(The following is my speech from Pride Prom, held at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, produced by the Triangle Program and SOY (Saving Our Youth). The Pride Prom is an annual prom in Toronto for LGBTQ and Questioning youth and their friends. It gives them a chance to come to a prom with same sex dates, be outrageously queer and there is a Prom Queen, King and Ace. The Ace is for anyone not comfortable identifying as a king or a queen.)

Thank you for having me here today. I want to welcome you all to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I believe that usually when we come to the theatre we come to watch characters onstage, people, have experiences and to watch them transform as they have experiences. And as we sit in the darkness in the audience, hopefully, we can let our hearts open. Maybe we let our hearts open just a little bit. And, if we let this happen it can be really quite amazing to watch people transform. It can also be very moving to realize that we are all on a journey that is unfolding in front of us. I think that is one of the things that makes the theatre a very magical place. When it lets us see that.

Tonight, I am very privileged that I get to speak to you at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre at the Pride Prom. As you graduate from high school. It’s my hope that you are enjoying the moments of this time in your life. Because this is a time of transition for you I expect it will also be a time of transformation for each of you. I encourage you to let your hearts open, just a little bit. You are witnessing everyone’s transformation and your own.

It can be very exciting to watch the Theatre of our Own Lives as it unfolds.

The Theatre of my Own Life has been very exciting for me.

I went to high school in a very small town in rural Ontario. When I was there I was a very effeminate person in a boy-body, and I hope things have changed in that small town for young queer people, and I know that they have.

One of the things that comes to my mind when I think back to my high school is that it was a kind of theatre, too. It was a very small high school so there were people watching other people’s lives unfold. In fact, we were all witnessing each other’s lives. Commenting about it. Talking about it. Getting caught up in the drama.

Sometimes people could say some very negative things about each other.

I did everything I could to perform well there. I performed very well in class. I was a “straight” A student. And, I performed very well after class in the drama club. I performed very well in our school’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I liked performing very much, and I suppose I was known for it in my high school.

I also made sure to perform very well in the hallways, and in the cafeteria and after school. In between classes I made sure that I guarded my impulses and didn’t do anything inappropriate for my small town high school in the 80’s. Don’t be too effeminate. Don’t be too flamboyant. Don’t be too creative. Definately don’t be too creative. Don’t be sexual in any way around straight people. I performed that very well.

I wanted to be liked. I wanted to have friends and be accepted. So, I performed very well whenever other kids were watching me which was pretty much all the time in the Theatre of my High School. It was very challenging for me to always be performing, but it paid off because I got to survive.

But in a way I made an unspoken deal with some of the other people at my school. I would perform in certain ways and not in others ways if they would accept me. And they agreed to this agreement, too.

But once I made that unspoken deal with people they could be very critical of what I was performing and how I was performing. In fact, almost everyone was a critic. Everyone had an opinion.

Some people complained I was too artistic. Others said, “Why can’t you just let yourself be as artistic as you want to be?” Some said I was too unusual. Others said, “Why can’t you just embrace the fact that you are unusual. Most people said I was too effeminate. Others said, “Why can’t you just get over the fact that you’re effeminate and stop caring what other people think?” I was too proud. Not proud enough. Too forceful. Not forceful enough.

There was always something wrong with my performance. It was never good enough, and the criticism came form both sides.

Sometimes the most painful criticism of what I was doing was, “Why can’t you just be real? Why can’t you be the real you?”

It’s very hard to be real inside that kind of theatre. With an audience always judging.

(pause)

I always used to think that if I was famous everyone would accept me. Once I was famous people would really want to get to know the real me. I was really looking forward to being the real me. In a way, I wanted to perform the real me.

I don’t think that to perform is only to be fake. After all, we perform daily actions. We perform brushing our teeth. We perform carrying out the garbage. We perform actions. We perform saying hello.

Hello.

I do my best to perform as well as I can.

(pause) Yes, there´s more…. »

(from www.buddiesinbadtimes.com)

New Artistic Director Brendan Healy says: “When I accepted the position of Artistic Director, I was aware of the company’s important legacy and its need for renewal. As a queer artist, I identify with dissenters and mavericks. I have always considered myself an outsider, which affords me a perspective that is apart from mainstream ideals of beauty, art and love. I rebel against moral and cultural clichés around consumer-driven lifestyles, sexuality and identity politics. My vision for a queer theatre is one that embraces this outsider status in order to challenge established notions of morality, human relations, history and politics. In this age of cultural homogenization when difference is erased and divergence is feared, the queer point of view is more necessary than ever. This, my first official season, represents a bold reassertion of Buddies’ relevance as an artistic and political force in our city.”

Buddies’ proudly continues its commitment to new play development, gender parity and diversity with five works written by women, two by First Nations artists, five world premieres of original Canadian works, and the return of our ever-popular annual Rhubarb Festival with a new Festival Director, Laura Nanni.

Next season, Buddies will also extend its reach nationally with two of the company’s most successful recent productions embarking on cross-country tours. Both Agokwe and The Silicone Diaries will return to Buddies as they begin to travel the country with stops in Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal.

And last, but not least, Buddies will open its doors to an international perspective with the English-Canadian premiere of a major queer work from abroad. Sarah Kane’s brilliant and controversial play Blasted will finally get a professional Canadian production, outside of Québec.

The 2010-11 Season engages with the broader world. It fearlessly tackles experiences of citizenship, racialization, religiosity, marginalization and social repression. It is a season that encompasses the full complexities of contemporary existence with quintessentially queer humour, intelligence and ferocity.

(photography by Tanja-Tiziana)

on June 8th, I’ll be performing on a double bill with d’bi.young at the Performance Studies International conference. The event happens at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

I will be performing i was Barbie. d’bi will perform She.

d’bi is a brilliant and prolific artist, and I am excited we are performing on the same night.

Performance Studies International (PSi) is a professional association founded in 1997 to promote communication and exchange between scholars and practitioners working in the field of performance.

The organisation has staged numerous international conference and festival gatherings that have moved between the discourse and practice of performance. PSi conferences have been held across the U.S.A. and the U.K. and in Germany, New Zealand and Singapore.

To check out their website cut and paste the following link:

http://psi-web.org/

The Pride Prom is a spectacular, end-of-year celebration & graduation party especially for Toronto’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual (LGBT) high school students and their guests. Each year, hundreds of queer & trans youth and their friends join us as we crown the Pride Ace, King and Queen! The Pride Prom features celebrity hosts, food, entertainment, spinning by well-known youth DJs, contests and prizes. Past hosts have included actor Adamo Ruggiero, diva D-lischus, comedian Elvira Kurt, Taufiq, Much Music VJ Sook Yin Lee, the lovely Jane (AKA Sky Gilbert), and the marvellous Mirha-Soleil Ross. This is definitely an event you won’t want to miss!

The Pride Prom is co-sponsored by The Triangle Program and Supporting Our Youth.

It takes place at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Waawaate Fobister in Agokwe

My play, The Silicone Diaries, will be published in an anthology with Waawaate Fobister’s multiple Dora award winning Agokwe. This anthology of queer theatre will also contain Marie Brassard’s Jimmy (which we have known for quite some time.) It is a deep pleasure to be included with other such beautiful works.

I am not sure if a fourth play will be added to the anthology which is edited by J. Paul Halferty. It is being published by Borealis Press.

Agokwe is a multi-character monologue performed and danced by Waawaate Fobister. It explores unrequited love between teenage boys from neighbouring reserves. Yes, there´s more…. »

photo by David Hawe

(this story –about Silicone Diaries director and Buddies in Bad Times Artistic Director Brendan Healy– originally appeared in the March 25th issue of Xtra!)

(by Gerald Hannon)

He’s the man who was once a gender-ambiguous little boy with fingernails painted blue (applied by his openly bisexual dad), a little boy who loved to play with dolls and dollhouses, who made those dolls part of an “insanely rich and detailed dynasty,” a little boy in a rough part of town who got beat up a lot, whose hippie parents split before he was born, who spent a lot of time alone, who had a rich imaginary life, who grew up bilingual in Montreal. That may not have added up to a “lovely, pastoral childhood,” as he puts it, but it does read like the perfect background for a career in the arts.

Today, Brendan Healy is the artistic director of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. He’s only the fourth to hold that position in the company’s 31-year history, and he’s the youngest. That’s a description that makes him just a little uncharacteristically grumpy. “I’m fucking 34,” he says. “I’m not young. I know what I’m doing; I have life experience. I’m not some kid.” He’s no longer gender-ambiguous either, with his mildly caffeinated masculinity, his crisply ironed shirts and his conservative ties. Don’t let those externals fool you, though. He’s as queer as they come. Yes, there´s more…. »

Buddies in Bad Times Artistic Director and Silicone Diaries director Brendan Healy is going to be working with me again, directing a new revised production I Was Barbie. The new production will show this summer at multiple venues. I will post more details when I can….

Last summer I Was Barbie played to sold out houses and standing ovations at We’re Funny That Way, the queer comedy festival, Buddies in Bad Times Pride Festival and Halifax’s Queer Acts festival.

I saw Taylor Mac perform at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb! festival last February. She was one of the most inspiring live performance artists I have ever seen. This queen is making the world a better place, one performance at a time.

a video trailer for my one woman play The Silicone Diaries…

Karin Randoja in Breakfast

I learned a lot working with professional artists over the course of Silicone Diaries, and I knew I would learn even more if I observed the process from the outside again. I asked Brendan Healy if he would let me observe the remounting of The Independent Aunties’ Breakfast -both rehearsals and production meetings. Thanks to The Independent Aunties for letting me come aboard. I am very much looking forward to seeing your work.

Here’s info below on Breakfast from artsexy.ca

BREAKFAST
Mar 17 – Apr 4, 2010

Created by the company
Written by Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry
Directed by Brendan Healy
Featuring Karin Randoja, with Evalyn Parry and Anna Chatterton
Set & Costume Design Julie Fox
Sound Design Richard Windeyer
Lighting Design Laird MacDonald

“Utterly compelling … titillating and threatening” Xtra! Magazine

Nominated for 3 Dora Awards, Buddies is thrilled to present a remount of the Aunties’ highly acclaimed and unnervingly intimate production.

Meet Marnie, a woman trying out a self-help program in an attempt to “move ahead” in her life. The audience is invited to her kitchen, as voyeurs to Marnie’s morning rituals. “Randoja’s absorbing, fearless performance” (EYE Magazine) anchors this surreal and chilling encounter with one woman’s psyche, which takes an unflinching look at loneliness, self-delusion and our cultural obsession with self-help and personal transformation. You’ll never look at breakfast the same way again …

“One of the top ten shows of 2008″ Paula Citron, Globe and Mail

Developed through the Theatre Centre Residency Program

Photo of Karin Randoja by Jeremy Mimnagh