Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre strives to fulfill the role of the leading alternative facility-based theatre in Toronto. We are committed to work that challenges the boundaries of theatrical and social convention. As a company we celebrate difference and question assumptions. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is committed to theatrical excellence which it strives for through its play development programs, strong volunteer base, youth-mentorship initiatives and ever increasing wealth of Canadian queer talent.

History of Organization

Founded in 1979, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre has ensured that queer voices are a vital part of Toronto’s cultural landscape. It has made an unparalleled contribution to the acceptance of queer lives while supporting some of Canada’s most innovative and important artists, such as Daniel MacIvor, Brad Fraser and Ann-Marie MacDonald. In 1994, thanks to the financial support of a wide range of donors, Buddies was able to give queer Canadian culture a permanent home at 12 Alexander Street. The combination of Buddies’ innovative artistic vision, a powerful community spirit and a permanent, flexible space has resulted in Buddies becoming the largest queer theatre in the world.

Accolades and Accomplishments

• Seven Dora Mavor Moore Awards for productions of Blasted and The Situationists (2011)
• Six Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Waawaate Fobister’s Agokwe (2009)
• Artistic Director Brendan Healy received the 2009 Pauline McGibbon Award for directors
• In 2008, former Artistic Producer Jim LeFrancois received inaugural Leonard McHardy and John Harvey Award for arts administrators
• Other awards include the Lieutenant Governor's Award for the Arts (for organizational strength), the Michael Lynch Award for Queer History, and numerous other Dora Awards and nominations

Programs

>Queer Youth Arts Program
>Artistic Programming
>Artist Residency Program

Queer Youth Arts Program: This program provides an empowering artistic space for queer youth aged 15-25 to build connections with established queer artists, like-minded peers, and the broader queer and arts communities, with on-going opportunities for performance creation and access to Buddies' artistic programming.

Main Stage Productions: Every year, Buddies provides a creative outlet for more than 500 artists and reaches an audience of 45,000 through productions that share and celebrate queer stories, partners with other theatre companies who work in marginalized communities, and hosts the longest-running new works festival in Canada.

Artist Residency Program: Buddies commissions and develops new work by established and emerging artists by offering one-to-three year residencies where they receive the space, resources and dramaturgical support needed to realize their creative vision.

Queer Youth Arts Program

A program where the next generation of queer youth can discover and share their individual voices, under the mentorship of senior artists and community leaders. It also teaches them about the struggles of previous generations and provides them with an outlet to share those discoveries with their communities. The program is broken into four main components:

• Buddies Youth Nights: Every season, Buddies gives out over 200 free tickets to youth. Each youth night also includes a special talk-back with the artists.
• QueerCab: A monthly open-mic night for young queers to express their creativity in a supportive and safe environment.
• The Young Creators Unit: A supportive and artistically rigorous space for 4 queer-identified artists to develop and perform their own original solo performance piece under the mentorship of theatre professionals.
• PrideCab: Each spring, a select group of youth program participants create an original cabaret-style show that is presented as part of Buddies’ annual Queer Pride Festival.

Funding and Program Partners

Our Queer Youth Arts Program receives direct support from our Education Partner, TD Bank Group. We also partner with a long list of youth groups, public agencies, schools, community groups and art organizations in order to reach as many queer youth as possible. Some of these are: Supporting Our Youth (SOY), The 519 Community Centre, Planned Parenthood's TEACH Program (Teens Educating and Confronting Homophobia), the Toronto District School Board’s Triangle Program, the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT), and the Central Toronto Youth Centre, just to name a few.

Program Impact

The Queer Youth Arts Program empowers queer youth through artistic expression, fostering self esteem and a sense of belonging, while offering regular opportunities to share their voice with the larger community and develop it through hands-on professional training.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Leadership and Belonging:

“Toronto youth face barriers to accessing safe and welcoming public space.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2011)

Buddies’ Queer Youth Arts Program provides queer youth with an empowering and supportive environment by helping them discover, develop, and share their creative voices, and connecting them to the broader queer communities.

Participant Vignette

From Waawaate Fobister, whose groundbreaking one-man show Agokwe told the tale of unrequited love between teenage boys from neighbouring native reserves. This critically-acclaimed show bravely tackles themes of native cultural preservation, racism, bullying and teen suicide. Agokwe began development while Waawaate was in the Queer Youth Arts Program, and premiered on the Buddies main stage in 2009. In 2010, the show embarked on a tour across Canada which included a stop at the prestigious National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

“I first got involved at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2006 with their PrideCab, a queer youth driven cabaret for their Pride festivities. I was also asked to perform in their QueerCab, a monthly open mic. At this open mic, I ranted a true story. Evalyn Parry, the director of the PrideCab, urged me to organize this rant into a monologue to perform in the cabaret. I reluctantly did so. This was the seed for Agokwe. I later applied to be a part of their Young Creators Unit (YCU) to further develop Agokwe into a one-man show. At the end of the YCU we had to perform our pieces and I was paired with professional director Ed Roy to bring this piece to life. After the success of that presentation, Buddies approached me wanting to produce this show into a full-scale production. The show was a hit. It was nominated for eight Dora awards and took six of them. Buddies has nurtured me and given me a chance as a young artist. Where I come from in a northern isolated reserve, Agokwe’s success is thought only as an unreal dream. My parents would be thrilled if I only got as far as my high school diploma, because it is seen as a huge accomplishment and to go further is beyond expectations for the youth from my reserve. I am so very grateful that Buddies believed in me and invested in their youth programs, because if they hadn’t - the success of Agokwe would still be an unreal dream.” -Waawaate Fobister

Artistic Programming

As a queer performing arts centre, Buddies in Bad Times is an exceptional site for local, national, and international queer artists to present their work, meet each other, and enter into a dialogue about art identity and politics with our city. Over the course of a season, our audience experiences the best in emerging and established queer talent from Toronto and beyond through our mainstage productions, festivals and late night cabaret performances.

Funding and Program Partners

Buddies receives multi-year operational funding from the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government. The site at 12 Alexander Street which Buddies occupies is a city-owned building that is leased to the company for a nominal sum. This lease is in effect until 2033. Additional funding for artistic programming comes from the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Ontario Ministry of Tourism’s Arts Investment Fund, and the Creative Trust (an arts stabilization program for mid-sized companies, which has awarded the company three Working Capital grants). Buddies also benefits from private support through individual donors and corporations including TD Bank Group and BMO Financial Group.

Program Impact

Through our artistic programming, Buddies acts as a cultural home for the queer community – telling our stories and preserving our heritage. Our work brings an important queer perspective to our city’s cultural discourse and raises the voices of the marginalized to a level of excellence on par with the rest of the world.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Arts and Culture:

“The city is well-positioned to be a global leader in arts and culture.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2011)

As the largest queer theatre company in the world, Buddies ensures that Toronto retains its position as a world leader in artistic and social innovation. As one of the most acclaimed and longest-running professional theatre companies in the city, Buddies plays a pivotal role in positioning Toronto as an energetic and creative city.

Artist Residency Program

Buddies in Bad Times recognizes that a solid, stable, committed and extensive new work development program is essential to support the creation of new queer work. Established in 2009, Buddies’ Artist Residency Program supports artists and companies who follow creation methods that fall outside traditional, writer-centered processes by commissioning and developing new, queer works over a one-to-three year period. Resident artists are offered space and time in the theatre, along with dramaturgical, technical, production, and administrative support needed to realize their creative vision.

Funding and Program Partners

The program receives direct support from BMO Financial Group. Our current resident companies are Ecce Homo, The Independent Aunties, Birdtown and Swanville, and The Gay History Project.

Program Impact

Buddies’ Artist Residency Program ensures the preservation and promotion of queer culture by giving voice and opportunity to the people who tell its stories, and creating a space for them in the larger cultural dialogue of our city.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Arts and Culture:

“Toronto’s finest attribute? Creative capital that enriches the city and drives prosperity.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2011)

The Buddies Artist Residency Programs acts as a seeding ground for new work and as a platform for artists to grow their careers and refine their craft. It is an important first investment in the creative capital of tomorrow.