The world's largest queer theatre company is about to kick off an absolutely massive Pride program

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

We should all aspire to embrace middle age like Buddies in Bad Times. As the theatre company and queer social space celebrates its 45th birthday, it's doing so with renewed energy and a hopeful outlook — no small feat for 2024 (particularly in the theatre world). And that's in part thanks to its new artistic director, ted witzel. 

"It's hard to come into this job when all of the reporting about what it is to be in the theatre sector right now is that it's under collapse and it's under critical threat of not surviving,' witzel says. "I'm so bored of the word 'unprecedented,' but it is kind of like an unprecedented time in terms of trying to make decisions about what it means to run a theater right now. The pandemic so radically changed how we engage with going out."

So witzel — who joined Buddies last fall — is trying to approach things from the perspective that in 2024, it's all about the experience.

"What I'm noticing is that the live events that are doing really well are big and they're experience driven," he says. "Whether you're talking about like Beyonce and Taylor Swift's sell out tours or looking more theatrically at the really successful run of Six at Mirvish or the Stratford Festival managing to post a surplus this year. I think people are not so much willing to just come and buy a ticket for a nice story and then go home. But they do want to go out for a complete experience. And so we're trying to revamp our operations with that in mind."

That certainly is evident in Buddies' massive 2024 Pride programming, which kicks off May 24th (with their 45th anniversary party) and then continues for more than 5 weeks. 

"Pride is great because it's a combination of curation and events that community members are bringing forward," witzel says. "And it's a mix of parties and comedy shows and drag and cabarets. So we're doing a really expanded pride festival this year."

The dozens of planned events include a Pride drag extravaganza in a new partnership with Vision Drag; a visit from Irish drag royalty Panti Bliss, the 2-Spirit Cabaret (with Native Earth Performing Arts), the Emerging Creators Unit showcase, and concerts and cabarets that include Vag Halen's The Vag of the Beast, punk-music showcase Scrapfest, and a special 10-year anniversary concert by the Queer Songbook Orchestra (and that's just a small sampling). 

The programming — and Buddies' mission in general — is in part based off conversations between witzel, artistic associate Erum Khan and director of operations Kristina Lemieux about what makes a memorable night of theatre.

"The show being good is a really important part of that," witzel says. "But what I also remember is my time in the lobby, who I was out with when I went to the theatre and where I went after the theatre. What's the way I spend that whole night? And that's what I carry with me. Whether it was traveling to Serbia to see a 24 hour long show with a fisting scene halfway through or going to the same show as Peaches in Berlin, all of those have made a kind of critical impact on me. One, because the show is fucking brilliant. But on top of that, because it was a whole night out that I was building a connection and an intimacy with the person I was seeing the show with. So all that is feeding into how we're thinking about people coming into the building."

There are three things witzel acknowledges that make coming to Buddies unique, whether you're an audience member or an artist putting on work there.

"For one, there's the fact that this place's basic existence and identity as a queer art center and one of the largest of its kind in the world," he says. "Specifically in the landscape of queer theatre, it's the world's largest and longest running one. And as I have worked internationally a lot, I don't see any other country having such a sophisticated discourse of what it means to encounter queerness in performance. And I think that the artists in this country are also working in dialogue with this institution."

The second thing is that Buddies has not just gone through the pandemic, but also an accountability process.

"Which means that it has deconstructed itself to a massive degree," witzel says. "There's been a massive amount of departures. We have an entirely new board. So there's really a chance to rebuild with a lot less givens than other organizations are working with where they haven't had the kind of staff turnover and they don't have the ability, or it's much more painful for them to restructure."

Finally, witzel says Buddies stands apart thanks to the fact that it has a dual identity — and a dual business model — as both an arts center and a nightlife space.

"So where I look at a lot of the other theatres in the city, they don't have the same potential to pull in additional revenue streams by being relevant to the communities they serve or the publics they serve. Buddies does, so people can find a way to belong in this building, even if they hate theatre. And that's a lot of people!"

So come one, come all, to the Buddies in Bad Times experience. May it reign for another 45 years, at least.

Check out all of Buddies in Bad Times' Pride programming here.