Promotional materials and Reviews
Something Exciting Is About To Transform Toronto!
Once the city that slept too much – Toronto is waking up to a cultural explosion! Here, new people and a variety of cultures mix, creating dynamic neighbourhoods. Theatre, dance, music and film--- an astonishing variety of voices tell many different stories that challenge our assumptions and enrich our lives.
Soon, in the heart of the city, there will be a place for these voices to be heard, discussed, and shared; a home for ideas and dreams. An historic theatre is about to be renovated, a new home for artists from all over. A place committed to the breaking of cultural barriers—where artistic freedom and the exploration of sexuality and art reign---- Timothy Findley
Forging New Cultural Frontiers:
Imagine a place where artists congregate and create new visions of all cultures and where audiences converge for a wondrous experience. Buddies is a theatre which celebrates the work of cutting edge and lesbian and gay artists. Buddies will continue to be about difference and how exciting and enriching that difference is! The new Buddies will be home to explorers of Toronto’s uniquely modern urban culture. It is a risky and often sensuous adventure. But that’s what art is about—isn’t it?
Honouring the TWP legacy
Before George Luscombe and Toronto Workshop Productions, Toronto had little if any indigeneuos theatre. Sure, there were American road shows but nothing by an for us! There is a certain symmetry to Buddies in Bad Times’ move into the former home of Toronto Workshop Productions. The past will have a place of honour in the present. We will build a wall of tribute to Toronto Workshop Productions. Here, Buddies will face the future of theatre on a solid foundation. From the birthplace of radical theatre in Canada, will grow a theatre for the next century!
Some of the Plays:
The Seventh annual Rhubarb! Festivals of new and/or innovative theatre
Unique plays:
Diana (written and directed by David Cope)
The young symbolic moonstruck man, dangling on the wood. The young oblivious tick-tock man, out on a Sunday stroll. A young woman, dubious of tea and bisquits and pleasant promenades, sees a glimmer of her new moon, and makes a decision.

The Night Georgina Choked On The Bone, That’s Chicken To You, PAL! (Choreographer-Joey Meyes, Music by—Klaus Nomi):
They Frequently Swooned is a dance theatre piece where bhuto meets vaudeville, modern prose meets personal poetry, and lets you so close to the inner workings of women you can see their tonsils. Come see the Lapithe Sisters yell, rhyme, repeat, tap dance, eat, starve, waltz, wrestle, sing (in tune) swoon swoon swoon.
Rhubarb festival
Buddies annual festical of innovative theatre, performance art and dance theatre runs in early February. All pieces in the festival are half hour or less in length and should be innovative in style and challenging in content. Buddies produces and writers, directors and performers each receive a small honorarium. Fifteen new works are selected each year; each work gets five performaces
Unique play reflecting a gay man’s life and societal pressure and conformity:
Drag Queens In Outer Space, they believe, is even better than the orginal, since Gilbert’s writing is tighter and the dialogue was created with Staines, Chow and Millar in mind. But, as before, there is plenty of leeway for improvisation. In the sequel, a doubt-ridden Marlene shocks her friends by deciding to become more masculine and wearing men’s clothing. And, while trying to discover her true self, she is forced to confront starlet Marilyn Mansfield, a reincarnation of Joan Crawford and an array of evil space monsters. “ The show does have something important to say,” adds millar, “but we hope it’ll also lighten people up and help them forget all of society’s serious issues for a while.”
“That’s our philosophy,” agrees Chow. “Our motto is: ‘Lighten up!’”
Continued...
Marlene wants to go straight! The inch-thick mascara is gone, the slinky/sleazy dress has come off, even the name has disappeared. In place of the knock-your-eyes-out Marlene, theres a rather nondescript guy named bob, trying to be macho all over the place. Judi and Lana are horrified by the thought of their femme friend turning into a “church st. Monogamist.”
The plot, such as it is, is thickened by the arrival of poppies from the evil transvestite, Twyla. Their scent puts our heroes/heroines into a deep sleep and in their dreams the dilemma is examined from all sorts of unlikely viewpoints and resolved, with Bob going back into pantyhose and slingbacks where he belongs.