OutFest

What is OutFest?

OutFest aims to be the largest queer theatre festival in Atlantic Canada. After seven successful festivals in Kitchener, ON, this festival aims to provide a platform for multi-disciplinary artists to create stories that reflect our community, both past and present.

Organized by Page1Theatre, which is dedicated to producing, presenting, and developing original professional queer theatrical work.

Contact Info

• Host organization website

History

• OutFest 2023 was April 24 to 30 and included the following productions:
  • The Elephant Girls: The true story of the all-female gang that once terrorized London, England. Clever, organized, devious and daring, The Elephant Girls stole from the rich and gave to themselves. A fascinating piece of lost women's history, the play focuses on the 1920s when the gang was at the height of its power—and when the events took place which would mean its downfall.
  • Contemporary Dance Solo: Contemporary Dance Solo is a solo dance show with a hint of bouffon, wherein the performer (Robert Azevedo) recreates 18 dance solos from various youth dance competitions. Sometimes the young dancers are projected alongside the performer, allowing for easy comparison of the dancing bodies.
  • Untitled Flamingo Play: Featuring one performer, a collection of toys, and one sarcastic sock puppet, UNTITLED FLAMINGO PLAY follows two children, Addison and Helen, and their search for queer role models in a big scary normative world. The universe of this play is zany and irreverent: eight-year-olds quip like Oscar Wilde; kids use grindr on the playground; stuffed animals dispense questionable advice. Beneath all the hijinks, however, UNTITLED FLAMINGO PLAY has a purpose: to invite audiences into a hilarious story of growing up queer, in which coming out is just the beginning.
  • Water, Baby: “I wrote ‘Water, Baby!’ a few summers ago as an exploration of the lines between same-sex friendships, love and also just the psyche of a twenty-something in a love they cannot yet admit/understand/fathom. It was an eleven page story that relied on descriptions of the headspace of someone falling for their best friend, and also just the anxiety of, well, being alive."
  • The Skeleton Dance: The Skeleton Dance is a creative movement play for all ages about death. The show is a highly physical, energetic, and light-hearted play with elements of clown and puppetry. It is created and performed by Emma James (they/she) and Ella MacDonald (she/her). With an approximate run time of 40 minutes, the performance invites structured audience participation and is always followed by a meet-and-greet or talk back as well as cool-down activity.
  • 76 cm (staged reading): Samson and Abe are a long-term mixed-race couple. Their love is undeniable, but so is the tension between them. Amidst constantly howling winds and rolling blackouts, this relationship is put to the test as the couple finds themselves trapped in their basement apartment during St. John's record-breaking snowstorm of January 2020. What will end first, the storm or them?
  • Two-Spirit Stage - Patricia Vance-Meehan, Poetry: As a 24 year old who identifies as African Canadian, Russian, Metis Inuit, as well as a member of the LGBTQ2S community as a Two-Spirited Bisexual; I have discovered that writing is my form of expression and form of art that I choose to use in order to send very in-depth and positive mindedness as a part of my poetry.
  • Queer-Prov with Drag: Bunni Lappin and Mya Foxx are joining hosts Morgan Smith and Adam Myatt for an evening of improv comedy. The show will include games, music, costume changes, dance, and audience participation.
• OutFest 2022 ran from April 26 to May 1