Located in Toronto’s Gay Village, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is the world’s largest and longest-running queer theatre. This Fall, Buddies is presenting Black Boys, a new work created and performed by Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, Tawiah Ben M’Carthy and Thomas Olajide.
Black Boys was created out of a desire to have the stories from artists of colour both seen and heard, and the desire to be able to tell their own stories, instead of having them told through another’s lens.
The creators were facing fatigue of seeing the stage underrepresented with people of colour and other sexual orientations, Olaijide explained. “I thought it was important that we, the artists of colour, were the catalysts behind the production. That we had the keys, and not just sprinkled on stage at the last few seconds of a creative process.”
The show is about three individuals who identify with race, gender, love and death in very different ways. The creators added that Black Boys dissects both what it means to be black, and how each individual relates to it differently, with each performer having their own unique story to tell.
The trio began creating Black Boys in 2013, and the production has changed over the course of those three years to reflect changes in society, culture and themselves.
“A lot happened since we started this conversation. To be able to speak to what’s happening and the changes that are going on and being able to keep on top of it,” M’Carthy explained. “But not only that, as creators, our lives have changed over time. Over the past three years, we’ve grown, we’ve had many experiences that have influenced what the piece is.”
Even up to the time of our conversation a few days ago, they noted that the show was still ever-changing. “I feel like changes are happening still in us and in our souls and how we’re responding to the world now – in this current week. It is challenging but it is exciting,” Jackman-Torkoff noted.
Black Boys opens at a time where the conversation of intersectionality of race and sexual orientation, and what it means to be a queer person of colour has come to the forefront in Toronto, after the Black Lives Matter protest at Toronto Pride this past summer. The group stated that the protest opened up a very important conversation on different definitions people have of the LGBT community and how certain people may feel more apart of it than others.
Jackman-Torkoff mentioned that this conversation has greatly affected his creative circles, as well. “I’m finding it’s mobilizing a lot of people and I’m finding a lot more black artists and queer artists and black queer artists who are very eager to join creatively in the conversation. And I’m meeting more and more people I didn’t know existed and it’s because these conversations are happening.”
Ultimately, through both inward and outward experiences, the production speaks to what it means to have a black identity, and how it’s unique for each individual.
“We all identify as black in different ways. We all have different relationships with our blackness. So it’s a matter of us unearthing that within the show,” M’Carthy said. “And in so doing, even within whatever racialized community you come from or whatever race you are, we are all individuals within it, with our own experiences.”
Black Boys is playing at Buddies in Bad Times until December 11, 2016.
Written by Andrew Sturrock
