Zee Zee Theatre 2024/2025
A letter from Cameron Mackenzie, Artistic & Executive Director
HELLO friends, loved ones and all those joining us for the first time!
Welcome to Zee Zee Theatre’s 17th Season! It boggles my brain that we’ve been building this company for close to twenty years. At seventeen we’re no longer a child, but not yet an adult. We still have much growing and learning to do – but we know who we are and what we hold dear!
This season we are having hard, yet vital, conversations. Daring conversations that will hopefully support growth and transformation in ourselves and in our communities. Our season begins with Indigenous storyteller Dallas Yellowfly, who brings the spine-chilling tale of Qwalena: The Wild Woman Who Steals Children to life in his riveting multimedia performance and allegory which explores the history and far-reaching effects of the residential school system. It will be an evening of Indigenous storytelling, music, vendors and sweet treats, in honour of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This will be a co-presentation with Touchstone Theatre – a first for us!
Storytelling is at the root of our work, and a key part of hard conversations should be good storytelling. That is why we are thrilled that our annual storytelling project this year focuses on Rainbow Youth: 2-Spirit, Queer & Trans youth ages 14-17. With so many marches, laws and online hate-filled conversations being had ABOUT the children, our Artistic Managing Producer Bronwyn Carradine felt we needed to hear FROM the children. I added that if they couldn’t vote then they truly didn’t have a voice in this so-called democracy that we live in. Come with an open heart and listen to the truths these young people want to share.
Our mainstage production continues these hard, but exciting, conversations with Andrea Scott & Nick Green’s Every Day She Rose – a theatrically inventive exploration of white supremacy, privilege, and patriarchy in supposed safe spaces. The boundaries between playwright and character melt away as two friends – both real and fictional – grapple with their shared but deeply opposing experience of witnessing the Black Lives Matter halt of the Toronto Pride Parade in 2016.
With protests to support Palestine happening at this year’s Pride Parades the conversations around how we show up as allies to our intersecting communities is a crucial one. So much of the response to this year’s protests are the same as those in 2016. Eight years later and so much of what was said online could have been taken directly from this incredible script.
I am also thrilled to have not one, not two, but FOUR new works in development! including a new Zee Zee commission by Sunny Drake – playwright behind “instant Canadian classic” (Calgary Herald) Men Express Their Feelings, our Mainstage show in 2022. Not to mention two alumni works from our own Queer & Trans Playwriting Unit. We continue to invest in established, mid-career and emerging Queer & Trans artists at every opportunity and truly believe in the transformative power of art and sharing the human story.
This season pushes us to be better allies and better humans. At the same time we believe in the transformative power of QUEER JOY and CELEBRATE the act of making art and the people who make, inspire, and support it. At Zee Zee hard conversations create thrilling theatre.
Come and celebrate what 17 seasons at Zee Zee Theatre looks like.
Artistic & Executive Director
September 2024