Zee Zee Theatre 2025/2026
Welcome friends to our 18th season!
When I started Zee Zee nearly 20 years ago I couldn’t imagine that we’d still be fighting for our right to exist and love and laugh by 2025.
In 2008, when we incorporated the company, hate crimes were on the rise in Vancouver, there were no mainstream Queer theatre companies, the West End Queer nightlife scene was about to be in a tail spin with the impending closure of the Odyssey Nightclub and the East Van Queer scene was on the decline with the monthly dance party Bent folding and the quarterly Oddball retiring. There were fewer and fewer avenues for Queers to gather and celebrate.
It was into this world that Zee Zee emerged, dedicated to bringing Queers together and to creating community. From our inception, we have been throwing giant parties with drag at the heart of these events as a way to celebrate Queer Joy. The early voguing balls, the monthly dress-up party Queerbash, the weekly drag variety show Apocalypstick, all brought people together to dance, to laugh and to celebrate. Behind the seriousness of this fledgling, mainstream theatre company was a bunch of 20-somethings desperate to dance and sweat and make out (with consent!) and ultimately build audiences and raise money. It’s thanks to the brilliance of Dave Deveau and Brandon Gaukel who produced all these parties that Zee Zee exists today.
But now nearly 20 years later, Queerness seems under threat again. And so our 18th season focuses on Queer Joy in the face of adversity, as an act of resistance.
From the workshop of Equinox our Trans love-story set against an institutional threat, to Glamily our family dress-up dance party, Zee Zee continues to foreground joy and laughter at all costs.
Please join Bronwyn and I this season!
Artistic & Executive Director
September 2025