Artists exist to create Art. Why does the state of the world today make them question that purpose and has it always been so? Susanna Fournier and ted witzel have been asking themselves that, and why they keep trying to give up Art (and failing) for twelve years during which time the world has just got even more fucked up. The result is take rimbaud; a play by Susanna Fournier, directed by ted witzel currently playing at Buddies in Bad Times in partnership with the Howland Company.
The headline is a quote from late in the second half of Zaiba Baig’s double header Kainchee Lagaa + Jhooti: The Begging Brown Bitch Plays which opened on Thursday night at Buddies in Bad Times in a production directed by Tawiah Ben M’Carthy for House of Beida Inc. The plays are loosely linked in that both deal one way or another with queerness and Pakistani-Canadian identity and experience.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from Oraculum at Buddies in Bad Times. I kew it featured a drag act and fortune telling but that was about it. On one level it’s a show about the relationship between a straight bimbo PR consultant; Kayleigh, and her gay male twink friend; Matt, who is hustling a product line called Gape. She’s about to get married and he’s doing all he can to undermine it including impersonating the on-line fortune teller she continually consults.
Bernard-Marie Koltès’ Roberto Zucco (translated by Martin Crimp) is currently playing at Buddies in Bad Times in a production directed by ted witzel. It’s a piece from the 1980s, written as Koltès was dying of AIDS and set in the mean streets of the less salubrious part of a European city, perhaps Paris.
operaramblings 