Surviving the Pandemic III: festivals in your home!

5 May 2020

The covid-19 pandemic has dealt a serious blow to the LGBTQ and arts communities. The first "Surviving the Pandemic" looked at how individual artists and groups were struggling to adapt and to create amidst the loss of their usual venues. The second "Surviving the Pandemic" featured even more. Since then there have been many great projects that deserve to be added to those lists but hopefully readers are scannning social media and finding even more than I have. Great art and entertainment is thriving on the web.

But now we are three months in and summer is here. All the events that make summer in this city so vibrant have been cancelled in their usual formats. But a lot of them are figuring out how to connect via the internet. The summer's biggest event, Pride Toronto, is launching Virtual Pride. While a lot of events have been announced covering the entire Pride Month - drag extravaganzas, virtual versions of all three parades, versions of Steers & Queers and Blockorama, Fay & Fluffy's Drag Story Time, Yes Yes Y’all, Sex Talk: Calls in Quarantine, and even The Morning After: Strapped Brunch Takeover - the details are still vague about how to actually tune in. Visit pridetoronto.com and though we can't celebrate collectively, we can all still be proud. 

Buddies' Queer Pride always fills Pride Month with joy and daring. It too has moved online for 2020 and with their Queer, Far, Wherever You Are series ongoing on Instagram and continual blogposts dealing directly and insightfully with queer life in a pandemic, they have a head start. Buddies is also sponsoring fixed location performances and installations that are spread all across the city (with the admonishment to avoid travelling and to visit the one near your lockdown location or view online). From a Twilight Fairy Garden with heavenly vocals by Helene Ducharme, to a "site-specific, physically-distant drag performance spectacular for one" with Jord Camp, to a Michael Caldwell (House Guests) dance piece titled "Cruising" at Cherry Beach (if only it were safe for it be interactive), to a Pride Rocks rock garden in Scarborough, to a nightly party at Trixie and Beever's notorious backyard, there is a lot to explore.

On Wednesday, June 24 Buddies teams up with the CBC for Queer Pride Inside: a Buddies in Bad Times Cabaret hosted by Elvira Kurt and starring a motherfuckerlode of queer talent including Gay Jesus, Pearle Harbour (Retreat, Chautauqua, Pearle Harbour's Sunday School), Ivan Coyote, Tawiah M’Carthy (Obaaberima, Black Boys), Les Femmes Fatales and many more. The Queer Youth and performances by the Emerging Creators Unit will also be performing their annual Pride cabarets. And for everyone missing the casual cruisy festivities at Tallulah's on Pride Sunday, there was a Zoom event Patricia's Pride Tea Dance hosted by the grande dame herself, Patricia Wilson (Musing From the Bunker & Slouching Towards Womanhood) but it has now been cancelled. All the details on how to join in Buddies Pride are at buddiesinbadtimes.com.  

The other big gay festival, Inside Out has optimistically postponed the festival of LGBTQ films until October. In the meantime, to celebrate their 30th year, there is a Retrospective Shorts Program culled from the festival's three decades that can be streamed at insideout.ca. There is no way to recreate the excitement and cruisiness of the actual festival, but at least a taste will keep cinephiles sated until, hopefully, October. The shorts are collected into the groupings of "Best of the Best of the Fest," "Local Heroes," and "30 Years of CanQueer." All three contain dozens of shorts that tantalize and can't help but build anticipation for the future main event.

The Luminato Festival which has brought Toronto audiences so many extraordinary events - RIOT, Burning Doors, and the life-changing Forget Me Not - over the years is now streaming on the festival's social media platforms and Zoom from Thursday, June 11 to Saturday, June 13. There are many workshops and conversations, which always were a part of Luminato's programming, but also "an edible performance" by Measha Brueggergosman (Caroline, or Change) that will be delicious. Taking on extra urgency in light of current events is Black Summer Nights with Unit 2, Black Lives Matter Toronto and Tea Base. As well as a host of DJs there are performances by Dainty Smith and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (Trout Stanley, Towards Youth, Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom, Black Boys) that will transcend any technological limitations of presentation.

Zuppa Theatre Co present Vista20, a walking tour app that they claim can be experienced anywhere - even "in circles around an apartment" - without ignoring physical distancing. The irrepressible Tomson Highway (The (Post) Mistress) introduces a performance of his and John Millard's hit from last year's festival The Cave. A cabaret production that was already intensely intimate, it should translate well to a small screen with its magical musicality intact. Luminato climaxes with an invitation to "come and party like its the end of the world" at Revelation with Les Femmes Fatales and DJ Nik Red. Full listings and log-on details at luminatofestival.com.

The Hot Docs Festival will miss having a big screen, but it does have a big selection of over 140 films and shorts that are available online. Some are once-offs but many are will be streaming on demand until Wednesday, June 24. There is, as always, queer content with Her Mothers (Hungarian lesbians adopt), Transhood (four years in the lives of four trans youth in Kansas City), Meat the Future (queer filmmaker Liz Marshall explores producing meat without slaughtering animals), If It Were Love (a theatre tour of a play based on raves becomes a surreal film/theatre hybrid), and Playback (drag queens in conservative Cordoba in the '80s).

As always there are also many documentaries with queer appeal: Bare (the creation of Burning Souls, a dance piece performed au naturel), Kachalka (a gym built out of "cast-off Soviet-era machinery and the eccentrics who work out there), and the self-explanatory Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist. Browsing the catalogue online at hotdocs.ca will help you find many other films to fill those hours when Netflix just doesn't have what you want.

Though the full details aren't announced yet, the Toronto Fringe festival is also going to adapt with The Fringe Collective, a Digital Experience. The 50 performances that were scheduled for summer 2020 will "share a creative offering" in a slot during four acts taking place from Wednesday, July 1 to Sunday, July 12. All the performances will be pre-recorded and will stream on a private page at fringetoronto.com. There isn't a full program available yet, but never underestimate the "let's put on a show" spirit of the Fringe.

Who wouldn't pick up if they got a call from Nick Blais, Colin Doyle (The Flick), Francis Melling (Hand to God), Anand Rajaram (Buffoon, Mustard, Stupefaction), or Sebastien Heins (Bang Bang, Brotherhood: The Hip Hopera)? SummerWorks will tragically not be able to offer their slate of intriguing experiments and adventures, but they are teaming up with Outside the March (The Flick, The Tape Escape, Mr Burns, a Post-Electric Play) to present The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries. The first mystery is just what the production is, the press release explains it as a "customized improvised narrative experience unfolding over a week’s worth of short daily phone calls, as our intrepid private investigators delve into your very own micro mystery using the investigative power of good conversation."

However it works, 'the game's afoot!' with assistance available from "The Misplaced Keepsakes Division," "The Striking Coincidences Think Tank," "The Missed Connections Unit," and "The Paranormal Activity Task Force," all staffed with some of Toronto's best theatrical talent and the mad geniuses that form Outside the March. Bookings with The Ministry and more information at summerworks.ca and outsidethemarch.ca.

The summer won't be a total loss with the internet bringing all the festivals and Pride directly to your home. It won't be the same but it will still be a summer of festivals. Festivals in your home.