Buddies in Bad Times TheaTre is siTuaTed on The lands of The haudenosaunee, The anishinaaBe, and The WendaT, and The TreaTy TerriTory of The mississaugas of The CrediT. We aCknoWledge Them and any oTher naTions Who Care for The land (aCknoWledged and unaCknoWledged, reCorded and unreCorded) as The pasT, presenT and fuTure CareTakers of This land, referred To as TkaronTo (“Where The Trees meeT The WaTer”; “The gaThering plaCe”). Buddies is honoured To Be a home for queer, Trans and 2-spiriT arTisTs on These sToried and saCred lands ThaT have Been sTeWarded By Indigenous peoples for Thousands of years Before The arrival of Colonial seTTlers.
Cover photo + creative direction by Fran Chudnoff. styling by CC Calica, makeup by Rahnell Branton.
Pictured: Ludmylla Reis.
Festival Director’s Note
Rhubarb! has, for me, been about a feeling first, and as its Festival Director, I have been experimenting with how to communicate that feeling with words, ideally, only one. Transgressive communicates one side of the festival; radical describes another, but only in early 2026 did I stumble into sovereignty as a concept. Or rather, I returned to it.
When I think of sovereignty in art making, I think of it as a skill that allows me to find the corners or transgression in what is available to me in the world. I need to know what I want, why I want it, and where I want to go with it, so I can decide my position in the discourse I’ll be a part of.
Rhubarb! 2026 has asked the artists (and then will ask its audiences) to sharpen their sovereignty skills.
As a dashed canadian, who has chosen to be an artist first by consuming one culture (Brazil), to then produce it in a different one (Canada), I will forever navigate the question: what type of art do I want to make now? In holding this question, I have aligned a cohort of artists under one theme.
HYBRID CREATURES: where each piece is doing the artistic movement of smashing inspirations, forms, rules and by doing so, creating a hybrid. Something that we just can’t categorize, something born of a reshaping of what was, something that allows us to reimagine the new. And I believe we all need to re-exercise that today.
As Rhubarb! 47 artists develop works that navigate these clashes; Rhubarb’s curation has also invited them to take a detour from their regular ways of figuring things out. We asked them to think outside their habits, beyond the regular ways they view things, and beyond the expectations and demands our systems have imposed on them. Take a detour, do it in a way that might not keep you on the development path, but will give you the chance to gather some kind of information that you can take back in the journey with you — it’s fully yours.
Consider it a way to improve your artistic sovereignty skills. Rhubarb! continues to be a place to rethink culture for artists and audiences alike, and I can’t wait to hear what you think on our last day of the festival, which consists of a series of public engagements, including our beloved Coffee Chats. But if you need a day or so to get your mind back in order, my email is very easy to find.
Bisous! Besos! Beijão!
L.
shows + artIsts
Live Art
TESTO by Wet Mess
Struggles of No Real Significance by Aiden Robert Bruce with Rachel Rusonik + Sara Starling
Sandpaper Hammock by Aliyah Aziz
How to Make a Fishing Net by Bronwyn Keough
Seasons of Grief by Cass Cervi + Bad Machine (James Jordan)
ORTOLAN by Eris Thomas + Other Hearts featuring Yousef Kadoura, Eija Loponen Stephenson
TESTing Ground: Toronto and the world at Rhubarb! 47 by Erum Khan + isi bhakhomen
EEK!!! by jonnie lombard with Jenna Geen
I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD by Katie Clarke with D. Halpern
Watch Me by Lucy Coren + Nevaeh May featuring Nevaeh May, Rinchen Dolma, Brandon Lorimer
¿Y si me ven? / If they see me? by Macarena Coronado featuring Cuzzocrea, Osvaldo “Ova” Barreda Buschmann, Seung Eun Cha
Transfigure/Transfix by Oliver Pitschner + Jessie Walker + Sophie Parisi featuring jonnie lombard, Bronwyn Keough, Lou Campbell, Laura Spencer
How the Wolf Says Goodnight by River Oliveira + Max Cameron Fearon
An-ti-gon-nee by Ludmylla Reis
After DArk
Men Explain Things to Us… and We Like It! by Dasha Plett + Gislina Patterson (We Quit Theatre)
Wrath Month: Louder Than Pride by Morgan-Paige Melbourne + En Tze Loh (GRRRL Spells)
crew
Van Ward, Diamond Srey, Nate Gurarie, Kit Norman, Mojo Noble, Zoe Daca // head techs
Mojo Noble // associate technical director
Darren Shaen // festival lighting designer
Lexi Sproule // festival coordinator
Mike Dowdall, Zoe Daca, Antel Kollenberg, Mackenzie McCallum-Mallory, Julie M Li, Brawk Hessel // crew
Matt Armour // archival video operator
THANK YOU
Liz Staples, Bespoke A/V
still from TESTO by WET MESS by Lesley Martin
Festival scheDule
Please note that the schedule below lists the order in which the shows will be presented, but the start times for each show may vary.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026 – Opening night
Doors 6:30PM / Show 7:30PM
On February 4, the venue is mask-mandatory after 9:30PM. Masks will be available for those who need them.
Live Art // 7:30PM
TESTO by Wet Mess [60 minutes]
ORTOLAN by Eris Thomas with Other Hearts [30 minute loop]
I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD By Katie Clarke [30 minutes]
Access Notes
TESTO by Wet Mess features a pre-show touch tour and described audio. Please purchase an “Audio Described” ticket if you’d like to access the described audio.
I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD by Katie Clarke is a masked performance.
thursday, February 5, 2026
Doors 6:30PM / Show 7:30PM
Live Art // 7:30PM
How the Wolf Says Goodnight by River Oliveira + Max Cameron Fearon [30 min]
Seasons of Grief by Cass Cervi + James Jordan (Bad Machine) [20 min]
Sandpaper Hammock by Aliyah Aziz [30 min]
Transfigure/Transfix by Jessie Walker + Oliver Pitschner + Sophie Parisi [60 min loop]
Access Notes
If possible, please bring a device that can connect to the internet and a pair of headphones to engage with this piece. We will have limited numbers of each to use on site.
Friday, February 6, 2026
Doors 6:30PM / Show 7:30PM / Rhubarb! After Dark 10:30PM
Live Art // 7:30PM
EEK!!! by jonnie lombard [30 min]
How to Make a Fishing Net by Bronwyn Keough [20 min]
Watch Me by Lucy Coren + Nevaeh May [30 min]
Struggles of No Real Significance by Aiden Robert Bruce [30 min]
Rhubarb! After Dark // 10:30PM
Men Explain Things Men Explain Things to Us… and We Like It! by We Quit Theatre [60 min]
saturday, February 7, 2026
Public Events 1PM – 4:30PM / Doors 6:30PM / Show 7:30PM / Rhubarb!
After Dark 10:30PM
Free Public Events // 1 – 4:30PM
1PM – Coffee Chats
2:15PM – Canada, eh? A public chat on cultural diplomacy and the Canadian touring context, hosted in partnership with SummerWorks
3:20PM – (SOMETHING?): A Public Conversation on International Producing, hosted in partnership with Generator
Live Art // 7:30PM
TESTing ground by Erum Khan + isi bhakhomen [30 min]
¿Y si me ven? / If they see me? by Macarena Coronado [20 min]
An-ti-gon-nee by Ludmylla Reis [15 min]
And you? a performance on criticism related to An-ti-gon-nee led by Ludmylla Reis [45 min]
Rhubarb! After Dark // 10:30PM
Wrath Month: Louder Than Pride by GRRL SPELLS
project DescriptioNs
Wednesday, February 4, 2026 – Opening night
TESTO WET MESS
In TESTO, Wet Mess Wet Messifies the messiness of life with teeth and one chin hair; exploring transitions, testosterone, the edges of drag, the blurry line between performance and reality, character and self, dreaming and day-dreaming, knowing and feeling, and the soupy spacey mess in between it all. Meet me at the computer of confused edges, for some guttural sexuality, too many images, wearing our insides on the outsides, and waiting for the hateful crunchy key change. Expect moustache meals, desktop dreams, dykey desires, underwhelming overwhelm, trotting, lolling, humping, titting, farting, pinching at the dull flesh of life here and here and here and here where the magical is in the mundane and made up shit becomes real.
Wet Mess // creator + performer
Nancy May Roberts, Lucia Fortune-Ely (Metal & Water) // production
Miz Barber // production coordinator
Jordan Sherman / Lambdog1066 // costumes
Baby // sound
Josh Hariette // lighting
Travis Alabanza // outside eye
Ruta Irbīte // set
Trans Punk Elder, Baby, Angel, Shrek666, Santi Sorrenti, Danni Spooner, Sue Maclaine, Svar Simpson, Felix Mufti, Ben Vyle, Envy the Queen // interviewees
Content warning: nudity, references to transphobia. Sensory warning: strobe lights.
ORTOLAN
Eris Thomas
ORTOLAN is a performance installation and intimate ritual that explores the intersections between decadence, queer embodiment and the natural world. Taking its name and performance logic from the rit-
ualistic consumption of the endangered ortolan bunting, in which the head is covered to shield from the eyes of God. In our contemporary world, the ritual of consumption and its aesthetics of transgression remain, the human shame of glorying in the decadence of cruelty. ORTOLAN transmutes the aesthetics and logics of this ritual towards one of intimacy and care, while exploring the fetishization and commodification of both avian and Trans bodies.
Eris Thomas (she/they) // lead artist/performer
Yousef Kadoura (he/him) // maitre de service/production support Eija Loponen Stephenson (she/her) // installation support
Content warning: references to violence and sexual acts.
I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD
Katie
Clarke
I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD is an experiment in poetics and new kinds of prayer. This work-in-progress explores landscapes of guilt and shame in a sick trans body and the rituals and relationships that inscribe or excoriate those feeling-places.
Katie Clarke // creator
D. Halpern // dramaturg, outside eye
Content warning: scraping fingernails on wood, reference to suicide, death, needle use.
thursday, February 5, 2026
how the wolf says goodnight
River Oliveira + Max Cameron Fearon
Somewhere, a boy tests speakers in an empty theatre. Somewhere, a professor delivers his final lecture. Somewhere, a wolf prowls and claws at the dark.
Once upon a time, there was a knife. But this story is not about the knife. It is about the wound.
A love letter to imperfect victims everywhere, “how the wolf says goodnight” is part sound collage, part performance lecture, and part dissociative episode live onstage. It explores cycles of trauma within queer relationships, the psychology of folktales, and what it is to live in the “after.”
[Dedicated to the memory of Jo Tedman]
River Oliveira (he/they) // creator, performer, sound artist
Max Cameron Fearon (they/them) // co-creator, director, dramaturge
This immersive, multimedia project is a rumination on the cyclical nature of grief and healing. Poetry and music that have been created in conversation are performed together to move the audience through the seasons of a year and bring listeners into the artists’ grieving journey.
Cass Cervi // writer, performer
James Jordan (Bad Machine) // composer, performer
Transfigure/Transfix
Around + Out Theatre Company / Ghost Tower Theatre Company / Sophie Parisi
Transfigure/Transfix is an audio play by Jessie Walker and Oliver Pitschner. In this sexy early-2000s tale of romance, magic, and funerals, barista Tuesday and shapeshifter Vesper will explore needing people and being needed in the way only messy queers can. The audio play is accompanied by Sophie Parisi’s visual animation and illustration work Fester/Ferment, exploring repetition and collecting, wanting and desire, remembering and re-remembering, and finding the same feeling over and over again in different places.
Oliver Pitschner // co-writer and co-director
Jessie Walker // co-writer and co-director
Sophie Parisi // visual artist
Al Starkey // sound design and editing jonnie lombard, Bronwyn Keough, Lou Campbell, Laura Spencer // voice actors
Content warning: language, depiction of funerals/discussion of death, mentions of transphobia.
Sandpaper Hammock
Alia Aziz
Sound is something that you can feel beyond your skin. In “Sandpaper hammock” the electromagnetic hums that underscore our technological interactions, are amplified as living ghosts that move through us, echoing beyond their physical forms. Using custom built “Listening Gloves” as an instrument, Aliyah Aziz extends the hidden sonic textures that exist underneath the perceived smoothness of our machines. Tuning technology as though she is listening to its pulse, she invites the audience to join her as she performs alongside improvised compositions off of technological artifacts, pushing their electric auditory signals past their surfaces in a haunting extension of voice.
Content warning: mention of violence. Sensory warnings: loud sounds, and flashing lights.
EEK!!! or The Really Cool Experimental Reimagining of The “Mice Turned Me Trans!!!” Play
jonnie lombard
jonnie gets stuck in a very exerting movement piece exploring the entanglement of the creative and the personal as it pertains to their transgender being and also in a mousetrap there’s cheese! please come
What is the difference between archival and hoarding? Where does cultural knowledge fit in a modern life? Is tradition really just peer pressure from the past? Part-storytelling, part-tutorial, part-gossip circle, How to Make a Fishing Net is an ode to the Northeast Avalon and its people, holding fast to the edge of the continent.
Heavily inspired by trad circles, kitchen parties, and the real-life upbringing of a gay east-coaster, I present a character study of the land and the people shaped by it.
This project is dedicated to Andrew, who was my great uncle, and also my friend.
Content warning: discussion of sexual assault, emotional abuse.
Men Explain Things to Us... And We Like It!
We Quit Theatre
Two impulsive, unpredictable, extravagantly gendered late-night talkshow hosts — Dasha Plett and Gislina Patterson — invite real life men into a cardboard and construction paper television studio to talk about their passions, fears, and what it’s like to be a man. Streamed live from Winnipeg, Men Explain Things to Us… And We Like It! uses the space between reality and performance to transgress and re-write the unwritten rules and social etiquette of gender relations. Men Explain… is presented with support from send+receive, Winnipeg Film Group, Manitoba Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts, and is directed by filmmaker Ryan Steel. Visit www.wequittheatre.ca for more information.
Dasha Plett (she/her) // creator, performer
Gislina Patterson, he/they // creator, performer
Ryan Steel (he/him) // director
Philip Geller (they/them) // outside eye
Struggles of No Real Significance
Aiden Robert Bruce
Have you ever felt different? Like no one quite understands you?
No One Important has, and they’re here to share their experience with abnormality. It’s not a coming-out story. It’s not particularly inspiring. It’s not that interesting or significant. But maybe you’ll find something to chuckle at. Maybe something will resonate. Probably not, but who cares?
It’s something to do.
Aiden Robert Bruce (any pronoun) // creator, performer
Rachel Rusonik (she/her) // director
Sara Starling (she/they) // dramaturg
Content warning: homophobic and acephobic language, bullying and physical assault, sexual harassment and sexual coercion, references to rape and sexual violence, self-harm (including cutting and
self-flagellation), suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, depression and anxiety, medical and psychological pathologization of sexuality.
Sensory warnings: loud/sudden noises.
Watch Me
Lucy Coren + Nevaeh May
Watch Me is a digital site-specific performance that takes place on OnlyFans, and offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the complex realities of being a sex worker. It situates sex work as simply that–work. Watch Me digs into that familiar tension so many of us feel between the need to work and provide for ourselves, while also trying to balance self-compassion, rest and care.
Conceived by Lucy Coren, and co-created by Lucy and Nevaeh, a sex worker and birth worker in Toronto, this work is performed by Nevaeh and is a composite of elements of her own life, as well as material generated by interviews with other folks in the sex work industry in the city. It was originally commissioned and developed by Project: Humanity.
Lucy Coren (she/her) // co-creator + director
Nevaeh May (she/her) // co-creator + performer
Andrew Kushnir (he/him) // dramaturgy
Rinchen Dolma (she/her) // performer
Brandon Lorimer (he/him) // performer
Miquelon Rodriguez (he/him) // broadcast designer
Riley, Shawtay, Christina // community consultants
Content warning: NSFW.
saturday, February 7, 2026
¿Y si me ven? / If they see me?
Macarena Coronado Harman
This project is a contemporary dance inspired movement piece with no dialogue, exploring the feeling of being caged behind a mask in a
world where everyone else seems to be effortlessly free of one. More than anything else though, this piece is a personal experiment, an attempt to voice my thoughts, emotions, and experiences through the language of the body. Movement is fluid and free of strict meaning, it is up to the interpretation of those who choose to interpret it. It is freeing. And through it I hope to express what my words cannot.
Macarena Coronado Harman (she her) // creator, director, and performer
TESTing Ground: Toronto and the world at Rhubarb! 47
Erum Khan + isi bhakhomen respond to TESTO
Two local artists experiment with their own practice at Rhubarb! 47. Erum Khan and isi bhakhomen will watch this season’s touring piece, TESTO, at the first night of the festival, take the next 48 hours to engage with it artistically and share their findings with us as part of the 47th edition of the festival. Wanna be surprised? This is the event for you.
In this part autoethnography, part manifest, part theatrical deconstruction of Antigone, we follow a performer’s personal journey through the myth. For Rhubarb! 47, a unique excerpt is shared with the audience. The piece will also serve as material for the discussion/deconstruction event happening right after it, called And You?
Ludmylla Reis // artist
Sensory warnings: repetitive sounds.
And You?
Ludmylla Reis
This event is an experiment in public discourse, criticism, opinions, perceptions, and exchange between an audience and an artist, reflecting on the excerpt showing of an-ti-gon-nee by Ludmylla Reis which happens immediately prior. The discussion/experiment will be mediated by three invited industry guests who are also seeing an-tigon-nee for the first time.
Will the artist be present? How will the audience engage? How will the guests respond to the material? What will we grasp from it, collectively?
An excerpt of it an-ti-gon-nee will be presented immediately before And You? begins. You are welcome to attend And you? without watching an-ti-gon-nee, however, no further context will be provided about the piece; it would be as if you stumbled upon a secret session, and you will have to figure out the context as you go.
Ludmylla Reis // artist
Wrath Month: Louder Than Pride
Wrath Month: Louder Than Pride is a QTBIPOC alternative music show, featuring gothic, punk, metal, and alternative bands and artists who are usually deemed too “weird”, “scary”, or “different” for mainstream and corporate-funded Pride month events. On this night, we bring back the riot and trade dance beats for a mosh pit!
Morgan-Paige Melbourne (they/she) // co-organizer
artIst BIos
day 1 – Wednesday, February 4
TESTO
I am Wet Mess (they/them) and I work across drag, movement direction, theatre, and live art. In 2021 I won Not Another Drag Competition (RVT) and have since been largely working in drag, cabaret, and nightlife. In 2023 I was part of Travis Alabanza’s Sound of the Underground (Royal Court) and Emma Frankland’s Galatea at Brighton Festival. My film work has been funded by Jerwood Arts and screened at Thunderdance, Raindance, London Short film festival, ICA, and The Photographers gallery and won multiple awards. Movement direction work has included choreographing videos for Will Young and London Grammar. In 2018 we won a Fringe First at Edinburgh Festival with the theatre company ThisEgg. Solo and collaborative works have been shown in multiple contemporary contexts such as the Tate Britain, The Southbank, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Battersea Arts Centre, The Place, Shoreditch Town Hall, Walker Gallery, and Baltic39. As a performer, I have worked internationally with Pester & Rossi, Monster Chetwynd, Donna Huanca, Oriana Fox, Cecile B Evans, Molly Palmer, Beth Kettel, Bhebhe&Davies, Joseph Bond, and Rebecca Lloyd-Evans.
ORTOLAN
Eris Thomas (they/she) is a Nonbinary, multi-disciplinary artist working in theatre as a director, dramaturg, and performance maker. Their work explores the possibilities of hybrid performance forms, and is especially devoted to theatrical ritual, the inventive use of bodies and objects, and the ways our material world informs the stories we tell. Selected Credits: Director/Performer, INVISIBLE ARTISTS
CARNIVAL (Other Hearts/Eyelevel Gallery, Nocturne 2023), Director/CoScenographer, QUARTET (Other Hearts in association w Video Cabaret, 2024, Dora Nominated), Performer/Creator, ENTWINED/DISTILLED (Sto Union in association w Other Hearts, Nuit Blanche 2024).
Yousef Kadoura is a Disabled Lebanese-Canadian actor, writer, and producer as well as graduate of the acting program at the National Theatre School of Canada (2017). He is a producer and host of Crip Times, a podcast series exploring disability in the arts. Selected credits include: Mo, RUBBLE, (Aluna theatre 2023) Jonathan, JONATHAN: LA FIGURE DU GOELAND (surrealsoreal, Montreal, 2022) Jihad, ERASER,
Eija Loponen-Stephenson (she/her) is a sculpture and performance artist whose work is predominantly concerned with interrogating the choreographic relationship between human movement and urban materiality. She holds a BFA in Sculpture and Installation form OCAD U and is currently completing her PHD at York University. Recent credits include: In/tention (Produit Rien, 2021), In support of sex work (Images Festival, 2020), Costume Design/Co-Scenographer QUARTET (Other Hearts in association w Video Cabaret, 2024, Dora Nominated).
Other Hearts is a Dora-nominated, Toronto-based performance collective made up of four core members: Yousef Kadoura, Sebastian Marziali, Silvae Mercedes, and Eris Thomas. Other Hearts seeks to blur the line between artists, audiences, and the world around them. We are devoted to work that is interdisciplinary and intercultural, drawing from the lived experiences of our core team and our collaborators to envision new ways of being together via performance.
I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD
Katie Clarke is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. Directing credits include The Immaculate Perfection of F**king and Bleeding in the Gender Neutral Bathroom of an Upper Middle Class High School (One Yellow Rabbit/BodyCube Arts Collective), The Rocky Horror Show (apprentice director, Neptune Theatre), and can you remember how we got here? (OutFest). They are currently producing and co-directing The Unfamiliar Everything (The Accidental Mechanics Group/The Theatre Centre), which will premiere in 2027. Katie’s poetry has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Wussy Mag, Room Magazine, and with Metatron Press. Their poem “other people’s clothes” was longlisted for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize. Katie’s undergraduate thesis on Foucault, domestic violence, and women’s incarceration, co-authored with BL Shirelle, was recently published in Hypatia.
D. Halpern (they/them) is a Canadian-based playwright and dramaturg. Playwriting credits include An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies (Dandelion Theatre), Milk and Spittle (Paper Sailor Theatre), The Immaculate Perfection of F**king and Bleeding in the Gender Neutral Bathroom of an Upper Middle Class High School (One Yellow Rabbit/BodyCube Arts Collective), and Donnelly (Bleeding Hearts). Dramaturgical credits include The Waves (Out of Body) and Creature of Habit (Expanse Festival).
how the wolf says goodnight
River Oliveira (he/they) is a multidisciplinary sound artist, musician, performer, poet, and technician interested in creating sonic landscapes that explore altered states of perception, queer experiences of grief and survival, and the marriage of nature and noise. He has worked as a creator and technical leader across the city. Most recently, River was Head of Audio at TMU Chrysalis, and the Composer/ Sound designer for the Weston Mural/Sound Installation, “Chasing Wind” with Crossroads Theatre. Website: riveroliveira.com.
Max Cameron Fearon (they/them) is a director-dramaturge and artsworker whose practice centres wonder, urgency, and care. They investigate and (re)create stories that exist between/beyond “the text”; and explore personal journeys and connections as opportunities for social/political transformation. Max has directed for indie companies across the city and worked recently with the Stratford Festival (Langham Director’s Workshop), SummerWorks Festival (Co-Festival Producer), and Young People’s Theatre (Teaching Artist). They’re a pretty good baker. Website: mcfearon.crevado.com
Theodore Belc (they/them) is a Toronto-based lighting designer and creative problem solver working at the intersection of colour, space, and story. They graduated from the Performance Production Program at Toronto Metropolitan University, where they focused their studies in lighting design and scenic arts. Theo’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in illuminating stories that reflect and resonate with the Toronto arts community with a focus on queer narratives.
Katherine Teed-Arthur (she/her) is an actor, playwright, and producer known for her colour-coded scripts, multi-tab spreadsheets, and a career dream to play a scary ghost. She has an affection for intricate projection set-ups, speedy pacing, and pretty lights. Most recent work onstage includes Antigone (Sunbeam Theatre), 500 Doubloons (Hamilton Fringe), and Hamlet (Afterlife Theatre).
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard (she/her) aka Belladonna the Blest is an emcee, playwright, dramaturge, and agitator. Her work has been recognized with nominations to the Governor General’s Literary Award, Siminovitch Prize, Dora Awards, META, SATA, and Patrick O’Neill Award. She is currently the associate artist at lemonTree Creations, playwright in residence at Theatre Aquarius, and artistic director of New Harlem Productions.
Seasons of Grief
Cass Cervi (they/them) is a screenwriter, facilitator, poet, and performer based in Toronto. Whether they’re writing absurdist comedies, like their IPF-funded webseries Confession Queens, or their Canada Council-funded feature film Master Debaters, performing their silliest burlesque acts, or hosting queer events of all kinds, their goal is always the same: to bring people joy. Catch them every Tuesday at Bampot House, where they host weekly sapphic programming!
Bad Machine is a queer, disabled, and non-binary comedian, clown, writer, screen/voice actor, and improvisational loop musician. They’re weird. Their unhinged and entirely improvised live performances mix beatmaking, clown, DJing, and visual and performance art into one eccentric smoothie. Some recent credits include Rhubarb! Festival 2025, Open Canvas Festival, and the UKAI Carnivals of Shipwreck and Algorithmic Culture. If excited by the above, check them out at badmachine.ca.
Transfigure/Transfix
Jessie Walker (they/she) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, theatre-menace, and veritable jack-of-alltrades based in Kjipuktuk /Halifax. They were the recipient of the 2025 Robert Merritt Emerging Artist Award and their queer hobbyhorsing epic, Horse Girls, has received multiple awards including “Best of the Fest” at the 2024 Halifax Fringe Festival. They have collaborated across Canada and the US with organizations including Eastern Front Theatre, Shakespeare by the Sea, Prismatic Arts Festival, Festival Antigonish, CORPUS, Arrivals Legacy Project, Ghost Tower Theatre Co., programsound. fm, Opera House Arts, and more. You can hang out with them on the internet @aroundandouttheatreco + @walkerjessie. Huge thanks to Ludmylla + the entire Buddies team for their Buddies debut!
Sophie Parisi (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator from Toronto. She loves textiles, ceramics, and comics and enjoys primarily working in analogue mediums, bleeding into material art and design. Her work often explores spectral memories, earnest convictions, bittersweet recollection, and feelings that are too big to hold in her hands. Her piece for this year’s Rhubarb! Festival accompanies her dear friend Oliver Pitschner’s audio play Transfigure/ Transfix and is called Fester/Ferment. It’s about repetition and collecting, wanting and desire, remembering and re-remembering, finding the same feeling over and over again in different places. This is her Buddies debut.
Oliver Pitschner (he/him) is a transsexual playwright, director, and arts administrator based in so-called Toronto. He is a proud writer of genre fiction, exploring themes of youth culture, the family unit, religious fundamentalism, the early internet, and transgender liberation in his work. He has written and directed Behold, a Man!, The Other Paris, and Transfigure/Transfix. He currently works at Factory Theatre as a commsperson and sits on the board of directors for East End Arts, helping bring accessible arts and culture to Toronto’s east end where he resides. He is thrilled to be back at Buddies after directing Valentine Leger’s The Biography of Harry Allen at last year’s 2025 Rhubarb! festival. When he’s not working on his current writing project UNION, Oliver can usually be found cooking his friends dinner, trying to teach his fiancee Maeve Magic: The Gathering, or at the club dancing to post punk.
Sandpaper Hammock
Aliyah Aziz is a multidisciplinary artist who uses light to talk about shadows, and sound to physically move shadows through us. She uses disruption as a tool of resistance, embracing glitch and static to channel the friction that exists between the surface and the depth of the technology that we engage with. Aliyah finds inspiration in what reaches below the skin, and in the sensations that whisper behind language in the stories that we tell.
3 – Friday, February 6
“EEK!!!” or The Really Cool Experimental Reimagining of The “Mice Turned Me Trans!!!”
Play
jonnie lombard (they/them) is a trans thing from the woods swirling through side-quests of sentience. They perform, poeticize, and party in pop-art melodrama playgrounds, in bars, basements, bathrooms, and back again, always with the primary intention of wearing fun hot outfits. They have been an Ancient Greek unintelligible being, a monster made of markers, a cyber-canine sex demon, a snail-mountain lovechild, and a pigeon. If you ask jonnie to go dancing, they will always say yes <3
Jenna Geen (she/her) (aka moonwatcher) is a singer, sound designer, composer, and actor. her recording artist project, moonwatcher, is an experimental music project exploring the union of classical and contemporary composing within a pop landscape. She created a concert last year with the Music Gallery where she sang under water in a fish tank, she is giving birth to a squash named Pinky in her spare time, and she is excited to score this iteration of EEK!!! at the Rhubarb! Festival with her bff jonnie <3
How to Make a Fishing Net
Bronwyn Keough (they/she) — on a dark December night in 1999, lightning struck a patch of neon lichen growing on a seaside cliff — and Bronwyn was born. They have been an artist/weirdo/freak for as long as anyone can remember, probably because of the lichen thing. They are a comedian, poet, storyteller, net-maker, little sister, and all-around shitdisturber. They love swimming and berry-picking, and are learning to play the spoons. Previous Buddies credits: QueerCab 2.0. If you see them around, say hi!
Watch Me
Lucy Coren is a theatre creator, producer, and community arts facilitator. Her work centres around engaging people as they are and working to unpack and repackage their stories into a dramaturgy which allows them to safely and insightfully communicate their identities and experiences. She has produced nationally and internationally for venues such as Theatre Royal Plymouth, Tramshed Arts, Native Earth Performing Arts, and the National Arts Centre. Past creative work includes Football Fathers (De Grote Post, 2019), Transfers (SummerWorks, 2022), and
How We play(ed) (Theatre Direct, 2023.) Lucy has been a Buzz Artist with Theatre Passe Muraille, a member of The Foundry with Factory Theatre, and was an artist-researcher with Project: Humanity and Nightswimming. She is currently the Artistic Producer for Outside the March.
Neveah May is a sex worker and birth worker. A full spectrum doula since 2018, going to only abortion doula work in 2021. She founded a BIPOC doula non-profit that services the most marginalized navigating the reproductive spectrum. She has been a camgirl/online content creator since 2022 and a stripper since 2023. In her time in both industries she has had to navigate boundaries in unique ways, redefining and navigating how they are respected or not depending on which of the two feminized work forces she’s in that day. She hopes this piece forces the person seeking services to recognize the humanity of their care provider and get reflexive about the ways in which they unintentionally (or intentionally) strip their service provider of that right to offer or withdraw consent, force compliance, and dismantle their personal power in client need of receiving self-directed care.
Struggles of No Real Significance
Aiden Robert Bruce (ARB) is an actor, singer, producer, intimacy director, and playwright. They received their Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Drama from Queen’s University. They have performed with various institutions such as Theatre Kingston, Eye of the Dawn Collective, the Kick and Push Festival, and Kingston WritersFest. Off of the stage, they have worked with Kingston Theatre Alliance, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Intermission Magazine. Rhubarb! 47 marks their debut with Buddies.
Rachel Rusonik is a director, designer, and theatre scholar currently completing her MA at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. She received her Bachelor of Arts Honours in Drama and English from Queen’s University. Her previous directing work includes Sunday in the Park with George with Queen’s Musical Theatre and The Scottish Play with Two Rabbits One Hat. Rhubarb! 47 marks her Buddies debut, and she is very excited.
Sara Starling (she/they) is an emerging artist who is absolutely stoked to be making her Buddies debut alongside her long-term friends Aiden and Rachel! Sara has worked with companies such as Peerless Productions, FOLDA, and Thousand Islands Playhouse. She is currently studying production at the National Theatre School of Canada. She is also a playwright and dramaturg whose work mostly focuses on women, sex, and the body!
Men Explain Things to Us… And
We Like It!
We Quit Theatre is an award-winning, nationally-touring collaboration between trans artists Dasha Plett and Gislina Patterson. Dubbed “the hottest collective to come out of Winnipeg since the Royal Art Lodge” (Globe and Mail). Their past performances include include 805-4821, i am your spaniel, Passion Play, and GLORY!
day 4 – saturday, February 5
¿Y si me ven? / If they see me?
Macarena Coronado Harman (she/her) is a Toronto-based performer, director, and multidisciplinary theatre artist from Lima, Peru. Weaving together her love for dance, design, and theatre, her neurodivergent brain, and her political science degree, Macarena aspires to make art that is expressive and revealing in all senses. Most recently, she co-created and performed in …! (The Balloon Show) at the 2025 Paprika Festival, and was artistic intern at Theatre Gargantua for their production of Dissonant Species. This is Macarena’s Buddies debut!
Emma Cuzzocrea (she/he/they) is a performing artist currently pursuing a BFA in Acting from TMU. They have collaborated on and performed in new works with many wonderful artists at Guilty By Association, Sheep’s Clothing Theatre, and the Paprika Festival. Buddies debut. Thanks to Mum, Pop, Sarah, Kathleen, Ruth, Gilly, and of course all the POPs (People of Paprika).
Osvaldo “Ova” Barreda Buschmann (he /him) is a dancer and educator from Santiago, Chile, who is now based in Toronto. After studying visual arts with a focus on community and teaching secondary school in Chile, he traveled to Toronto to devote himself fully to dance. He is currently a student at the Dance Arts Institute (formerly the School of Toronto Dance Theatre), and his practice unfolds between street dance and contemporary dance. Throughout his career, he has participated in international art residencies in Colombia and Zimbabwe and performed on various stages in Toronto, including the Paprika Festival, Canadian Stage (with Jamii), SummerWorks, and Common Ground.
Seung Eun Cha (they/them) is a theatre performer and artist entrenched in multidisciplinary embodiment and expression. They are in their third year at TMU’s Performance: Acting program and while recently partaking in the creation and performances of Rock Bottom Movement’s Be The Bird, Sheep’s Clothing Theatre’s Blood Brothers, The AMY Project’s Creation Program, and There Is So Much More To Say directed by Erin Brubacher. In Paprika Festival’s 2025 Creator’s Unit, Seung Eun collaborated with Macarena Coronado, Ova Barreda Buschman, and Emma Cuzzocrea, under the mentorship of STARLIGHT, to devise an absurdist movement piece called …! (The Balloon Show).
TESTing Ground: Toronto and the world at Rhubarb! 47
Magda “isi bhakhomen” Uculmana-Falcón is an AfroPeruvian, Nigerian, downtown Toronto-based artist. Their varied works explore themes of Black femme power, ancestral memory, humour and absurdity. Through stories they aim to build worlds that give Black folks the freedom to breathe, to laugh and to heal. A literary giant once described them as “a fiercely blossoming independent artist.” A loving teacher stated that they were “a force to be reckoned with both as a performer and as a writer.” And their formerly estranged father now calls them “brilliant.” You can find out more about them at www.isibhakhomen. com.
Erum Naz Khan is a performance artist based in Toronto. Erum chases frequencies across multidisciplinary practices, awakening the mythic through contemporary lyricism. Committed to collaboration as a core artistic ethos, they seek to honour the varying worlds and pedagogies unearthed by those who are in a room together, forever elevating a collective mess emerging fully from the heart. Recently they were the Artistic Associate at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, a literary artistin-residence at The Atlantic Centre for the Arts, and a selected playwright for the 2025 National Playwrights Retreat at Caravan Theatre. For a deeper inside scoop: erumkhan.ca.
Ludmylla Reis is a cultural leader, a theatre director, a filmmaker, a Creative producer, and a curator with a BFA in acting and an MFA in directing, as well as an independent career in project management and cultural studies. Currently, they are the Festival Director for The Rhubarb! Festival @ Buddies in Bad Times.
Wrath Month: Louder Than Pride
GRRRL Spells is a horror and occult inspired queer and trans art and apparel brand, combining riot grrrl attitude with goth aesthetics and the gay agenda. With Wrath Month, we expand on our love for queer and alternative subculture and aim to advocate for QTBIPOC representation in the alternative scene by creating spaces for the genre and community that is often overlooked. Wrath Month: Louder Than Pride will be debuting at Rhubarb! After Dark as a pilot event for what we hope will become a full fledged festival in the future.
Show Line Up
Takaayla
Morgan-Paige
Chinese Medicine
Monster Magicals hosted by Krēme Inakuchi
BuDDIes IN BaD tIMes theatre
Artistic Director
TED WITZEL
Director of Finance and Development
KRISTINA LEMIEUX
Rhubarb Festival Director LUDMYLLA REIS
Operations Coordinator
MASON MCDONALD
Production Manager REBECCA VANDEVELDE
Technical Director
ANTHONY ALLAN
Producer
AIDAN MORISHITA-MIKI
Director of Artistic Planning
SUE BALINT
Marketing Manager
KATIE CLARKE
Social Media Coordinator
ANASIMONE GEORGE
Facility Manager
PAUL THERRIEN
Senior Manager of Bar and Nightlife
AL THOMAS-HALL
Nightlife Programmer
RAE ABUNAHLA
Nightlife Producer
EMMA WESTRAY
Chamber Coordinator
AMBER PATTISON
Publicity
KATIE SAUNORIS | KSPR
Custodian
KEVIN NICOL
Hosting Team
CONI AGURTO, MAXWELL COWAN, HANNAH KENNEDY, DIVINE MARKSOWUSU, MACKENZIE MCCALLUM, LESLEY NICHOLLS, ASHER ROSE, SARAH ROWE, SIWAR SORIA, MAIREAD STEWART, DANNY SYLVAN
Head of Security AIDAN MCKENDRICK
Security Team MARY RUMBAWA
Bar Personnel
RICHARD BELL, DANIEL HOANG, RONNIE LÉGÈRE, ASHER ROSE
