Roberto Zucco marks a new era in Buddies’ history of queer theatre
iPhoto caption: Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh.
Toronto theatre can be a bit risk-averse.
Artistic directors, constrained by limited funding, program obvious crowd-pleasers over boundary-pushing experiments. Playwrights, afraid to ruffle feathers, create spaces that validate the public’s existing beliefs, rather than raucous experiences designed to provoke. Audiences, faced with shrinking free time, opt for known commodities over innovative, but potentially disappointing, duds. And, as any magazine freelancer will tell you, theatre section editors tend to prioritize artists who readers already know over unfamiliar faces.
With all that in mind, it was a bit of a surprise back in June when ted witzel announced Roberto Zucco as his first production at Buddies in Bad Times since becoming artistic director. Penned by French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès in 1988 as he was dying of AIDS, the gritty, bloody, and occasionally funny script follows the titular character (loosely based on real-life Italian serial killer Roberto Succo) as he slices and dices his way through an unnamed city. At first glance, Zucco stands out as an odd season opener for the company. Not only is Koltès largely unknown among Toronto audiences, the script — here Martin Crimp’s 1997 translation — isn’t always considered queer.
“The queerness of this play feels very visceral and intuitive, in a way where you never explicitly have to name it,” witzel said in an interview. “In a way, it’s also my retort to what I’ve experienced as the great sentimentalization of AIDS over the last few years. We’ve seen a lot of AIDS stories on Netflix and a wild number of HIV-related plays. And there’s often an ‘it gets better’ element, where they want to show how heterosexual society can change to include queer people. This play is the photo negative of that, screaming with rage and crying for a revolution.”
Along with the question of its queerness, Zucco is an improbable choice for Toronto given the laserlike focus many companies put on premiering original Canadian scripts. Hoping to ward off American cultural imperialism, regulators and funders have long insisted on a heavy dose of CanCon across stages, radio dials, TV stations, and magazine racks. While digital platforms offer easy access to writing, films, and music from around the globe, theatrical offerings remain comparatively limited since the medium is so localized.
“As an emerging artist, I felt very stifled by a funding system and a set of programming imperatives that say something is only new Canadian work if it’s a new Canadian text,” he said. “I think you can create a new Canadian production by reacting to a text that comes from anywhere in the world and any other point in time. It can’t help but be Canadian when you have a bunch of Canadian artists trying to make sense of it and stage it for this audience here right now.”
Despite Roberto Zucco being an unlikely fit for Toronto, the text has proven a hit elsewhere. Since it premiered at the Berlin Schaubühne theatre in 1990, a year after Koltès died, Zucco has been translated numerous times and performed on dozens of stages around the globe, including a stop at Montreal’s Festival TransAmériques in 1993 as well as a new production in the original French at the National Theatre School of Canada this past April. Interestingly, the last few years have seen a global uptick in stagings, including a show in London last June and another in Rome slated for October.
witzel says the script’s rise in popularity is part of his reason for staging it at Buddies. But the play has actually been on his mind for nearly two decades. He first encountered it during his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, when a professor assigned monologues from it to some of his classmates. Stunned by what he heard, he quickly found a copy and devoured the whole thing.
“My first thought was, ‘What the fuck did I just read?’,” he said, laughing. “I returned to it every once in a while after that, but I didn’t really find a way into the play or a reason to direct it until about five years ago. Then something cracked open in me and I began viewing the story through the lens of what queer rage means on the edge of death.”
For this production, witzel has enlisted scenographer Michelle Tracey, who collaborated with witzel on the world premiere of Sunny Drake’s Every Little Nookie at the Stratford Festival in 2022, as well as The Scavenger’s Daughter at Buddies in 2019. Together, they’ve conceived an environment with peeling wallpaper and grimy tile that looks like it was borrowed from a true crime series set in the 1980s. Logan Raju Cracknell’s lighting and Dasha Plett’s sound design will help complete the production’s atmosphere.
“The piece is located near the height of the AIDS epidemic and the end of the Cold War,” witzel said. “We’re playing a lot with the disintegration of one world order as a new world is trying to be born mixed with the mythic elements Koltès was exploring and the current position of true crime in our culture. Materially, we’re pretty located in that decade and the true crime aspect. With the lighting and sound, we’re going towards the mythic.”
As an artist, witzel has never been subtle about his desire to challenge audiences. In choosing Roberto Zucco to open the season, he wanted to question the role Buddies serves in 2024, when queer stories already feature on stages around the city and across the country.
“As an audience member, I feel like Buddies is a space where I’ve been consistently challenged and I want to continue that with this piece,” he said. “Programming this show says that we’re here to do difficult work. It’s going to be sexy, it’s going to be provocative, and you’re not going to walk out with easy answers.”
Roberto Zucco runs at Buddies in Bad Times until October 5. Tickets are available here.
Chris Dupuis
Chris Dupuis is a nomadic writer/creator/curator originally from Toronto.
LEARN MORE
iPhoto caption: I Don't Even Miss You photo by Eden Graham.
Factory Theatre welcomes new audiences with shows that explore human connection
“I feel like I’m really looking to theatre for joy right now,” says artistic director Mel Hague. “I don’t mean works that are specifically funny or happy. I’m talking about something deeper where you can feel connected to the art on stage, the space that’s hosting it, the other people in the audience, and yourself.”
iPhoto caption: J. Kelly Nestruck headshot courtesy of The Globe and Mail.
An exit interview with Globe and Mail theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck
J. Kelly Nestruck has left the building. (Or at least the aisle seat.)
iPhoto caption: Photo of Gary Reineke courtesy of Allegra Fulton.
Remembering Gary Reineke, the man who knew how to enter
Gary couldn’t abide a bad show. This was a man who looked imperiously down his nose. You knew judgment was surely there at the tip, and that it would not be forgiving. He couldn’t stand a bad actor.
iPhoto caption: The cast and creative team of Cinderella at Lighthouse Festival Theatre. Photo courtesy of Lighthouse Festival Theatre.
Lighthouse Festival’s holiday pantomime returns for a second year of family-friendly fun
As per panto tradition, Cinderella will feature audience call-and-response, topical zingers, and loving nods to the local community, framed by an irreverent retelling of a classic fairytale. Playwright Ken MacDougall will once again pen the script for the show.
iPhoto caption: The cast of Tunnel Runners. Photo by Aza Jin.
Tunnel Runners takes listeners on a podcast journey through Toronto’s hidden chasms
If you’re tempted to go spelunking and find out for yourself just what lies beyond the curve of a TTC tunnel, pop in your earbuds and press play on Tunnel Runners, a new seven-part original audio drama from CBC’s PlayME podcast.
UnCovered returns to Musical Stage Company with U2 and the Rolling Stones
“What you see in the audience is really the tip of a very long collaborative iceberg,” says Wong, artistic associate at Musical Stage Company and arranger, orchestrator, and music supervisor for UnCovered. “It’s a really diverse cast of voices and styles, and they’re all bringing their A-game. It’s starting to get really exciting in the room.”
iPhoto caption: I Don't Even Miss You photo by Eden Graham.
Factory Theatre welcomes new audiences with shows that explore human connection
“I feel like I’m really looking to theatre for joy right now,” says artistic director Mel Hague. “I don’t mean works that are specifically funny or happy. I’m talking about something deeper where you can feel connected to the art on stage, the space that’s hosting it, the other people in the audience, and yourself.”
iPhoto caption: Image courtesy of SummerWorks.
How SummerWorks confronts a theatre industry steeped in hustle culture
“As far as our sector goes, there’s this idea that how busy you are is a reflection of your values,” says director-dramaturg Harri Thomas. “We also tend to emphasize a person’s career over the body of work they’ve produced. There are certain things that we can do at a community level, particularly when it comes to resource sharing. But we also need to consider the fact that we operate in a scarcity environment where we’re so focused on individual shows that we often neglect the larger ecology.”
Director Hillar Liitoja was ‘pathologically uncompromising’ in his pursuit of great art
His creations brought together all the joy and terror and beauty and chaos of being alive.
"Nightlife trends come and go," says witzel. "But there’s no reason a queer party space can’t be a creative site as well as a way to fund art."
‘It’s Definitely Worth the Trip’: In Conversation with The 39 Steps at County Stage
The two-time Tony-winning story will see its first ever site-specific outdoor production, courtesy of the County Stage Company.
iPhoto caption: Vik Sahay and Ali Kazmi in Anosh Irani's Behind the Moon - original photo by Cylla von Tiedemann. Overlaid on the image is Anosh Irani's picture.
A Glimpse Behind the Moon with Anosh Irani
We caught up with the celebrated scribe to chat about literary formats, strange characters, and achieving immortality through writing.
Comments