50th Anniversary Presentation Of Groundbreaking LGBTQ Play At Buddies In Bad Times

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 premiere of John Herbert's groundbreaking play, Fortune and Men's Eyes. In celebration, Herbert's tour de force will be brought to life with a dramatic reading by an all-star cast featuring COLTON CURTIS, GEORGE KRISSA, GRAHAM PARKHURST, Paolo Santalucia and Dora Award winner, Bruce Dow.

The star-studded reading will be followed by a panel discussion with prolific members of Toronto's theatre community. The panel, comprised of Playwright Guild of Canada's Rebecca Burton, Brad Fraser, PAUL HALFERTY, BRI WATERS and Buddies in Bad Times co-founder and former long-time Artistic Director, Sky Gilbert, will discuss the play and its importance to Canadian theatre.

Fortune and Men's Eyes focuses its attention on four young incarcerated men and traces the progress of Smitty, an innocent 17-year-old, thrown into prison after trying to help his mother escape his abusive father. What follows is a portrait of prison life complete with violence, sexual abuse, homosexuality and how it all comes together in the constant struggle for power and survival.

The play was the first to dramatize, and force audiences to confront, society's treatment of homosexuals and the inhumane conditions of prisons. It also forced both theatre audiences and the theatre itself to acknowledge the existence and rights of homosexuals during the pre-Stonewall era when homosexual acts were still punishable offences under the Criminal Code of Canada.

The road to success was, of course, a rough one for this controversial play, which is now lauded as the beginning of gay drama in Canada. Following rejections from several Canadian theatres and directors, Fortune finally premiered in an off-Broadway production in New York City thanks to renowned Canadian theatre critic, Nathan Cohen, who rightly noted that such a play had no chance of being produced professionally in Canada at the time - it needed the validation of a New York production.

Fortune premiered off-Broadway in February of 1967 and ran through to January of 1968, attracting notable gay playwrights like Tennessee Williams and Noel Coward during its yearlong run at the Actors Playhouse.

Though reception and reviews were initially mixed and audiences shocked, by the mid-1970s the play had been produced more than 400 times worldwide and won the Chalmers Award for best Canadian Play in 1975. Since its premiere, Fortune has been translated into 40 languages, produced in more than 100 countries and remains Canada's most published play.

Now, 50 years later, there could be no better place to commemorate such an important piece of queer theatre than at the largest and longest-running facility-based queer theatre company in the world. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, which would almost certainly have produced such an important work had it been around 50 years ago, is the perfect venue to host this queer theatre milestone. "It is an important reminder to theatre artists, especially queer theatre artists, and independent theatre artists that Canadian theatre can have a lasting, global impact," says director Bri Waters.

Despite its success and the progress of the past 50 years, Herbert's work still faces challenges. This special presentation is in lieu of an actual production due to a lack of funding. Even after so much time, there is still a tendency to disregard this pivotal piece of theatre. So, though its slang and references may be out-dated, the issues confronted by Fortune and Men's Eyes remain timely and relevant.

In this way this presentation plays another important role; it is a poignant reminder not only of how far we've come, but of how much further we still have to go.

All cast is available by phone or email.

KOVAL Studio fosters the creation of new work, re-imagines old work and supports emerging artists with the intention of making theatre accessible through education, new media and outreach. KOVAL is a not-for-profit company.

Established in 1979, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a professional Canadian theatre company dedicated to the development and presentation of queer theatre. Over the course of its history, it has evolved into the largest facility-based queer theatre company in the world and has made an unparalleled contribution to the recognition and acceptance of queer lives in Canada.

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