ON STAGE

Just what: OUTstages theatre event Where: Metro facility, Intrepid Theatre pub whenever: Summer 20 to 24 passes: $20, $25 (three-show passes $50) via intrepidtheatre or 101-804 Broughton St.

Delving into the field of gay chat rooms as a teenager probably ended up beingn’t a good idea, Indrit Kasapi admits.

In the dance-theatre piece MSM (people seeking people), the Toronto actor/playwright makes use of verbatim transcripts of web talks he had with homosexual guys as a 16-year-old.

“It did surprise myself how risky those issues could have been. But i did son’t feel they certainly were dangerous at that time,” mentioned Kasapi, today 32.

Staged by Kasapi’s Toronto dependent Lemontree designs, MSM (boys desire men) are done on Metro facility in the future. The 60-minute benefit five performers falls under Intrepid Theatre’s 3rd annual OUTstages queer results event, running June 20 to 24.

Featuring an all-queer cast (including Kasapi as a DJ), the show examines gay hook-up culture, racism, homophobia and fetishism. Also Kasapi’s own transcripts, the writing features excerpts of some other men’s online chats.

One critic described MSM (men desire people) as actually “not for your shy.” Kasapi says that is probably a reference to your dancing, which is sometimes about suggestive area. “There become performers that happen to be holding one another, going together. Sometimes it get aggressive. Sometimes it get really sexual,” he stated.

Kasapi moved to Canada together with group from his native Albania when he was actually 15. He going taking part in gay chatrooms a-year later.

“I found myselfn’t hooking up. But I happened to be satisfying other people and inquiring. I happened to be a 16-year-old who had beenn’t rather alert to whom I became, sexually speaking,” he stated.

10 years after, as a grownup, Kasapi came across the half-forgotten transcripts of those talks, nonetheless on his computers. Realizing they may make good theater section, he place them away.

MSM (guys seeking boys) was initially done on Toronto edge Festival in 2013 and also at Worldpride Toronto in 2014. It was nominated for six Broadway business Toronto honors.

The five-day OUTstages festival comes with Tomboy success Tips Guide, nation Song, appreciation with Leila, Diva Cab, a number of free reception discussion and an evening of play-reading featuring appearing playwrights.

Tomboy success guidelines, which starred OUTstages a year ago, are an accumulation of tomboy tales sent by transgender performer/ blogger Ivan Coyote. Nation track is by playwright-performer Lee-Anne Poole, just who discovered playing your guitar specifically for this tribute to this lady parent.

Love with Leila is done and sang by Toronto’s Izad Etemadi, a former pupil at Victoria’s Canadian College of Performing Arts. The show was a comic consider the search for relationship by Leila, dubbed a “Persian Judy Garland” by one critic. Diva Cab is actually a showcase for regional performers, like Pacific Opera Victoria pianist Robert Holliston and tenor Joey Bulman. (Total event information can be obtained at intrepidtheatre.)

The OUTstages festival is founded by and is also curated by Sean Guist, Intrepid Theatre’s marketing and advertising and developing supervisor. Guist claims the mandate is display the best of “adventuresome queer theater” from across Canada.

The guy stressed the event is actually for any theater enthusiast, not only people in the LGBTQ community.

“What we’re carrying out with OUTstages are delivering some of those cutting-edge shows that just affect bring a queer lens on it,” Guist stated.

Kasapi asserted that while MSM (men pursuing men) concerns homosexual matchmaking, the job provides broad appeal. Those people that incorporate dating apps will identify making use of the “funny and frustrating” section of the practise. For other individuals, it’s a “new window” into that community.

Kasapi is currently writing a brand new play for Theatre Passe Mureille, bloodstream Cycle, three siblings wanting to break from the Albanian practice of Gjakmarrja, or bloodstream feuding, a traditions in which committing payback murders in preserving family honor are a social responsibility.

In terms of MSM (men desire men), Kasapi acknowledge he’s never told their moms and dads that many transcripts inside the program chronicle his very own conversations.

“While I got reading all of them during my mid-20s, it had been stunning … just how available I was inside the conversations I was creating,” the guy mentioned.

Expected if he’d have any words of advice about his 16-year-old self, Kasapi chuckled. Then, he said: “Be considerably more cautious.”