TOO QUEER: A BI VISIBILITY CABARET

Created and Curated by:
Mx. Sly

Stage Manager:
Kjell Cawsey

A brief history:

Tender Container’s longest-running project, it’s hard not to get teary about the public impact, art, and community that has been forged through Too Queer over 5 years.

Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret was an arts-based community engagement project created by Mx. Sly in Toronto in 2014, in response to an absence of community events organized for and about bisexuality and pansexuality.

Back in 2014, Sly knew only a handful of other bi/pan folks. On a message thread with the small group of bisexuals that Sly did know, a friend mentioned that someone should throw a performance event about bisexuality.

Sly immediately realized they had the requisite amount of know-how, rage, and connections, to actually make that happen.

Sly contacted friends William Ellis and Jordan Tannahill, who were running a storefront, independent performance venue called Videofag, told them that there was no budget, but a lot of passion to curate a performance night celebrating bisexuality and pansexuality, and luckily for what would become the Too Queer cabaret series, William and Jordan understood the bi and pan community’s need, and donated their space. 

In 2014 when all of this started, Sly felt completely disconnected from a bisexual community and wondered if one even existed. At the same time, they encountered biphobia in day-to-day life and in designated queer spaces, where the B in LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) was only welcome if it was silent.

In curating the first Too Queer event, Sly only expected a handful of people to show up. What happened instead was that the performance space was so packed, it was standing-room only about an hour before performances even began. Bisexuals, pansexuals, and allies had been waiting for an event where they felt welcome.

There were people standing 4-deep outside the windows of Videofag’s storefront, trying to see the performances. For the first time in Sly’s life, they saw how large the bisexual+ community is.

Immediately after that first event, the bi and pan community asked, “When’s the next one?” 

That’s how the Too Queer series was born.

Since 2014, Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret held seven widely-attended performance events across Canada, showcasing over one hundred bisexual+ artists working in photography, illustration, storytelling, dance, burlesque, spoken word poetry, performance art, video art, and music, among other artistic disciplines.

Performances seeded by Too Queer have a strong habit of continuing in development and ending up at larger presentation platforms, including at Toronto’s Second City, Toronto’s SummerWorks Performance Festival, Vancouver’s PuSh Festival, and Calgary’s Discomfort Lab.

More recent news:

In 2016 Too Queer held a day of free-to-the-public arts workshops, all led by artists who identify as bi or pan, working around the question, “How do we make bisexual art?”

That day of workshops was followed a week later by another hugely successful performance event at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (the world’s oldest and largest queer theatre).

In the words of Buddies’ Artistic Director Evalyn Parry,

“There’s no project like Too Queer in Toronto. It’s time to expand the definition of what we think of as queer.” 

In 2017 Too Queer held its first event outside of Toronto, ON, in Vancouver, BC, Canada — becoming Canada’s the first and only bi-coastal, bisexual+ performance series. (Pun-intended.)

In 2017, former Too Queer-artist Catherine Jones founded Toronto’s Bi Arts Festival, an annual event fostering exactly the kind of community that Too Queer hoped to seed.

Goals:

Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret had three goals:

• Combat biphobia.

• Create a safe container in which bisexual and pansexual cultural expression can develop and evolve.

• Serve as a cultural focal point around which bisexual folks, pansexual folks, and our allies can meet each other and form friendships, relationships, and community.

Biphobia, a form of discrimination distinct from homophobia and transphobia, takes many different forms.

For example, a frequent form of discrimination bisexual people face is the assertion that bisexuality (physical, sexual, and/or emotional attraction to people of the same gender and of other genders) simply doesn’t exist, and is either an expression of confusion over sexual orientation or greed.

Another form biphobia takes is the stigma that bisexuals spread HIV to the straight community.

Biphobia also manifests in violence. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bisexual women experience a significantly higher rate of being stalked, attacked, or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner than women of other sexual orientations.

The denial of the existence of bisexuality manifests in the media through an absence of portrayals of bisexual characters and narratives, which in turn enforces the belief that bisexual people don’t exist.

Through art, Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret attempted to combat biphobia by increasing the visibility of bisexuality, pansexuality, and polysexuality, and by creating an opportunity for art that addresses the bi+ spectrum to develop.

Too Queer stands in solidarity with trans communities and with sex workers. No TERFs and no SWERFs.

DEVELOPMENT:

Produced, throughout the years, with the financial and/or in-kind support of:

• Toronto Arts Council

• Pride Toronto

• The Vancouver Pride Society

• Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

• Videofag
  Now closed, formerly in Toronto, ON, Canada

• The Gladstone Hotel
  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Second City
  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Bi Arts Festival
  Toronto, ON, Canada

• City Park Library
  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Fox Cabaret
  Vancouver, BC, Canada

PRODUCTION HISTORY:

The first instalment of Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret opened at:

• Videofag (2014)
  Toronto, ON, Canada

Subsequent instalments of Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret were produced at:

• Gladstone Hotel (2015)
  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Pride @ Gladstone Hotel (2015)
  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Queer Pride (2016)
  Buddies in Bad Times Theatre - Toronto, ON, Canada

• Vancouver Pride Festival (2017)
  Fox Cabaret - Vancouver, BC, Canada

• Rhubarb Festival (2018)
  Buddies in Bad Times Theatre - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

• Toronto Pride (2018)
  Alexander Street Parkette - Toronto, Ontario, Canada