original queer performance and art since 2014
building something strong and flexible enough to contain truth
Since 2014,
sixteen live productions,
1 national performance incubator,
3 literary projects and counting
Tender Container is an ad hoc group of artists working on performance and literary projects, steered by Artistic Producer Mx. Sly.
Tender Container creates its own original works as well as providing financial and developmental support to other artists’ work.
Tender Container believes in using what you have at your disposal to build something strong and flexible enough to contain your truth, whatever that truth may be, as nameable or unnamable as that truth is.
Tender Container creates, supports, and is interested in art that is highly specific in subject matter: work that seeks to speak to one, individual experience at a time. In this way, Tender Container’s work is non-totalizing, non-appropriative, and achieves universality through specificity.
Founded in Canada in 2014, Tender Container has a preference for work created from a queer and gender diverse perspective. Our longest-running production is the arts-based community engagement project, Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret. We have a particular dexterity for creating tour-ready, solo performance work. In 2019, Tender Container began operating in Australia, in addition to operating and presenting work in Canada.
Tender Container is always interested in projects, artists, and collaboration. If you have an idea you want to develop but are looking for help securing funding, or have a performance you want a (co)producer on, get in touch.
Tender Container does not receive operational funding because we are not a non-profit/charity— so we can’t cut you a cheque tomorrow. That said, we are highly competitive at getting project and initiative-specific arts grants, so get in touch a year ahead of when you want a project to start, and we may be able to help.