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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Big gay play from small university town

Graeme Gerrard takes to Toronto's gay village in drag to promote his new play.
Small town theatre artist Graeme Gerrad has gamely answered Praxis Theatre’s call for guest bloggers. In a series of posts, Gerrard has been documenting the production of his company’s new play Going Back In & Getting Dragged Out – which premieres at Toronto’s Factory Theatre this January.

Finding audiences is a real drag
By Graeme Gerrard
Going Back In & Getting Dragged Out opens in less than two weeks. We’ve resumed rehearsals since our holiday break to the expected hazards of the occasional forgotten line, but the cast has really gelled in terms of chemistry.

Although rehearsals had been on temporary hiatus, the promotion of the play and distribution of the book has not slowed down at all. I’m happy to say the book is now available in Toronto at both Theatre Books (11 St. Thomas Street) and This Ain’t The Rosedale Library (483 Church Street).

In order to promote the play, my assistant director, Cody Rus, and I hit the gay village this weekend to spread the word in drag.

We offered people the chance to win a copy of the play by putting on some of our drag queen costumery. Some scoffed. Others were already putting on the faux-fur. What’s even more exciting is we’ll be back next weekend for more town-crying.

For more opportunities to win, tune in to Proud FM (103.9) afternoons on the week of January 7th for a chance to win your tickets to the Factory Studio performances of Going Back In & Getting Dragged Out.

In the mean time there still is the matter of getting the play on its feet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is one of the best PR moves I've seen an independent theatre company put together in ages!

Nice job Graeme and Cody.

Michel F. Pare said...

Your play is only being promoted in gay Toronto traditional village en? Pity! what about the GLBTTIQ community that live in the Gay Toronto's Queer West Village?