LIF(E) Is Very Gay, Indeed! DaPoPo’s Live-In at The Nest
DaPoPo Theatre, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, presents its jam-packed month-long Live-In Festival, reimagined as LIF(e) @ The Nest. The festival runs from October 1 - October 31, at The Nest, a new creative arts hub at 6068 Quinpool Road.
First run in 2007, the Live-In Festival is a grassroots festival for artists and art lovers, theatre makers, creatives and queerdoes. Over the course of the month, participating artists “live in”, working and (to some degree) living at the Nest. “We’re a bit of a queer art family”, says Garry Williams, DaPoPo Theatre’s Artistic Director.
DaPoPo is dedicated to telling queer stories.
Originally selected as an office space, The Nest is an upstairs multi-office space with stairs outside and inside and is not accessible to people with limited mobility. “This is a problem we face,” says Williams. “The lack of accessibility creates real barriers for The Nest as a community space.”
DaPoPo is dedicated to telling queer stories. “It’s who we are,” says Williams. The Musical KAMP, by Garry Williams and Jamie Bradley, which premiered at the Neptune in 2018, originated with DaPoPo and had its first public concert reading at the Live-In Festival in 2015.
“There is an abundance of queer content in the Festival” says Wiliams. “LIF(e) is very gay indeed!” The festival brings together LGBTQ artists and facilitators, including Lee-Anne Poole, Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac, Noella Murphy, Riley Reign, Jessie Walker, Logan Robins, Luke Hathway, Kai McGilligan Oliver, and Kyle Gillis.
The line-up includes an art show; a reading of Blood Wedding by queer poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (assassinated by Nationalist forces in 1936); as well as The Blazing World by Haligonian playwright, performer, producer, and visual artist Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac; highlights from James Thornton’s Fringe play trilogy; a Musical Theatre audition and song interpretation workshop, as well as a super-queer, sex-positive music theory drop-in sessions; a grant writing work group; a Theatre Family Potluck, a public presentation of Logan Robins’ Abstract; a Storytelling Games Night, and two Halloween-inspired performances, to name just a few!
Williams has two works in the Festival, a new play Malleus Maleficarum about Helena Scheuberin, one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft in a high profile court case, as well as a concert reading of DaPoPo’s The FEAR Project, their dark Fringe hit, written with Kristi Anderson, a long-term colleague and DaPoPo’s Executive Director.
Here's the full calendar! All events are Pay What You Can / by donation. Suggested donations may vary.
For reservation or more information, please email DaPoPo Theatre, or find them on FB or Instagram.
