Bootycandy
Canadian Premiere
An Obsidian Theatre and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Co-Production
by Robert O’Hara | Directed by Jay Northcott
The durational comedy of parental hypocrisy. A reverend in high heels. A formal lesbian breakup at a tropical destination.
The THEYHEARD folks are trying to start new rumours, but fortunately, we’ve got a lot of witnesses. Bootycandy shows us a young man’s experience of power, permissibility, and privilege from the childhood dinner table to the playwrights’ circle to the dark disarray of a stranger’s hotel room. Robert O’Hara’s meta-theatrical, semi-autobiographical dark comedy fleshes out an intricate embodiment of Black queer life.
Content Warning – Click Here
Mature and homophobic language; mentions of sexual harm/assault violence, and suicide; simulated nudity.
Upcoming Events
Black Out Night – Friday, October 2 @ 7:30PM
Black Out Night is an evening created for the Black community. A space to celebrate Black stories, artists, and audiences. It’s a night for Black theatregoers to come together and experience theatre through shared culture, joy, and connection.
Mask-mandatory performance – Sunday, October 4 @ 4PM
The performance on Sunday, October 4 will be mask-mandatory for audience members. We have masks available onsite for those who need them.
ASL-interpreted performance – Thursday, October 8 @ 7:30PM
On Thursday, October 8 at 7:30PM, the performance at Buddies will be interpreted in ASL by Deaf interpreters Courage Bacchus and Robert Haughton.
Use code “ASL15” when purchasing a regular ticket to access a $15 ticket.
Illustration by Celeste Cole
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September 30 – October 17, 2026
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Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St
Co-Producers
Helen Belay
Performer (Actor 1)
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Helen Belay
Performer (Actor 1)
Helen Belay (she/her) was born in Bedford, England and is a graduate of the UofA’s BFA Acting. Select credits include: Ransacking Troy, Anne of Green Gables (Stratford Festival); Perfect on Paper, White Taffeta Silk (TIFT); …Legend of Daddy Hall (Tarragon Theatre); The 39 Steps (County Stage Company); Heaven (National Arts Centre); The Importance of Being Earnest, Jane Eyre, The Fiancée, Heaven (Citadel Theatre); The Wonderful (Caravan Farm Theatre); King Lear, Queen Goneril (Soulpepper Theatre Company); The Blue Hour (SkirtsAFire Festival); …Titus Bouffonius (Theatre Network); Cinderella (Globe Theatre); Vidalia (Teatro Live!). Endless thanks to the team, my loved ones and anyone and everyone that’s ever plucked up the courage to tell a story.
Kyle Brown
Performer (Actor 2)
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Kyle Brown
Performer (Actor 2)
Kyle Brown is a Montreal-born, Toronto-based singer, actor, and theatre creator. A second-generation Trinbagonian-Canadian, he is passionate about telling stories that explore identity, belonging, and community, drawing inspiration from his Caribbean heritage, musical roots, and lived experience navigating faith and queer identity. Select credits include Come From Away (Mirvish Productions/National Arts Centre/Australian National Tour), Stag & Doe (Thousand Islands Playhouse), and Tyson’s Song (Pleiades Theatre), which earned him a Dora Award nomination. Kyle is delighted to make his Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Obsidian Theatre debut in Bootycandy!
Meghan Swaby
Performer (Actor 3)
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Meghan Swaby
Performer (Actor 3)
Meghan Swaby is an actor and writer from Toronto who has performed across Canada, the USA, Mexico, and the UK. Recent stage credits include Table for Two (Soulpepper/Obsidian), Interior Design (Tarragon), Prodigal (Howland/Crow’s Theatre), Controlled Damage (Neptune/b current), Calpurnia (Nightwood/Sulong), Venus’ Daughter (Obsidian), and All Our Happy Days Are Stupid (Harbourfront/The Kitchen, NYC). Film/TV credits include; Adults (FX), Brilliant Minds (NBC), Ghostwriter (Apple TV+), and Odd Squad Mobile Unit (PBS). Voiceover credits include Phoebe & Jay (PBS Kids), Let’s Go Bananas (CBC Kids), and Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes (Disney Jr). Her play Venus’ Daughter is published by Scirocco Drama. She created and co-hosted Beneath The Ceiba Tree, a podcast on Caribbean folklore.
Christopher Allen
Performer (Actor 4)
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Christopher Allen
Performer (Actor 4)
Christopher Allen (He/Him)
Selected theatre credits: Cymbeline, The Diviners, As You Like It, Sense and Sensibility, Dangerous Liaisons (Stratford Festival 2024/2025); The Master Plan (Crow’s Theatre); Redbone Coonhound (Tarragon Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bard on the Beach); Sweat (Canadian Stage); Selfie (Young People’s Theatre); Julius Caesar, The Comedy of Errors (Canadian Stage); The Adonis Project (The Piece of Mine Festival).
Film & TV: Star Trek: Discovery (Paramount+/CBS), Coroner (CBC), Murdoch Mysteries (CBC Television, Citytv), Workin’ Moms (CBC Television), 13: The Musical (Netflix).
Training: York University Acting Conservatory 2015
Awards: Dora Mavor Moore Awards Recipient and Nominee
Dan Mousseau
Performer (Actor 5)
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Dan Mousseau
Performer (Actor 5)
Dan Mousseau is a Dora award winning actor, and a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University and the Soulpepper Academy.
Selected theatre: Bremen Town (Tarragon); There is Violence… (Buddies in Bad Times/Native Earth); Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet (Canadian Stage); Wildwoman, The Seagull, Innocence Lost (Soulpepper); Summer and Smoke (Crow’s Theatre); Prodigal (Howland/Crow’s Theatre): Three Sisters (Howland).
Selected Film/TV: The Testaments, DOC, Law and Order Toronto, The Boys, Murdoch Mysteries, Frankie Drake Mysteries, Strays, Workin’ Moms.
Dan would like to thank his family and friends as well as his loves, Merlin and Bren. Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Landback.
Robert O’Hara
Playwright
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Robert O’Hara
Playwright
Robert O’Hara has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, two Obie Awards and the Oppenheimer Award. He directed the World Premieres of Nikkole Salter and Danai Gurira’s In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2) and Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy, as well as his own plays, BootyCandy and Insurrec
He has directed around the country including Arena Stage, The Alley Theater, Primary Stages, Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth, American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Culture Project, The Flea, Philadelphia Theater Company, Wilma, Geva, City Theater, Dallas Theater Center, OSF and The Goodman Theater. He has been an Artist in Residence at the American Conservatory Theater, New York Shakespeare Festival, Theater/Emory and the Mellon Playwright in Residence at Woolly Mammoth, as well as a Visiting Professor at DePaul University School of the Arts and Adjunct at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts.
As a playwright, his work is produced all over the country and Mr. O’Hara has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, Steppenwolf, the Public Theatre, LaJolla Playhouse, McCarter Theater, Mark Taper Forum and Woolly Mammoth Theater. He is currently under commission from Lincoln Center and OSF. He has written screenplays for Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jon Avnet, HBO, ABC, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, New Line/Fine Line Cinema and Artisan Entertainment.
Mr. O’Hara has been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, a TCG Extended Collaboration Grant, NEA/TCG Fellowship, and was a Van Lier Fellow at New Dramatists. He received the LAMBDA Literary Award for best LGBT Drama, the Mark Taper Forum’s first Sherwood Award and the TANNE Award for Exceptional Body of Work.
He recently directed a new musical, UniSon, inspired by the poetry of August Wilson, at OSF; a new musical, Bella: An American Tall Tale, by Kirsten Childs, at Playwrights Horizons; and the Chicago premiere of Bootycandy.
He received his Directing MFA from Columbia University.
Jay Northcott
Director
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Jay Northcott
Director
Jay (They/Them) is a multidisciplinary Creator, Director, Producer, amateur wrestler and former Big Brother Canada contestant.
Central to Jay’s creative and artistic practice is their advocacy for marginalized communities including Palestinians, Indigenous, Black, Racialized, Queer, Trans folks and beyond.
The art they create is a window into their world, soul, values, and imagination.
Art is freedom and freedom breathes life.
Stay tuned for HEEL, 2 Be a Man. In Development with Elaine Weryshko as part of Buddies Residency program. “
Nick Blais
Set Designer
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Nick Blais
Set Designer
Nick Blais designs in all manner of discipline and venue: creating thematic, impactful designs, and transforming unconventional spaces into dramatic environments. Recipient of Dora Mavor Moore awards in Toronto for set and lighting design, nominated for the Virginia Myrtle Cooper award in costume design, and various other awards and nominations across the country. As Head of Design for Outside the March, Nick is working to expand the reach and importance of design in storytelling and placemaking. Nblaisdesign.com Recent Credits: Dance Nation, Rainbow on Mars (Outside the March); Medusa, Witch (Soulpepper); Fulfillment Centre, Case for the Existence of God (Coal Mine).
Arianna Moodie
Costume Designer
Darren Shaen
Lighting Designer
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Darren Shaen
Lighting Designer
Darren Shaen is a lighting designer artist mood maker based in Toronto who works in theatre and nightlife. He frequently uses alternative light sources, industrial objects, and found materials. He is inspired by quotidian beauty, analog technology, and the aesthetics of queer nightlife past, present and future.
Selected lighting designs for stage; take rimbaud (dir. ted witzel), GAPE w/ Susanna Haight and Tia Kushniruk w/ Mile Zero Dance, “pacing” (dir./choreo Susanna Haight) with Arts Orillia’s 2025 Dance & Design residency, the 2025 Rhubarb Festival, “MÀSCARA” (by Pulga Muchochoma) with Dance Immersion, the 2024 SummerWorks Festival, and “This Lament I’ll Lip-Sync Until I’m Born Again” dir./choreo Riley Sims) with Social Growl.
Selected lighting, ambience, and installations for raves/parties; Twist, Redacted, OOMF, Plantasia, Natural Born Sinners, Strangers, Places (Techno for Worms), Sous Bas Spring Pop Up, The Beginning, Club Mud, and the biannual queer warehouse rave series Something For the Lovers. Darren also designs the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s big events and parties.
Darren currently works as the lighting lead at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto, Darren has had his hands inside every technical installation of buddies season over the past 5 years. He holds an MFA in Lighting Design from The University of British Columbia.
David Ariza
Sound Designer + Composer
Greg Carruthers
Intimacy Director
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Greg Carruthers
Intimacy Director
Intimacy Director: La Traviata, Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung (Canadian Opera Company), It’s a Good Life IfYou Don’t Weaken (Theatre Aquarius), We Will Rock You (Mirvish). Choreographer: Pepsi Pride (PepsiCo), Naughty, Nice and Undecided (Second City Mainstage), Into the Woods (The Grand), Fame (Madinat Theatre – Dubai) and 2 seasons as resident director for Canada’s Wonderland.
Greg is a fat liberation activist and founder of the Webby Award winning “EveryBODY on Stage”. His company advocates for body diversity in the arts and has produced short films and live events for Comedy Bar, Musical Stage Co and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre garnering him a Premier’s Award Nomination. Greg is the owner of ROOM 123 STUDIOS, an affordable and accessible artistic co-working space in downtown Toronto. room123.ca
Elisia Evans
Set Design Associate
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Elisia Evans
Set Design Associate
“Elisia Evans is a set designer and prop builder. She comes from a background in education and her years as an elementary school teacher have fostered a passion for story telling. She came to theatre with a desire to explore how the elements of live performance can reach and inspire people.
Recent credits: Preexisting Condition (Coal Mine Theatre, Head of Props), Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (Guild Festival Theatre, Set and Props Designer), Bronte: The World Without (Guild Festival Theatre, Set and Props Designer), Dance Nation (OTM and Coal Mine Theatre, Head of Props), Fulfilment Center (Coal Mine Theater, Head of Props)”
Farnoosh Talebpour
Stage Manager
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Farnoosh Talebpour
Stage Manager
Farnoosh Talebpour was born in Tehran, Iran but has now spent most of her life in Toronto, ON. She would like to thank all the people around her who have helped keep her feet grounded, joined in laughter, and kept her heart safe. SM Credits: Mischief (Tarragon/NAPA), The Christmas Market (b current/Studio 180/Crow’s), Dear Robert (Video Cabaret), Let Me Explain (Green Light Arts), Songs from The Journey (Daniels Corporation/RCM ), seven methods of killing kylie jenner (Obsidian), Lessons in Temperament (Outside the March), No Save Points (OtM).
Jazmine De Sousa
Apprentice Stage Manager