BASH'd

Description

When naive small-town boy Dillon meets the sophisticated urban Jack in a gay bar, it's love at first sight, and not just for a one-night stand either! While these star-crossed lovers manage to bring their initially dubious if not downright disowning families together in celebration of their marriage, their unblemished love certainly hasn't changed the world quite the contrary. When Jack becomes the victim of a gay-bashing, Dillon sets out on an indiscriminate rampage of revenge. Unfortunately, the straight men he takes on are neither particularly homophobic, nor are they exactly itching for a fight and the scene quickly turns ugly, teetering on the verge of a slaughter of the innocent until the police intervene. Realizing too late that two wrongs don't make a right, the lovers, wrapped in each other's arms, die in a hail of bullets. Arriving in heaven, much to their contrite surprise, the creator fits the souls of these two Romeos with a set of wings and sends them on a mission of redemption. Condemned to wander the earth and tell their cautionary tale forever to whomever will listen, their angelic personae TBAG and FEMINEM have had no trouble enthralling wildly enthusiast audiences all over North America with the rap opera rhymes of this tragic tale ever since. While the goal of BASH'd is first and foremost to tell an engaging gay love story, it also flips the music industry's gangsta stereotype of rap music on its head and returns it to its political roots in this case to explore the dangers of the kind of attitudes that continue to condone and even encourage sexual discrimination of all kinds in our society. Not since Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner has a narrative poem inspired such empathy in the hearts and minds of its audience.

Chris Craddock Chris Craddock is an Edmonton-based actor, producer and writer. His theatre work has been recognized with four Sterling Awards and two Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and his film Turnbuckle was nominated for two Ampia Awards. He is the proud recipient of the Enbridge Emerging Artist award, the Centennial Medal for his contribution to the Arts in Alberta and the Alberta Book Award for his collection of plays for teens, Naked at School. Craddock graduated from the University of Alberta's BFA Acting Program in 1996 and since then he has worked on stages all across Canada. Nathan Cuckow Nathan Cuckow is an award-winning actor, producer, playwright and a co-artistic director of Edmonton's critically acclaimed theatre company Kill Your Television. Born and raised in Calgary, Cuckow moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Upon graduating, he worked as an administrator in the Education Outreach program for Tony Randall's National Actors Theatre for the Broadway production of The Sunshine Boys. Cuckow returned to Canada in 1998 and has since then called Edmonton home. In 2007 he received, with Chris Craddock, the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater (BASH'd).

"BASH'd is furious, fast-moving, hip-hop entertainment! As one of the lyrics proclaims, "it's Romeo meets Romeo," complete with an ample supply of scatological language, swaggering attitude and a keen, often hilarious sense of observation about gay life." -- Associated Press "BASH'd is brilliant ... this is a show you don't dare miss." -- Toronto Star "Audiences should be impressed by the passion of its convictions. The production ... shows its rage, its grief and its driven, heartfelt determination." -- New York Times "Besides being hugely imaginative, energized and brash, BASH'd is also very, very funny." -- Calgary Herald "The idiosyncrasies of gay life are displayed vividly (and sometimes in raunchy detail) as Craddock and Cuckow snap from character to character, creating a world full of aggressive drag queens, disdainful lesbians, macho conservative dads, wayward straight boys and one pitch-perfect, loving-but-cringing mother." -- New York Daily News