ZOM-FAM - Digital Programme

ZOM-FAM

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SOLO

BY KAMA LA MACKEREL

Buddies in Bad Times TheaTre is siTuaTed on The TradiTional lands of The haudenosaunee, The anishinaaBe, and The WendaT, and The TreaTy TerriTory of The mississaugas of The CrediT. We aCknoWledge Them and any oTher naTions Who Care for The land (aCknoWledged and unaCknoWledged, reCorded and unreCorded) as The pasT, presenT and fuTure CareTakers of This land, referred To as TkaronTo (“Where The Trees meeT The WaTer”; “The gaThering plaCe”). Buddies is honoured To Be a home for queer, Trans and 2-spiriT arTisTs on These sToried and saCred lands ThaT have Been sTeWarded By Indigenous peoples for Thousands of years Before The arrival of Colonial seTTlers.

ZOM-FAM finally gets to meet an audience! After two whole years where this show has been “in suspense,” during a time when all of us working in the arts, performance and cultural fields wondered whether we would ever get back to our work, find room for our bodies on stages again and be able to commune with an audience… But here we are, and somehow, these two years of waiting for this work to be presented have taught me just as much as the four prior years I had spent developing the show.

In many ways, ZOM-FAM was never planned, it was a gift from the universe that came into my life and demanded to exist. I never sat down telling myself I am writing a manuscript. Between 2013-18, as I was finding my artistic voice through the art of the spoken word, I had written and performed a series of poems, at open mics and cabarets, most of which spoke about my childhood as a queer/trans child growing up in Mauritius. I had not realized at the time that if I threaded all these pieces together, there was a storyline asking to be narrated.

I developed this show over many years, with the guidance of multiple creatives who helped me refine my artistic vision and bring it to fruition. In many ways, working on this show was a test of faith. It demanded that I ground myself in a daily form of spirituality and of belief (towards myself, towards others, towards the artistic process itself). Through this work, I learnt to make friends with my most deep-seated fears and insecurities.

So when ZOM-FAM was canceled not once, but twice, in 2020, it felt like disappointment but it did not feel like a loss. Deep inside, I knew that this work would find its audience– if my artistic practice (and working on this show, in particular) had taught me anything, it is that it is important to honor the timing of creative work. When one remains grounded in a clear artistic intention, all one can do is surrender to that intention, and to hold on to the faith that only when 1- the artist is ready; 2- the work itself is ready; 3- the public is ready, do things align in the universe.

In this moment of alignment, I thank you all for witnessing this work, for holding these stories, for allowing me to bring to the stage my own voice, those of my ancestors who had been silenced, the voices of my family, and those of the generations yet to come.

— Kama La Mackerel

Creative Team

Kama La Mackerel // text, artistic direction + performance

Mathieu Leroux // dramaturgic advisor Andrew Tay + Rhodnie Désir // choreographic advisors

Sophie Gee // external eye

Jon Cleveland // lighting design and technical direction Evan Stepanian // sound design

Nalo Soyini Bruce // set design

Rachel Habrih // production management

Vishmayaa Jeyamoorthy // associate lighting design

Samira Banihashemi — Woman, Life, Freedom / // head technician

Matty Armour, Frank Incer, Kit Norman, El Patey, Amber Pattison, Rachel Shaen, Diamond Srey, Katherine Teed-Arthur, Alison Thomas-Hall // install crew

Co-produced by the MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels)

ZOM-FAM has benefited from: the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ) Vivacité grant; La Ruche production grant from the MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels); Réseau AccèsCulture creation grant; Maison de la Culture Marie Uguay research and creation residency; and SummerWorks Festival research and creation residency.

KAMA LA MACKEREL MATHIEU LEROUX

ANDREW TAY

RHODNIE DÉSIR

SOPHIE GEE

JON CLEVELAND

EVAN STEPANIAN

NALO SOYINI BRUCE

RACHEL HABRIH

KAMA LA MACKEREL (they/them) // text, artistic direction + performance

Kama La Mackerel is a multilingual writer, visual artist, performer, translator and educator who believes in love, transformation and justice. Their work ventures beyond the borders of disciplinarity and creates hybrid spaces from which to enunciate decolonial and queer vocabularies. Wholeheartedly invested in ocean narratives, island sovereignty, transgender poetics and ancestral healing, their body of work challenges colonial notions of time and space as these relate to history, power, language, subject formation and the body.

MATHIEU LEROUX (he/him) // dramaturgic advisor

Writer, theatre director, performer, and dance dramaturge, Mathieu Leroux is a graduate of L’École Supérieure de théâtre of UQAM (2002). Aside from creating and performing many stage works in the last two decades, Leroux has built sustainable partnerships with prominent choreographers and has been working with, amongst others, Victor Quijada, Helen Simard, Dorotea Saykaly and Alexandra Spicey Landé for many years. He is part of the Danse à la carte mentoring team. Leroux earned his master’s degree in French literature at l’Université de Montréal (2011). His first novel, Dans la cage, was published to rave reviews by Héliotrope, and his short plays accompanying an essay on performing the self, Quelque chose en moi choisit le coup de poing, can be found at La Mèche.

ANDREW TAY (he/him) // choreographic advisor

Andrew Tay is a hybrid performer, choreographer and dance curator based in Montreal. In 2005 he co-founded (with collaborator Sasha Kleinplatz) the company Wants&Needs danse. Since then, the company has produced the wildly popular dance events Piss in the Pool and Short&Sweet which take place in non-traditional performance venues throughout the city.

Residencies have included Studio 303, Usine C (Montreal) and K3 (Hamburg). He has worked as interpreter for well known European choreographers Doris Ulhich (Vienna) and Marten Spangberg (Stockholm). Andrew is Artistic Director of the Toronto Dance Theatre.

RHODNIE DÉSIR (she/her) // choreographic advisor

Choreographer-documentalist and artistic director of RD Créations, Rhodnie Désir has created about fifteen pieces, like BOW’T TRAIL Retrospek and her pioneering memoir journey BOW’T TRAIL have earned her two awards from the Prix de la danse de Montréal (2020): The Prix Envol and the Grand Prix. In 2021, she was chosen as one of the “25 to watch” by Dance Magazine in New York and nominated for the prestigious career award “The APAP Award of Merit”. In 2022, she received the “Danseuse de l’année” award at the Gala Dynastie, she became the first Associate Artist of the famous Place des Arts institution in Montreal and she is also honored by the “Sandra Faire Next Generation Award” from Dance Collection Danse Hall of Fame. Her documentary and Afro-contemporary choreographic signature is rooted in rhythmic languages. A performer and orator of remarkable power, her words and her international civic actions unite beyond dance, and then shine as at UNESCO.

SOPHIE GEE (she/her) // external eye

A graduate of the National Theatre School’s directing programme, Sophie likes to work with artists outside of the world of theatre and strives to combine her love of text and story with the research processes of dance and contemporary art. She presents her work under the name Nervous Hunter. Her works include Bonnes Bonnes (premiere at Théâtre Aux Écuries in April 2023), Lévriers (MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), National Arts Centre, Conseil des arts de Montréal on tour), The Phaedra Project (No! I! Don’t! Want! To! Fall! In! Love! With! You!) (MAI), I Am Such a Small Container for All This (Iceland, SEAS Festival), and Domestik (Eastern Bloc, Montreal). For other companies, work includes Duos en morceaux (Théâtre I.N.K.), Habibi’s Angels: Commission Impossible by Hoda Adra and Kalale Dalton-Lutale (Talisman Theatre) and The Tropic of X (Imago Theatre).

JON CLEVELAND (he/him) // lighting design + technical direction

Jon Cleveland is a Montreal based Lighting Designer/Visual Artist. Working in theatre and dance he has worked with The Segal Centre for The Arts, The National Arts Centre, The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Tangente, Cabal Theatre, Scapegoat Carinivale, Susanna Hood, Lucy M May, Rabbit in the Hat, Malik Nashad Shapre, and KimSanh Chau among others. His design for Tragic Queens with Cabal Theatre was nominated for a 2017 META award for outstanding lighting design. When not designing he Tours as TD and head of lighting with the Tashme Project and Lara Kramer on tours around Canada, Europe, and the South Pacific.

EVAN STEPANIAN (he/him) // sound design

Evan Stepanian is a Montreal based sound designer, composer, audio technician, performer and artist working in theatre, film, dance, music, installation art and performance. His creations are striking, inventive and lush and often incorporate live performance. In 2018 he received the Montreal English Theatre Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theatre for his Live Musical Performance in Sapientia, winner of Outstanding Independent Production. He is also a theatre technician, working hard behind the scenes to build, light and mix your favourite theatre productions all around the city.

NALO SOYINI BRUCE (she/her) // set design

Nalo Soyini Bruce is a Montreal-based artist, designer, and art director of Caribbean origin. Her mission is to express underlying historical, cultural and psychological dimensions of stories in the worlds of visual art, performance and film. She achieves this primarily through colour relationships, textured surfaces and varied materials. In her scenic, costume and prop design, she sculpts spaces and costumes in cross-pollination with creative teams and in symbiosis with directors and choreographers. Recent projects that Nalo has worked on include Da’ Kink In My Hair (by Trey Anthony, produced by Arts Club Theatre Company – Vancouver, BC) for which she received a 2021-22 Jessie Richardson Award nomination for Outstanding Costume Design in the large budget division ; Pipeline (by Dominique Morisseau, produced by Black Theatre Workshop – Montréal, QC) ; and Luna: From the Sun To The Moon (by Vanesa Garcia-Ribala Montoya, produced by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens – Montréal, QC).

RACHEL HABRIH (she/her) // production management

Rachel Habrih is a queer femme multidisciplinary & multimedia artist, researcher, and knowledge creator. She works with all sorts of media from digital collages, visual art, photography, textile, sound, and video. In her work, Habrih addresses questions of diasporic identity and self-formation, cultural knowledge, as well as de/anti-colonial queer ways of knowing. Habrih is Algerian-Romanian, was born in France, grew up in Tkaronto/Toronto, and now lives in Tiohtià:ke/ Montréal. She currently works with Kama La Mackerel as their Production Manager for their show ZOM-FAM. Her experiences and journey are reflected in the art she creates, notably through an autoethnographic approach, as she attempts to define art as a form of release, self-expression, and resistance.

VISHMAYAA JEYAMOORTHY (she/her) // associate lighting design

Vishmayaa Jeyamoorthy is a lighting designer and researcher based in Tkaronto (the land known as Toronto). She has designed all over the world but calls Scarborough her home. Notable credits include designing at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Soulpepper, and teaching lighting workshops on BIPOC centered lighting design. Outside of her design work, Vishmayaa is currently pursuing a JD at Osgoode Hall Law School, and plans to return to theatre upon graduation, before retiring from theatre and using her JD to provide legal services to low-income artists.

The Company

Interim Director of Operations + Programming

DANIEL CARTER Rhubarb Festival Director

CLAYTON LEE

Director of Special Projects

JACQUELINE COSTA

Production Manager

REBECCA VANDEVELDE

Technical Director

CONRAD MCLAREN

Rental + Events Manager

STEPH RAPOSO

Communications + Development Manager

AIDAN MORISHITA-MIKI

Box Office + Front-of-House Manager

JULIA LEWIS

Interim Bar Manager

DEVIN REID

Manager of Touring

CHRIS REYNOLDS

Artistic Producing Intern

JULIE PHAN

Emerging Creators Unit Director

ERUM KHAN

Youth/Elders Programming Coordinators

LEZLIE LEE KAM + USMAN KHAN

Facility Manager

PAUL THERRIEN

Marketing Associate

NATASHA RAMONDINO

Events + Stewardship Associate CHASE HIEBERT

Development Associate ARJUN SINGH

Finance Manager

CYNTHIA MURDY

Box Office + Front-of-House Lead JAKE RAMOS

Box Office + Front-of-House Representatives

YIMING CAI, SKY FFRENCH, BRAWK HESSEL, MUHADDISAH, SASKIA MULLER, NETA ROSE, SARAH ROWE, ILLIANNA WOTTON

Bar Personnel

RICHARD BELL, CHARLEE BOYES, ANDREW DESABRAIS, VISHMAYAA JEYAMOORTHY, RONNIE LÉGÈRE, DANIEL ROJAS, NETA ROSE, JESSICA RUSSELL

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

ASHLEY BELMER, CHRISTINA CICKO, BRENDAN MCMURTRY HOWLETT

A Buddies production

The Man That Got Away (A Special Appearance) by Martin Julien — December 2022

Buddies presents The Rhubarb Festival Festival Director Clayton Lee — February 2023

a Bad New Days production Untitled Landscape Project March 2023

a Tarragon Theatre production, in association with Buddies The Hooves Belonged to the Deer by Makram Ayache — April 2023

a madonnanera, Buddies, and b current production Body So Fluorescent by Amanda Cordner & David di Giovanni — April 2023

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PHOTO OF DANIEL AND MAKAMBE K SIMAMBA BY DYLAN MITRO

“WHAT I HAVE NOT ALL THAT

PUBLIC AGENCIES

PHOTO OF DANIEL JELANI ELLIS MAKAMBE K SIMAMBA DYLAN MITRO

“WHAT I HAVE DONE IS NOT ALL THAT I AM.”