The Body Politic was a Canadian monthly magazine, which was published from 1971 to 1987. It was one of Canada's first significant gay publications, and played a prominent role in the development of the LGBT community in Canada.
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a Canadian professional theatre company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1978 by Matt Walsh, Jerry Ciccoritti, and Sky Gilbert, Buddies in Bad Times is dedicated to "the promotion of queer theatrical expression". It is the largest and longest-running queer theatre company in the world.
Evalyn Parry is a Canadian performance-maker, theatrical innovator and singer-songwriter. She grew up in Toronto, Ontario in the Kensington Market neighbourhood. Her music combines elements of spoken word and folk.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is an Canadian-American poet, writer, educator and social activist. Their writing and performance art focuses on documenting the stories of queer and trans people of color, abuse survivors, mixed-race people and diasporic South Asians and Sri Lankans. A central concern of their work is the interconnection of systems of colonialism, abuse and violence. They are also a writer and organizer within the disability justice movement.
Nina Arsenault is a Canadian performance artist, freelance writer, and former sex worker who works in theatre, dance, video, photography and visual art.
Rebecca Northan is a Canadian actor, improviser, theatre director, and creative artist. She is known for playing the hippie mother Diane Macleod on the CTV & The Comedy Network sitcom Alice, I Think and for her role as Jane in the independent film Adult Adoption. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary, and an alumna of the Loose Moose Theatre Company where she did her improv training with Keith Johnstone.
Brian Francis is a Canadian writer best known for his 2004 debut novel Fruit.
Pretty Porky & Pissed Off(PPPO) was a Canadian fat activist and performance art collective based in Toronto, Ontario from 1996 to 2005. They used their bodies as modes of resistance against discriminatory language, cultural, social practices, and policies. Their feminist, queer, and LGBT politics were part of the DIY ethics of punk rock and the Riot Grrrl movement, and feminist activism. PPPO was a Canadian trailblazer in the international fat liberation movement.
Videofag was a storefront arts space that operated in Toronto, Ontario's Kensington Market from 2012 - 2016. Founded and run by couple William Ellis and Jordan Tannahill, who converted it from an old barbershop, the space became an influential hub for queer counterculture in the city. A flexible multimedia space, Videofag was designed to serve as a cinema, art gallery, nightclub or theatre space depending on the needs of any individual event. It also doubled as Ellis and Tannahill's home. Videofag often acted as a laboratory, in which artists were gifted residencies to explore new ideas. The space helped develop and premiere several shows that went on to high-profile presentations at major theatres and festivals internationally.
Tawiah Ben M'Carthy is a Ghanaian-born Canadian actor and playwright. He is best known for his 2012 play Obaaberima, a one-man play about growing up gay in Ghana.
Damien Atkins is a Canadian actor and playwright.
Kim Katrin is a Canadian American writer, multidisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, and educator. She was formerly credited as Kim Crosby and Kim Katrin Milan. She speaks on panels and keynotes conferences nationally, and facilitates radical community dialogues. Her art, activism and writing has been recognized nationally.
Nick Green is a Canadian actor and playwright. He won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play in 2017 for his play Body Politic, a dramatization of the history of the Canadian LGBTQ newsmagazine The Body Politic. He is also the recipient of an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award, the Tom Hendry Award and BroadwayWorld.com Award.
Syrus Marcus Ware is a Canadian artist, activist and scholar. He lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is an assistant professor in the school of the arts at McMaster University. He has worked since 2014 as faculty and as a designer for The Banff Centre. Ware is the inaugural artist-in-residence for Daniels Spectrum, a cultural centre in Toronto, and a founding member of Black Lives Matter Toronto. For 13 years, he was the coordinator of the Art Gallery of Ontario's youth program. During that time Ware oversaw the creation of the Free After Three program and the expansion of the youth program into a multi pronged offering.
Leah Cherniak is a Canadian playwright, actor, and teacher. She is a co-founder of Theatre Columbus.
Peter Knegt is a Canadian writer, producer, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of four Canadian Screen Awards and his CBC Arts column Queeries received the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada.
Dainty Smith is a Toronto-based actor, playwright, and burlesque performer. She is the founder of Les Femmes Fatales: Women of Colour Burlesque Troupe, Canada's first burlesque troupe for Black women and women of colour, femmes and gender non-conforming persons. Her interdisciplinary work engages themes of glamour, afrofuturism, queer thriving, body positivity, and Blackness.
Queer Pride Inside is a Canadian television special, which aired June 24, 2020 on CBC Gem. Created by CBC Arts and Buddies in Bad Times as a response to the cancellation of Pride Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, it presented a video cabaret of performances by LGBTQ-identified Canadian musicians, actors and drag artists.
Ho Ka Kei, sometimes credited as Jeff Ho, is a Hong Kong-born Canadian stage actor and playwright. He is most noted for his plays Iphigenia and the Furies and Antigone: 方, which won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Drama and were shortlisted for the 2022 Governor General's Award for English-language drama.
Daniel Krolik is a Canadian actor and playwright. He is most noted for his 2022 Toronto Fringe Festival play Gay for Pay with Blake & Clay, which he cowrote with Curtis Campbell and co-starred in with Jonathan Wilson.
