Slo Pitch | |
---|---|
Genre | Comedy |
Created by |
|
Written by |
|
Starring |
|
Country of origin | Canada |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers |
|
Producer | Paige Haight |
Slo Pitch is a Canadian web television comedy series, co-created by J. Stevens, Gwenlyn Cumyn, and Karen Knox. [1] The series centres on the Brovaries, an underachieving softball team for LGBTQ women and non-binary players; despite being perennial losers who are mostly more concerned with drinking beer and meeting women at after-game parties than they are with the sport, they unexpectedly find themselves in the league championships playing against their arch-rival Toronto Blue Gays. [1]
Slo Pitch features a fully female and/or non-binary led creative team, a key cast that is 50 percent BIPOC, 70% of the cast and crew identifying as female or non-binary, and 80% of key cast identifying as LGBTQ+. [2] The cast includes Kirsten Rasmussen, Gwenlyn Cumyn, Karen Knox, Lane Webber, K Alexander, Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah, Amanda Cordner, Aisha Evelyna, and Chelsea Muirhead.
It premiered August 3, 2020 on OUTtvgo in Canada, and aired on OutTV's linear television channel in 2021. [3] Slo Pitch was picked up by IFC (U.S. TV channel) and aired on their platform October 18, 2021. [4]
Shortly after being picked up by IFC, Season Two premiered in June, 2022. [5]
The series was produced by Shaftesbury Films (Paige Haight) and Boss & Co (Michael Schram, Cumyn, and Knox). [3] with funding from the Independent Production Fund and the Bell Fund. [6]
Co-writers Knox and Cumyn met 12 years ago at George Brown Theatre School where they started collaborating on plays. [7]
The show’s theme song is called "Play the Field", by Partner. [8]
The show follows a queer female softball team trying to make it to the championships of their competitive beer league in Toronto, Canada. The mockumentary focuses on an overly invested coach named Joanne, played by Kirsten Rasmussen, and her attempts to take her underdog team The Brovaries all the way to championships. [9] Co-creator J Stevens says they got the idea for the show after playing many team sports, and witnessing the amount of drama that comes from the players. [10]
The series was nominated for the LGBTQ+ Spirit Award at the 2020 TOWebfest. [13]
Pride Toronto is an annual event held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in June each year. A celebration of the diversity of the LGBT community in the Greater Toronto Area, it is one of the largest organized gay pride festivals in the world, featuring several stages with live performers and DJs, several licensed venues, a large Dyke March, a Trans March and the Pride Parade. The centre of the festival is the city's Church and Wellesley village, while the parade and marches are primarily routed along the nearby Yonge Street, Gerrard Street and Bloor Street. In 2014, the event served as the fourth international WorldPride, and was much larger than standard Toronto Prides.
Pure Pwnage is a Canadian Internet-distributed mockumentary series from ROFLMAO Productions. The fictional series purports to chronicle the life and adventures of Jeremy, a Canadian and self-proclaimed "pro gamer". In 2010, an adaptation of the web series began airing on Showcase, a Canadian cable television channel, but the series failed to be picked up for a second season.
The Inside Out Film and Video Festival, also known as the Inside Out LGBT or LGBTQ Film Festival, is an annual Canadian film festival, which presents a program of LGBT-related film. The festival is staged in both Toronto and Ottawa. Founded in 1991, the festival is now the largest of its kind in Canada. Deadline dubbed it "Canada’s foremost LGBTQ film festival."
Jo Vannicola, formerly known as Joanne Vannicola, is a Canadian actor. They are most noted for their roles as Dr. Naadiah in Being Erica, Dr. Mia Stone in PSI Factor, Jerri in Love and Human Remains, Sam in Stonewall, Renee in Slasher: Guilty Party, Amber Ciotti in Slasher: Solstice and Slasher: Flesh and Blood, as well as voice roles in Crash Canyon and My Dad the Rock Star.
The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA) is a non-profit, international association of gay and lesbian softball leagues.. As of 2023, NAGAAA rebranded to International Pride Softball.
Danger & Eggs is an American animated series created by Mike Owens and Shadi Petosky that premiered on Amazon Video on June 30, 2017. The show focuses on the adventures of a "gender-free female lesbian child and her giant large-gamete friend," as described by Petosky. Petosky stated that she, and the show's cast, wanted to be overt about LGBT representation rather than having "metaphors and hidden symbology" within the series.
D. W. Waterson, is a Canadian DJ, drummer, writer, director, and web series creator. They are known for their work as a performer and for creating, writing, and directing the award-winning web series That's My DJ (2014–2017). Their feature-length directorial film debut, Backspot, is forthcoming.
Alexander "Sasha" Hedges Steinberg, known professionally as Sasha Velour, is an American drag queen, artist, actor, and stage and television producer, based in Brooklyn, New York. Velour is known for winning the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, her drag revue NightGowns, and her one-queen theatrical work, Smoke & Mirrors.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inequities experienced by marginalized populations, and has had a significant impact on the LGBT community. Gay pride events were cancelled or postponed worldwide. More than 220 gay pride celebrations around the world were canceled or postponed in 2020, and in response a Global Pride event was hosted online. LGBTQ+ people also tend to be more likely to have pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma, HIV/AIDS, cancer, or obesity, that would worsen their chances of survival if they became infected with COVID-19. They are also more likely to smoke.
Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod are Canadian television hosts and former international-level athletes. They are best known for their television segments called BodyBreak, which have been in intermittent production since 1988. The program is considered a cult classic among Canadian pop culture.
Roobha is a 2018 Canadian feature film produced by Warren Sinnathamby, and written and directed by Lenin M. Sivam. The film which was produced under the banner of Next Productions, stars Amrit Sandhu, Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Thenuka Kantharajah, Sornalingam Vyramuthu, Cassandra James, Dan Bertolini, Tharshiny Varapragasam, Bhavani Somasundaram, Sumathy Balram, and Ishwaria Chandru. It is based on a story by Antonythasan Jesuthasan who writes under the pseudonym Shoba Sakthi. The film explores the harsh realities faced by a young South-Asian trans-woman who struggles to make a living in Toronto after she is ostracized by her family. Roobha had its world premiere at Montreal World Film Festival on August 25, 2018. It was also the opening film of the 18th Annual Reelworld Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, an Official Selection for the Cambridge Film Festival in UK, Official Selection in the World Panorama Section of the International Film Festival of India in Goa., Official Selection of the Windsor International Film Festival in Canada, Official Selection of the Whistler Film Festival in Canada, London Indian Film Festival in UK, Official Selection of the Melbourne Indian Film Festival in Australia, and Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in Mumbai, India.
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.
In the 2020s, LGBTQ representation in animated series and animated films became more pronounced than it had in the 2010s, or 2000s when it came to Western animation. This included series like The Owl House, Harley Quinn, Adventure Time: Distant Lands, RWBY, and Dead End: Paranormal Park. Series like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Steven Universe Future, The Hollow, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which had various LGBTQ characters, came to an end in 2020, and Gen:Lock came to an end in 2021. An upcoming season of Hazbin Hotel was hinted at, while an animated adaption of Lumberjanes was in development.
Q-Force is an American adult animated comedy series created by Gabe Liedman for Netflix. In April 2019, Netflix ordered 10 episodes of the series, with Liedman as a showrunner, along with Sean Hayes, Michael Schur, Todd Milliner and others as executive producers. It was released on September 2, 2021.
Karen Knox is a Canadian director, actor, and writer. She is the show runner of Slo Pitch, and Homeschooled on CBC, which she wrote, directed, and starred in. Her directorial feature film debut, Adult Adoption, premiered at the 2022 Glasgow Film Festival prior to its theatrical release in North America with Level Film. Knox's notable roles include Ginger in Paramount's All I Didn't Want opposite Academy Award nominee Gabourey Sidibe, Holly Frost in Syfy's Letters to Satan Claus, Veronica Vale in KindaTV's Barbelle, and Boris in IFC Slo Pitch.
Sort Of is a Canadian television sitcom, released on CBC Television beginning in 2021. Created by Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo, the series stars Baig as Sabi Mehboob, a non-binary millennial trying to balance their roles as a child of Pakistani immigrant parents, a bartender at an LGBTQ bookstore and café, and a caregiver to the young children of a professional couple.
Gwenlyn Cumyn is a Canadian actor, writer, and producer. Her notable projects include the web television series Barbelle and Slo Pitch.
Amanda Cordner is a Canadian actor, most noted for their regular role as 7ven in the television series Sort Of.