On Sunday night, writer Sky Gilbert published a post on his blog — a blog that has likely seen a record-breaking spike in traffic over the past few weeks — titled “Sky Gilbert Says Goodbye to Buddies.”

It’s the fourth post in four weeks, the span in which Gilbert went from having a civil relationship with the company he co-founded in 1979, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, to removing an upcoming workshop production from the season and severing ties with the company completely. Hopefully it’s the final one in a drama that has stoked a generational divide in the theatre community.

“Buddies is no longer a Gay and Lesbian Theatre, as it was when I was the artistic director,” Gilbert wrote. “Buddies is now a home for people representing a range of intersectional genders and identities. I no longer want my name, my voice, my essays, my ideas, my plays, my novels, my poems, my art — or anything about me — to be associated with Buddies. I’m happy to make space for others.”

The post comes after two weeks of controversy for Buddies, the world’s largest and longest-running queer theatre — certainly no stranger to causing offence in its 40-year history. The difference is that those offended usually don’t include those it served at its beginning and continues to serve today.

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On Oct. 29, Gilbert wrote “An Open Letter to Vivek Shraya,” a musician, author and transgender woman of colour, criticizing the title of her book I’m Afraid of Men. This was followed by “I’m Afraid of Woke People,” just over a week later, describing the persecution Gilbert says he feels as a gay man and drag queen, specifically from the trans community.

The post came days before a scheduled reading of Gilbert’s 1986 play Drag Queens in Outer Space, which current Buddies artistic director Evalyn Parry programmed as part of the company’s 40th-anniversary celebrations.

For a variety of reasons — including wanting to signal to community members who are trans, non-binary and people of colour that they are safe at Buddies — Parry replaced the reading on Nov. 19 with a “long table discussion” based in part on a Shraya quote: “In these increasingly polarized times, how can we, as an intergenerational queer community ‘cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid’?”

The statement that Buddies released on Facebook was met with calls of censorship. Gilbert himself, in his written response to the reading cancellation, said Parry “exhibited bullying behaviour” toward him.

Parry acknowledges Buddies could have kept the reading and added the discussion as a complement so as not to rock the boat, “but it probably wouldn’t have got to the heart because it wouldn’t have been a clear statement of saying, ‘We’re going to press pause. We’re not going to continue as planned because something has happened that has hurt people in our community.’”

The sentiments Gilbert expresses in his farewell letter — which, at the time of publication, had yet to be communicated directly to the Buddies administration — sound like a hopeful shift in favour of open discussion and space-making for those of other identities and young queer artists. “Our youth are our future,” Gilbert says.

Yet it’s disappointing that he feels he cannot, or does not want to, remain part of those discussions himself — like the emotionally intense but supportive conversation I witnessed firsthand at the long table on Nov. 19.

Before releasing his latest statement, Gilbert told the Star that he watched the live stream and was alarmed by the “hate” directed at him.

“I was very right to be afraid of woke people,” he said. “When people are encouraged to simply be emotional, it’s not good. It’s kind of dangerous.”

Was the long table emotional? Absolutely. But was it about hating Sky Gilbert? Not in the least, not to this (white, cis, straight, female) witness. Although he was the catalyst for the discussion, this story is not really about Gilbert; it’s another example of the complicated, messy business of addressing systemic inequality and deeply ingrained prejudices.

It’s about the provincial Conservative government’s proposed resolution to remove gender identity from school curricula. It’s about how, as several people attested at the long table, queer people, trans people, Indigenous people and people of colour are living in fear every single day.

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After her next show opens at Buddies this week, Obaaberima by Tawiah Ben M’Carthy, Parry will turn her attention to how best to expand the conversations started in the past week — likely through ongoing long table discussions, including one already planned in the 40th anniversary series on May 13 — in the hopes of moving the conversation from the extremes of Facebook to an in-person connection.

Parry was recently reminded of the Leonard Cohen quote, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

“It’s like this ‘pressing pause’ is the crack,” she said. “We’re feeling this at every turn, and we just need to make space to be able to actually unpack it and actually feel what it is, and not just get into yelling at each other.”