Libido Productions

Libido Productions was founded in 2010 by York University professor, author and playwright Sheila L. Cavanagh. The Toronto-based theatre company specializes in Queer and Trans- drama with a focus on the psychic complexities of gender and sexuality. Libido Productions is committed to verbatim dialogue and to theatrical research based performances. Its mandate is to produce critical and psychoanalytically nuanced plays that complicate normative ideas about love and loss, hate, identification and desire. Libido Productions are dramatic and politically compelling in the way they grapple with everyday emotions and affect in the socio-cultural landscape.

Libido Productions' first play is the Queer Bathroom Monologues (QBM), written by Sheila L. Cavanagh; directed by Megan Watson; and starring Hallie Burt, Tyson James, and Chy Ryan Spain. The QBM was staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival, July 6-17, 2011 and given the Patron's Pick Award. It is a verbatim play about LGBTQ experiences in Toronto's public facilities. Based on interviews completed for the book titled Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination (UTP, 2010) by Sheila Cavanagh, the personal monologues open our eyes to the secret sex life of the bathroom and to the history of the gendered rooms.

In the tradition of The Vagina Monologues and The Laramie Projects the QBM uses interpersonal narrative to bring the social life of the bathroom to the stage. The play features multi-dialogue and solo performances to capture a range of gendered and sexualized experiences in the toilet. They include never-before-told stories that span from the devastating to the sublime, the traumatic to the passionate, the mundane, to the curious, the comic and everything in between. After witnessing the powerful performances of queer and trans lives underground you will never look at the bathroom the same way again!

Contact Information: Sheila@yorku.ca