SPIZZY LIVE! November will feature two incredible theatre artists discussing gay creators. What does it mean to be a gay creator? Is there a gay sensibility? Is there such a thing as gay culture and is it different from straight culture? What’s it like being a gay creator? Is homophobia over? Spizzy discusses this with playwright and actor Damien Atkins and award-winning author, playwright, and filmmaker Jeffrey Round.
Spizzy Spezzatura Jones at The Liar’s Club (NEW LOCATION!!)
Thursday, November 14 at 7:00pm
The Imperial Pub – 54 Dundas Street East, Toronto
Free admission as usual.
Playwright and actor Damien Atkins has performed on most of the major stages across the country. Recent credits include: De Profundis (Soulpepper), Here Lies Henry (Factory), Sherlock Holmes & The Mystery of the Human Heart, Candida, Blithe Spirit, The Shadow of a Doubt (Shaw), The Sound of Music (Arts Club), Caroline, or Change (Obsidian/Musical Stage); Angels in America (Arts Club); Hosanna, A Doll’s House, The Heidi Chronicles, Angels in America (Soulpepper), The Gay Heritage Project (Buddies). He has spent four seasons as actor and playwright at the Stratford Festival, and seven at the Shaw Festival in the same capacities. His plays include Real Live Girl, miss chatelaine, Lucy, Good Mother, The Mill, Part Four: Ash, The Gay Heritage Project (with Andrew Kushnir and Paul Dunn), We Are Not Alone, and Prince Caspian. Damien has been a guest instructor at the National Theatre School, and playwright-in-residence at Necessary Angel, Crow’s Theatre, Canadian Stage and Factory Theatre. He has received a Jessie Award, two Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards and twelve Dora Mavor Award Nominations, winning five.
Jeffrey Round is an award-winning author, playwright, and filmmaker. His books include the seven-volume Lambda-winning Dan Sharp mysteries, the Bradford Fairfax comic mysteries, the ReLit-nominated poetry collection In the Museum of Leonardo da Vinci and the acclaimed war novel, The Honey Locust. He directed Agatha Christie’s stage classic, The Mousetrap, for three of its 27 record-breaking years at Toronto Truck Theatre. His 2022 music video, Gone Again, won the Luis Buñuel Memorial Award. He was a featured author at the 2024 Toronto International Festival of Authors MOTIVE festival. His latest book, The Sulphur Springs Cure, a historical whodunit from Cormorant Books, was called “an extremely satisfying reading experience” by the Toronto Star.
The Liars Club Manifesto:
Art is important because it is morally ambiguous. In this totally polarized culture –where we are alone, believing the various orthodoxies we find on our computers — each of us has come to imagine that we are are a crusader for what is right and what is wrong. WE NEED ART. Art offers no truth. It offers no answers; only questions, it shocks, upsets, and unsettles, and demands that we use our own minds and hearts to think, feel, explore undiscovered countries, and change our mind. Art is a LIE. This is why we need The Liars Club!
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