Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty.

        We accept PayPal, Visa & Mastercard
        through our secure checkout.

 

Mastercard                              

 

BASH'd

BASH'd
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Chris Craddock & Nathan Cuckow
Publisher: Talonbooks (cover image may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 96
Pub. Date: 2011
ISBN-10: 889226563
ISBN-13: 9780889226562
Cast Size: 2 male

About the Play:

GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater

BASH'd: A Gay Rap Opera is a full-length comedy by Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow. This musical, told entirely in rap and spoken word poetry, tells the story of Jack and Dillon, a gay couple who meet and fall in love. When Jack is brutally bashed, Dillon hits the streets looking for revenge. Not since Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner has a narrative poem inspired such empathy in the hearts and minds of its audience.

BASH'd chronicles the tale of naïve small-town boy Dillon who meets the sophisticated urban Jack in a gay bar, it's love at first sight, and not just for a one-night stand either! While these star-crossed lovers manage to bring their initially dubious if not downright disowning families together in celebration of their marriage, their unblemished love certainly hasn't changed the world — quite on the contrary. When Jack becomes the victim of a gay-bashing, Dillon sets out on an indiscriminate rampage of revenge. Unfortunately, the straight men he takes on are neither particularly homophobic, nor are they exactly itching for a fight, and the scene quickly turns ugly, teetering on the verge of a slaughter of the innocent until the police intervene. Realizing too late that two wrongs don't make a right, the lovers, wrapped in each other's arms, die in a hail of bullets. Arriving in heaven, much to their contrite surprise, the creator fits the souls of these two Romeos with a set of wings and sends them on a mission of redemption. Condemned to wander the earth and tell their cautionary tale forever to whomever will listen. While the goal of BASH'd is first and foremost to tell an engaging gay love story, it also flips the music industry's gangsta stereotype of rap music on its head and returns it to its political roots — in this case to explore the dangers of the kind of attitudes that continue to condone and even encourage sexual discrimination of all kinds in our society.

BASH'd played an award-winning run at the 2007 Toronto Fringe Festival. It was a super-hit at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival and transferred to a four-month commercial run Off-Broadway at Zipper Theatre in New York City, winning a GLADD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) media award in 2008. It has received huge critical enthralling wildly enthusiast audiences all over North America with the rap opera rhymes of this tragic tale ever since.

Cast: 2 male

What people say:

"Great music and comic performances with a story that is ultimately quite dark, dramatic and moving. … Though it’s not a new show, BASH'd remains relevant and speaks to the complexities of the fight for equality." — Edmonton Sun

"BASH'd is furious, fast-moving, hip-hop entertainment! As one of the lyrics proclaims, 'it's Romeo meets Romeo,' complete with an ample supply of scatological language, swaggering attitude and a keen, often hilarious sense of observation about gay life." — Associated Press

"BASH'd is brilliant … this is a show you don't dare miss." — Toronto Star

"Audiences should be impressed by the passion of its convictions. The production … shows its rage, its grief, and its driven, heartfelt determination." — The New York Times

"Besides being hugely imaginative, energized, and brash, BASH'd is also very, very funny." — Calgary Herald

"The idiosyncrasies of gay life are displayed vividly (and sometimes in raunchy detail) as Craddock and Cuckow snap from character to character, creating a world full of aggressive drag queens, disdainful lesbians, macho conservative dads, wayward straight boys and one pitch-perfect, loving-but-cringing mother." — New York Daily News

About the Playwright:

Chris Craddock is an Edmonton-based actor, producer and writer. His theatre work has been recognized with four Sterling Awards and two Dora Mavor Moore Awards. Craddock graduated from the University of Alberta's BFA Acting Program in 1996 and since then he has worked on stages all across Canada.

Nathan Cuckow is an award-winning actor, producer, playwright and a co-artistic director of Edmonton's critically acclaimed theatre company Kill Your Television. Born and raised in Calgary, Cuckow moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Upon graduating, he worked as an administrator in the Education Outreach program for Tony Randall's National Actors Theatre for the Broadway production of The Sunshine Boys. Cuckow returned to Canada in 1998 and has since then called Edmonton home.