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.