Trash Cinema Club
Trash Cinema Club: Goblins Goblins Goblins and tunes from DJ Kwoo
April 27, 2025
8:00 pm
Join us for a celebration of Ed Wood’s filmography. Derided as the worst filmmaker of all time and championed as a pioneer of trash, Ed Wood’s work is low-budget, chaotic, queer, disruptive and, most of all, entertaining. Featuring a special drag performance by character comedian Goblins Goblins Goblins.
Trash Cinema Club: Sasha Shame and tunes from DJ Kwoo
May 4, 2025
8:00 pm
The dolls are calling and they need their grooviest recruits! Join Rock Bottom Saloon and Sasha Shame as they present the inaugural Dolls Pageant, a night to celebrate transness in tandem with the sexploitation genre of trash cinema. Customise your own doll to participate in the pageant and after you lose, console yourself with Russ Meyer’s most infamous picture!
Trash Cinema Club: Martin Kenny and tunes from DJ Kwoo
May 11, 20205
8:00 pm
Celebrate the iconic “trash” cinema director John Waters with an immersive night of his subversive works, featuring a special talk by queer academic and artist Martin Kenny, a PhD candidate in Drama & Theatre Studies, who specialises in queer theory and hauntology. Martin, a DruidFUEL Artist for 2025, will delve into the radical aesthetic of Waters’ films and their impact on queer culture and cinematic subversion.
Festival Week 1
Stealing Stories
May 5, 2025 – May 10, 2025
7:30 pm Monday through Saturday
2:30 pm Monday and Saturday
Who has the right to tell a story? When Gavin offers to help his writer friend, Robbie, work on a new novel with a queer theme, Robbie is initially reluctant. As a straight cis man he fears he will be accused of appropriation but is reassured by Gavin, a cis gay man, that writers should be able to write anything they like. But when an offer to publish the emerging novel comes, the question of who the story belongs to threatens to tear Gavin and Robbie’s friendship apart.
Oh! I Miss the War
May 5, 2025 – May 10, 2025
7:30 pm Monday through Saturday
2:30 pm Monday and Saturday
1967. London, England. Sodomy decriminalized! Sort of.
Jack, aging tailor to the chorus boys of the West End, watches the new generation celebrate, and laments that they will never know the outlaw happiness he knew as a youthful rentboy.
2022. Toronto, Canada. Kink night! Sort of.
Matt, a service bottom with failing knees, tries to find an erotic connection with puppies and a political connection with pronoun-careful Gen Zeds.
Recalling hankies and Polari, busbies and chaps, rent boys and faeries, tea rooms and back rooms, love and death, they each bring the past to the present and celebrate the future.
Sex, pleasure, kink, shame. God. During the Blitz. During the Plague. And after. A hundred year sliver of queer history, work, and hope in less than an hour!
“Explores queer themes with depth, tenderness, and audacity.” “Raw and magnificent!” “Flawless!”
Iggy Beamish Destroys Traditional Marriage
May 5, 2025 – May 10, 2025
9:00 pm Monday through Saturday
4:00 pm Monday and Saturday
Iggy Beamish makes a dubious living officiating straight weddings while doing everything in his power to avoid the reality of his own gay divorce. Our hero bravely explores the gulf between homo and hetero matrimony—and marriage may never be the same. Now if he can just find a decent place to live, a reliable way to make money, and a way to avoid thinking about the worst mistake he ever made, everything should be golden! Join Iggy on a journey from Toronto’s jubilant queer nightlife scene to its nightmarish real estate market; from gay husbands to heteroflexible hook-ups; from “the happiest day of your life” to rock bottom.
The Strange Case of Dr. Dillon
May 5, 2026 – May 10, 2025
9:00 pm Monday through Saturday
4:00 pm Monday and Saturday
From 1915 to 1940, Michael Dillon struggled against a world that insisted he was a girl. The only way he could live a full life was to invent gender affirming care for trans men. Hormone and surgical treatments developed by and for Dillon, in partnership with eminent plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, are now established best practices for the global medical community. Body aligned, he began work on his soul. Heart-break, world travel, and life as a Buddhist monk followed.
Follow Michael’s journey from his childhood in south England, through his medical training in Dublin and transition, to the Merchant Navy and Buddhist monasteries in India. Michael’s autobiography, finished shortly before his death, was discovered by biographer Liz Hodgkinson, who first shared his story in 1989. Dillon’s extraordinary life is brought to the stage by an all-trans cast.
Festival Week 2
Typewriters and Paintbrushes
May 12, 2025 – May 17, 2025
7:30 pm Monday through Saturday
2:30 Saturday
Two boys meet at the Longitude festival. Sam is there to reconnect with his ex, though if truth be told he would much rather be at a Taylor Swift concert. Max, on the other hand, is there to be amongst strangers and to see if he can “pass” convincingly as cisgender. Through their conversations, Sam and Max discover things about each other and themselves that change their perspectives on life.
The Little Black Fish
May 12, 2025 – May 17, 2025
7:30 pm Monday through Saturday
2:30 Saturday
Step into the world of The Little Black Fish to hear the untold tales of the Iranian queer community; the stories of love, loss, desire, hope, exile, pain, joy, longing, and displacement. At our show, let the Little Black Fish guide you through our stories of survival and critical reimagining of Samad Behrang’s children’s literary classic about the Little Black Fish that leaves the safety of the local stream to explore the world.
Homo(sapien)
May 12, 2025 – May 17, 2025
9:00 pm Monday through Saturday
4:00 Saturday
Set in Galway, Homo(sapien) follows 25 year old Joey, a self-described “bad gay” who has never had sex and “can’t get into RuPaul’s Drag Race no matter how hard he tries.” After hearing about the death of a gay man in Dublin, following a hate crime, Joey imagines himself dying a virgin and thus begins his misguided quest to “get his hole.” During this quest, set over the course of a weekend, Joey must battle his own internalised homophobia, his deeply entrenched Catholic guilt, prejudiced local attitudes and the perceived threat of violence from the Galway GAA players. Homo(sapien) is a joyful, darkly comedic solo show about friendship, self-discovery, and the intersection of homosexuality and Catholicism.
It Goes Without Saying
May 12, 2025 – May 17, 2025
9:00 pm Monday through Saturday
4:00 Saturday
Join us for this fun and unflinching look at the life and mimes of Bill Bowers. It Goes Without Saying takes the audience on a scenic tour of Bill’s life thus far: growing up gay in the wilds of Montana, his outrageous jobs as a performer, studying with Marcel Marceau, and the whirlwind of working on Broadway. Bill observes the incredible power that silence can wield – whether on stage, between family members, among neighbors, or when we are alone. Bill talks (yes, talks) with sensitivity, precision, and constant humor about a life lived out loud.
