UPDATE: Sky Gilbert will be attending Wednesday Evening's Performance of Theatrelife, August 15, at Arts Court Theatre. Come and meet the writer!
While in Ottawa, Sky will be reading from Brother Dumb at Collected Works August 16.
Writer, filmmaker,director, or drag queen extraordinaire....Sky Gilbert is one of Canada's most controversial artistic forces. In his earlier years, his work was mainly theatrical. His hit plays: Drag Queens On Trial and Drag Queens in Outer Space were produced in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Phoenix, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Washington D.C., and London England. Fourteen plays including The Dressing Gown and Playmurder, and two anthologies: This Unknown Flesh and Tainted, Painted, Sainted have been published. For the Shaw Festival Mr. Gilbert directed Anything Goes, and Wilde's Salome in 1987. Mr. Gilbert received the Pauline McGibbon Award for directing in 1985, and the Dora Award for his play The Whore's Revenge in 1990, and the Dora Award for his play Suzie Goo: Private Secretary in 1992.
Sky Gilbert has published two books of poetry -- Temptations for a Juvenile Delinquent, and Digressions of a Naked Party Girl as well as one Memoir and several plays since he left Buddies in Bad TImes to pursue creative pursuits 10 years ago. Sky has also published five novels in the last ten years: Guilty (Insomniac) St. Stephen's (Insomniac), I am Kasper Klotz (ECW), An English Gentleman (Cormorant) and Brother Dumb (ECW). An English Gentleman won the ReLit Award in 2005, and Brother Dumb has recently received rave reviews in Now Magazine ("a great leap forward for one of Toronto's most important queer artsts") and The Globe and Mail ("Gilbert's prose skips along as smartly and readable as ever") Sky will be reading from Brother Dumb at Collected Words August 16. Sky recently received the Silver Ticket Award from the Toronto Alliance fo the Performing Arts and the Margo Bindhardt Award for his contributions to Toronto Theatre. Ryan Kelly, who starred in Sky's most recent play (Will the Real J.T. LeRoy Please Stand Up?) won best actor at the Doras in Toronto this past spring. Presently Sky holds the University Research Chair in Creative Writing and Theatre Studies at Guelph University.