All events require a Femme Folks Fest Pass. If you are able during these unprecedented times, we kindly suggest a donation of $50.
All Femme Folks Fest donations will be directed to local artists.

March 9

ANNE DOELMAN Astroplaning on Hydro Lines  
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

Best friends Nelly and Jess are one year away from escaping their small town existence. If they can keep their marks high, getting into university should be a snap. But when Nelly’s dying grandfather has a vision of Jesus and Jess claims she leaves her body at night, Nelly realizes escaping may not be as easy as it seems.

March 10

AMY NEUFELD WITCHES IN THE WOODS 
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

Witches in the Woods: A Queeer Re-spinning of Hansel and Gretel: What if that old familiar story wasn’t true? What if the people labelled witches are really heroes, and the villains are hidden behind unearned respectability? Yara and Sybil live in the woods and are desperate to adopt a baby from the orphanage, but their chances dry up when the case-worker realizes the nature of the women’s relationship. Rumours about them start to swirl, and into the middle of that chaos come Hansel and Gretel, trying to survive their abusive and selfish parents who’ve abandoned them, and finding peace in the cottage in the woods. But when the children are returned to their parents, the situation becomes truly dangerous for all of them, and Hansel, Gretel, Yara, and Sybil must rely on their wits, compassion, and bravery to avoid disaster.

This is a family-friendly play for all audiences.

March 11

AVELEIGH KELLER TORONTO, 1989
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

While volunteering at an AIDS hospice, Steph – a butch lesbian – encounters a young teenage girl too nervous to visit her dying brother. While convincing her to say goodbye, Steph re-lives key moments in her life.

March 12

CAMILLE INTSON  PATCHFACE and UNTITLED
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

Patchface: A switchboard operator becomes intimately involved in the affairs of a young couple when she overhears, and participates in, a series of telephonic exchanges between them. Patchface is a play about technology, intimacy, desire, communication, and the space between these things.

Untitled VR Sex Play: A quirky computer science student creates a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype that allows its users to stimulate sexual encounters with anyone of their choosing, and sells it on the black market of his college campus.

March 16

VANESSA SPENCE STRETCH MARKS: PART 2 
FESTIVAL COMPANY IN RESIDENCE AND WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

Sasha, a pregnant, transracial adoptee, attempts to beat her gestational clock as she battles with her past, present, and future to decide whether she should keep her unplanned child or place them for adoption.

March 17
7:00-8:00PM

MICHAELA JEFFREY W.R.O.L. (Without Rule of Law)
FESTIVAL PLAYWRIGHT IN RESIDENCE

In the garage of her suburban duplex, twelve-year-old Josephine makes apocalypse preparedness videos and posts them to YouTube. Vic takes Jujitsu. Maureen encrypts her text messages and hordes matches (because lighters fail). Sarah stuffs her knapsack with extra socks, granola, water filtration tablets and Tolkien novels, because “you don’t know where you’re going to be… when it happens… you might not be at home.”

​Convinced the world at large can’t be trusted to prioritize the well-being of adolescent girls in the event of a cataclysmic event (or just in general), this determined troupe of 8th grade ‘doomers’ are committed to preparing for survival in the post -collapse society they anticipate inheriting. Judy Blume meets Rambo, WROL (Without Rule of Law) is a darkly comic coming-of-age story for complicated times.

March 18

MEHER JAFFRI  Newest Work 
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021  

In Urdu with English subtitles. Assisted by 10 actors, Meher and cast will be reading from her latest New Work in Urdu with English captions.  Following the reading, Meher will be joined by Lisa in a Conversation on Decolonization of Language in arts presentation.

March 19

NANCY KENNY I Don’t Feel Pretty/Chu pas cute
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

I Don’t Feel Pretty / Chu pas cute is an absurdist dark comedy on failed womanhood. Through a series of vignettes, the play explores addiction, intergenerational trauma, and vanity guided by a diverse chorus of women’s voices. It is a bilingual, full-length, ensemble piece for  5 or more women between the ages of 16 to 65, running at approximately 75 minutes.

March 20

ROSE CULLIS The Amazing Grace Jones Spaceship
WOMEN’S ROOM 2021

The Amazing Grace Jones Spaceship is about fluid sexualities and genders, and the perils and pleasures of identity politics. The play is about an older woman (Tuesday) who has a random and life-changing encounter with a younger non-binary person (Charlie) and with their high femme girlfriend (Agnes.) Charlie wants to elude labels and just be, but Agnes is suspicious of Charlie’s politics when Charlie appears to compulsively and aggressively seduce straight women. Tuesday, on the other hand, is eager to explore aspects of herself that are muted. The Amazing Grace Jones Spaceship explores the possibilities of metamorphosis, and the role the imagination plays in our sense of who and what we are.

March 20
6:00 – 7:00PM

CATHERINE FRID Alarm Clock in Action
WOMEN’S ROOM 2020

Catherine Frid’s produced plays include Spend Your Kids’ Inheritance (Toronto Fringe – Patron’s Pick), What I Gave I Have (Guelph Museums), AfterWhys (Suicide Awareness Council of Wellington-Dufferin, tours), Half Full (Mixed Company Theatre, school tours), Burying Toni (Alumnae), The Bold Canadian (Arts and Letters Club), Homegrown (SummerWorks and others), GuineaPigging (Alumnae), Dead Cat Bounce (Toronto Fringe and others), and many short works in Canada and the United States.

Catherine also co-creates community-engaged works, including Sytske Then and Now (Our Voices), Our Roots, Our Future (a Canada 150 production), Out of the Illusion (Six Nations Reserve), and Our Voices: Senior Selfies (Our Voices).

Publications include Our Voices: Senior Selfies (Art Age Publications); This Isn’t Toronto in Long Story Short, a Playwrights Canada Press 10-minute play anthology; Community with Strangers in Scenes from a Diverse World (ICWP Press); and Us and Them in Thirtysomethings: Mother-Daughter Monologues (ICWP Press).

Catherine is Artistic Director of Watercourse Theatre, and has been Playwright in Residence at Mixed Company Theatre and Artist in Residence at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Upcoming in 2021: a new community co-creation (via Zoom) called Hope and Resilience in Action.