Laura and Samara spend their days as non-profit unicorns and fill every spare minute exploring the world of musical theatre as BFFs (that’s Broadway Friends Forever). Follow @bffs613 on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.
Opening the National Arts Centre’s 2023-24 English Theatre season, The Queen In Me is a one-person play set in the opera world. It includes some operatic songs—but it’s not like going to the opera (or what you think that would be). If you aren’t an opera buff, don’t worry—no background knowledge is needed. Sure, you might get an extra joke or two if you know the Italian lines from a famous Giacomo Puccini composition. But if you don’t, the show is still incredibly accessible, giving you all the information you need about this world to understand the show’s intention.
Created and performed by interdisciplinary artist Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them), The Queen In Me explores how the beauty and complexity of the opera art form is stuck in the past in many ways. The play challenges the genre to expand its borders, break its self-imposed “rules,” and truly see where the art can go if it would open its mind to the possibilities of including more than just the traditional casting and story tropes.
Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野. Photo by Dahlia Katz
The minimal staging and imagery play on classic opera costuming, perfectly aligning and changing through the emotions and significant moments of the production. By breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience while acknowledging the dynamics of being in an opera, the play is unlike anything you would expect to see from an opera. Though it explores heavy topics and features an in-depth performance, the production is also laced with continuous moments of humour, light, and levity.
It’s a very fitting time to see this show, as it’s reflecting so much of our society’s discussions right now: human rights, recognizing people for who they are and want to be, judging books by their cover, and sticking to traditions for… traditions’ sake? As stated in the production, if you aren’t able to tell your story, no wonder it gets misunderstood. Art is meant to transport us into worlds outside our own and give us access to different experiences and perspectives. If we don’t evolve, we stand still or move backwards. The Queen In Me is a push forward that shouldn’t be missed.
The Queen In Me plays at the National Arts Centre’s Azrieli Studio until September 30. The performance runs 60 minutes and tickets are $49 for general admission seating. The NAC’s main accessible entrance is on Elgin Street. The Canal Lobby entrance and Parking 2 and 3 vestibules are also accessible. Seating for wheelchair users, the visually impaired and their companions is available in every performance venue. All NAC public spaces, event spaces, and washrooms are wheelchair accessible. Universal and companion care washrooms are located on the Orchestra level of Southam Hall.
Content warnings: This production explores discrimination against trans, non-binary, female-identifying, queer, and racialized people.
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