“Buddies in Bad Times is a great venue and they produce some wonderful theatre, but they can’t do it all,” says Darren Stewart-Jones, who not only produces the queer theatre festival Gay Play Day at the Alumnae Theatre, but is featuring his short play, Ramblings of a Middle Aged Drag Queen. He describes his contribution as “a glimpse of the Toronto gay scene of yesteryear, before the internet and apps like Grindr.”

Gay Play Day grew out of another festival produced by Stewart-Jones, the HamilTEN Festival: “It was a great weekend of theatre, and I thought I’d like to produce something similar in Toronto but with an LGBT angle.”

Gay Play Day opens with four 10-minute plays — Intervention, by Bruce Harrott; The Object of Her Attraction, by Tina McCulloch; Stupid Bitch, by Durango Miller; and Stewart-Jones’s play — and concludes with a reading of a longer play by Sky Gilbert entitled Hamilton Bus Stop,  “the story of a gay, HIV-positive hustler and a suburban housewife who literally meet at a bus stop in Hamilton.” The festival features an impressive lineup of Toronto actors: Elley-Ray Hennessy, Nick Green, Philip Cairns, David Bateman, Julie Burris and Ryan Anning. “We are starting small, but I hope it will grow into a full-fledged festival of LGBT theatre. There are so many stories out there that have yet to be told,” Stewart-Jones says. —Jeremy Willard

Gay Play Day is Fri, Sept 28 and Sat, Sept 29,
8pm at the Alumnae Theatre, 70 Berkeley St. gayplayday.blogspot.ca