Return to full capacity has created a lot of excitement for Intrepid Theatre’s OutStages Festival, the ninth edition of which comes to a close this week.
We welcome Shaun Brodie (he/him) the Artistic Director of The Queer Songbook Orchestra (QSO), a Toronto based 13-piece chamber pop ensemble, dedicated to exploring and uplifting 2SLGBTQ+ narrative in pop music. The QSO have been steadily working to bring intimacy and vulnerability to stages across Canada since the project was founded in 2014 by Artistic Director Shaun Brodie. By working with a base of familiar songs, drawn from pop music of the last century, which is reinterpreted and offered alongside their accompanying narratives, the listener is allowed a new entry point into familiar works, and a peek inside the elusive nature of song and the pockets of memory where they tuck away. They are a highly collaborative ensemble and have worked with nearly 200 guest artists and arrangers, and many others, including high school students and elders from all across Canada. The QSO have released four albums to date; the 2017 collaborative album with Vivek Shraya, Part-Time Woman (Long List