#422 – ted witzel

About This Episode: This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby welcomes ted witzel, Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, to discuss the company’s 2025–2026 season and the vital role Buddies plays locally and globally. In this wide-ranging and passionate conversation, ted talks about the curatorial ethos behind the season, how queerness informs both aesthetic and practice, and why Buddies remains a radical, necessary space in an increasingly conservative climate. This episode explores:

• The inspiration and process behind curating the 2025–2026 Buddies season
• Why queerness is more than representation—it's a creative methodology
• The value of festivals (Rhubarb, Nuit Blanche, Queer Pride) in Buddies' identity
• Longing as a theme: desire, intimacy, revolution, and more
• Highlights from the season including The Green Line, Make Banana Cry, The Herald, and The Begging Brown Bitch Plays
• The importance of unruliness, disobedience, and disrespectability in queer theatre
• The enduring legacy and global uniqueness of Buddies in Bad Times

Guest: 🎭 ted witzel ted witzel (he/him) is a queer theatre-maker and artistic leader from toronto / tkaròn:to. primarily a director, ted is also variously a dramaturg, curator, teacher, writer, translator, designer, and performer. he has worked with theatres and cultural organizations across canada, the uk, germany, and italy.

fusing high-octane performance, rigorous dramaturgy, digital aesthetics, and poetic text, ted’s directing is located at the intersection between the personal and the political, and the (visceral, emotional, intellectual) frictions between them.

ted was a guest curator for the 2023 edition of the summerworks festival and is a member of the theatre committee at the toronto arts council. he recently completed a four-year tenure as artistic associate and laboratory director at the stratford festival, where he oversaw the company’s research and development programs. these included a broad portfolio of new works in development, equity-focused systems change, artist residencies, and a collection of artistic explorations and programs that aim to help imagine the future orientation of the company.

ted holds a masters of arts management from SDA bocconi and an MFA in directing from york university and canadian stage. in 2018, he was selected as an artistic leadership resident at the national theatre school, and was a member of the banff centre’s 2019 cultural leadership cohort. he has been artist-in-residence at harbourfront centre, buddies in bad times (toronto) and institut für alles mögliche (berlin).

Connect with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre: 📸 Instagram: @buddiesTO 🌐 Website: buddiesinbadtimes.com

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