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Written and Performed by Johnnie McNamara Walker
Directed by Byron Laviolette
What happens to the life of the party once the party’s over?
Charming trainwreck Iggy Beamish officiates straight weddings for a living while avoiding the reality of his own gay divorce.
Iggy Beamish explores the gulf between homo and hetero matrimony while its titular character traverses Toronto’s jubilant queer nightlife scene and nightmarish real estate market and he hops from wedding gigs to DJ gigs; from gay husbands to hetero-flexible hookups; from “The Happiest Day of your Life” to Rock Bottom.
Content Warnings
Iggy Beamish contains some light cursing and sexual content.
Comic genius.
The Irish Times
A picaresque journey or hilarious humiliations... very funny and relatable stuff.
The Edmonton Journal
Walker is a bonafide charmer on stage.
The Toronto Star
About the Artist
Johnnie McNamara Walker
Johnnie McNamara Walker is a Queer writer and performer from Toronto. He performed his last solo show, The Heterosexuals, at Factory Theatre in Toronto and has toured it to Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, and Dublin, Ireland. His first solo show, Redheaded Stepchild, has toured the coast-to-coast and is available in print from Playwrights Canada Press. His play Shove It Down My Throat premiered at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2019. He has held artist residencies at Buddies, Canadian Stage, Theatre Passe Muraille, Videofag, and Playwrights Workshop Montreal. He wrote, directed, and starred in the short film Saturn Devours, which has screened at festivals in LA, Toronto, Montreal, and was featured by the National Screen Institute.
Johnnie is a founding member of burlesque troupe BoylesqueTO and has spent over fifteen years writing and hosting their shows, which have been performed across North America and won awards at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. Under the alias Orange Pekoe, Johnnie is a DJ and event producer and the creator of long-running queer nightlife series HEY GIRL HEY.
About the Director
Byron Laviolette
Byron Laviolette is a director with over twenty years experience working in the arts, the agency, the academy and the arcade. He is the resident director with Adam Francis Proulx’s Pucking Fuppet Co, having directed The Family Crow, Ferry Tale, Emilio’s A Million Chameleons as well as the short film How to Hug a Porcupine. He also works with the Dora and Canadian Comedy Award winning female clown duo Morro and Jasp and with Summerworks Festival’s Audience Choice Winner and Drag Tragicomedienne Pearle Harbour. He was also the Creative Director of The Mission Business, the Digi award-winning experience design agency whose clients included Autodesk, Starbucks, CBC, MetroLinx and NASA. He has designed courseware and on- and off-screen games for a selection of organizations including OntarioLearn, Microsoft and Ubisoft.
Byron holds a PhD in Interactive Theatre and Pervasive Transmedia Fiction from the Theatre and Performance Studies Department at York University and his criticism/art journalism has appeared in Scene Changes, EYE Weekly, AdBusters and IN Toronto magazine. He also directs audio books, including the Headphone Award winning Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline and the Audie Nominated The Butcher and the Wren by Alaina Urquhart, host of the hit podcast Morbid. Most recently, he has taken on the role of Artistic Director of Toronto’s newest live entertainment festival – What The Festival. With WTF, he seeks to present and promote puppetry, bouffon, clown and drag artists to new audiences looking to discover the very best in weird, wild and wonderful theatre. You can learn more about the work WTF is doing at www.wtfestival.ca