Frontmezzjunkies reports: Rhubarb! 47 Returns to Buddies in Bad Times

There are few theatre events in Toronto that feel as bracingly alive as Rhubarb!, and its return this February feels especially urgent. From February 4 to 7, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre once again becomes a playground for raw, risky, and gloriously strange performances as Canada’s oldest festival for experimental new work launches its 47th edition. If you’ve ever walked out of a Rhubarb! night buzzing, baffled, exhilarated, or all three at once, you already know: this is where artists try the ideas they can’t try anywhere else.

Under the direction of Ludmylla Reis, Rhubarb! 47 embraces the theme Hybrid Creatures, a fitting title for a program that mashes forms, fractured narratives, and invites contradiction, without any regrets. Across four nights (and several late ones), the festival offers a dense lineup of original Canadian works alongside internationally celebrated queer performance, plus After Dark programming and a robust Industry Series that opens the doors to collective conversation, curiosity, and provocation. Even better: entry to the entire festival—including shows and late-night events—is just $20 per night.

One of the great joys of Rhubarb! is its refusal to play it safe. As Buddies Artistic Director ted witzel puts it, this is the beating heart of the theatre’s ethos: a space for the unpredictable, the unruly, and the unhinged, where artists meet an audience ready to go wherever the work leads. That sense of danger, of something happening once, and only once, is what makes Rhubarb! such a singular sensation year after year after year.

This year’s festival features 13 original Canadian works, spanning performance, music, movement, and genre-defying experimentation, alongside the acclaimed UK touring work TESTO by Wet Mess, which opens the festival. Whether you come for one night or attempt the full Rhubarb! immersion, expect work that challenges, confounds, delights, and refuses easy answers.

Rhubarb! 47 Festival Lineup

• Struggles of No Real Significance by Aiden Robert Bruce with Rachel Rusonik + Sara Starling
• Sandpaper Hammock by Aliyah Aziz
• How to Make a Fishing Net by Bronwyn Keough
• Seasons of Grief by Cass Cervi + Bad Machine (James Jordan)
• ORTOLAN by Eris Thomas + Other Hearts, featuring Yousef Kadoura, Eija Loponen Stephenson
• TESTing Ground: Toronto and the world at Rhubarb! 47 by Erum Khan + isi bhakhomen
• EEK!!! by jonnie lombard with Jenna Green
• I DESERVE TO FEEL GOOD by Katie Clarke with D. Halpern
• Watch Me by Lucy Coren + Nevaeh May, featuring Nevaeh May, Rinchen Dolma, Brandon Lorimer
• ¿Y si me ven? / If they see me? by Macarena Coronado, featuring Emma Cuzzocrea, Osvaldo “Ova” Barreda Buschmann, Seung Eun Cha 차승은
• Transfigure/Transfix by Oliver Pitschner + Jessie Walker + Sophie Parisi, featuring Jonnie Lombard, Bronwyn Keough, Lou Campbell, Laura Spencer
• how the wolf says goodnight by River Oliveira + Max Cameron Fearon
• an-ti-gon-nee by Ludmylla Reis

International Touring Work

• TESTO by Wet Mess (UK)

Add to that free daytime public events, late-night Rhubarb! After Dark performances at Tallulah’s Cabaret, and conversations that invite audiences into the messiness of art-making and criticism, and Rhubarb! 47 shapes up to be not just a festival, but a temporary community, one that asks what kinds of creatures we become and how we feel when we gather in the dark together with open hearts and minds.

Rhubarb! 47 runs February 4–7, 2026 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Full schedule and details are available at buddiesinbadtimes.com.