“One night. Two pasts. A reckoning long overdue.”
This tagline for BUTCH/FEMME, playwright and director Emily Paterson’s new drama captures the charged intimacy of a work that by design feels both historic and contemporary. Premiering at Theatre Passe Muraille in a production by The Green Couch Theatre Company, BUTCH/FEMME takes a concentrated look at two women in 1950s rural Ontario, who are bound by love, longing, and the labels that have shaped their lives.
“Choosing this setting was a deliberate choice inspired by my own experience growing up as a queer person in rural Ontario,” explains Paterson, who also directs the production. “Often, queer stories and queer history are contextualised within the city, which does not represent the extensive history of queer voices.” The play’s rustic and historical setting is intended to remind audiences that queer people are everywhere and have always existed – and “that queer people everywhere yearn for the same community seen in the city.”
The play opens when Jenny’s quiet evening is shattered by an unexpected visitor. It’s Alice (played by Tessa Kramer), a woman Jenny (Annabelle Gillis) thought she had left in the past. Over the course of a single night, the two revisit their history, unearthing truths that neither can escape. BUTCH/FEMME explores love, identity, and the invisible threads that bind us … even when we try to let go. The play’s 1950s setting allows for audiences to approach the story with a certain distance, in order to understand how the historic issues of the queer community persist even today. “Essentially,” notes Paterson, “this setting was intended to reveal the ways the past speaks to the present, in order to represent the multitude of queer experiences over time.”
At the heart of BUTCH/FEMME is Jenny and Alice’s relationship, which is tinged with memory and longing. And Paterson shaped the pair’s dynamic by carefully capturing the nuance of Butch and Femme identities – which are polarizing labels that have historically been misunderstood: “It was important to me to represent all facets of lesbian identity, and I thought the most interesting way to do this would be to tell a story of the two extremes of lesbian presentation: hyper-masulinity and hyper-feminity.” Through this representation, Paterson hopes audience presumptions about what “butch” and “femme” mean will be deconstructed and recontextualized: “Because these identities are so severely misunderstood, it was very urgent to me, as a lesbian playwright, to capture the truth of these experiences.”
This urgency underpins the play’s intensity. The two women are drawn in sharp contrast, yet their dialogue moves beyond labels to probe deeper questions of love, belonging, and resilience. This is especially important, given what Paterson sees as the ebb and flow of lesbian portrayals and presence. “Historically, lesbian representation in theatre has come in waves, gaining a lot of popularity in the 90’s, before being set aside to make room for other stories. I’m hoping BUTCH/FEMME will begin to carve out a space for lesbians in the theatre, a space where we have been underrepresented significantly for the last 20 years. My goal is to start conversations around the issues of lesbian spaces, lesbian representation, and the lesbian experience as a whole.”
Especially in an era when queer women’s venues and community spaces in Toronto are dwindling, the play takes on additional resonance. It reminds audiences of what has been lost and what remains, while insisting on the presence — and persistence — of lesbian voices in the theatre.
The play’s form is almost impossibly confining: two characters, one room, one conversation, one night. In fact, when Paterson first came up with the play’s concept, it was a writing exercise focused on working within tight restrictions: “I was challenging myself to create a very intricate work with a lot of limitations, in order to see what I could produce. And in the end, BUTCH/FEMME is what I created. It’s definitely challenging to work with such restrictions, and there were moments where I reached impasses, and I wasn’t sure what to do next. However, working with these limitations … leads to high amounts of tension, and very intense, intimate moments. And these turned into a very beautiful and nuanced story.”
Why does Paterson challenge herself like this? Because “theatre is a very special art form to me, and something I’ve been involved in my whole life. There is a certain intimacy in theatre you don’t experience through other forms of visual media, that really lends itself to an intimacy story such as this one.” Widening the aperture, she admits, “Additionally, theatre is my ideal art form, as it allows for so much freedom. Anything is possible in theatre – leaving so much room to experiment, make mistakes, adapt, and learn.”
That freedom — to experiment, to adapt — is part of the origin of Butch/Femme, and also its continued evolution. The show first premiered at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Drama Festival, where it won the President’s Award for Outstanding Production. “I’ve loved watching this story grow and develop over the last 6 months between the Hart House festival and bringing it to TPM,” notes Paterson. “We did a great workshop with artist Moynan King, who gave me some great advice in terms of expanding and refining the script.”
With BUTCH/FEMME, Paterson has created a play that invites audiences to listen more closely: to the echoes of the past, to the specificity of lesbian identities, and to the courage it takes to bring such stories to the stage. “BUTCH/FEMME was received very well at the university, so I am excited to continue to share Alice and Jenny’s story with the city and beyond. I hope the audience enjoys watching it as much as we have enjoyed creating it.”
BUTCH/FEMME continues at Theatre Passe Muraille until September 27, 2025. Tickets are available on passemuraille.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
