Youth Engagement — the frank theatre

Youth Engagement Projects

TELLING IT BENT 2025 SHOWCASE at IGNITE! Youth-Driven Arts Festival

May 14th at 8pm at the Cultch

Telling it Bent is an interdisciplinary writing workshop for queer, trans, Two Spirit and questioning BC youth ages 14 to 25. Throughout the program, participants explore poetry, playwriting, and interdisciplinary creation through a queer, decolonial, future building lens. Participants build connections with other young queer creatives, liberate their sense of imagination and play, and gain a deeper understanding of themselves, their artistic practice, and the possibilities of the stories they can tell. As part of IGNITE!, Telling It Bent participants will share one person or small-cast pieces of writing, performed by the cohort, in a range of styles and genres.

CREDITS:

Produced by the frank theatre company

Facilitator and Co-producer: Adonis Critter King

Co-producer: Anais West

Stage Manager: Alexa Fraser

Youth participants: Amaruuk Bose, Ronnie Cheng, Ninh Đặng, Vijeta Dhalla, Maraya Franca, Dylan Grace, Faye Ludwar, Neko Smart, and Sunny Zatzick.

CONTENT FORECAST:

Potential discussion of queerphobia, and how it intersects with race, gender, and mental health.

FACILITATOR & PROGRAM PRODUCER: Adonis Critter King

Adonis Critter King, is a Black and nonbinary, inter-disciplinary writer, theatre creator, director, facilitator, and activist. Their arts practice is rooted in social justice as daily practice, revolution as habit that starts in the home, and QT2BIMPOC safe space curation. Their work uses afro-surrealism, visionary fiction, and The Poetic Surreal to explore the joys and complexities of mad and disabled QT2MBIPOC life, the unsettling nature of becoming, and the difficult choices we must make to liberate our futures.

Adonis was the 2016 Youth Poet Laureate of Victoria, the 2017 recipient of the VACCS (Victoria African & Caribbean Cultural Society) Community recognition Award, and in 2020 they received the Witness Legacy Award for Social Purpose and Responsibility Through Art.

Recent mentorship credits include: The Parallel Project (2023) with Momentum 180 and Telling it Bent (2023) with The Frank Theatre Company.

MENTORS:

SCREENWRITING MENTOR:

Karter Masuhara: Non-binary artist and arts manager. They have worked for a variety of artistic companies in administrative and communication roles with a focus on creating opportunities to uplift diverse voices. As an artist they have written and directed an award-winning short film, Where to Piss, which has been entered into multiple film festivals globally. They have also written and self-produced their own play, Before They Cut Down Our Tree, which was presented at the 2023 Vancouver Fringe Festival. They have a Masters in Screenwriting from Leeds Beckett University.