“The Queen In Me” is set to explore the many ways that race, gender, and sexuality are represented, and often policed, in the opera industry.

The new co-production from the Canadian Opera Company, Amplified Opera, Nightwood Theatre, and Theatre Gargantua was created by and stars interdisciplinary artist Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野.

The production will be featured as a Major Cultural Event as part of Toronto Pride 2022 and will be performed on June 2, 3, and 4, 2022 at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre.

The new work is framed through the lens of “The Magic Flute’s” iconic Queen of the Night. In musing what else this character could be if only released from expectations and stereotype, the show reclaims space for the multitudes of women, trans, and non-binary individuals excluded from the stage, and dares to imagine new narrative possibilities for the art form.

Teiya Kasahara is a queer, trans non-binary, multi-and- interdisciplinary creator-performer based in Tkarón:to (Toronto). In a statement they said, “I was always taught to go deep into every character I was playing, to bring as much dimensionality to those characters on the stage. But it always felt like, despite her power, the Queen of the Night was given so little room to grow. And so I started to dream: who is this character and what might she be saying off-stage? The Queen In Me is a place where the Queen can finally speak for the first time—and speak up not only for herself, but for characters in the canon, and various performers in this industry who may also feel like they are othered.”

Co-directing on this production are Andrea Donaldson and Aria Umezawa. Donaldson.