The Videofag Book

Longlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Awards

In October 2012, lovers William Ellis and Jordan Tannahill moved into a former barbershop in Toronto's Kensington Market neighbourhood and turned it into an art space called Videofag. Over the next four years Videofag became a hub for counterculture in the city, playing host to a litany of performances, screenings, parties, exhibitions, and all manner of queer fuckery. But hosting a city in their house took its toll and eventually William and Jordan broke up, closing the space for good in June 2016.

The Videofag Book is a chronicle of those four years told through multiple voices and mediums: a personal history by William and Jordan; a love letter by Jon Davies; a communal oral history compiled by Chandler Levack; a play by Greg MacArthur; a poem by Aisha Sasha John; a chronological history of Videofag's programming; and a photo archive curated by William and Jordan in full colour.

Jordan Tannahill is a playwright, filmmaker and theatre director. He won the Governor General’s Award for Drama for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays and was shortlisted for the prize again for Concord Floral (also a recipient of the 2015 Carol Bolt Award). He has twice received Dora Awards for Outstanding New Play while his play Botticelli in the Fire won the 2017 Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Canadian Play. He is the author of Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama and his first novel, Liminal, will be published by House of Anansi Press in Januaray 2018. Jordan’s films and multimedia performances have been presented at festivals and galleries such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Tribeca Film Festival. Most recently, his virtual reality performance Draw Me Close, a co-production between the National Theatre (UK) and the National Film Board of Canada, premiered at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

William Ellis is a performer whose work in theatre and dance includes Other Jesus by Evan Webber, Even This Old Town Was a Forest by Aurora Stewart de Pena, WorkingOnWorkingOnUs by Andrew Tay, S h e e t s by Salvatore Antonio, and Greg MacArthur’s A Man Vanishes. He has performed for choreographer DA Hoskins in Machine Room, The Coating Project for the Luminato Festival, and This is a Costume Drama at Harborfront World Stage. Recently he received a Toronto Theatre Critics Award—Special Citation for Videofag, an ongoing collaboration with Jordan Tannahill.

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