I Am YEG Arts: Brett Dahl

As a queer, Métis, gender-nonconforming, non-binary theatre artist, Brett Dahl (they/​them) is committed to reclaiming and reimagining stories from a queer perspective. Primarily a director, writer, and actor, Brett also works as a dramaturg, teacher, producer, administrator and drag performer, Ziggy-Zay-Ah. Whether developing new plays or approaching classics through a modern queer lens, they strive to be a catalyst that broadens our understanding and interpretation of theatre while creating work that contributes to the vitality and visibility of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. In this week’s I Am YEG Arts feature, Brett expands on the themes they explore in their work, and what audiences can expect from their show Sissy Fit: Battle Cry at this year’s Expanse Festival.

Can you share a bit about your journey into theatre and how you first got involved in the arts in Edmonton? Were there any specific moments or influences that sparked your passion?

Theatre has always been in my life. I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t passionate about performing. All through junior high and high school, I was in every play, every project that was possible. But it was my high school teacher who changed my perception [about a career in the arts]; I didn’t think that I could be a professional theatre artist, but with her encouragement, she changed my trajectory. 

In 2008, I applied to do my training here at U of A; I did the BA and then the BFA acting program, and I’ve never looked back. During those early years training as an artist, Edmonton was an inspiring place to be. There’s so much amazing work, both professional and independent in Edmonton. But when I graduated from my undergrad, I didn’t feel like there was space for me. I left school being told to hide my queer identity, and that you’d be pigeonholed for being queer and no one really wants to talk about queerness. The Edmonton theatre scene felt like a very heteronormative place at the time (even though there were amazing queer artists). So, I left Edmonton in 2013 not knowing where I belonged, and that’s when I found Theatre Outré in Lethbridge and I began working with other queer artists for the first time. It was through working with other queer artists that I really started to develop my own voice, and I got to do some of my first professional plays as an actor. Theatre Outré produced my first play as a playwright and then I did my first directing project with them. They really let me build my own aesthetic and voice as an artist. 

I worked all across Canada; I lived in Toronto for a while, and worked in London, ON, and I toured shows to BC, and my first play even toured to Dublin, Ireland. During the pandemic, I moved back to Alberta and I applied to do my Masters in directing at U of A. After almost 10 years away, I really began reintroducing myself to Edmonton. I think Edmonton as a theatre community has grown and changed a lot and has become a lot more accepting. Companies like Freewill Shakespeare and Azimuth took note of who I was and allowed me to share my queer identity and the work that I was doing. Over the last four years of living in Edmonton, I’ve felt championed and supported by the community. 

There’s an incredible drag community across Alberta and we have some of the most exciting diverse and super queer drag talent here in Edmonton. Fruit Loop, Evolution Wonderlounge, and Party Queens YEG have been great supporters of my drag career. 

As an artist and as a community builder, tell us about your commitment to making space for queer expression, queer representation and queer storytelling. Tell us more about the work that you’ve done (and continue to do) to reclaim and reimagine stories through a queer perspective. 

Sometimes as an actor I’m not always in control of the roles I do, or as a playwright of the projects that get produced. Since 2019 I’ve been producing the Sissy Fit cabarets across Alberta. For me, doing a cabaret was a very quick and immediate way to put queer voices at the forefront, and to be an agent of who gets to tell the stories and how they tell the stories. Sissy Fit cabarets are not just about drag, it is also about bringing different artistic mediums and disciplines into one exciting night. We’ve had queer poets, musicians, burlesque artists, and one time we had a pole dancer. Now with Sissy Fit: Battle Cry I’m focused on hiring predominantly trans and gender nonconforming artists because I feel like our voices — especially right now — really need to be heard and it needs to be us telling our stories. 

In addition to being a director, writer, and actor, you’re also a drag performer. How has your drag persona, Sissy Ziggy-Zay-Ah, created new avenues of creative exploration for you as a theatre artist? 

I’ve always loved the art form of drag, and I think it’s really about challenging the perception of a binary, that these identities live inside of us. As an actor I sometimes feel limited by the roles that are offered by professional companies and so I really wanted to do more drag as a way of telling stories the way I want to tell stories, through lip syncs and mashups of texts. 

Growing up, I was teased for being effeminate and weak. And while doing my training as a theatre artist, I was quite skinny and I was told I wasn’t masculine enough for leading roles. And so, Sissy Fit is a reclaiming of these negative things associated with my past. And then the Ziggy-Zay-Ah was a nod to Ziggy Stardust, a very androgynous invention of David Bowie. And Ziggy-Zay-Ah is also from the Spice Girls song ​“Wannabe”, so a nod to my true queer awakening, which was the Spice Girls, as it was probably for many people in my generation. 

I feel like as a drag artist I get to do the silliest things. And sometimes it’s sexy, and sometimes it’s political. I just feel like drag is a way of exploring pop culture in a queer fun way. 

Your production Sissy Fit: Battle Cry is part of this year’s Expanse Festival, running March 29 – April 4, 2025. Tell us more about what audiences can expect from the performance. What was the inspiration for this piece?

I’ve done my Sissy Fit cabaret many times, but usually as the host. My drag and my theatre career are often at odds because both are predominantly at nighttime, and I felt like I was missing opportunities to perform because I was doing theatre contracts. So, I thought, what if Sissy was not just a one-night cabaret? What if I invested in more of a theatrical production and combined all the resources and amazing collaborators I have in the theatre world with the drag artists that I’ve been working with in Edmonton, combining these two artistic pursuits together? As me and my collaborator, Aaron Gruber, were applying for grants and decided we wanted to invest in fuller design for the cabaret, the provincial government put laws forward that are aggressively harmful to our trans community. We realized that this was an opportunity for us to challenge what’s happening. We titled it Battle Cry; we felt like it was a rally call that we need to directly address these issues.

The piece, it’s kind of in three parts: the first part is more of a solo investigation of Sissy, of me trying to respond to the shame that I feel like is being put into our culture and the prejudice that is resurfacing for some reason. And so, I call on other queer friends and they come and perform with me, and we do some group numbers; that’s more of the cabaret element. And then we call in the audience to create a communal space so that we can cry out together, scream together, dream of the queer future that we want together, and then it all ends in a beautiful dance. 

Sissy Fit: Battle Cry is really for anyone. If you’re a theatre lover, you’re going to have a theatrical experience. If you’re drag lover, you’re going to have a great experience. It’s not just for queer people. This is an immersive theatre experience that’s for everyone.

Tell us more about some of the amazing artists that you’re collaborating with for Sissy Fit: Battle Cry.

We have an incredible team! T. Erin Gruber is doing some video and producing work. Benjamin Toner is our costume designer, and Ben is known for designing works on Canadas Drag Race and was also the winner of OUT TV’s reality show Sew Fierce, and now he’s a guest judge on that reality sewing competition. Rory Turner is our lighting designer, an amazing emerging queer lighting designer. Kena León, who’s an amazing sound designer and incredible DJ, and if you’re a queer person in the community, you’ve probably danced to DJ Kena at Evolution or another amazing event in town. Emma Noakes is our technical director. And then the other performers I have with me are Hunny Moon, who’s this incredible avant-garde spooky drag persona; Felicia Bonée, stunning trans goddess, can do the best Whitney Houston number I’ve ever seen; Orpheus, who is a drag king and the sexiest Greek God you’ve ever seen dance on stage; and Voula Callas, who is a another incredible beauty and she probably has one of the most stunning mugs of all time. I feel like we have all kinds of aesthetics performing in the show. I’ve worked with all of them before and they’re some of the top performers we have.

What is the next step in your artistic journey? Tell us what you’re currently working on or hope to explore next.

Obviously, Sissy Fit is taking up all of my time right now, but I’m directing a musical with NUOVA this summer called Between the Lines. I’ve been transitioning to more directing work, so I’m developing a few projects. Theatre Outré has an amazing program called the Queer Creators Cohort, and we’re developing three new plays by queer creators in southern Alberta. And I’m also starting a new play which is about queer love letters exchanged between soldiers in World War II. My grandfather fought in the Second World War, and I’ve always been fascinated by that time period, and these real-life love letters between these two queer soldiers surfaced a few years ago. I was really inspired to talk about that time and the way that queer people navigated being in the war, also living in a time when who they were was illegal. It feels like that kind of rhetoric is happening again. I think it’s interesting to parallel another time in history and think about how we relate to that in our own day and life.

I’m also writing a musical about bees. It’s a queer musical for families centered around queer youth and the slogan is ​“you can be any be any bee you wanna be”. Bees work in a bit of a binary; women work and are guards and do all the kind of tasks in the hive, and male bees are drones and just sort of focus on reproduction. It’s about a little drone bee who wants to be a queen, fighting the binary.

Don’t miss ​“Sissy Fit: Battle Cry” at this year’s Expanse Festival! You can catch performances on March 30, April 1, 3, and 4. Purchase tickets here! 

About Brett Dahl

For over a decade, Brett Dahl (they/​them) has worked as a queer actor, director, writer, choreographer, drag performer, arts administrator and educator across Canada. As an actor, Brett has worked with Freewill Shakespeare Festival for three seasons, Shadow Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Theatre Outré, Downstage, Alberta Ballet, The Grand in London, Canadian Stage, Alberta Theatre Projects, Shakespeare Company, Lunchbox, One Yellow Rabbit, and Catalyst Theatre. Brett’s drag persona, Sissy Ziggy-Zay-Ah, hosts and curates the queer cabaret Sissy Fit. Sissy has performed with Arts Commons, Theatre Calgary, Calgary Pride, Azimuth Theatre, Fruitloop, Evolution, Party Queens Yeg, Girl Brain, and Gender I Hardly Know Them. As a director, Brett has worked with Theatre Outré, The Citadel Theatre, Nuova Vocal Arts, and The University of Alberta, and as an Assistant Director with The Citadel Theatre, Studio Theatre, Downstage, and The Shakespeare Company. As a writer, Brett’s plays have been produced by Theatre Outré, the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in Ireland, Intrepid Theatre in Victoria, and Cardiac Theatre, with a screenplay slated to hit the Film Festival pursuit in 2025. Brett has been part of the Major Matt Mason Wild Fire Creators Unit, the APN Emerging Playwright Program and Bad Hats NBI Program. Brett is a graduate of the BFA-Acting and MFA-Directing programs from the UofA and the Artistic Director of Theatre Outré. Brett was the recipient of Theatre Calgary’s Stephen Hair Emerging Actor Award (2015), the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award (2018) and the RBC Emerging Artist Cultural Leader Award (2020). In 2024 Brett appeared in The Hooves Belonged to the Deer for which they received a Sterling Award Nomination for Outstanding Performance by and Actor in a Supporting Role. Upcoming Projects include: Creator/​Performer of Sissy Fit: Battle Cry (Expanse Festival); Choreographer on Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Theatre Outré); Assistant Director on Little Women (The Citadel Theatre); Director of The Doorstep Plays (Theatre YES); Director of Between The Lines (Nuova Vocal Arts); and an Instructor at Artstrek.