Maddie Bautista is a wonderfully talented designer and performer. Whether it’s composing evocative music and soundscapes for theatre or becoming a drag space alien as xLq; she shares her creativity with generosity, grace, and fun!
Some of the fun includes: walking through Trinity-Bellwoods Park, appreciating the different gardens in the neighbourhood, belting a tune wherever karaoke night is happening, playing video games, watching anime, dancing, eating delicious food, and a handful of other things.
Every once and a while she’ll get a new song that she’s created. Getting the track cued up on her computer and handing me a pair of headphones. I get to experience a new world of sound that she’s created. It’s a great honour and pleasure.
Maddie gives so much to the community she is in and her generosity is so consistent. She’s an inspiration to her friends and colleagues. Her goals are big and her dreams are grand.
I know because she sometimes talks in her sleep.
What ‘hood are you in?
I live really close to Trinity Bellwoods Park! One of my roommates is a Filipinx dancer and DJ whom I mightily love and admire: Diana Reyes, also known as Fly Lady Di. I’m honoured to live in a house exploding with Brown excellence.
What do you do?
I am a sound designer and composer, half of a queer performance art duo called xLq with Jordan Campbell, and a performer-creator. I also am the co-Artistic Producer of Theatre Amihan with Adriano Sobretodo Jr. – a Filipinx theatre collective.
What are you currently working on?
As I am writing this, I am in rehearsal for RARE Theatre’s Welcome to my Underworld directed by Judith Thompson. The play is so rich with challenge and delicious, dangerous, and dirty humanity, and really centers bodies that Canadian theatre does not create a lot of access for. In it, I tell the story of my childhood in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
I’m also sound designing and composing for Eraser at RISER 2019. It’s Theatre for Young Audiences like you’ve never seen before – the team behind it is truly revolutionizing its form and the way they engage with kids.
xLq is also preparing for our Vancouver tour of 4inXchange at the rEvolver Festival. As soon as Underworld closes, we are heading there!
Where can we find your work?
Check out xLq on Facebook to make your electro-club-performance-art-drag dreams come true.
RARE Theatre Company and Soulpepper Theatre Company’s Welcome to my Underworld directed by Judith Thompson, May 9th to May 25th, 2019. At the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto.
