QIYE's Story

Flyer for QIYE's First Performance in 1997

QIYE’s first show was advertised in Xtra Magazine as part of the Voices On The Fringe program of the 19th annual Toronto Festival of Storytelling 1997¹. One of QIYE’s founding members, Clare Nobbs, remembers: “We really went to town with promotion and harassed the people at Xtra Magazine. A friend of Rico’s was the freelance photographer they sent out to shoot us for the article we landed, called 'Love that Oral'. Rico, Helen Porter, David Bateman, Jean Bubba and I met up with him in a grand old empty house on Euclid St for a photo op. We were thrilled. That was for the Bar Babylon gig, which was in a tiny cocktail bar upstairs in one of the buildings beside Out on the Street.”

The title “Love that Oral: Fairy tales & lesbo fables in the flesh”², illustrated their vision: Tell explicit and explicitly queer stories. Even though not all of their initial members were queer, it was important for the group to create possibilities of telling queer stories. 

The tellers Clare Nobbs, David Bateman, Helen Porter, Jean Bubba and Rico Rodriguez recounted stories and poems, from British Columbian poet Anne Cameron to "Hansel and Gretel" to stories about first lesbian experiences, all in a small bar but to a big audience. 

Rico Rodriguez with Queers in Your Ears at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 1998

Clare Nobbs at Toronto Storytelling Festival 2003

The collective decided to continue with this idea the year after, in 1998, and Clare Nobbs, Jean Bubba, and Rico Rodriguez were joined by Jeffrey Canton and Ken Setterington at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. They told stories inspired by the "Emperor’s New Clothes", Boccaccio and by personal experience.

The concept had been very well received (even called ground-breaking), and again, a large audience gathered to listen to their stories, leaving the group with the intention to repeat this kind of event.

And so they did in 1999, though not without hurdles. That year’s event was to be held at the lesbian bar called Pope Joan (formerly The Rose), which turned out to be impracticable for their endeavors. The tellers featured that year were Chabuca La Grande (Rico’s drag persona), Jean and Ken as well as Jan Andrews, a children’s storytelling author, and Johnny Moses, a storyteller and healer. Even though the atmosphere of the first few storytelling events could not be recreated in the spacious bar, the group came together again in 2000 at the bar Red Spot. 

The search for a good venue revealed what would also become clearer after their subsequent event at the Red Spot: Queers in Your Ears had to find and refine their voice. Not only did the different bars show that having a suitable space, where the audience could hear and be close to the tellers, would be crucial to building a relationship with their listeners, QIYE realized that their future was a “queer tellers only" one.

Correspondingly, the group set out to tell at a space upstairs of and belonging to This Ain’t The Rosedale Library the following year. Clare Nobbs, Jeffrey Canton, Ken Setterington and Rico Rodriguez told “saucy and sexy”³ tales in 2001. They were joined by youth A. Hyatt and J. Buxton in an effort to expand their range of tellers in 2002 and later also by Michèle Clark, a sexual health educator, who later became a well-known photographer in Toronto. In 2003, she entertained with a story about drying her dildo on a windowsill. 

At this point, Queers in Your Ears had been part of the Toronto Storytelling Festival’s fringe event and it was time to move to a bigger stage. QIYE was invited in 2003 to perform on the main festival weekend and were scheduled to perform at the LOFT Stage in the Harbourfront Centre on a Sunday afternoon with tellers Clare Nobbs, Jeffrey Canton, Ken Setterington and Rico Rodriguez.

Flyer "Obsessions & Other Fixations", 2004

QIYE continued as part of the Toronto Storytelling Festival at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library in 2004 under the title “Obsessions & Other Fixations” with the usual tellers joined by Patty Barclay and in 2005 at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre joined by Evalyn Parry, later artistic director of Buddies, for an evening called “Dare We Tell The Truth”. 

After a break in 2006, QIYE performed at the Yorkville Branch Lecture Series in celebration of Yorkville’s 100th Anniversary and became a long-term part of the Toronto Storytelling Festival’s main event on the weekend. Between 2007 and 2012, they performed at the Harbourfront Center in the Brigantine Room and the Old Buddhist Temple, telling stories about first kisses, Latino gay men, childhood, oral pleasures and more. 

Poster "No More S#%&!", 2017

In 2013, the collective held their storytelling event as part of the Toronto Storytelling Festival’s Storyfire at the ArQuives (formerly CLGA - Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives). The event had “tales of guilty pleasures, sensual desires and hilarious mishaps”⁴, as Xtra Magazine wrote, and the ArQuives provided the group a supportive space for their tales. QIYE stayed at the ArQuives for their yearly performances until 2015, creating performances titled “Swallow” and “Good Dads are Hard To Find”. 

After their 20th anniversary event “Queerin’ What You’re Hearin’” at Gladstone, QIYE explored a new theme once again and became part of a project by Myseum (now Museum of Toronto) called “Intersections”, where they recounted important events of Toronto’s queer history. In 2017, Jeffrey and Rico, joined by Samantha Chaulk and Marcus Peterson, set out to revisit the 1981 Bathhouse Raids in “No More S#%&!: Operation Soap Revisited” by using archival material and conversations with people involved to tell the stories of the people arrested in what is also known as “Operation Soap”. They even told their stories at SPA Xcess, a bathhouse, as a men-only event (due to the nature of the bathhouse). This theme was revived in a performance as part of 2017’s Nuit Rose.

TJ Banate, Rico Rodriguez and Jeffrey Canton at QIYE's performance at the Village at Black Creek

"Cheers to Queers in Your Ears" by Rico Rodriguez

Performances called “Our Secrets are Out Now - Let’s Keep it That Way” and “Dare To Be Queer” (in cooperation with the group Dare) followed in 2018 before QIYE revisited another queer historic event in 2019. This time, tellers Jeffrey and Rico imagined 2SLGBTQ+ life in 1969 under the title “The Battle of Yonge Street - Celebrating Stonewall”. This event was revisited for 2019’s Nuit Rose. 

More story events followed like “There’s Something in the Air: An Evening of Queer Stories, Gay Tunes & Drag” with Clare, Jeffrey and Rico in 2019. QIYE also held four virtual events including “Queers in Your Ears @ The (Virtual) Cedar Room” and “Canadian Storytelling Night” in 2020. For the “Queers in Your Ears 25th Anniversary Edition”, tellers Clare, Jeffrey and Rico were joined by Jody James, leZlie lee kam and Tyler J. Sloane in 2021. The last virtual event was called “Three Old Queers” with Jeffrey, Rico and Tim McCaskell, Toronto's well-known educator and queer activist, later that same year.

QIYE continued with live events at the Theatre Passe Muraille in 2023 as well as the yearly Toronto International Storytelling events at the ArQuives in 2024 and The Well in 2025. In the same year, they also became part of the Replay Storytelling Festival. 

2025 brought another history-focused event for QIYE. For the first queer event ever held at the Village at Black Creek, QIYE imagined the lives of queer people in the 19th century. That year, QIYE also took part in a themed event at the Cathedral Church of St. James, telling stories about queer faith.

Over the last years, Queers in Your Ears has welcomed new members to keep their stories diverse and ensure that the collective keeps on growing and performing in the future.