Plays and Theatre Projects

After/BAAL 2021-present

A new play written by me, directed by Jon Michaelson, designed by Denyse Karn, and featuring actress/singer-songwriter Astrid Van Wieren, who also wrote the music, in the title role. In December 2024 we’ll be workshopping the play at Tarragon Theatre with the entire cast, thanks to a grant from Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.

Stay tuned for info about our public performance on 14 December wrapping up our week of work shops.

The four core members of this collective – playwright Rose Cullis, director Jon Michaelson, songwriter/lead performer Astrid Van Wieren, and designer Denyse Karn – first came together in 1996 to create the rock and roll play BAAL, about a queer singer-songwriter who tries to live without attachment or compromise and devastates the people she cares for. In that play, Baal’s career crashes when her young lover Sophie kills herself, at least partly in response to Baal’s cruelties. BAAL had a well-received production at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (main stage) in 1998. 

We have reconvened to explore the changes in the lives of the main characters from the first play (now considerably older, as we are), to create new songs, and to excite a new audience. After/BAAL is a new story about second chances and the possibility of redemption, but it also engages with very contemporary issues about gender, sexuality, and aging, and with the effects of a suicide on those left behind. The play begins on the cusp of the Pandemic, an event which impacts this show’s story. Throughout the story, there’s a sense of being haunted by past events that caused irrevocable damage.  

In After/BAAL the main character (now 50+) returns to a public life after a hiatus of almost twenty years. Baal’s trying to do it differently this time, but she’s haunted by her past, and by people she hasn’t seen in years who turn up to make claims on her, including a young non-binary person named Sage who turns out to be the abandoned child of Sophie. The appearance of Sage provokes events which spin out of control and force a reckoning. Each of the characters in “After/BAAL” has a different relationship with the tragedy of Sophie’s suicide. There are layers of cover up, guilt, grieving, and shame.

“Rose Cullis’s new play looks, unflinchingly, at what love can be, and sometimes what it fails to be among friends who are brought together by their Art. We often have stories about artists, musicians in particular, breaking up after a long career but this story looks at how band members struggle to come back together many years after an early tragedy (a suicide) drove them and their band apart. When I read the script I was immediately engaged by the rawness of the emotions expressed by Rose’s characters.” – Catherine Banks, Playwright

“Rose Cullis has captured something truthful and exhilarating about this kind of life. Paired with Astrid Van Wieren’s powerful songs for the piece, we’re excited about this show’s potential to create something wonderful –“ Irene Sankoff & David Hein

“I’ve heard Astrid’s songs for BAAL, a rock n roll play, and they are exceptional. Now she’s working on some new songs for After/BAAL. I’ve had a listen to the first new song for the show – “Everything and Nothing” and it’s wonderful.” – Michael Rubinoff