Screaming Weenie is a professional theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 company in Vancouver, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 committed to the production, promotion and development of queer and sex positive arts and artists. The company defines 'queer' as individuals and groups outside of sexual and gender norms.

Early years

Incorporated in 2003 with co-founder and original Artistic Director Ilena Lee Cramer at the helm, the company established itself by staging new plays and creative collaborations at Vancouver night clubs. While Screaming Weenie was a self-described 'queer company', a descriptive quote from Cramer from the on-line magazine Word Play in 2004 reads, "The Weenies do theatre for a wide audience - I'm interested in reaching those who are disenfranchised by art".

Original creations by Screaming Weenie in this period included The Bacchae - an electronic opera,
The Sound of Disco and The Wizard of Glam. The company also produced the plays Belly by Dawn Wendy McLeod Clue In The Fast Lane by Ann Marie MacDonald & Beverley Cooper, The Well Of Horniness by Holly Hughes and Lounge by Tanya Marquardt.

Second stage

Seán Cummings

Sean Cummings

Seán Cummings is a Canadian actor and director from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was born in Ontario on January 17, 1968.In 2008, Cummings became Artistic Director of Screaming Weenie Productions in Vancouver...

 was hired as the company's Artistic Director in 2008. Cummings had previously worked with other theatre companies in Vancouver on seminal queer-themed works as Martin Sherman's
Bent

Bent (play)

Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives....

, Brad Fraser's Poor Super Man

Leaving Metropolis

Leaving Metropolis is a 2002 Canadian drama film written, directed, and based on the play Poor Super Man by Brad Fraser, about a gay man and a married heterosexual man who fall in love. It was filmed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada...

 and Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out.