Visiting the audience in the present day, Gertrude and Alice come to find out how history has treated them. The couple recounts stories of their forty-year relationship; of meetings with iconic artists and writers; and of Alice’s overwhelming, consuming devotion to Gertrude’s genius. Before they leave, they want to find out what has become of their artistic and cultural influence, and how their lives and work are—or are not—remembered.

Evalyn Parry is the artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto. Her award-​winning, innovative and interdisciplinary work is inspired by intersections of social justice, history and auto/biography. A theatre performer, writer, director, and deviser, Evalyn is also a singer-​songwriter; she has released five critically acclaimed CDs of original music, and a short film, To Live in the Age of Melting: Northwest Passage, in collaboration with Elysha Poirier. She is the winner of the KM Hunter Artist Award for Theatre, the Ken McDougall Award for Directing, and the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award. Her theatre-​concert SPIN—​about the feminist history of the bicycle—​has had more than 250 performances around North America. Other recent theatre projects at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre include directing The Youth/Elders Project, the multi–Dora Mavor Moore Award–winning Obaaberima by Tawiah M’Carthy and writing / performing Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools with Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory.

Evalyn Parry's profile page

Anna Chatterton is a librettist, playwright and performer. She has been nominated three times for the K.M. Hunter Award for Theatre and has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. As a librettist, her work includes Swoon (Canadian Opera Company), Rocking Horse Winner (Tapestry Opera) and Crush (COC and The Banff Centre). Anna works frequently with composer Juliet Palmer's company Urbanvessel, whose work includes Voice-Box (World Stage/Harbourfront Centre), Stitch (Theatre Centre) and Sweat (Center for Contemporary Opera) in Brooklyn, NY. Stitch was nominated for Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Opera.

Anna's plays include Quiver (Nightwood Theatre) and Within the Glass (Tarragon Theatre) and she has been a Playwright in Residence at Tarragon Theatre since 2011. She also writes and performs with Evalyn Parry and Karin Randoja in the acclaimed feminist theatre collective Independent Aunties. The Aunties have created six shows together, including Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine (Theatre Passe Muraille, SummerWorks Award for Best New Play), Frances, Mathilda and Tea (Theatre Passe Muraille), Breakfast (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Theatre Centre) and Gertrude and Alice (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Dora Mavor Moore nominations for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Ensemble). Anna was also honoured with a Toronto Critics Award for her role as Alice.

Anna Chatterton's profile page

Karin Randoja is a multi-​award-​winning theatre artist who has directed and dramaturged devised performance for almost thirty years. She graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada (acting) and went on a to be a founding member of Primus Theatre and the Independent Aunties. She has also been the director/dramaturge of such plays as This Is The Point, huff by Cliff Cardinal (winner of multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the Quebec Critics’ Award, Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation and the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Prize), Brotherhood: The Hip Hopera, My Nightmares Wear White (winner of the SummerWorks Spotlight Award for Performance), and numerous other performances that have been nominated for the Prix Rideau, Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and the Capital Critics Circle Award. Her work has been seen in Australia, Denmark, India, Italy, France, England, Japan, and Mozambique. As a teacher/director she has been a faculty member at Humber College for nineteen years, the Centre for Indigenous Theatre for four years, and was a guest instructor at the National Theatre School of Canada for seven years.

Karin Randoja's profile page

• Nominated, Governor General's Literary Award

“Talent is talent is talent is talent, to echo Gertrude Stein’s well-known statement about a rose. You’ll find plenty of it, along with humour, satire and affection, in the Independent Aunties’ take on the lives and work of perhaps the best-known lesbian couple of the early 20th century, writer/thinker Gertrude Stein and her devoted partner, Alice B. Toklas.”

Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine