Generous Friend is a performance umbrella.

Founded in 2017, Generous Friend is a performance umbrella that invites the participation of a rotating roster of artists. The governing principle of our work is how things are made shapes what is made.** Criteria for Generous Friend projects include: a keen attention to process; commitment to mentorship; and making performance situations that create conversations that would not otherwise happen — putting people in rooms together who might not have the occasion to share space and place. 

Led by Erin Brubacher and Erum Khan, Generous Friend works with a distinct combination of artists from different disciplines. Our roster of rotating artists has included: Liz Peterson, Rosina Kazi, Nicholas Murray, Anwar Khurshid, Veda Hille and Sherri Hay.  

Generous Friend has been supported by The Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. 

** With thanks to our friend Cara Spooner for helping us find this articulation.

ERIN BRUBACHER is a director, educator and multidisciplinary artist. Her work has taken her across Canada to venues such as The National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Canadian Stage (Toronto), and The PuSh International Performance Festival (Vancouver), and internationally to Scotland, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Mexico and the USA— to festivals and other contexts including The Edinburgh International Festival and Theater der Welt.

As a theatre director, EB works with writers, performers, musicians, choreographers, visual artists, and other makers to collaboratively create new works. Her directing projects include the award winning productions of Concord Floral (Brubacher/Spooner/Tannahill), Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools (Buddies in Bad Time Theatre).

EB is the author of the poetry collection, In the small hours (Gaspereau Press) and the co-author of the hybrid book, 7th Cousins: An Automythography (Book*hug). She holds a practice based MA International Performance Research from the University of Warwick and University of Amsterdam. EB has lived in ten cities. She now makes Toronto her home.

ERUM KHAN is a performer, film and theatre maker, youth facilitator, and film programmer. She is the current recipient of the Urjo Kareda Research grant from Tarragon Theatre and was the recipient of the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Queer Emerging Artist Award. Erum was a selected artist for the inaugural edition of the Loughborough Lake Writer's Retreat with Crow’s Theatre and Mongrel Media.

In film, she has worked as a programmer at the Rendezvous With Madness Festival as well as being a pre-screener for the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival and the 2017 Festival Programming Intern at the Toronto International Film Festival. Her short films have premiered at The Toronto Queer Film Festival, Breakthroughs Festival, The Toronto Independent Film Festival and The Rendezvous With Madness Festival. She was a playwright with Nightwood Theatre’s Write From The Hip program and a co-facilitator of the TD Emerging Creators Unit at Paprika. 

Much of her community-engaged work is underscored by a commitment to create space for youth to access and engage with the arts.