The creative process is never linear. As a company that programs a wide range of interdisciplinary works in our main stage season, the lead artists on our season shows often have intricate, unexpected, and sometimes unusual ways of collecting inspiration for and making the final works that audiences witness on stage.
To bring you closer to Buddies artists and their processes, this season, we’re asking Buddies artists to tell us about their “process marginalia” — notes in margins, strokes of inspiration, and snippets of songs, films, books, and more that helped the work get made.
Bijuriya by Gabriel Dharmoo is an intricate solo performance weaving drag, new music, pop, Bollywood, and more. It’s on stage at Buddies November 26 – 29, 2025, after a national tour to festivals in Vancouver, Montreal, and beyond. In preparation for the show, we asked Gabriel to share some of his key references in creating the work. Read on for a look inside the making of Bijuriya.
1. Niche Bollywood References
Sprinkled throughout the show are random and specific references to the Indian mainstream entertainment industry (mostly Bollywood, Kollywood, and Indian reality TV). How many will you catch? These Easter eggs could be words or phrases commonly heard in film dialogue “Bas!”, quotes “Pooja! What is this behaviour?”, song lyrics “Chocolate Lime Juice” or phrases related to the industry “Smoking is injurious to health.” The level of “clockability” varies — from random stuff that stuck with me, to the current Bollywood zeitgeist. Here’s a challenge for you: can you spot which line I quote from this ridiculously iconic film scene from Andaz Apna Apna. Hint: it’s one of the English lines.
2. Playback Singer Geeta Dutt
My song “Geeta” is written from the perspective of Geeta Dutt, my favourite Indian film industry singer from the 1950s and 1960s. In song sequences, the industry standard was — and still is — for actors to lipsync to the voice of playback singers. “Geeta” is inspired by the fact that Geeta’s voice is often heard through the onscreen image of other bodies. It’s about a love triangle between herself, her husband Guru Dutt (acclaimed filmmaker, actor, and producer), and Waheeda Rehman, a renowned actress he was allegedly having an affair with. Geeta Dutt’s contribution to Indian film music as a playback singer is highly impressive and respected, but her cultural legacy is tainted by this alleged affair, as well as her and Guru’s tragic outcomes. By channeling the memory, artistry, and life of Geeta in my song, I try to revive the agency and meaning of her voice, through my own voice and body. Referenced in a crucial moment of the show, the song “Waqt Ne Kiya” exemplifies this love triangle dynamic; Guru and Waheeda are seen onscreen, while Geeta’s invisible voice is heard.
3. Self-referencing to my “Contemporary Music” Catalog
Despite being predominantly a drag show, the audience is also introduced to a whole other dimension of my musicianship: my work as a somewhat serious and overly trained award-winning composer in the so-called Western classical contemporary art music scene. I was immersed in this artform for so long that it has left an unarguable imprint on my artistic identity and sensibility. My training and experience allowed me to engage with sound in creative and meaningful ways. Despite a critical self-distancing from this scene in the past years, I can’t disavow it as an important chapter of my life. In this show, I wanted to celebrate it in a way that felt sincere and aligned with my present artistic self. The sound design in Bijuriya incorporates six of my past musical compositions, written for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, or orchestra. However, they are recontextualized and remixed in the sound design. To hear examples of my work as a contemporary music composer and experimental vocalist, you can listen to my albums Vestiges d’une fable or Quelques fictions.
4. A Queer Take on South Asian Aesthetics
Most costumes in the show are a queer take on South Asian aesthetics. For example, the costume for my “Curry’s a Mix” song was based on Rajasthani aesthetics and the kathputli puppets I brought back as souvenirs during my travels. The costume’s vivid colours and patterns evoke Rajasthani culture. Propped on top of an oversized turban, the posture of a pink bearded puppet is meant to read as queer or genderbending; its legs are crossed and its upper body propped up, looking like Édouard Manet’s Olympia or Titian’s Venus of Urbino, with some extra sass. Cryptic spoiler alert: the more puppets, the merrier! You can see the costume and (and a glimpse of the gay af puppet) in the music video for Curry’s a Mix.
5. Carnatic Music
Being bi-cultural, I have had a starry-eyed fascination for Indian culture since my childhood. Throughout my musical journey, this developed into a desire to deepen my musical knowledge in India. Shortly after graduating from Conservatoire music studies, I researched South Indian Carnatic music in Chennai twice, in 2008 and 2011. Although I have not actively fostered my relationship to Carnatic music and its networks, different moments in my show attest just how deeply I did fall in love with it. Even if I gained some knowledge of Carnatic music, even if it expanded my musical ear, the reality is I’ve only skimmed it superficially. As much as I wanted to engage with my musical roots, I lacked the years of immersion in the culture and language to make it feel like something worth pursuing… the imposter syndrome and the labour of trying to engage with classical cultural artforms as a queer person are important themes of the show. One of the scenes is based on a varnam in raga Kalyani that I had learned both on voice and cello during my research: Vanajakshiro.
Get tickets to Bijuriya here, and check out our upcoming season shows.