Southland & SouthEast Coast! 2 Tours coming your way!!
Last weekend I saw the Mighty Real Tour in New York City. It’s two beautiful solo shows by two very handsome queeroes of mine. Silas Howard and Lynee Breedlove are veterans of the famous dyke punk band Tribe8.*
Lynee is pictured here with my charming and adorable dog Macy.
The first is Thank You for Being Urgent, by Silas Howard. It’s a performance piece about his work to make a movie about the life, music and love of Billy Tipton and Billy’s wife Kitty. The movie hasn’t been made yet**–but I think it’s a testament to his work as an artist that Silas has been able to make a beautiful piece of art out of the process in the meantime. I’ve seen Silas’ show twice now–it is very poignant and inspirational. The director’s lab scenes from the movie made me cry. (Go buy Silas’ movie By Hook or by Crook
If you don’t know about Billy Tipton, you need to read about him. It’s certainly not easy to change genders nowadays, but think about what it was like in the 40s and 50s living as a man. Intense.
The second part of the Mighty Real Tour is Lynee Breedlove’s Confessions of a Poser. It’s a little bit transguy show and tell, a little bit gender coming out story with a tip of the hat to dyke history–including the life and love of Phillis Lyon and Del Martin. But what it is most of all is hysterical, outrageous and touching. Lynee is a fabulous storyteller (go buy his book Godspeed
They were in Atlanta, my home away from home, tonight, and are moving West through the South. Check out their Facebook page for all of the upcoming dates! Go see them and support them!
The Mangos with Chili Tour has just announced their Fall dates. I saw the tour last year when I was in California. I was blown away. It was simultaneously exciting, devastating and really fun.
Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality work of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond.
It’s co-curated by one of my very favorite people on the planet, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the Femme Shark Correspondent for FemmeCast. Leah’s poetry is outstanding–the first time I saw her read she said “Love is an ANARCHIC BITCH” and had femmes screaming YES in response.
Ms. Cherry Gallette, the other co-curator/founder is a sassy burlesque performer whose work is titillating to both the body and the mind.
Add to that The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins, who I have talked about on this blog 8800 times recently but also must ad her tweet “It’s uterUS not uterME people–do your part!” kept running through my head during my last bout with PMS. I am pretty certain she has a sassy one liner about every aspect of life. But going to this tour you get to watch her take her clothes off and be covered in glitter!!!
The other performer on the roster that I’ve seen is Amir. You will recall him from Episode 8 of FemmeCast, talking about the Panjamism movement and he describes his rabble rousing as honoring his ancestors.
I think it might be a testament to how much I love the work of Mangos that I am strongly considering a day trip to Washington, DC (a 5 hour drive) to go see their last show.
Mangos with Chili kicks off next Friday, October 16, 2009 in Texas and moves East from there. The full tour dates are at their website.
Grass roots word of mouth buzz is my favorite way to hear about cool queer art. If you don’t live in the regions these tours are performing in you should totally send the info to your friends who do live there! Queer realness, having $10 to spend on a movie or amazing queer performance art is easier said than done, but I think it’s important to fund the kind of art you want to be happening. Transguy veterans from dyke punk bands and queer and trans people of color aren’t at the top of many grant funding lists. It’s up to us to help keep this kind of art going!
*If you don’t know about Tribe8 I insist that you netflix the documentary Rise Above. It will tell you all you need to know. Also you should buy their cds.
**The fact that Silas’ amazing movie does not have a studio producing and funding it this very minute breaks my heart. If you are a studio who can produce and fund it, do it.