At the Neptune, in a theatre full of beautiful Black and brown people, words were spoken that allowed many of us to heal. I saw my fellow trans and QPOC community members laugh and cry. I can only imagine that they felt the same chills creep up their spines as I did, as the beautiful truth, the beauty the is being trans and black was laid out before us.
In her most recent theater project, San Francisco drag icon Peaches Christ brought a new show to Seattle last week. “9 to 5 Inches ”— based on the Bechdel Test champion film “9 to 5” — was true to the movie’s theme of sisterhood, empowerment, and dismantling a repressive capitalistic patriarchy from the inside out.
“I’m a writer and a storyteller. Different stories need different kinds of voicing.” These are the words of SassyBlack – aka Seattle’s Catherine Harris-White – an artist, producer, writer and all around versatile expressionist who generates work at such a high volume that it can feel at times that she’s doing so that no one genre, label or category can catch up to her.
Last Thursday Gay City Arts premiered a play entitled Rising Up, a work that openly condemns gentrification and displacement in the Central District by sharing the QTPOC experience and the importance of chosen family. The debut work from playwrights Sara Rosenblatt and Ebo Barton, directed by Barton along with Neve Andromeda Mazique-Bianco, depicted an honest and personal representation of the QTPOC experience in Seattle.
Not far from here in either time or space, there flies the Octavia Butler, a small spaceship crewed by three enterprising lesbians in search of something bigger than themselves. They live and work communally, down to the collective Diva cup boiling pot and regular slam poetry presentation.
Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Judy Garland, Armistead Maupin – each has a portrait and a story in Robert’s one-man show, “The Gay Uncle Explains It All To You: The True Stories of a Middle-Aged Gay Man.”
Sunday night, Hazel English took the stage wearing a delicately checked blue and yellow sweater, acid wash jeans (relaxed fit), and pink vans. Fittingly for the Vera Project, the crowd was mixed in age and seemed subdued to the point of drowsiness. Most of us sat placidly along the walls through the two openers, but stood and drifted towards the middle of the stage as she and her band began playing.
Cliché’s aside, everyone loves a comeback kid. In March of 2016, Kehlani, the R&B wunderkind behind a series of commercially and critically successful EPs posted an Instagram of an IV. In the caption, she alluded to attempting to take her own life and addressed swirling rumors about her relationships and alleged infidelities.
This Fall, I got sushi with Michete and we talked about their music, Kanye West and our shared Spokane upbringings. At the time, they told me off the record that they were working on the lead single from their next album, Cool Tricks 3.
One of the most common (and most entirely dumb-ass) cultural refrains currently at large is the notion that great art emerges in times of social and political turmoil. “Yes, this administration will be awful,” the faceless hordes opine, “but the art will be great!”
In the midst of so much heartbreak in the music industry, a creative zeitgeist also occurred. Here are the year’s top 20 queer artists and the brilliant new music they released to excite, titillate, grieve, groove, and awaken.
After such a shitty year, you deserve a yuletide palate cleanse. Whether you need to be blown away by some incredible singing voices, titillated with a whole lotta skin, or relieved with a good belly-laugh session, you’ll find genuine comfort and joy with Homo for the Holidays.