performance art

July 18, 2018

BPREVIEW: Opulence Presents: Mother’s Meeting – featuring Virgin Xtravaganzah, Mickey Taylor, Twiggy @ The Nightingale Club 20.07.18

On Friday 20^th July, Opulence Presents: Mother’s Meeting – featuring Virgin Xtravaganzah, Mickey Taylor, and Twiggy at The Nightingale Club in Birmingham. Doors are open from 9pm, and whilst all Early Bird tickets have sold out you can still get advance tickets for £6 – click here for online ticket sales.

N.B. A limited number of tickets will be also available on the door for £7, but these cannot be reserved and are expected to go early. For direct event information visit the Opulence Presents: Mother’s Meeting Facebook Event Page by clicking here.

Opulence are one of Birmingham’s leading drag collectives, who strive to host fun and safe events for Birmingham’s ever growing drag scene. Their debut Mother’s Meeting at Jesters Bar back in April was a rousing success, and this month’s event looks to be even bigger –with Opulence moving the event to the larger Nightingale Club, and three artists schedules to perform as well as Opulence’s resident drag queens.

First up is Virgin Xtravaganzah, a London based queen who has been coined the ‘Mother of Gawd’. Mixing high fashion imagery, comedy and witty song parodies, Xtravaganzah is no stranger to the stage having performed at The Underbelly Festival and can be found hosting London’s infamous Torture Garden fetish parties.

Not exactly where you’d expect to find the Holy Mother, however Xtravaganzah’s interpretation of the Virgin Mary couldn’t be further from what we’re used to – think latex, leather corsets and towering heels as opposed to linen robes and rosary beads.

Next is Mickey Taylor, a singer songwriter who to date has two solo albums and an international tour under his belt. His music is ethereal, dance type tracks – for fans of artists such as Halsey, Lana Del Ray and Troye Sivan.

Taylor has an impressive fan base, having built his reputation through the adult entertainment industry and scooping numerous awards at the British Prowler Porn Awards. His latest album, Midnight Palace, shows a much more refined style in comparison to his gay-pop debut, Puppets Lament, back in 2016.

Finally, Birmingham’s very own lip-sync darling, Twiggy, will also be featured at Mother’s Meeting; Twiggy is one of the Midlands’ best-known drag artists, having honed their craft as a performer back in the 1980s.

Describing their life as “one long fancy dress party”, Twiggy’s signature outrageous club kid style (and headdress) has made them a cult figure of the UK’s drag scene, whilst also becoming the glamorous face of many Birmingham clubs from Miss Moneypenny’s to S.L.A.G. and Sundissential. Having performed at Birmingham’s very first Pride back in 1982, Twiggy is seen as one of the founding mothers of Brum’s gay village and drag scene.

With three headliners plus Opulence’s very own drag entourage, expect to see the likes of Yshee Black, Nora Virus, Elliot Barnicle, and drag duo Cocktail Sausage (Petite and Pork Pie) also grace the stage throughout the night.

Opulence Presents: Mother’s Meeting at The Nightingale Club on Friday 20^th July – featuring Virgin Xtravaganzah, Mickey Taylor, and Twiggy. For direct information, including links to online ticket sales, click here.

For more on Virgin Xtravaganzah, visit www.virginxtravaganzah.com

For more on Mickey Taylor, visit www.misfitarmy.com

For more on Twiggy, visit www.instagram.com/twiggybirmingham

For more on Opulence, visit www.facebook.com/opulencebirmingham

For more from The Nightingale Club, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.nightingaleclub.co.uk

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

July 11, 2018

BREVIEW: BE FESTIVAL @ Birmingham REP 04.07.17

Words by Helen Knott / Pics courtesy of BE FESTIVAL

The backstage area of the REP is all abuzz, as audience members and performers mingle and grab drinks on another sultry evening in this most singular of summers. There’s a certain amount of trepidation as we file into The Studio.

BE FESTIVAL’s format of presenting four 30-minute shows of different genres and companies from around Europe means that you’re never quite sure what to expect. It’s safe to assume that this isn’t going to be a relaxing, safe evening watching some book-adaptation on the main stage; it’s going to be challenging, thought-provoking and sometimes difficult to watch.

Thankfully, tonight’s first performance eases us in gently. For me, contemporary dance is right up there with opera as one of the least accessible art forms. Quite often, I just don’t get it. The Czech Republic’s VerTeDance, clearly aware that this can be a barrier for potential audience members, have responded with Let’s Dance, a tongue-in-cheek ‘manual for anxious audiences’ of contemporary dance. The work’s director, Petra Tejnorová, stands at a lectern at the side of the stage, guiding the audience through warm-up techniques, the creative process and dance motifs while the dancers demonstrate… if I’m making that sound a little dry, then it certainly isn’t.

Each dancer steps up and describes an episode from their dancing journey, from the ludicrous (the disadvantages of being a female dancer with short hair) to the touching (the realisation for the male protagonist that he doesn’t have to dance in the hyper-masculine way of his native folk dances, if he doesn’t want to). VerTeDance won the 2015 BE FESTIVAL audience award, and after watching Let’s Dance it’s easy to imagine why; it is a funny, informative introduction to contemporary dance that never takes itself too seriously, while conveying a deep love of the form. I leave wanting to see the full version of the piece (tonight was just a 30 minute segment) and keen to give contemporary dance another go.

After a short break, it’s back into The Studio for Sister Sylvester’s Three Rooms, which links UK actor Kathryn Hamilton (who is here in Birmingham) with colleagues in Germany and Istanbul, over Skype. Hamilton opens the show by announcing, “On stage you can see the outline of the set for a play that we’re not going to perform tonight.”

Hearing that we’re missing out on something grabs the audience’s attention immediately. Hamilton explains that this autobiographical play, about two people fleeing war in Syria, can’t be performed because two of the actors are still unable to get visas to travel. Instead, we join the two through Skype. They show the audience their current homes and, with some visual trickery, perform a couple of scenes from the play.

At points in Three Rooms we get a rare insight into the domestic lives of individuals living through Europe’s border crisis, but on the whole it’s too unfocussed and disjointed, as Skype calls with absent friends can often feel. I’d like to understand more about the reality of the actors’ day-to-day lives spent waiting for something to happen, rather than watching them perform sections of the play, which lose their impact out of context. If the aim of the piece is to question how well technology can compensate for the physical absence of its actors, the answer is: not very well.

Next up, dinner. Having the chance to eat a meal on the REP’s main stage is a real treat, even if everything has overrun; it’s 9:30pm and I’m ravenously hungry. There’s barely enough time to shovel down the pork loin, rice and salad on offer before we’re called in to watch the next performance.

This time we’re in The Door, a smaller space, for F.O.M.O – Fear of Missing Out, by Spain’s Colectivo Fango. F.O.M.O describes the pangs of anxiety many of us feel when we see a social media post that suggests we’re missing out on something. The performance starts light-heartedly enough – a lively set of What’s App messages are projected onto the stage, then one of the piece’s female actors uses the front-facing camera on her phone to pose, pull faces and check her teeth. We start to get a hint that things aren’t quite as innocent as they seem when she starts pointing the phone between her legs… it’s uncomfortable to witness such a personal moment portrayed on stage.

Things quickly turn disturbing. Violent acts are portrayed against women, with continual filming through phone screens having a distancing effect on the perpetrators, distorting reality. In one harrowing segment, one of the female characters poses for social media photographs, before the poses become more and more frantic and out of control and she strips naked. All the while, the other performers count, slowly at first, before speeding up to the number 137, which is finally revealed as the number of Instagram followers she has.

Towards the end of the show things have reached crisis point. One of the characters confides that they know nothing about the war in Syria and asks the audience if any of us know anything either. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be implicated in the violence being portrayed on stage. I’m sure many of us can see ourselves in the characters’ obsessions with digital communication and social media.

By this stage, things have massively overrun, so I don’t manage to see the final performance of the evening which is Control Freak by Cie. Kirkas – public transport just doesn’t run late enough. But BE FESTIVAL 2018 has offered plenty of food for thought. Let’s Dance encouraged me to open my mind to contemporary dance, and Three Rooms and F.O.M.O – Fear of Missing Out both suggested that technology, often heralded as an effective tool for breaking down geographical and political borders, can sometimes distance us from each other further.

It may have been, as suspected, challenging, thought-provoking and sometimes difficult to watch, but that’s exactly what the best art should do.

For more on BE FESTIVAL, visit www.befestival.org

For more from Birmingham REP, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

July 2, 2018July 2, 2018

BPREVIEW: BE FESTIVAL @ Birmingham REP 03-09.07.17

Words by Helen Knott / Pics courtesy of BE FESTIVAL

Running from 2^nd to 9^th July, Birmingham’s annual BE FESTIVAL showcases theatre, dance and circus artists from across Europe – presenting a week-long programme of performances and workshops, hosted by the Birmingham REP.

And in a chance for the public attending to meet the artists performing, BE FESTIVAL invites patrons to join them for a special Interval Dinner, ‘served on the REP’s main stage after the first half of the evening performances’. To see the Interval Dinner’s changing menu from Marmalade, the REP’s onsite restaurant, click here.

A weekly pass to BE FESTIVAL will cost £100 with dinner, or £60 without dinner. Individual day tickets are also available, costing £24 with dinner and £16 without dinner. Tickets can be bought thorugh the Birmingham REP Box Office, or for online sales click here.

It’s hard to believe that 2018 is the ninth year of BE FESTIVAL – it still seems like a fresh, young pretender on the Birmingham theatre scene. Perhaps it’s because the line-up always presents interesting new talent and some of the latest movements in the arts, or maybe it’s down to the event’s open-minded sense of fun, but BE FESTIVAL is a decidedly cool place to spend a few hours.

For those of you who don’t know (where have you been for the past nine years?) each evening at BE FESTIVAL tends to follow roughly the same format – typically, there are four 30 minute performances from companies or artists from across Europe, with a communal Interval Dinner where you get the chance to rub shoulders with the performers. The REP’s backstage area is transformed into the festival HUB, where you can chill out, grab a drink, and debate just what on earth was going on in that piece of contemporary dance you just saw. The audience is then invited to party on into the night to the sounds of a live band or DJ set.

That’s where any sense of predictability ends, however; the performances take in a range of different genres – including dance, puppetry, physical theatre, circus – and typically cover a full gamut of emotions and themes.

BE FESTIVAL co-director, Miguel Oyarzun, says on this year’s line-up: “We invite audiences to reflect on the borders we unknowingly create as individuals and groups. Our 2018 programme features work that tests physical limitations, bodily boundaries, social preconceptions and draws on multiple disciplines.” A fitting theme indeed, for a time when the UK is in the midst of literally bordering itself off from the rest of Europe.

So, what’s on the 2018 programme at BE FESTIVAL? With a veritable smorgasbord on stage each night (and I’m not just talking about the Interval Dinner) you can check out the full programme by clicking here, but here is something from each day that got our mouths watering .

On Tuesday 3^rd July, the Bulgaria/UK based Ivo Dimchev will be inviting audience members on stage to perform increasingly extreme acts for cash, in P-Project. The ‘internationally ‘renowned choreographer, performing artist and singer songwriter’ has based his solo performance ‘on several words beginning with ‘P’ such as Piano, Pray, Pussy, Poetry, Poppers’ and further invites the audience ‘to Play with the complex Pussy catalogue’ where they can ‘construct their own Pussy and Print it on a Postcard.’ Presented in collaboration with Fierce Festival, P-Project is for over 18’s only.

On Wednesday 4^th July, Sister Sylvester’s Three Rooms (Syria/ UK/ Turkey) use Skype to present a digital performance that will take place simultaneously in Paris, Istanbul and Birmingham – in a play that ‘was conceived as a response to Europe’s continuing border crisis, which prevented the actors from traveling to either the rehearsals or performances of the original commission in 2016’ and seeks to ‘ to question the possibilities and limitations of technology to mediate absence.’

Then on Thursday 5^th July, BE FESTIVAL opens with Someone Loves You Drive With Care from the UK’s self professed ‘performance artist and a liar.’ Tom Cassani’s circus sideshow-inspired piece will ‘challenge the borders of his own body using blunt and scary looking objects’ (yikes!) as the artist ‘questions our collective construction of truth and lies’ using cabaret trickery and slight-of-hand in an impressive sounding solo performance. There is no official age restriction for Someone Loves You Drive With Care, although the faint of heart (or under 16’s) might want to take a hand to hold or something to hide behind.

Friday 6th July presents Poliana Lima‘s Aqui Siempre (Here Always), as the award winning Brazilian choreographer combines styles ‘from Argentinian popular dance to the European ballet tradition’ in a narrative that explores ‘women from four different countries beaming with individual diversity, experiences and traditions’. Now a ‘long term resident of Madrid’, Poliana Lima‘s Aqui Siempre uses the individuality of each person’s physical expression, or ‘movement systems’, in a dance performance piece that explores the ‘ relationships between memory, the present and the future.’

Then as part of the final day at BE FESTIVAL, on Saturday 7th July, the Greece based ODC Ensemble present The Cave – ‘a digital recalibration of the symbolic potency of Plato’s Cave allegory’ that uses opera, cinema, digital and visual technology ‘to reflect on the walls and shadows we build around us.’ ODC Ensemble were the first prize award winners at BE FESTIVAL 2017, led by the Athens based Elli Papakonstantinou, and ‘their work embraces the bewilderment of the audience in the face of persistent dislocation.’

It can be off-putting to invest an entire evening (and ticket cost) into a programme that you’re not sure that you will like, but BE FESTIVAL takes that risk away – you may not enjoy all of the performances, but with up to four artists on show each evening there’s bound to be something that makes you think.

Above all, BE FESTIVAL, with its communal dining and feedback cafes, is an ego-free place of openness and playfulness. You may even find that you have some of your own boundaries and preconceptions challenged along the way.

BE FESTIVAL 2018 – official trailer

BE FESTIVAL runs at Birmingham REP from Tuesday 3rd to Saturday 7th July – with a special matinee programme on the final day. For more on BE FESTIVAL, including the full festival programme and links to online ticket sales, visit www.befestival.org/festival

For more from Birmingham REP, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk

June 6, 2018June 6, 2018

THE GALLERY: RuPaul’s Drag Race Werq the World Tour @ Symphony Hall 27.05.18

Words & pics by Eleanor Sutcliffe

It’s 8pm on a Sunday evening and Ashleigh and I are soaked. We’ve worked Birmingham Pride for two days and have just traipsed our way through monsoon rain to the doors of the Symphony Hall for RuPaul’s Werq The World Tour.

Having decided to wear slightly fancier clothing than our usual jeans and t-shirt ensemble for tonight’s occasion, I’m regretting my decision already – dresses were not made with practicality in mind, and this combined with the thunderous weather (and being forced to run in heels) has left us both looking, and feeling, worse for wear.

It gets even worse as we descend into the foyer too. Fans are dressed up to the nines in their best clothing, with platform thigh high boots and latex bodysuits seemingly the norm. We didn’t expect anything less, mind – when you’re coming to a show that features some of the biggest names in drag, it’s a given that fans will don themselves in outfits as outlandish as the performance we’re about to witness. Wrestling our way to our seats, we settle in and prepare ourselves for the evening ahead.

The lights go down and a quartet of male dancers make their way onto the stage. On swans Lady Bunny, who opens the show by lip-syncing to Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ to a backdrop of lightning – fitting, considering the weather we traipsed through to get to the show. A departure board flashes up and one by one, each queen does a single lap of the stage before disappearing backstage. They are all present and correct, with each queen garnering more support than the last.

Detox flings flowers out to the crowd before swearing at the front row before sauntering off, much to the attendee’s delight. The furor is deafening as Latrice waltzes her way on stage, who laughs and smiles as fans screech and click their fingers back and forth. Finally, they all reappear and dance along to a heavy pop track, the choreography for which Lady Bunny claims is inspired by “the hashish we got from Amsterdam”.

And so begins the show – first up is Kennedy Davenport, who sashays onstage to an upbeat instrumental dance track seemingly inspired by the Rio carnival. Dressed in a black ruffled cloak, this is soon cast away to reveal a fringed green, yellow and blue bodysuit. Her performance includes all the signature drag dance moves includes the painful looking ‘death drop’ (if you don’t know what this is, Google away). The sheer energy that Davenport brings to the stage is incredibly impressive – I’m sweltering under the lights just taking her photo, so how she manages to leap back and forth is beyond me. The crowd’s response is one of sheer delight and Davenport takes a bow before running offstage.

Next, a Seoul backdrop appears as Kim Chi slowly makes her way on stage accompanies by and eerie piano instrumental. The screen shows a dark pink sea and moon which, coupled with her short white skirt and blonde wig, gives away the Sailor Moon inspiration behind the performance. As the backing dancers mimic each character from the anime, Chi twirls out of her costume to reveal a sparkling white ballgown, before launching into a lip sync routine to the Sailor Moon theme tune, which is edited to include a heavy bass line. Though she struggles to lip sync along to the track, she more than makes up for it in after the performance when talking to Lady Bunny.

Forever the comedy queen, Chi claims her favorite part about Drag Race was “free catering” and how the most important lesson she learnt was that life isn’t always about winning – “it’s about losing to black people occasionally”. Personally, I’ve never felt incredibly comfortable with drag humour as it can seem rather crass and humiliating to me on occasion, however the comments go down a storm with the room so who am I to judge?

To break up the performance, Lady Bunny announces a game rather inventively named ‘Wig in a Box’. The rules are simple – four members of the audience will be selected and will delve into a large cardboard box, emerging with a rather beaten up wig. The aim of the game is to lip-sync along to the accompanying track, and whoever’s performance is best, wins.

Despite my best endeavors to coax fellow writer, Ashleigh, up on stage, she’s not having it in the slightest, and I personally cannot think of anything worse than stepping out onto the Symphony Hall stage only to publicly humiliate myself for the slight chance of winning a free T shirt. Four individuals are selected and make their way on stage, which angers a woman at the back who feels the need to collapse in the aisle while belting out ‘It Should Have Been Me’ by Yvonne Fair. She is gently escorted back to her seat under the seething comments of Lady Bunny, who claims “bitch, I don’t come to your job at Mcdonalds and tell you what to do”. The crowd goes wild. I begin to re-evaluate my life choices.

I am in no place to judge here either, as each competitor who forced their head into one of those wigs clearly has way more balls than I ever will. However, it is the young man who has to lip-sync to P!nk’s ‘So What’ who has me in stitches.

After cowering in his seat momentarily, he soon launches into a full routine which includes a cartwheel, handsprings, a border line striptease and a death drop that has me flinching in pain. Finishing by grinding on his chair to the cacophony of applause, even Lady Bunny seems to be impressed, or concerned, I’m not sure which one. She crowns him the winner and flings him an official Werq the World t-shirt before carrying on with the show.

Next is Sharon Needles, who Lady Bunny welcomes by claiming she “puts the gore in gorgeous”. Her style of drag has always been a favourite of mine, as she goes against the grain and puts a horror spin on the art form. Entering the stage clad in a black veil and dress, she stands still as a dancer in a latex devil mask twirls around her, accompanied by text that says, ‘enough of that, let the sacrifice begin’.

‘Marry the Night’ by Lady Gaga soon starts blaring out of the speakers and the veil is cast away in favour of a black latex bodysuit. The lip sync soon morphs into her own 2017 release ‘Black Licorice’, and the screen behind shows images of a rabbit decomposing as she dances across the stage. Closing her performance with the phrase “Happy Halloween, hail Satan, being gay is punk and kill your parents”, Needles strolls off stage without a care in the world as the crowd descends into ecstasy behind her.

The following performance is most definitely NSFW; Detox has always been known for her rather outlandish antics, however she truly goes to town tonight. Sporting a long black coat and lip-syncing along to what we think is ‘S.E.X’ by Madonna, she reveals a red latex corset and kinky boots as her outfit of choice, accompanied by a long, latex ponytail reminiscent of a whip.

Her dancers are soon stripped down to red latex pants the size of postage stamps as she grinds on each one in turn, much to the joy of the crowd and the embarrassment of the parents present. After attaching a rope to the collars of each dancer she has them walk around her like puppies, further hinting at the dominatrix influences on her performance. It’s clearly the fan’s favourite so far, as a woman runs down the aisle to stuff notes of money into Detox’s thong.

Lady Bunny appears again, this time to perform a rather controversial ditty that mocks each of the major drag queens we have seen throughout RuPaul. Again, this is not my humour, however the crowd seemingly lap it up, squealing at the controversy it may cause. But the whole thing seems shallow and crass to me, with most of the comments focusing on the looks, sizes, or nationalities of the queens. For a show which prides itself in being inclusive to all forms of drag, I find myself uncomfortable during this performance. I occupy myself cleaning my camera lens until the next act comes on.

All it takes is the signature twang of a Spanish guitar for me to know that Valentina is soon to perform. Her lip sync and dancing is second to none, however I cannot help but feel fans are growing slightly bored of the continuous references to her nationality. She is an incredibly skilled and talented performer, and I feel she could expand on this considerably if the company were more willing to look outside the box. Regardless, Valentina‘s performance is amazing as per usual, and I marvel at the grace and elegance she brings to the stage. The mariachi style dance goes down a storm with the crowd too, with fans at the front nearly in tears.

Ah, Violet Chachki… If I have a soft spot for any queen, it’s her. Descending upon the blue lit stage in a typical sequined burlesque gown, the aesthetics of her performance are simply stunning. Coupled with her cabaret style dancing and aerial skills, her show tonight is truly breathtaking.Casting the gown aside for a sequined leotard, she hops into the aerial hoop with more grace than I could ever possess, which is then hoisted into the rafters of the Symphony Hall. Spinning and twirling at a speed that would make me vomit on the crowd, Chachki goes through several daring moves, each one riskier than the last. The variety breaks up the night well, and she receives ecstatic applause from the crowd.

And finally, Latrice Royale, saving the best until last. She is introduced clad in theatrical regal gown complete with the biggest ruffled collar I’ve ever seen in my life. Her performance is based around her latest single ‘Excuse the Beauty’, which has the entire audience up out of their seats for the first time this evening. She is flung a white and mint flag by one of the dancers which she incorporates into her routine, hurling and spinning it though the air like a baton twirler. Clearly the crowd favourite, fans are in tears at this point, screaming their praise as Royale bows and exits the stage.

As Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ pulses from the speakers, each of the queens emerges from backstage donning silver sequined outfits to take their final bow. At this point, fans begin the crowd the aisles, desperate to make their way to the stage to sing their praises. Even the queens seem slightly surprised at the sheer support that is being shown, as the shake hands with fans and blow kisses.

As we leave the Symphony Hall, I’m slightly speechless. It’s rare I leave a show surprised – on the contrary, I’m usually picking flaws from the moment I’m back out on the street. However, the atmosphere is electric and seeing fans this excited at the performances they have just witnessed warms my soul slightly. I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting for the response from an audience, even to such a high profile to a drag show, to be this strong. But it is. And I love it.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Werq the World Tour @ Symphony Hall 27.05.18 / Eleanor Sutcliffe

For more on RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour, visit www.vossevents.com/events/werq-the-world

For more both the Symphony and Town Halls, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.thsh.co.uk

May 21, 2018May 21, 2018

BPREVIEW: RuPaul’s Drag Race Werq the World Tour @ Symphony Hall 27.05.18

Words by Eleanor Sutcliffe

On Sunday the 27^th May, RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour will be coming to the Symphony Hall – stopping off in Birmingham for the second date out of seven across the UK and Ireland.

The show starts at 9pm, with an exclusive VIP Meet & Greet from 7pm. Tickets are priced from £32 to £128 – as presented by Voss Events, World of Wonder, and VH1. For direct gig information, including venue details and links to online ticket sales, click here.

Also appearing at the Symphony Hall on Sunday 27^th May will be Ginger Johnson, the ‘nightmare in nylons’ storyteller who will be reading Glamorous Gran and other Stories – ‘a lively collection of original children’s stories inspired by the lives of LGBTQIA+ people and their experience of the world’.

A free event, taking place in the Symphony Hall Level 3 Foyer from 3pm, Ginger Johnson’s Glamorous Gran and Other Stories is suitable for ‘switched on kids’ aged 7 years and up. For direct event information, click here.

Lady Miss Ikea will also be DJing before and after the RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour show in the Symphony Hall Cafe Bar, playing ‘the most glamorous deep, house, disco and wildest pop – as well as tracks that you love from your favourite RuPaul Queens’. Again a free event, Lady Miss Ikea starts her first set at 7:30pm – for direct event information, click here.

Following a string of sold out shows in 2017, the only official tour for the popular reality TV series, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, is making a stop in Birmingham at the tail end of the city’s Pride Festival (how fitting). With a total of 63 shows across the globe, and 36 of those in Europe, Sunday 27^th May is Birmingham’s opportunity to see some of drag’s finest queens perform in all their glory on stage. Hosted by fan favorite judge Michelle Visage, the show will feature performances from Kim Chi, Latrice Royale, Sharon Needles, Kennedy Davenport, Detox, Valentina, Violet Chachki and a surprise guest from Drag Race Season 10.

RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour is quite possibly one of the most prominent drag shows to ever land in Birmingham, showcasing the TV phenomenon that has helped push drag from underground art to mainstream pop culture. And whilst drag events have become a more prevalent fixture on Birmingham’s event calendar – with national promoters such as Klub Kids and Eat Sleep Drag Repeat selling out shows at both mainstream and LGBT+ venues, alongside ferociously creative new events, showcasing both local and national talent, from collectives such as Dragpunk and Opulence – a show of this size coming to the Symphony Hall is unassailable step further into the limelight.

RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour line up is diverse enough to give its audience a taste of all manner of drag too. Take Sharon Needles, for example, whose both ‘simply divine’ and ‘ghastly runway look’ won her the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar in 2012 at the end of Drag Race Season 4.

But if macabre isn’t strictly your style, then Kim Chi – who was the first Korean drag queen to appear on American television – offers up her self-described ‘bionic dolly’ aesthetic, celebrating all things ‘cute, fun, weird, and exotic’.

Then there’s Violet Chachki, whose drag, burlesque and acrobatic performances ‘blend strip tease, aerial acrobatics and fetish aesthetics – while also distorting the gender binary’. Chachki’s confidence and ‘indomitable, high self-esteem’ saw her win Drag Race Season 7, as well walk for Moschino in their Fall 2018 Collection at Milan Fashion Week and become one of the first drag artists to represent a major fashion brand for Betty Paige Lingerie.

Also appearing on RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour will be Latrice Royale – a plus sized queen who from Compton who is also an ordained minister, Detox – another LA queen who has appeared in music videos with Ke$ha and Rihanna, Kennedy Devenport – whose numerous pageant titles include Miss D’Elegance International 2013 and Miss Gay Orlando 2016, and Valentina – whose spectacular looks have appeared in Elle Magazine Mexico, Paper Magazine, and Vogue.com as well as being the face of Mexican fashion designer Benito Santos’ latest collection.

From kawaii to couture, RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour presents one of the most impressive drag line ups the city has seen, with each queen having worked their way to drag royalty with grit and determination. Here’s hoping, amongst the undeniable glitz and glamour, we witness some of that fire on stage at the Symphony Hall on 27^th May.

RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour comes to the Symphony Hall in Birmingham on Sunday 27^th May – as presented by Voss Events, World of Wonder and VH1. For direct show information, including venue details and links to online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk/event/rupauls-drag-race-werq-the-world-tour

Lady Miss Ikea will be DJing before and after the RuPaul’s Werq the World Tour show in the Symphony Hall Cafe Bar – with her first set starting at 7:30pm. For more information visit www.thsh.co.uk/event/dj-lady-miss-ikea

Ginger Johnson will also be reading Glamorous Gran and other Stories for free in the Symphony Hall Level 3 Foyer from 3pm, suitable for children (and adults) aged 7 years and up. For direct event information, visit www.thsh.co.uk/event/ginger-johnson-presents-glamorous-gran-and-other-tall-stories

For more both the Symphony and Town Halls, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.thsh.co.uk