Part of our mission is to hold space for marginalized voices through innovative and representational programming, which in turn lets our queer artists and audience members know that YOU BELONG. While we celebrate Pride in June, we are dedicated to showcasing queer talent and providing a platform for queer art and expression throughout the year.
Here’s what’s coming up!
SAT JUN 1 | 6:30PM | MORTIFIED: Pride Edition
We kick off Pride month with the wildly popular Mortified Baltimore, produced by Alex Hewett and Adam Ruben! Mortified stars everyday adults sharing their most embarrassingly real teenage diary entries, poems, love letters, lyrics, and locker notes…in front of total strangers. As we celebrate Pride Month in Baltimore, this edition of Mortified features adults sharing their childhood and adolescent diaries, poetry, locker notes, etc. exploring sexual and gender identity, coming out, and other LGBTQ stories.
FRI JUN 7 | 8PM | ESSENTIAL TEASE: Burlesque Student Showcase
Essential Tease is a burlesque teaching collective run by three queer performers/instructors—Jacqueline Boxx, Ruby Rockafella, and Tempete La Coeur—dedicated to helping students explore and find their true selves through burlesque performance. The June student showcase features a a bevy of brand new performers and is hosted by queer, award-winning nerdlesque superstar, Maki Roll.
SAT JUN 8 | 5PM | Gathered In Love and Rage: Palestinian Film Showcase
Referencing Philadelphia-based human rights attorney, Noura Erakat’s speech on November 3rd, 2023, during the protest in solidarity with Palestine, the title encapsulates the project’s concept and curatorial theme. Gathered In Love and Rage is a film program, originally showing at three different Philadelphia venues (Asian Arts Initiative, Vox Populi Gallery, and Making Worlds Bookstore) featuring short films by contemporary independent women and LGBTQ+ Palestinian artists with topics exploring orientalism in the media, love stories, experimental films and queer narratives. With films oscillating between love and rage, the event is meant to create a cathartic grieving space for the South-West Asian North African (SWANA) and Palestinian community, as it faces constant grief and dehumanization, to remind us of not only the justification of our collective rage but to stand in awe of all that Palestinians are teaching us daily about love and community.
THU JUN 27 | 7:30PM | Stoop Stories B-more Proud: Queer Tales of Charm City
The Stoop Storytelling Series, in partnership with the Queer Jewish Arts Festival, presents B-more Proud: Queer Tales of Charm City! For this show, we are seeking individuals who identify as queer and Jewish to share a true, personal tale. Stories can be about anything related to identifying as queer and Jewish—how you met your partner, your bubbie ally, how your chosen family is your tribe—we want to hear them all! The Stoop Storytelling Series is a Baltimore-based live show and podcast that features “ordinary” people sharing the extraordinary, true tales of their lives. It showcases the stories of “ordinary” people, told in front of live audiences as large as 1,400. Stoop stories are weird, wonderful, hilarious, and heartbreaking—and, above all, intimate.
SAT JUN 29 | 8PM | Chocolate Covered Rocky Horror: Gender Bender!
In a special one-night only event, Chocolate Covered Rocky Horror debuts Gender Bender! Come up to the Lab as we premiere our first female Frank-N-Furter in a new interpretation that takes the tale to a whole new level. The Rocky Horror Picture Show will thrill you and chill you; the new theme is guaranteed to fulfill you! Dive into a wild night featuring a live shadow cast, innovative choreography, and crowd participation. Since 2015, Chocolate Covered Rocky Horror has been a tribute to the queer experience while showcasing and exposing minorities to liberating art forms.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS) was released on September 25, 1975, with music and characters that feature androgynous themes. EarlOrrin Productions, LLC produced the first all African American live shadow cast production of RHPS. (We hope this is on Wikipedia!)
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FRI JUN 14 | Kaia Kater w/ Black Assets
SAT AUG 24 | An Evening of Vintage Smut Presents: The 3rd Annual “Miss Mistress of Smut” Pageant
