Latest / philly has heART / Priority Hoarding feat. Rose Jarboe and Naila Francis

Transcript

Priority Hoarding feat. Rose Jarboe and Naila Francis · philly has heART

0:14
Hey, Lou. Hey, you. Oh my gosh, did we have a
0:20
weekend? A week, really? Because this started
0:23
back on Wednesday. Yes, it did. What had happened
0:28
was, oh my gosh, absolutely hilarious. Colin,
0:34
killing it. Heavy R. Crane, killing it. HRC is
0:39
HRC. HRC is HRC. Such a good show. Cathartic.
0:45
We laughed. We cried. What did you think about
0:48
the band? They were so good. I mean, throw a
0:52
live band on top of a performance, and it makes
0:56
it so much better. Love a drummer. Yes. I think
1:00
you still have the opportunity to see two more
1:02
shows. Yes, what had happened was, is running
1:06
this Saturday and this Sunday, both at 8 p .m.,
1:10
both at Frankie Bradley's. Get an aisle seat.
1:14
Yeah. You won't regret it. Then did I have a
1:18
week? Let's take you through it, right? It was
1:20
the grand opening of the Ballet Center for Dance
1:24
building. And let me tell you, they know how
1:27
to throw a party. They know how to throw a party.
1:30
This space is so great. Thursday night was awards
1:34
ceremony, dance party at night. There was food,
1:39
there were cocktails, there were dancers, there
1:41
was things going on. There was an arch made of
1:46
point shoes. Let me tell you. Can we acknowledge
1:49
that? Gunnar Mantana did an amazing job. amazing
1:54
job with the Rs. Gunnar in the past has done
1:57
some choreography with the dancers. This has
2:00
kind of been like a full circle moment for that
2:03
opportunity again. And they didn't look like
2:08
you shoes. No, I think they were brand new. And
2:11
then Friday, ribbon cutting, cutting the ribbon.
2:16
Who did we see? Our best buds. Nikhil Saval killed
2:20
it, did so well. Money for the Arts. But then
2:25
bring us to Friday night. What'd we do Friday
2:26
night together? We went to the new talent group
2:30
show at Bridget Mayer Gallery. Then we went to
2:34
Glow Day at James Oliver Gallery. Glow Day at
2:38
James Oliver Gallery. It's a show with three
2:42
different artists who specialize in neon lighting.
2:48
What did you think? I thought it was great. I
2:51
think that the greater part was we went downstairs
2:54
to Morimoto and had a... They have a co -branded
3:00
cocktail between Morimoto and James Oliver Gallery,
3:05
which is Brill. It was so good. It was delicious.
3:09
Mm -hmm. I'm still thinking about the rock shrimp.
3:13
Oh, yeah. They do it well. They do it really
3:15
well there. But we didn't stop there. We kept
3:18
going on Saturday. We went to the Sean Lugo show.
3:21
It opened on Saturday at Works on Paper Gallery.
3:24
What did you think about that? Super fun. Super
3:28
fun. There were works of all sizes, of all price
3:32
points for you to check out. For any of you millennials
3:36
that like have a little fever character, you'll
3:39
probably find them on the wall. Sean Lugo is
3:42
a dad and he worked on this show in conjunction
3:47
with his young son, Oliver. There was even an
3:52
interactive part where you could help graffiti
3:55
a wall. Hold me back. But onto the conversation.
4:00
We've got a good one. This is Robert Marsh and
4:17
you're listening to Philly Has Heart Podcast.
4:19
In this podcast we sit down with artists, gallerists,
4:23
educators, curators, and other creatives who
4:25
comprise the Philadelphia art world to discuss
4:28
upcoming performances, exhibits, and other events
4:31
and initiatives that are not to be missed. The
4:35
art scene of Philadelphia is so rich that it
4:37
can seem daunting. Consider this your weekend
4:39
cultural recommendation. With me always is my
4:43
producer, Lucinda Dayrone. Hola! And today we
4:46
have Rose and Nyla of Bearded Leaves Cabaret,
4:51
priority hoarding. Welcome. Thanks for having
4:54
us. Yes, no, super excited, super excited. We
4:59
are going to start with a question for Rose.
5:01
Could you take us through your journey that brought
5:04
you to the performing arts? What moments, both
5:07
big and small, directed you to where you are
5:10
today as the founding artistic director of Bearded
5:14
Ladies Cabaret? How long is the podcast? As long
5:16
as you need. As long as you need. Welcome up,
5:20
folks. I come from the Midwest. from a very conservative
5:24
Catholic background. I've rolled in very far
5:27
away from the family tree. I studied English
5:30
in theater and wanted to go perform on Broadway.
5:34
And I studied at University of Michigan. I had
5:37
a teacher, her name is Rebecca Wright, she's
5:39
still an amazing director in town. And she was
5:42
like, come to Philly for a bit. And I thought
5:44
I'd lily pad to New York. And then I started.
5:48
Being able to pay my rent with doing mediocre
5:51
Shakespeare and mediocre musical theater. I was
5:54
doing a lot of it. In one of the shows I was
5:56
doing, it was actually media theater. I was doing
5:58
a show at media theater, and media theater, they
6:01
were so lovely, and they said, do you want to
6:03
do a cabaret? And I said, yes. I had no idea
6:06
what a cabaret was, but I figured I would do
6:08
it and just say yes and figure it out later.
6:10
And I was working at the Philadelphia Shakespeare
6:13
Theater at the time with a lot of disgruntled...
6:16
Shakespearean actors who were like not happy.
6:18
Is there any other kind? I'm just kidding, I'm
6:23
just kidding. No, no, I think we drink at the
6:25
Irish bar on Sansom Street on like 24th and Sansom
6:29
or something like that and we complain and so
6:32
I got a group of disgruntleds probably hung over
6:35
Shakespearean actors to help me make a cabaret
6:38
about what it meant to be queer in the army using
6:41
World War II music by Irving Berlin. and we called
6:44
it Back in the Army. We did it at Media Theater,
6:47
and it went really well, and some guy that had
6:50
heard me singing at a retirement community came.
6:52
He was in his 70s. He had just come out after
6:54
his wife died. His name was Tom, and he was so
6:57
sweet, and he was like, come down and meet me
6:59
at Mixed O. I'd like to talk about your work.
7:01
It was really moving for me as someone who's
7:03
a veteran, etc. And I was like, I think this
7:06
older man might want something from me. But I
7:09
was like, I'll go and tell my friends where I'm
7:13
at. And he was so sweet and there was nothing
7:15
untoward about it. And he was like, I'd love
7:17
for your show to happen in Philadelphia. How
7:19
much would it cost? Do you have a budget? And
7:21
I was like, absolutely I have a budget. I had
7:24
no idea. I had not done that before, but I asked
7:28
some friends for help. I put together a budget,
7:31
he donated, and what now seems like such a small
7:34
amount, but then was huge. And we did the show
7:40
in Philly. Blanca and Jamie Haskins, who were
7:45
at the Wilma, came and saw it, because I was
7:48
doing Shakespeare at the Wilma, too. Not me over
7:52
Shakespeare. But I was doing a piece that Blanca
7:55
was directing, and she saw it. We're like, this
7:58
is incredible, you do our gala, we'll watch your
8:00
group's name. And so I talked to my friends and
8:03
it was between like the girly boy scouts and
8:05
the bearded ladies and we're like, bearded ladies
8:06
is right, I don't know why. And then we made
8:09
a whole show for them, for their fundraiser,
8:12
and then someone saw that show and they said,
8:15
that's a real show, you really put a lot of energy
8:17
into that, we want that to be at the Wilma. It
8:19
was Linda and David Glickstein who are long -term
8:22
supporters of ours and they've been supporting
8:23
us for 16 years, so. It just snowballed like
8:26
that and slowly became the Bearded Ladies Cabaret.
8:30
And it's, you know, Priority Hoarding, which
8:32
is the project we're talking about, it's an unasked
8:34
for retrospective of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret.
8:37
And what it means to look back when you're devoting
8:40
your life to often very ephemeral art. Why are
8:43
we doing all this work? And to me, one of the
8:46
answers to that is creating spaces where people
8:49
can self -actualize. So I called it The Bearded
8:53
Ladies back in 2010 before I identified as The
8:57
Bearded Lady. It took me 10 years. I'm a little
8:59
slow. It took me 10 years before I was coming
9:01
into my feminists and my transness and my queerness
9:04
fully. At the time I was like, I'm a Shakespearean
9:08
actor who happens to be wearing a dress because
9:10
it's the character. I'm not even a drag queen.
9:12
I think I had some internalized homophobia and
9:16
transphobia in me that I was working through.
9:18
All those other disgruntled Shakespeare actors
9:20
are actually trans people. Like, they were all
9:22
trans and all queer and all processing stuff
9:26
and you look back at it now and you think, wow,
9:30
no wonder you wanted to play the James Bond villain.
9:33
Like, you just wanted to wear a mustache. Like,
9:37
I get it. I'm wearing the bikini. Okay, I get
9:40
it. It's pretty obvious in retrospect. It's not
9:43
rocket science. But that's the kind of journey
9:46
and slowly, you know, I did cabaret the art in
9:49
and I used to work a lot in theater in the city,
9:53
but now slowly I've been moving more and more,
9:57
all beards all the time, pretty much, or directing
10:00
other projects. And Philly is a home base for
10:03
what I hope for the beards and for myself as
10:07
a national and international queer, of creating
10:09
spaces of abundance for queer people. Wow, that's
10:12
lovely. I have two questions real quick. When
10:15
you arrived at the University of Michigan campus
10:18
as a freshman, did you know that you were gonna
10:21
embark on a BFA in theater? Yeah, I was in the
10:25
theater department and I wanted to be in the
10:26
musical theater department. And I tried and I
10:29
didn't get in. But I had an English N .O. at
10:32
a BFA. And do you think that English impacted
10:35
working with Shakespeare? The English degree
10:37
was really amazing in terms of relationship to
10:41
poetry. an eyeless poet, and like I'm very drawn
10:45
to poetry. I think if I were like phoenixed into
10:50
the kind of artist that I would really love to
10:52
be, I would love to be a poet. I'm doing theater
10:56
in the meantime. And I got to work with Ann Carson,
10:59
was one of my teachers. Yeah, it was amazing.
11:03
So like I had such great, strange teachers at
11:07
Michigan in poetry and the combination of poetry.
11:11
and theater was really rich for me. So it's led
11:15
to me to, yes, I'm drawn to Shakespeare because
11:17
of it. I'm drawn to text -based work. My work
11:21
is very text -based, as you'll find with priority
11:23
recording. It's just tons of puns and wordplay
11:26
and language holding it on itself. And then one
11:30
other question. For those who are unfamiliar,
11:32
how would you describe Cabaret? How would you
11:35
describe it to an alien? Oh, to an alien? Well,
11:38
I'd try to. I'd just pull out Liza Manali. Yeah,
11:44
this is something we talk about a lot at the
11:46
Bearded Lady's cabaret because cabaret means
11:48
different things to different people in different
11:51
sociopolitical contexts and different time periods.
11:55
Cabaret has like a clear start point in the 1880s
11:58
in Paris. That was very text -driven. It wasn't
12:01
very music -driven, and it came from a... group
12:04
of writers called the Hydropaths, and they were
12:06
like middle -class artists who were priced out
12:08
of the city, and so they bought land in rural
12:12
right outside of Paris, which was Mumax now,
12:15
but it wasn't part of Paris, and they were like,
12:17
well, we're gonna buy this place, and actually,
12:19
sex and booze is cheaper here, and so maybe people
12:22
will come. And then the rich people came, and
12:25
the poor people that were living nearby came,
12:28
and it became this, it was a place for poets,
12:30
actually, Kever, it was a place for poets. It
12:33
changes depending on where you are. In Berlin
12:36
it became more political and more musical. One
12:39
of the works that the Beards have been doing
12:40
is, I've done a lot of work trying to figure
12:42
out what cabaret is, because I didn't know at
12:44
the beginning. What I would say is, there's always
12:47
some kind of Conferencier or MC. There's always
12:50
a host. There's always a connection to the now.
12:53
It's not a cabaret if you don't have someone
12:55
being like, whoa, the news today. Anyone? Like,
12:58
you need someone who's welcoming you into the
13:00
space. And that's rooted in the fact that it
13:02
started out with some guy that bought a space
13:04
named Rudolph Selene, who was like, come on in,
13:06
I just bought this place, sit down, we're gonna
13:08
have some poets today. So it's always rooted
13:10
in that. It's gotta be live and insistent on
13:13
its liveness. And it's often a space that, I
13:16
think of it as reverse immersive theater, but
13:18
like in immersive theater, you as an audience
13:21
member walk into an audience, you walk into a
13:25
space that the artists have made. and you're
13:27
like wandering through and looking. In cabaret,
13:31
the space needs to feel like it's the audience's.
13:33
Like you go there for the cheap sex or the booze
13:36
or to flirt or to hang with your friends and
13:38
then there happens to be a performance that like
13:41
slips into your space and allows you to see each
13:43
other. And the beards, that's like for me the
13:46
root of cabaret is that moment of seeing each
13:48
other, seeing each other, seeing and... then
13:52
you can take it and you can put opera in it or
13:54
dance. You can expand it. You can make it. Even
13:58
when we're doing immersive installation, like
14:00
prior recording, there's a sense of like, hello,
14:02
welcome. Oh my gosh, you're here. You hear the
14:06
news? Like there's that sensibility to all of
14:08
the work is cabaret. It's a little elusive. That
14:13
was not. Thank you. I love that. Yeah, that's
14:16
not short -winded. He really appreciated that.
14:18
Yes. I've never heard that before. Lovely. Lovely.
14:24
And Naila, can you share your journey to Grief
14:27
Coach? And who was that? You know, how was any
14:31
of your personal experiences kind of part of
14:34
your journey? Yeah, so I actually was a journalist
14:39
and I thought that was going to be my life path.
14:41
I went to school for journalism and I did that
14:43
for... many years and I was in arts my last sort
14:48
of stint as a journalist. I was an arts and entertainment
14:51
reporter. I also had my own column called Life
15:01
in La La Land and it was La La Land because my
15:03
niece calls me Lala. She's called me that since
15:05
she was little. And I just wrote about my life
15:10
in that. column which was kind of a different
15:13
thing for like a daily newspaper to just have
15:15
somebody writing candidly about their life. And
15:19
while I was at the paper and writing that column,
15:24
my mom's partner, she'd been with him for 18
15:27
years, my parents were divorced, he passed away,
15:30
and then the year after that my dad died. So
15:33
since I was writing about my life, I had to write
15:37
about loss and grief and... what it was like
15:40
to walk this journey without them, and what it
15:43
was like to enter this landscape that I wasn't
15:46
really familiar with. And I left the paper in
15:51
2014, and it wasn't like I left into grief work,
15:56
or really even knew that I was going to be doing
15:58
this work one day, but when my dad died, he lived
16:02
in Saint Lucia, and I was at his bedside for
16:05
the last four days of his life. And that was
16:08
a very, like, powerful and sacred and beautiful
16:10
time for me and i think you know there's these
16:13
moments in our lives where seeds get planted
16:15
but we don't really know they're there maybe
16:18
until the time is right for them to ripen in
16:20
some way and being at his side while he died
16:25
carrying that experience with me i think deepened
16:30
something in me that wanted to do work that was
16:32
a little more like human contact human centered
16:36
heart centered And walking my own grief journey
16:39
and just seeing how we did grief so poorly as
16:42
a culture, I think until you come to loss, you
16:45
don't really know all the ways you bungle it
16:48
yourself, like all the horrible cliche things
16:51
I had said to my own friends, like, oh, just
16:53
tell me what you need, which is one of the worst
16:56
things you can say to somebody in grief because
16:58
they have no clue what they need. So just realizing,
17:01
wow, we're really not good at this. And having
17:05
carried that... experience of writing about my
17:08
loss, and that felt like one of the most connective
17:11
things I'd ever done as a journalist. Like, people
17:13
wrote to me all the time to share their own stories
17:16
of loss, or to just, you know, offer me support,
17:19
or tell me how much my writing mattered to them,
17:21
and I just felt like there was a hunger, maybe,
17:26
for people to gather around loss in different
17:28
ways, or have access to talk about it in different
17:31
ways, and I was actually working part -time at
17:34
an art center in... in Montgomery County and
17:37
they had community workshops and one of the director
17:41
of the Arts Center said, and I was helping them
17:43
to market the Arts Center, it wasn't like I was
17:45
doing workshops, but she said, do you want to
17:47
maybe do a workshop yourself? And I decided to
17:50
offer a workshop around poetry and grief. And
17:56
the people who attended, it was a two session
18:00
workshop and I just remember how they didn't
18:02
want to leave. when it was over and I was like
18:05
so touched by that, by just how they were able
18:10
to connect around this universal experience that
18:13
gets so little attention when it's just a part
18:17
of being human. And so that stayed with me and
18:20
I just think there were all these moments along
18:22
the way that eventually led me to be like, you
18:26
know what, I'm just gonna do this. I'm just gonna
18:29
be a grief worker and see how it goes. Thank
18:33
you both. Those are actually incredible journeys
18:38
to bring you together for what will be priority
18:42
hoarding. A synopsis is the Bearded Ladies Airport
18:46
is an interactive installation built on 16 years
18:50
of accumulated baggage from a queer cabaret company
18:54
devoted to art, care, mess, and community. This
18:59
installation also asks, how do you know it's
19:02
time to move on when you don't know where you're
19:05
going? So the venue, aka the airport, is filled
19:10
with costumes, cardboard props, and other...
19:15
It's called ephemera. Ephemera, thank you. It's
19:18
lovely. Ephemera from Bearded Lady's Cabaret's
19:23
performance history. Visitors will make their
19:27
way through... brawling multi -room space made
19:30
to look like a fantastical metaphorical airport,
19:35
and invited to interact with components of the
19:38
lounge space full of bearded baggage, which will
19:43
also serve as the performance site for the now
19:47
hoarding in -flight entertainment live event
19:51
series. Would you like to add anything to this
19:54
synopsis? I ripped it from your website. You
20:00
did great. Thanks. You did great. I think I want
20:04
to say, well, it's going to be really delightful
20:05
and silly and joyful. And it's also in the context
20:09
of arts organizations collapsing of the weight
20:14
that we're still processing around UArts, the
20:18
school of PAPA, and a history of... often small
20:24
or mid -sized arts companies that just kind of
20:26
disappear without a to -do. So we're bringing,
20:29
and I feel like we've been leaning on Nyla's
20:33
expertise and kind of leading people through
20:35
grief specifically around, like, not necessarily
20:39
our mother's attic, but the attic of our company
20:43
and all the stuff that we have. And we're in
20:46
the height of our powers, we're not going away
20:48
anytime soon, but we're also in the context of
20:51
people erasing queer identity. you know like
20:53
an administration that's taking letters off the
20:55
Stonewall monument online and you're like oh
20:58
god we better take care of this we better take
21:01
care of our baggage before someone else takes
21:03
care of it for us and that's really the impulse
21:05
for this project and the fact that we have way
21:07
too many storage units we have to get rid of
21:09
this stuff so that's that's really where we're
21:11
coming from it is about these bearded ladies
21:14
but if you don't know the bearded ladies it doesn't
21:16
really matter you can come and enjoy a fake airport
21:19
and you'll learn about us We're just really the
21:22
test subject though for this question about what
21:24
do we do with all this baggage that we accumulate?
21:27
How do we take care of our stuff and take care
21:29
of each other? And in a context as you're saying,
21:33
where there's very little care for grief. Yeah,
21:39
and thinking about legacy too. What do you want
21:42
to leave behind? How do you want to be known?
21:43
How do you invite people into how you are known?
21:47
Really important and this whole idea of impermanence
21:51
you know you're making this art and creating
21:53
all of these things and some of them go on to
21:55
have longer lives and get repeated and some of
21:58
them you pour all this time and energy into and
22:00
then it's never done again it's never performed
22:04
again and so what is it like to make to be in
22:07
this world of like impermanence making art into
22:15
question. And so many artists have to then deal
22:19
with that as well, right? Even the painter, you
22:22
know, at one point in time has to say, I think
22:24
this is done now. Even if they might not feel
22:29
it's all the way there, and then they give it
22:31
away. And how do they go through that process
22:35
as well? Yeah, and once you give it away, how
22:38
does the person who you're giving it to care
22:40
for it? Nice. And what are all the ideas you've
22:45
had that never get? Or the child that inherits
22:47
it. Yeah, yeah. That's my bar. I saw something
22:50
online. I saw a very recent headline within the
22:55
last 24 hours about children inheriting their
22:58
parents' art. Mm -hmm. Because we're about to
23:02
go into the biggest wealth transfer. We're waiting
23:05
any day now. Thanks, Bob. Any day now. wealth
23:12
transfer ever, and art being part of that. Sorry,
23:17
let's get back to this. I'm gonna cut that out.
23:20
But that's also... It's also important, because
23:29
it's a whole generation of baby boomers that
23:33
have collected things over time and put meaning
23:36
towards them, and now... Does it all hit the
23:40
market at the same time as well, and is it worth
23:44
anything, or does it mean anything to them? That's
23:48
a lot of bad taste, I think. Can they give up
23:54
the offices too, like the public offices? drew
24:04
you to something of the immersive experience,
24:07
and is this a first kind for the Bearded Ladies
24:10
cabaret producing? I think in immersive, in all
24:14
cabarets, it's quite immersive as I was kind
24:16
of saying before, it's kind of reverse immersive
24:19
theater. We're often creating spaces around our
24:22
work. We just don't call it that. We're always,
24:25
we always just want it to be like, oh yeah, come
24:27
to a cabaret. It's like a Trojan horse situation
24:30
where you're just, um... where we want you to
24:34
come with really low expectations and really
24:36
relaxed and vulnerable. You're not the tyranny
24:40
of politeness of proscenium theater. We want
24:42
you to come in loose so that we can really build
24:46
something from there. And then we want you to
24:49
see, what you see is something more intricate
24:52
and thoughtful and woven together than an opera
24:56
at the Met. We want that to happen, but you're
24:58
like, wow, that was in a bathroom stall. Jesus.
25:00
Like, I've never been, you know, that's... I
25:05
just wanted to be. So, we've done that. We've
25:11
done that. And I did a project a couple years
25:14
ago at the Fabric Workshop and Museum called
25:15
the Rose Garden, which was an immersive gender
25:17
journey. Kind of an escape room of Midwestern
25:20
denial that you moved through. So, I'm drawing
25:23
on that, and the beards are drawing. And that
25:25
was separate from the beards, but informed by
25:27
beards practice. And the beards are drawing on
25:30
our... practice making temporary spaces. So that's,
25:34
that's where that comes from. That was that question,
25:36
but I missed the first one. What was the first
25:37
question? What drew you to something of the immersive
25:41
experience? I think you can answer that. Rufus
25:45
is also quite immersive, isn't it? Yeah, very
25:50
immersive. It's not something that you can really
25:53
intellectualize or think through. So creating
25:57
space to actually be... in the feelings and creating
26:00
a container for that has been an important part
26:03
of that experience. A big part of why we are
26:09
so grief -averse and grief -phobic is because
26:12
many of us haven't had the conditions that we
26:15
need to actually be able to grieve, and a big
26:19
missing part of that is community, so to be able
26:22
to work. with people in their grief process and
26:25
journey in community, I think is really, really
26:27
important. And grief also needs ritual to help
26:32
move it forward, practices that we can engage
26:36
in, and just realizing that the field of support
26:40
often is so much broader than just the human
26:45
realm, too. Like, who are the ancestors you can
26:47
call on in your grief? I lost my father in my
27:14
20s and it was the person who brings the casserole
27:19
dish and might just drop it off and walk away
27:23
that it still still sits in the back of my mind
27:29
that they put so much love and effort into something
27:34
and knew that at that moment in time all we needed
27:38
was the food to be dropped off at the door and
27:42
you don't you don't know that unless you've gone
27:44
through that process before and are able to be
27:49
the doula to someone's grief. Yeah, that's beautiful
27:54
that you have that. I really appreciate that
27:57
story because so many times people are like,
27:59
I don't know what to do to support this person.
28:03
And I often say the one thing is presence. And
28:07
offer, make. Offers and don't expect anything
28:10
don't expect they're gonna say yes or no, but
28:13
the offers are out there I'm gonna drop off this
28:15
meal. I'm gonna take you for a walk. I'm gonna
28:17
take your dog for a walk To confirm what the
28:33
audience should expect Is there a performance
28:36
part of this experience, at the end of this experience,
28:39
or are you kind of experiencing the entire performance
28:44
along your journey through the space? There are
28:48
two aspects to it. So the priority hoarding experience
28:51
is you're alone or you're with a group of up
28:54
to five or six people. Six people can go through
28:58
at a time. And there are four or five bearded
29:01
ladies that will be throughout the... installation
29:04
guiding you, making jokes, welcoming you, making
29:08
sure you know where you're going. So there is
29:10
a kind of performance element to it in terms
29:13
of you're guided on the tour, but there's not
29:15
like a moment of song and dance that happens.
29:18
What you do have access to is you sort through,
29:20
like you get a suitcase and you have to sort
29:22
through all of our storage units. So as you sort
29:25
through our storage units and you pull things
29:26
and you put it in your suitcase, each item has
29:29
a little tag on it that allows you to access.
29:33
film from our work or a secret story from the
29:36
Beards history so you you go through and you
29:39
can spend a lot of time there like the journey
29:40
should take 75 to 90 minutes but you could probably
29:43
spend hours because there's over 140 objects
29:46
that each have videos associated with them that
29:49
you can scan and watch in various really cool
29:54
airport gates airport gates so sorry airport
29:57
so So there is performance, but a lot of it's
30:02
film or these interactions with these docents.
30:04
And then if you're like, well, I wanted a cabaret.
30:08
You can come on Saturday to the installation,
30:13
I don't know, like at noon or something, go get
30:16
some food and come back for the 8 o 'clock performance
30:18
that night. So every Saturday, pretty much from
30:21
September 12th to December 19th, we have a performance
30:25
at 8 p .m. It's the first time the beards are
30:27
really extending one of these spaces beyond the
30:29
French festival like this. And each performance
30:31
is very different. One time it's like a heavy
30:34
metal band. Hard to know that's an arts administration
30:38
heavy metal band singing about grant portals
30:40
and we're going to give free massages to arts
30:42
administrators. Sometimes it's Ursula Rucker
30:45
kicking off the space. everything she does is
30:50
gold. You know sometimes it's a drag show with
30:54
Teen Lounge at Fleischer Institute where we're
30:56
like having an intergenerational drag show happening.
31:00
So it's every night is very different every Saturday
31:03
is different. Oh that's great. Now we understand
31:07
that you consulted with Theory Levy's cabaret
31:10
for Priority Hoarding. How did that collaboration
31:14
come to be? did your work or contribution to
31:18
the production look like? How did that collaborate?
31:23
Sally reached out to me and asked if I would,
31:28
yeah, collaborate on this project. And because,
31:32
you know, you said you're an arts enthusiast,
31:34
I'm also arts enthusiast and consider myself
31:38
not just a great worker, but also a creative.
31:41
I was very intrigued and Honestly, I didn't know
31:47
what to expect. I just thought, okay, I'll be
31:51
the grief guy, grief coach, grief person for
31:54
this project. And some of it has been helping
32:00
to actually shape moments in the installation
32:04
or parts of the installation where grief is really
32:08
present or where maybe... hey, this could be
32:10
a really vulnerable moment. Why don't we try
32:12
the vulnerability instead of the humor or maybe
32:15
the... Yes! Yes! Kind of just keeping a pulse
32:22
on the grief avoidance in the space and the moments
32:27
that could open up a little more room for people
32:30
to be in touch with deeper feelings. But also,
32:33
I feel like... been a grief support hopefully
32:36
too also to yeah all of the beards and you know
32:40
i offered two or three workshops to help them
32:44
just be with their grief in this process and
32:46
some grief ritual and also weaving in what could
32:50
it be like to have ritual in this piece like
32:54
what part of it might feel like ritual what would
32:56
that look like and um one of the frameworks that
33:00
i like working with is by Francis Weller who's
33:03
a psychotherapist and author who wrote The Wild
33:06
Edge of Sorrow and he's presented these five
33:09
gates of grief that we all go through and one
33:13
is everything you love you lose. The second one
33:16
is the parts of us that did not get love or what
33:19
we wanted we did not receive. The third one is
33:23
the sorrows of the world and the fourth one is
33:25
ancestral grief and I'm blanking on the fifth
33:29
one. And I was just in a workshop all about the
33:33
pains of grief. Ancestral grief. That's also
33:37
the pain we've done, but that's like... Yeah,
33:39
there's a sixth one, the harm... The harms that
33:43
we've caused. That was not introduced by Frances
33:46
Weller. That was actually introduced by two women,
33:49
Rachel Rice and Holly Trulard. But anyway, so
33:51
there are these five gates of grief, and... just
33:55
sort of sharing that as a framework for grieving,
33:58
but also so that the beards could open it up
34:00
and interpret it to, well, what would their own
34:03
vibe of gates, vibe gates look like for this
34:06
project? Wow. Yeah. We're kind of like, we hear
34:10
this all and we're like, gates, airport gates.
34:13
And we're like, right, forget the grief, let's
34:15
make airports. That's been the journey of the
34:20
Bearded Ladies on this. Oh my gosh, it's so good.
34:23
um no yeah yes and no and seriously it is nila
34:28
has been a very helpful i think consistent and
34:33
um gentle gentle and forceful presence to remind
34:37
us to actually do the work of the vulnerability
34:41
and it's been interesting to see our different
34:44
entrances into that because the beards always
34:47
start with pleasure and silliness and jokes And
34:52
sometimes we can get lost in those. Which is
34:55
why it takes us 10 years to realize we're bearded
34:57
ladies. We're just like really too busy making
35:00
puns. Was there? I actually did name all five
35:05
gates. I just like mixed them up. Yeah, so it
35:09
is. I like smooshed two of them together. It
35:12
is everything you love you lose. The parts of
35:15
us that have not known love. The sorrows of the
35:17
world. What we expected we did not receive. I
35:24
was like, if this was a pop quiz, I would have
35:27
failed. Rose, was there a particular object that
35:37
had spoken to you through that time that you
35:40
had to revisit? Oh, so many of them. So many
35:44
of them. I think a lot about losing D .F .N.
35:49
Riegersburg. There's like a there's like a urinal
35:53
and a toilet, a cardboard toilet, and I think
35:56
I wore the, you know, Ditto wore the urinal and
35:58
I wore the toilet on our heads in a show that
36:02
we did called My Dinner with Ditto. And Ditto's
36:05
passed, and so I'm thinking about a lot of those
36:08
objects and a lot of the objects from Mommy Queerist,
36:12
which was a show we did together back in the
36:14
army, like these shows. And we were doing an
36:17
album of recording for the show. And to have
36:21
a friend like we were leaving space for Dito's
36:24
voice on it and to like not have her Yeah, like
36:33
the visceral The visceral loss Because so much
36:38
of so much of my friendship with Dito and with
36:42
many other people's is woven into the work we
36:46
do it's an expression of love We're definitely
36:49
not doing it for the pay and the benefits. We're
36:55
doing it out of love and love for each other
36:58
and for the community and also as however sick
37:02
it is, as a way to process who we are and hopefully
37:05
make a space for other people to process who
37:07
they are. So it feels really hard to lose such
37:11
a, or not lose necessarily because I feel...
37:17
I feel deep everywhere, but to lose such a big
37:21
part of the community who was a big part of the
37:26
beers and a huge part of Philadelphia. Thinking
37:29
about all of those objects that are laden with
37:32
his memories. It's beautiful, thank you. Three
37:39
words each to describe Priority Hoarding. I'm
38:25
going to say departure, baggage, and connection.
38:32
Lovely. Lovely. Connecting life. Did you see
38:39
what I mean? I'm like, let's turn towards the
38:42
grief. There's a theme. It's true. It's true.
38:46
It's true. But I do believe that because I think
38:49
it is about death. It's like about departure.
38:52
Right. It's about baggage, everything that we
38:54
carry and that we can't carry. Like, is it a
38:56
carry -on or is it a checked bag? And you lose
39:00
your baggage all the time. And you're like, oh,
39:01
what did I do? We were just talking with an artist,
39:05
like the artist Andrew Schneider, who's like
39:07
a really amazing visual artist. Like, there was
39:09
a whole fire in Brooklyn that burned all of his
39:12
old work. You're like, what would I do? Especially
39:16
because all of our memories, this is way more
39:19
than three words, all of our memories. of our
39:22
work. It's not, some of our work is on film and
39:26
you can play it and be like, there it is, and
39:28
you can have an experience like you would have
39:29
with a novel in a way where it's like the play
39:31
happens when the person encounters it, but much
39:33
of our work is just contained in people's memories.
39:36
And they don't, you know, like if we've done
39:38
our job well, they leave the theater and they're
39:40
grateful and they'll come back, but they'll,
39:42
it's theirs. It's theirs. They're holding our
39:45
legacy. And we might hear about it at a party
39:48
someday. They're like, oh my God, I saw that.
39:50
or whatever it is, and it really changed me.
39:56
And I hear that, and I'm so grateful to hear
39:58
it. I'm so grateful to have A Ripple come back.
40:00
And I'm also, I think, I'll say this secretly,
40:03
no one's listening right now, are they? But we're
40:08
low. I also, sometimes I'm like, aw fuck, crap.
40:15
You had that whole journey and I didn't know.
40:17
I'm so glad that affected you in that way. And
40:20
I wish I could have felt it. I wish I could have
40:22
felt it. You couldn't battle it out. Yeah, because
40:25
you don't always get it back. And I guess that's
40:28
with good and bad impacts in your life. Sometimes
40:30
you don't feel what you've done in the world.
40:33
So yeah, it is about, I think, I'm going to bring
40:37
it back to connection. It is about people connecting
40:41
and us being able to create a space that will
40:43
ideally... There's a part in the in the airport
40:47
where you can during in customs you have to you
40:50
know declare things and you can declare a story
40:53
or you can share a story or leave a memory for
40:56
us that then can later be in part of our archive
40:58
so I'm hoping that it also becomes a space for
41:01
people to think about their own baggage and about
41:04
their bearded baggage and and to connect to one
41:09
another and to the many people that have created
41:12
the beards over the years and like actually create
41:16
a space or a container for that memory to exist.
41:24
It's also going to be really impressive just
41:26
to walk through the physical space. It's going
41:30
to be amazing. It's 10 ,000 steps. Lots of steps.
41:39
Love it, love it. Nyla and Russ, thank you so
41:43
much for your time. today and sharing your story.
41:47
Where can our audience find you? You can find
41:51
us at the airport, which is at 444 North 3rd
41:54
Street, September 10th through December 20th.
41:58
But I would come early and often. You can find
42:01
us at BeerLadiesCabaret .com, at BeerLadiesCabaret.
42:05
You can find me at Sean Jarbeard or something
42:10
like that. I don't even know what my Instagram
42:12
is. It's my dead name, but I don't know how to
42:14
change it. Help me. Help me change it. I'm a
42:18
grandmother. I'm a grandmother. I don't know.
42:20
I think it's at Jarbo or something like that.
42:22
We'll link it in the show notes. We'll connect.
42:25
Yeah. What's yours, Nyla? Mine, so my personal,
42:29
oh, I should say my personal Instagram. Yeah.
42:34
My non -grief Instagram is disarming, darling.
42:38
And for my grief work, I work under this hallowed
42:42
wilderness. So if people just go to Google this
42:45
hallowed wilderness or my name, they can get
42:47
to my website. And that's also my social media
42:51
handles at this hallowed wilderness. And we'll
42:54
link those as well. And if you want to avoid
42:57
your grief, don't hire Nyla. I want to avoid.
43:08
Not the one word. Excellent, excellent. We'll
43:15
be right back with rapid fire questions. And
43:19
we're back with rapid fire questions with Rose
43:22
and Nyla. Either one can go first. Philadelphia
43:25
art scene in one word. It's so expansive. That
43:31
seems to say nothing, but it does feel very...
43:36
Lovely. Worthy. That's good. It needs attention,
43:43
right? Yes. Yes. It needs love. Yes. I was gonna
43:47
say life support, but that seems dark. I love
43:50
Worthy. That's great. Yes. That's so sad. We
43:54
have such beautiful things. We just gotta take
43:56
care of them. Yeah. Right, Cheryl? Right there.
44:05
Just the width. Nice. Nice. And if you could
44:09
have seen any theater production in its original
44:13
iteration, what would it be? That's a rapid -fire
44:19
question. Sweeney Todd, Angel Lansbury. Oh my
44:25
god. Or Gypsy with Ethel Mervin. That came up
44:33
in the last episode! Chicago? Nice. The original
44:44
or the original revival? Oh, now it gets even.
44:48
The original original. Wow, damn. Lovely. I feel
44:52
like they had baby diapers in that. They had
44:55
a whole number of babies. Yeah, adult babies.
44:59
Yeah, fascinating. Thank you both again for sharing
45:03
your experience and your journeys today. Everyone
45:06
go and see Bearded Ladies Cabaret's Priority
45:09
Award. Thank you. What's good? What's good, Lou?
45:26
Fringe Fest all week, all month until the end
45:29
of the month. It is like Christmas in Hanukkah
45:32
for us. And solstice! Witchy! Ideas of Granger
45:37
with last week's guests Imani and Rain is running
45:41
through the 26th at Plays and Players Skinner
45:45
Studio. The adoption game with Rain as props
45:50
designer is running through the 27th at the Asian
45:53
Arts Initiative Black Box Theater. Paper Doll
45:57
Ensembles, Murdered Darlings is showing at Deep
46:01
End Studios on the 26th at 7 p .m. Spooky season
46:06
is upon us. Dolls, an ego -po classic theater
46:12
production at the Franklin Inn Club is closing
46:15
on the 27th. I'm ready for some practical magic.
46:18
How about you? Totes. Signing off. Billy has
46:22
heart. End art. you Thanks for tuning in to Philly
47:04
has Heart, your weekly cultural update. Until
47:07
next time, keep creating, keep connecting, and
47:10
remember, Philly has Heart.