Queer Performance Arts and Drag (QPAD) Summit

Belfast, Maine/eastern Wabanaki territory

Registration for the May 4th summit is now open!

Join us to explore the intersections of performance art and drag and our rural LGBTQ+ experiences! Summits are places to gather in community, (re)connect with and actively queer rural traditions, build relationships and trust among other rural and small town LGBTQ+ people, celebrate & grieve together, and create a roadmap to move us closer to our collectively liberated and joyful futures. Folks from any rural community or small town are welcome to join us.

Drag and performance art are tools for expanding our understandings of gender and gender expression. Playgrounds of costume and authenticity. Liberation from societal standards and expectations of the gender binary and beauty stereotypes. Drag and performance arts are for everybody, but especially queer bodies.

Summit sessions are spaces to vent, strategize, connect, build, reflect, think, experience, and make. We encourage participants to bring in to all of these sessions thoughts, questions, and strategies connected to struggles for justice against racism, classism, misogyny, incarceration, police brutality, ableism, fascism, transphobia, and other oppressions. If you want to offer a session at this summit, there is space for you to share about your idea or offering in the registration form.

The doors will open on Saturday May 4 at 9am, and we will wrap up at 6:30pm. Please plan to arrive early to account for taking a rapid COVID test that will take 30 mins to read results from.

Tickets are sliding scale $0 - $30, which is determined by access rather than a “pay what you want” model. Please consider contributing more if you have benefited from systemic privileges like race or gender. Financial constraints will not prevent anyone from participating. We want to see you there!

Registration includes: rapid COVID testing, masks, light breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack.

Tickets for the Summit are $0 -$30, and tickets for the drag show are $25 (with several no cost tickets available, reach out to us for the coupon code!). Tickets for each event must be purchased separately.

DRAFT SCHEDULE | Saturday May 4, 2024

We’ll continue adding details here as we have them.

9:00AM: Doors Open!, COVID testing, Light breakfast (provided)

10:00AM: Opening Gathering

10:30AM-12:00PM: Session 1

  • History of Drag (presented by Curbside Queens)

  • Curbside Queens values the importance of learning history before getting on stage. As a brief perspective on the scope of the art, Drag has been documented in the United States since the late 1800s in Washington D.C. Over the years, Drag has been used as a vessel for social justice work, for community emotional processing (joy, grief, etc), and for political change. As queer people today learning about those moments of history can help us honor and further the work started by those previous artists. Owner Gigi Gabor teamed with Professor Theo Greene to bring Drag 101: History, Culture, Impact to provide a base for in-depth learning and experience with this art form.

    12:00-1:00PM: Lunch (provided)

1:15-3:15PM: Session 2

  • Making tassels, pasties, and other fun DIY crafting

  • Puppet making and production with Willow

  • Join Willow for a make and take workshop, producing two puppets you can take home with you. This is a unique opportunity to explore character development, influenced by drag and burlesque exploration in the form of puppetry. Willow will lead the group through a simple hand puppet making process. First you will learn the technique, using a sock, newspaper and tape.  With the second puppet folks will be encouraged to think of a specific character or scene they want to explore and build the puppet with that intention.  Think of this as a small scale prototype of the burlesque persona of your dreams. We will have appropriate accouchement, feathers, sequence, hat making material, tassels and teasers and more. 

    This workshop also offers the opportunity to perform a work in progress and development. Come with your visions, Willow will share some techniques and tips on how to make props and costumes out of simple found materials like cardboard and paper mache, staples and tape. She will also teach the art of performance through a puppeteers lense. How do we enhance our presence and create the scene needed to bring life to our character on stage? 

  • Liberate Your Performance: Yoga Nidra for Queer Expression With Mea Starr Tavares

  • Yoga Nidra translates to “yogic sleep”. It is a meditative practice, practiced laying or sitting in complete relaxation, which supports us in consciously touching the held beliefs and restrictions that exist within the subconscious layers of ourselves.

    As Queers, as performers, as people expressing our true natures in the world, we all were given stories and beliefs from the intersectionality oppressive structures which we have navigated our entire lives. In performance, we have a vehicle to transform, to express, to create, to actively challenge, and to transcend these stories that restrict our bodies and dim our voices. Yoga Nidra can help us to release held beliefs and restrictive stories that limit the radical (to the root) expressions of ourselves, in celebration and liberation.

    The flow of this workshop will be a container to explore, gently, the barriers to performance and self expression that we carry, to practice transformation, release, and a meeting of our original essence through Yoga Nidra, and then to come back to integration and expression in a space of celebratory witness.

    Access notes: Please bring a yoga mat or something comfortable to lay down on, and any props that support your comfort and relaxation. (Pillows, blankets). If you process through writing, you are invited to bring a journal! Yoga Nidra is a withdrawal of the senses practice that uses auditory cues to move through meditative states. I am in an emergent collaboration with another community member fluent in ASL to develop a Yoga Nidra practice for members of the Deaf community, however, we have not completed that practice. If you are hard of hearing, we are able to arrange the room such that folks who need louder cues can be closer. Being a withdrawal of the senses practice, and a practice that lightly explores aspects of our psyches, it is formally suggested that folks assess whether or not this is supportive for their mental health, understanding their own balance best. The only experience that Yoga Nidra is specifically contraindicated for is for people who experience Dissociative Identities. We will have a space holder in the room available for if anyone needs to come out of the practice early, and, as a bodyworker I have been trained in trauma-informed practices. OITO also will have space holders available throughout the day as a general offering for the summit.

  • Movement exploration facilitated by Curbside Queens

  • Open topic(s): Is there something other than these topics you’d like to explore/talk about/do together? Propose it the day of the Summit or ahead of time! We can provide group facilitation tips if that is supportive to you.

3:15-3:45PM: Break, Snack time (provided)

4:00-5:30PM: Session 3

  • Develop your burlesque persona with Angelina Le Fay

  • The strongest performers bring a powerful sense of self to everything they do. This workshop is for new and experienced performers who want to identify what makes them stand out. Together we will brainstorm how your interests and personality can come together to create a unique and memorable persona. Performers will leave with ideas for a tagline and future acts.

  • Deconstructing Debutantes- Queer iconography and protest aesthetics with Willoughby

  • In this freeform crafting workshop, participants are invited to collaborate with Willoughby Lucas Hastings in appropriating and subverting visual elements of the Debutante Ball tradition through the incorporation of queer iconography and protest aesthetics. Participants will have the opportunity to create and decorate paper fans, an object that has strong connections to Debutante and Cotillion Balls but equally queer activism and drag performance. In addition, thematically relevant coloring book pages will be available to those interested in contributing their vision or voice to imagining a better future or new ways of performing self-expression. Finally, Hastings will have a small offering of embroidery hoops prepared with line drawings of historically queer-coded subjects and a written description of their meaning in context for participants to stitch. Participants are welcome to take their creations with them or donate them to an an archive that will be exhibited as part of a larger social practice art piece in 2025.

  • Performing under capitalism with Gigi Gabor

  • Open Topic(s)

6-6:30PM: Closing Gathering

GENERAL INFORMATION

Financial accessibility

  • Transportation stipends are available upon request.

  • Childcare is available on site- let us know in the registration form the age of the child and time frame you will need care.

  • No one will be turned away for lack of funds at this event— please reach out for a discount code to register at no cost.

Information about COVID layered protections

  • There will be rapid testing onsite, and you will be asked to test upon arrival.

  • Please plan to arrive between 9 & 9:30am so your results are ready before the event starts at 10:00am.

  • Masks will be required indoors, and we will have KN95 masks available.

Information about summit session locations

These locations are no more than .3 miles apart (around a 10-15 minute walk). There is a hill from the main location down to auxiliary locations.

Other information to note

  • In the spirit of paying a land tax, and because Out in the Open is not currently housed on a specific location in eastern Wabanaki territory/Maine, 10% of the budget for this gathering will be a donation to a local indigenous-led organization working on land rematriation.

  • This event has largely been dreamed up by a small volunteer team, with support from Out in the Open staff. If you would like to volunteer during the Summit or to help carry out future events, let us know!

  • Can’t make it but want to support this event? Consider paying a ticket forward as a donation and to support our cache of no-cost tickets, travel stipends, and overall effort to keep this event accessible to all!

Questions? Want to volunteer to help out on May 4th?

Email Jace: Jace@WeAreOutintheOpen.org