Since Trump took office in January, arts organizations that support queer and trans artists have faced political backlash and funding cuts.
But in Rose Jarboe’s world, it ain’t over till the bearded lady sings.
Jarboe is the founding artistic director of the performance company Bearded Ladies Cabaret, which has been a haven for queer artistic performance in Philadelphia for the past 15 years. BLC puts on original performances of varying formats, fostering an intimate connection with their audience, showcasing the work of queer artists in the city. However, making queer-centered art in the United States has become increasingly tenuous under the Trump administration.
In Philadelphia, small theater organizations such as PlayPenn, Wilma Theater, and Theatre Exile were hit hard after the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) rescinded tens of thousands of dollars in grants that were going toward conferences and original plays. The NEA has stated that previous grant agreements that “fall outside of the President’s priorities” would not be honored.
But for queer and trans theatre companies like the Beaded Ladies, [double burden of dealing with funding for arts being slashes AND being attacked for queer/trans stuff}. This March, the NEA tried placing grant restrictions on queer and trans related art. Grant applicants had to agree to not promote “gender ideology” in their applications. The ACLU sued the NEA, and a judge overturned the restriction.
Philadelphia Neighborhoods sat down with Jarboe to learn more about her experience making queer art in a tense political climate.
Q: Tell me about your journey as an artist, from childhood to young adulthood to now.
A: I got really enamored with singing and theater when I was in middle and high school, and as a continually budding queer person, that was where the freaks were. I went to college for theater and English, then I moved to Philadelphia and did a bunch of musical theater and mediocre Shakespeare. I didn’t really think of myself as an artist, I thought of myself as a craftsperson. I was serving other people’s vision and trying to be good at interpreting text or stepping into some other directorial world and pleasing people. Then, someone gave me an opportunity to do a cabaret at the Media Theatre. Once I stepped into that form, I started feeling a kind of agency that I hadn’t felt before; an agency to create. In 2010, I started the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, which was just a bunch of other trans folks and queer-dos that were hiding in plain sight. Art has been a means all along of finding the right people, and the work of play is an excuse to be together and feel a sense of belonging.
Q: What’s it like being an artist in Philly specifically? What’s unique about it?
A: I feel like you go to a city where it’s harder to make your living and you see people work more individually, like New York or London. But in a city like Berlin or Philadelphia, you get more group work and group thinking. Philly’s big enough to have resources but small enough that you feel like you know everyone. At least in the theater world, there’s a benefit to that in terms of it feeling less like a sector and more like a community.
Photo Credit: Christopher Ash, Courtesy of: Rose Jarboe
Q: What do you hope to achieve with your personal artistic work?
A: People suggest that queer and trans people are trying to convert other people. I am actively trying to convert. I am trying to convert your parents, your children, everyone in your family. I’m coming after all of them and trying to convert them into some sense of self-love, no matter how they identify. That’s basically what I’m trying to do is create spaces of love and abundance. In a time like this, I want you to come to a Bearded Ladies or Rose Jarboe piece and come out thinking, ‘God, it’s amazing being queer! They’re so fabulous!’
Q: How has it been creating queer art in a time when the queer community is under attack in this country?
A: It’s horrifying, and the rhetoric and behavior is hateful, and the worst thing about it is how boring it is. For me, it is very much a dance between earnestness and irony and trying to find heart and also armor. How much drag do I put on today to protect myself versus how much softness can I show? How can we create spaces that have the appropriate amount of armor so that everyone can feel soft inside?
Photo Credit: Christopher Ash, Courtesy of: Rose Jarboe
Q: How do you feel about the funding cuts to the arts? Have they affected Bearded Ladies?
A: They have affected us. We were supposed to go to New Zealand in February, and then we received an email that said, ‘You got the grant, but we didn’t get the money from the government so you can’t have the grant.’ It’s directly affected our budget and our calendar. Philly’s a really interesting city because there’s abundant art funding in certain ways, and we have some amazing organizations that support artists. At the same time, the city gives so little support and money to the arts, it’s shameful. But if you were in New York or a different city, a lot of taxes on tourism, like the hotel tax, go directly into funding the arts, and in Philly, they don’t. At all. So that’s an issue.
Q: If the Philly arts community could look like anything you wanted it to be, what would it look like?
A: I wish everyone was paid a living wage, given healthcare, and trusted at all levels of the arts practice. You need artists at all levels of their career and their success to make an arts ecosystem, so I would love for us to be supported and trusted. I wish that we had some Act Up energy from the early AIDS crisis. I want us to be out on the streets more. I want us to be using our creativity not just for things that serve ourselves but things that are going to serve activists or organizers. How can we use our creative juices for fighting fascism right now? It’s dire work.
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