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Bearded Ladies Cabaret is turning its closet inside out for an art installation about grief and loss.
“Priority Hoarding” will repurpose a mountain of old props and costumes to explore emotional baggage, lost cultural memory and the scars of theater life. The immersive installation will open this fall at 444 N. Third Street during the Fringe Festival and remain until the end of the year.
In its 16 years of theater-making, the company and its founder, Rose Jarboe, have created 30 original productions. Many have been on a shoestring budget, with the company making liberal use of cardboard to create costumes and sets.
“I love cardboard. It is utterly transformative and always cardboard, all at the same time,” she said. “My gender is a bit like cardboard. It’s always true to itself.”
Rebecca Kanach, co-founder and the resident costume designer, said she has learned to love cardboard the hard way.
“Rebecca has the burns, the cuts, the pokes,” Jarboe said.
“We joke that every show I’ve been to the ER,” Kanach said.
Jarboe said she and the company throw nothing away. Today, nine units in a self-storage facility in Northeast Philadelphia are filled with artifacts of queer theater: A cardboard sword wielded by an anachronistic Joan of Arc for a Bastille Day celebration, a cardboard shark that menaced the genderbending 007 spoof “Beards are for Shaving,” a cardboard iceberg that skated into the “Beards on Ice” capade, and a cardboard toilet seat that was once worn around the neck of the late Dito van Reigersberg, aka Martha Graham Cracker.
Rose Jarboe of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret tries on the cardboard toilet used in ”My Dinner with Dito: A How to be Gay Cabaret.” (Emma Lee/WHYY)
“It may look cheap, but it takes a lot of effort,” Jarboe said. “What is it that Dolly Parton says? ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.’”
“Priority Hoarding” is planned as a makeshift airport terminal for the fictitious company Receding Airlines that audience members enter to discover luggage filled with objects from old Bearded Ladies shows. Many objects will have QR codes that link audience members to audio and video testimonials from Bearded Ladies performers and creative partners.