{"id":208770,"date":"2026-06-02T20:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T20:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208770\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T20:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T20:54:13","slug":"martha-graham-cracker-beloved-philadelphia-drag-performer-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208770\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Graham Cracker, beloved Philadelphia drag performer, has died"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What an unfathomable loss this Pride season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Drag performer Dito van Reigersberg<\/a>, better known as Martha Graham Cracker<\/a>, has passed away at the age of 53. The actor suffered complications from a 2023 bone marrow transplant, which was part of his ongoing fight against cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am absolutely devastated to tell you that my sweetest and most generous and most talented friend Dito van Reigersberg aka Martha Graham Cracker has given her last bow (or is it curtsey?),\u201d Victor Fiorillo, senior reporter for Philly Mag, wrote last night on Facebook<\/a>. \u201cDito just died, surrounded by family and friends and music and an amazing medical team at Penn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Dito van Reigersberg\u2019s headshot (Photo by John C Hawthorne)<\/p>\n

Van Reigersberg leaves an undeniable mark on the Philadelphia performing arts community. Born in the Washington, D.C. area, he moved to the city after attending Swarthmore college. Van Reigersberg was a co-founder of Philadelphia\u2019s Pig Iron Theatre Company<\/a> in 1995 and starred in multiple productions throughout the years, earning various accolades and awards.<\/p>\n

\u201cDito was part of the very lifeblood of Pig Iron,\u201d said Dan Rothenberg, co-founder and co-artistic director of Pig Iron, in a statement. \u201cBack in the 90s, he said he wanted to make \u2019experimental theater with a heart.\u2019 So we did. And he carried the torch for that heart through all that we made together.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a review of Martha Graham Cracker\u2019s 8th anniversary show in 2013, WHYY News\u2019<\/a> Howard Shapiro called van Reigersberg a \u201cPhiladelphia institution\u201d and \u201cthe drag diva who croons and swoons, toys gleefully with an audience and is glorious in all her imperfection.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Martha Graham Cracker (center) with students from Paul Green Rock Academy in 2019 (File\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

The actor had a knack for \u201cbalancing two distinct but related professional lives,\u201d Shapiro said, \u201cone in platform high heels, purposely ill-fitting vinyl and an assortment of wigs, and another as a busy actor and teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn stage, Martha was all rock and roll, all joy, all comedy, very much David Bowie, very much a clown, very much an explosive personality,\u201d said Dustin Kidd, a friend and professor of sociology at Temple. \u201cOffstage, Dito was a tender-hearted friend, but also deeply passionate about fighting for the arts and fighting for the rights of artistic communities, queer communities, marginalized communities everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiorillo wrote a piece for Billy Penn<\/a> announcing van Reigersberg\u2019s leukemia diagnosis in 2022. While that illness forced the actor to take a hiatus, Martha Graham Cracker returned to the stage<\/a> in spring 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Van Reigersberg reflected on his cancer journey with Philly Mag<\/a> last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty scary to go from being a performer, having a great time and feeling good, and then suddenly my only job is working on getting rid of this leukemia,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t even know how to talk about that, exactly. It puts a lot of things in perspective. Like, \u2018okay, those are just shows. When I recover, I can do more shows.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a statement from Pig Iron<\/a>, Reigersberg had battled not one but two kinds of cancer since 2021, the second a rare blood cancer, which resulted in the bone marrow transplant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn January, complications from the transplant started to emerge,\u201d the theatre wrote. \u201cSince then, Dito has been in and out of the hospital, with fevers and low oxygen. His oncology team wasn\u2019t able to pinpoint what exactly caused all of this, but last week they landed on a diagnosis of graft-versus-host disease, a grave complication from some transplants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The author (on piano) and Dito van Reigersberg (on the floor) performing at L\u2019Etage as the Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret (File\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

Van Reigersberg was a strong advocate in Philadelphia\u2019s LGBTQ+ community, hosting drag performances and Pride concerts \u2014 adding his signature mix of sincerity and sass. He billed Martha Graham Cracker as \u201cthe world\u2019s tallest and hairiest drag queen,\u201d often with her shaggy legs and arms on full display.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe path of progress is never straight,\u201d van Reigersberg told an audience while hosting Philadelphia Orchestra\u2019s Pride Concert<\/a> last year. \u201cIt\u2019s gay. It\u2019s lesbian. It\u2019s bisexual \u2026 It\u2019s trans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pig Iron notes that \u201cIn lieu of flowers, you can send memories, poems, artwork, photos, videos, and messages to Dito\u2019s family at an email address we\u2019ve set up: lovefordito@pigiron.org<\/a>. His family will be able to view all of these when they feel ready.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. What an unfathomable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4877,91698,564,8987,91699,2252,69,71,70,1483],"class_list":["post-208770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-arts","tag-dito-van-reigersberg","tag-featured","tag-lgbtq","tag-martha-graham-cracker","tag-obituary","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}