{"id":224812,"date":"2026-06-22T09:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224812\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T09:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:23:07","slug":"bearded-ladies-holds-the-legacy-of-philadelphias-queer-cabaret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224812\/","title":{"rendered":"Bearded Ladies holds the legacy of Philadelphia\u2019s queer cabaret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>Bearded Ladies Cabaret is turning its closet inside out for an art installation about grief and loss.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPriority Hoarding\u201d 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.\n<\/p>\n<p>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.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love cardboard. It is utterly transformative and always cardboard, all at the same time,\u201d she said. \u201cMy gender is a bit like cardboard. It\u2019s always true to itself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca Kanach, co-founder and the resident costume designer, said she has learned to love cardboard the hard way.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRebecca has the burns, the cuts, the pokes,\u201d Jarboe said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe joke that every show I\u2019ve been to the ER,\u201d Kanach said.\n<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cBeards are for Shaving,\u201d a cardboard iceberg that skated into the \u201cBeards on Ice\u201d capade, and a cardboard toilet seat that was once worn around the neck of the late Dito van Reigersberg, aka Martha Graham Cracker.<br \/>\n<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-744584\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-06-12-e-lee-rose-jarboe-philadelphia-superior-moving-and-storage-stored-props-for-priority-hoar.jpeg\" alt=\"Rose Jarboe of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret tries on the cardboard toilet\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\"  \/>Rose Jarboe of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret tries on the cardboard toilet used in \u201dMy Dinner with Dito: A How to be Gay Cabaret.\u201d (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt may look cheap, but it takes a lot of effort,\u201d Jarboe said. \u201cWhat is it that Dolly Parton says? \u2018It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPriority Hoarding\u201d 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.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[85550,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-224812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-bearded-ladies-cabaret","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224812","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=224812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}