THE PAGEANT Opens at Comedy Republic Next Month

Backcomb that big hair, glue on the giant lashes and prepare to snatch that crown! Your hosts Victoria Beauvoir and Roger Seahorse are on a mission to bring children's beauty pageants to every Australian town and Melbourne - it's your turn.

The Pageant is "the beauty pageant to end all beauty pageants" and is a pageant celebrating the power of pageantry because if there's one thing former pageant darling Victoria Beauvoir knows, there's no such thing as too much pageantry. Victoria is joined by her long-term devotee Roger Seahorse in this children's beauty pageant that is most definitely not for children.

Presenting at Melbourne's newest and hottest comedy venue Comedy Republic, comedians The Beryls - aka Laura Trenerry and Patrick Dwyer - present this narratively driven, immersive sketch show that casts the audience as contestants and pushy showbiz parents as they satirise the superficiality of beauty standards. Leave your name, age and gender identity at the door because The Pageant is a world unto itself.

Creators and performers Trenerry, from award-winning comedy trio The Travelling Sisters, and Dwyer, a mainstage theatre actor, have been working behind the scenes with Travelling Sister Ell Sachs as co-devisor and director Kimberley Twiner, from award winning, physically based queer comedy troupe PO PO MO CO and The Wholesome Hour (recent winners of a Green Room award), to bring this twisted tale about beauty, devotion and fighting for your dreams to the stage.

Trained in clowning in Paris at the prestigious Ecole Philippe Gaulier, as part of The Travelling Sisters Trenerry has been touring to critical acclaim and sold out houses since they formed in 2014. Hailed as "geniuses of sketch comedy" they have a galaxy of five and four star reviews which they routinely collect when performing nationally and internationally. At the 2017 Melbourne Fringe they won both Best Comedy and the New Zealand Fringe Tour Ready Award, and that same year were nominated for Best Newcomer at Melbourne International Comedy Festival. They were also finalists at Funny Women Awards UK in 2016, nominated for Outstanding Ensemble New Zealand Fringe 2018 and in 2019 were again nominated for Best Comedy at Melbourne Fringe. They recently won Best International Web Series at the Dublin International Comedy Film Festival for their series Meet the Mullets.

"I always feel most comfortable when I'm playing a skittish, creepy middle aged man. This show is a dream come true," quips Trenerry, who met Dwyer when they were both studying theatre at the University of Southern Queensland. Since then, Patrick has performed in mainstage theatre productions for Queensland Theatre Company, DeBase Theatre, Metro Arts and at Laboite Indie and at Woodford Folk Festival. "I'm basically living out my unfulfilled fantasies of being a pageant queen," he says of his role as Victoria Beauvoir.

Performances run 7pm Friday 27th & Saturday 28th August 2021.

Tickets: $20 - $25 from comedyrepublic.com.au

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