Vital Matters to Present A QUEER CLIMATE CABARET & More

Vital Matters, an interdisciplinary laboratory for change that has been producing events at the intersection of the arts, climate change, and environmental and social justice since 2021, brings you A Queer Climate Cabaret, on October 17th at Creative Alliance. The cabaret is a culmination of a series of gatherings, workshops, and a book talk, and takes place two weeks before the general election. The event offers a refreshing alternative to black and white political stances and limiting narratives about how change happens. It offers creative, unlikely cross-pollinations between climate, queerness, and performance and reimagines drag as an interspecies affair. Performers invite you to a KiKi with kin you didn't know you had, to join a rare kind of "Crabeoke" inspired by the 400,000-million-year history of the horseshoe crab, to enjoy a specially commissioned performance that brings a queer lens to the Maryland Climate Plan, and much more!

Pretty Rik E. and Chris Jay of Pretty Boi Drag (www.prettyboidrag.com) emcee this event, whose lineup includes dance, theater, performance art, drag, poetry/spoken word, and burlesque. Featuring works and acts by: Jacob Budenz, Unique Robinson, Michele Minnick, Jacob Marrero, Nigel Semaj, Susan McCully, Bao Nguyen, Laurie Rollins Anderson, Lady Bladie, Hairy Poodini, Nicola Uatuva, and special guest Eli Nixon. An art mart before the show features local queer artists and craftspeople. Local environmental, climate, voting, and lgbtqia+ organizations will share information about how to help get out the vote in swing states and other actions. Doors open at 5:30 for the Art Mart. The show begins at 7 p.m. and will be ASL interpreted. Creative Alliance is a fully accessible facility. The bar will be open. The show and related events are supported by grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and Maryland Climate Partners.

Why a Queer Climate Cabaret? The increasing threat and devastation of climate change and the rising homophobic and transphobic violence in various states across the country have common historical roots in colonial, gendered, racialized violence. Our ability to thrive as a species depends upon our ability to engage with all expressions of gender and sexuality, and with difference, in ourselves and in the more-than-human world. From a queer ecology perspective, queer, transgender, and nonbinary points of view are essential to understanding how ecology and the natural world (including humans!) actually work. This cabaret offers ways of seeing, being and doing that are vital as we navigate the ever greater challenges presented by the climate crisis.

Vital Matters offers three primary kinds of programming: events and gatherings, artistic projects, and educational programming, that connect the global to the local, the personal to the political, and imagination to practical, everyday reality. Since 2021, it has been bringing people together to think, feel, and talk about climate change and environmental justice issues. Events have featured such Baltimore luminaries as Dr. Lawrence Brown, Sanahara Ama Chandra, Jordan Bethea, Valeska Populoh, and others, and collaborations with networks and organizations such as Baltimore Just Transition, Blue Water Baltimore, South Baltimore Community Land Trust, and others.

This year, Vital Matters launches its community educational programming through a three-part Queer Climate Workshop Series and book talk, facilitated by artists performing in the Cabaret. The series began with a "Drag King 101" workshop led by Pretty Boi Drag on September 7th. Up next (all events have ASL interpretation):

September 28: Writing with the Elements with Jake Budenz

Participants will gather in the green space behind Ivy Bookshop to consider how creative writing can engage self, climate, environment, and to respond to some writing prompts and share writing around a fire.

October 2: A Book Talk with Eli Nixon:

Bloodtide, A New Holiday in Homage to Horseshoe Crabs, co-produced and hosted with the Ecological Design Collective. Visit their website's event page to reserve tickets! Part of Books for the Future, a series Vital Matters launched this year that invites people to engage with key texts that can help map our ideas about change, and give us concrete tools to shape it. It began with Octavia Butler's parable books, laying the ground with the idea of Shaping Change. Bloodtide is a manual for community building, art-making and more.

October 19: Climate, Queerness, and Performance 101:

This final workshop will give participants the opportunity to explore their relationship to climate via creative and embodied means. Michele Minnick will open the workshop with ecosomatics practices in Patterson Park, Jacob Marrero will share strategies to combine drag performance with queer ecological ideas,andlead participants in a print-making exercise resulting in take-home art. Nigel Semaj will round out the workshop by sharing sustainable theater practices, and a devising exercise that integrates elements from the day.

In addition, Vital Matters founder Michele Minnick is working with Valeska Populoh, students, and other faculty in MICA's new Ecosystems, Sustainability and Justice program. The day of the Cabaret, ESJ and Vital Matters will host a day of conversations and workshops that explore the role of cultural workers active at the intersections of art, design, ecology and justice at NomuNomu. In the afternoon, Eli Nixon will host a workshop for this cohort to explore "NatureDrag" and experimental, collaborative play as a pathway to greater empathy and connection to each other and the living land around us.

This year, ASL Interpreter and mentor of ASL students at CCBC, Renuka Purimetla, and puppet artist, theater designer, co-producer of past Vital Matters events, and student of ASL interpreting, Jess Rassp, have been working to make Vital Matters' connection to the deaf and ASL community more meaningful. Purimetla says: "When I had the opportunity to provide language access to the Deaf community for Winter Seeds (2021), I was blown away with how much I learned about climate change! I was moved by theater's storytelling ability, and saw how it allowed the audience to share honest care, concerns and opinions while creating empathy. I believe we can do better for Mother Earth individually and collectively and that people can learn more through [these events] than I have seen with politics or in a class!" Rassp has been using Vital Matters' events as a unique model for interpreters in training.

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