For more current info visit Queer Spoken Word
Sept-Oct 2002:
A gang of San Francisco performers and writers
are about to invade the United States...
---
Strombolli's Island of Donkeys and Dolls is a performance cabaret tour
combining spoken word, the ancient art of clowning, and explosive hip hop for
a wondrous evening that will tug your heart through its full range of
emotions, leaving you quite dazzled and inspired! Tales of daily struggle are
lifted to myths of empowerment! Tranny clowns emerge to take you on a journey
through the mysteries of gender! Visual eye candy tickle your eyeballs while
your brain giggles and ponders and cracks open in glee! Booming electric
hip-hop send shock waves through your nervous system, until the only thing
left to do is dance!
Inspired by the diabolical sideshow creep of Pinnochio lore, Strombolli's
Island of Donkeys and Dolls is a celebration of freaks and misfits, underdogs
and tomcats, outsiders and infiltrators. Some performers are queer--some
aren't! Some performers are girls, some boys, some both! Truly something for
everyone!
"Who are these Donkeys and Dolls?"
Morty Diamond is a tranny clown who as performed and toured with Circus
Ridikulous. He is responsible for the creation of many San Francisco
nightclubs catering to freaks and misfits, noteably the The Cud Club, and the
tranny dance party Pink Pony. He is currently editing an anthology about
transgendered experiences of. He is very handsome.
The End of the World is a queer/trans hip-hop duo featuring MC Katastrophe
and MC STD. Katastrophe (Rocco Kayiatos) toured the US multiple times with
Sister Spit as the youth slam poet Kassy Kayiatos. He has been published in
the lit. mag Zzyzzyva, writes frequantly for the YO! Youth Outlook magazine,
and was prominently featured in the recent documentary Poetic License, which
was premiered on PBS and received attention from magazines as diverse as
Seventeen, Vibe, and the Atlantic Monthly. MC STD (Something Totally Deep),
aside being a killer MC and responsible for producing The End of the World's
amazing beats, also rocks in the death metal bands Bottled Og and Burmese,
and has toured the US repeatedly with both bands. The End of the World's song
CandyAss was used as the theme song for the dyke porn flick Sugar High
Glitter City, and was nominated by the porn industry standard Adult Video
News as Best Soundtrack. Alas, the duo lost to Snoop Dogg!
The End Of The World
Tara Jepsen is a writer and performance artist who has toured repeatedly with
Sister Spit, and recently hit the US again as part of the Doctor Frockrocket
Medicine Show, which opened Boston's 2001 Fringe Festival. With Beth Lisick,
Tara created the hilarious short film Fumbling Towards Rock: The Miriam and
Helen Story, which premiered at this year's Frameline Gay and Lesbian Film
Festival. Her one-woman show Turtle Heart, a blend of monlogue, side
photography, performance and live music, was amazing. She has self-produced
many zines and chapbooks of her own writings. With Tribe8's Lynn Breedlove
she hosts K'Vetch, san Francisco's longest-running queer open mic event. Tara
is currently working on a second film collaboration with Beth Lisick, a road
movie entitled Rusty Citation.
Tara will be with the Strombolli tour from September 5th through September
28th.
Ricky Lee is a displaced midwestern poet whose sad, hilarious, working-class
alcoholic butch poetry is in the vein of Charles Bukowski, if the man had had
a social consciousness. She is a frequent performer at bay area spoken word
events. Ricky's film Butch Girls, Resevoir Dykes and Faggot Whores screened
at film festivals worldwide. She is presently at work on Hella Ho's--a video
of The End of the World.
Ali Liebegott's poetry walks the line between giddy delirium and
heart-sopping melancholy, and has appeared in truckloads of jounrnals and
antologies, including Zzyzzyva, and Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay
and Lesbian San Francisco (Manic d Press). She has received a New York
Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and toured the country twice
with Sister Spit's Ramblin' Road Show. She is the author of four
self-published poetry and prose chapbooks, and is currently finishing a novel
The IHOP Papers, and an illustrated comic, The Crumb People. She is obsessed
with feeding the ducks, and resides in Providence, R.I., where she teaches
ESL.
Ali will be with the Strombolli tour September 21st throughout October.
Bucky Sinister is the former host of San Francisco's weekly Chameleon open
mic events, infamous for being the poetry reading where poets are most likely
to break chairs over each others' heads and become arrested by the police. A
gentle giant, Bucky is the author of the poetry and short story collections
King of the Roadkill, and the illustrated Tragedy and Boubon. He is included
in the comprehensive anthology The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and
Concrete Dreams, a grouping of writings from the early years of the indie
Manic d Press.
Michelle Tea's first novel, The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption
of One Girl in America, was published on the tiny, cult-hero press
Semiotext(e). Her second, Valencia, won a Lambda Literary Award for Best
Lesbian Fiction, and was selected by The Village Voice as one of the top 25
books of 2000. Her third book, The Chelsea Whistle, will be published in
conjunction with the Strombolli tour. With performance poet Sini Anderson she
created the legendary Sister Spit tours, and in 2000 she worked with
author/filmmaker Shar Rednour to bring The Wasted Motel Tour across America.
Michelle writes for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Girlfriends Magazine, On
Our Back, and Nerve.com. She is an honorary grand marshall of San Francisco's
2002 Pride celebrations. That's how gay she is.
---
SEPTEMBER
1--SF
Kimo's
8pm (?)
$5
2--Sacramento
Espresso Metro
1100 K St
8pm $5
3--Eugene, OR
Sam Bond's Bar
90% sure of this, if not we have backup
4--Portland, OR
Reed College
5--Portland, OR
The Meow Meow
all ages
527 SE Pine
9pm $5
7--Olympia, WA
Limelight
w/Spider
8--Seattle, WA
Rainier Valley Cultural Center
8pm $7.00
9--Missoula, MT
Jay's Upstairs
9pm $5
w/Poetry is for Sissies
10--Driving day, go to Wall Drug, see the badlands . . .
11--Minneapolis, MN
Bedlam
514 1/2 Cedar Ave. S.
w/Greg Gillam
12--Madison, WI
A Room of One's Own
8:30 $5
w/Greg Gillam
13--Milwaukee, WI
might now happen, can anyone help?
14--Ann Arbor, MI
Neutral Zone
all ages
w/ a couple of youth punky girl bands maybe + Greg
15 & 16--Columbia, Missouri
University of Missouri
15-6pm Gender Workshop
8pm show at Ragtag Cinema Cafe
10pm show at Ragtag Cinema Cafe
16--10am gender workshops
3pm--booksigning for Michelle & Bucky
4pm--gender workshops
6pm--dinner
9pm--campus coffeehouse
17--Chicago, IL
Hothouse
13 E Balbo
18+ 9pm $10
w/Greg & Nomy Lamm
18--Champaigne, IL
Ruby's
207 W. Clark
8pm $5
w/Greg
19--Detroit, MI
Trumball Theater
4210 Trumball Ave.
20--Buffalo, NY
Soundlab
505 Pearl St.
21--Boston, MA
Hollywood Ktv/Ecko Lounge
7:30
w/Sara Seinberg & Peter Pizzi
22--off
23--TBA
24--Easthampton, MA
Flywheel
2 Holyoke St.
8pm $5
w/Dani
25--off
26--Providence, RI
Monohassett Mill City
532 Kinsley Ave.
7pm/9:30pm
w/Anna Joy Springer & Laura Mulley
27--NYC
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery Club
7pm $5
28--NYC
Meow Mix
29--Chapel Hill, NC
Hillsborough Road Co-op
Free, Late
w/malaina poore
30--Chapel Hill, NC
University of North Carolina
OCTOBER
1--Atlanta, GA
TBA
2--Gainesville, FL
TBA
3--day off, disneyworld
4--Orlando, FL
Will's Pub
1850 N Mills Ave.
$5 9pm/10pm
5--day off
6--Tallahassee, FL
TBA
7--Pensacola, FL
Subterrean
8--New Orleans
Mermaid Lounge
9--off
10--Austin, TX
Club 7-10
$5 9pm/10pm
w/Kings and Things
11--off
12--Sante Fe
3pm--Plan B
8pm--Bar B
13--Albuquerque, NM
The Pulse
14--off
15--Tucson, AZ
University of Arizona
16--Tucson, AZ
Vaudeville Cabaret
8/9pm $5
17--Claremont, CA
Claremont Colleges
18--Las Vegas, NV
Double Down Saloon
19--off
20--off
21--Los Angeles, CA
Milk
22--off
23--Santa Cruz
TBA