Cabaret and Performance Arts:

(The Cosmopolitan Cabaret troupe 2004)

As a result of some initial performances at Club Wotever, I have become involved with Cabaret Wotever and other cabaret and performance arts related groups. After performing Gender Violence at the London "On All Fours" festival in April 2004, I was one of five performers who were asked to put together a show for the 2004 Stockholm Pride. We put together a feature length show incorporating all our individual performances and also new work that we started to do together.

(Cosmopolitan Cabaret, 30 July, 2004 at Stockholm Pride Picture (picture: Pavel Maira))

The event was a huge success and we were all bowled over by the response that has led to the launch of Cabaret Wotever, which puts on shows, workshops and club nights all around the world. In 2005 we performed in Warsaw at a club night organised by local promoters Kash and Lukas with Club Wotever. This was an absolutely magical experience on so many levels. The club night alone pulled in over 600 people and our work there with Kash and Lukas received huge amounts of national mainstream and queer press coverage.

(Front cover of the national Polish newspaper, Metropol)

We also played queer 'super-club' Smack regularly throughout 2005 which brings in a massive 900 people each time. In the summer of 2005 we very excited to play the fabulous Hackney Empire, a 1200 capacity London venue, with a newly expanded Cabaret Wotever for the Hackney Spice Festival. Another huge success, so much so that we we were back at the Hackney Empire twice in 2006 alone.

(The Wotever Cabaret troupe 2005)

(Wotever Empire reviewed in The Pink Paper)

The group has changed and morphed over the years, but we still continually to collectively plann many more shows in the UK and around the world. Click here for more information.

More Cabaret...

Since performing with the Cabaret Wotever group I have been getting more and more into doing different kinds of performance arts and cabaret style shows. This started with doing some short performances with Dyke Marilyn - with characters like Miss File and Penelope Precocious - but is blosoming into other kinds of performances. These cabaret and spoken word style performances have expanded since then and in 2006 I was able to put many of the pieces together in my first one-woman show. In 2007 I was honoured to be given the opportunity to put together my own cabaret-style show at Transfabulous 2007, "The Genderqueer Playhouse" (which was repeated and filmed in 2008), and my second one-woman show. These pereformances are now many and varied and I won't include all the details here, but some of them include:

"Miss File"

Miss File is a stern and repressed british psychologist in training who muses over her queer patients, and is clearly much more neurotic than any of them. She started out life as a character I suggested for a musical that Dyke Marilyn was writing. However, since then she has somewhat expanded out on her own. At first, I saw her as something of a purely comedic character but as I have performed her more and more, I have realised that though she can be comedic, she also has quite a serious side. I use her character as a way of demonstrating the masks that we wear as we try to perform ourselves in the social world. This can become quite personal and hopefully people can relate to what she is going through. I am very fond of Miss File, and I think one day she will "get it". I have performed her in large and small venues and will continue to write short pieces for her.

(Miss File, photo by Sam Nightingale)

Most often she performs lectures on many subjects relating to queer people, which she studies thoroughly but does not in any way identify as (oh no, she is not a raging queer filth-kitten). Of course she has been know to get carried away - for example when discussing the "evils" of burlesque (see some of the photos at the bottom of this page for the results). She has also recently been giving lectures alongside Professor Debonair on the subject of "boxes" (see picture).

(Miss File and Professor Debonair, at Agenda January 2007)

"Penelope Precocious"

Penelope, is in complete contrast to Miss File. She represents the most free girlish side of myself. Though she does get herself into heaps and heaps of trouble. She is thoroughly contrary. She will literally do the exact opposite of what she is told. Not in a mean way. Most often it is to get herself in as much (fun) trouble as possible. I have performed her a couple of times, most regularly with Dyke Marilyn (though in these instances, Dyke Marily plays a character called "Sadie Strap-it-on") but I am putting together some more short pieces with her soon. One involving young Penelope going for a ballet lesson.

"Being Me, Performing Myself"

In 2006 I wrote and performed a one-woman show for Stockholm Pride 2006. Combining performances and thoughts on the distinction between fact and fiction I presented this show as a reflection on performance and self. The show moves from my first nervous attempt to communicate something on stage through dance in 2004 to the freedom I now feel showing my queer trans(gendered) self in a multiplicity of ways on stage through all kinds of performances. The show is made up of 4 short performance pieces that I have done in the previous 3 years and in between I talk/perform in character and out of character (slipping between "fiction" and "reality"). I do this to show how these performances mirror my own life-journey and show the connections between "performance" and "everyday life" in general (how we are all performing gender through our lives). I change costumes, use song, dance, movement, comedy and spoken word, smoothly transitioning througout. The language and the performance is designed to be as accessible as possible to an international audience, relying less on the need for the audience to understand exactly what is said in all instances, but more on what is done and felt. The show went really well and I have recently performed it again at the first Queer Festival in Göteborg in 2007 at the ANSO Students for Transgender Conference in Århus, Denmark. Here are some photos from Anita Westin and Del Lagrace Volcano taken in Stockholm 2006.

(Miss File in Being Me, Performing Myself, 2006 - by Anita Westin

(Miss File in Being Me, Performing Myself, 2006 - by Del Lagrace Volcano)

"The Genderqueer Playhouse"

I was overjoyed to be asked to put together a show for Transfabulous 2007 which eventually got called The Genderqueer Playhouse and included the amazing performances by Jet, Jane, Jason, Ingo, Thomas, Jessica, and myself. It was an utter joy to do and I was so proud to be part of a production with so many close friends and amazing performers. It was the first time that I organised a show like that by myself, even though I have been in so many. We got a great response from a sell-out crowd and the show has moved on from there. We filmed "The Genderqueer Playhouse" in March 2008, now in postproduction. For more details ee film. The show is also being restaged for Stockholm Europride 2008.

(Performing at the Genderqueer Playhouse at Transfabulous 2007, photo by Alison Henry)

"How to be a happy trans femme lesbian in 28 easy years"

In 2007 I wrote my second one-person show, which was commissioned for Stockholm Pride 2007. It is based upon the inter-relation of sex, sexuality, romance and gender identity. Having a rather a specific identity i.e. being trans femme lesbian - I attempt to explore the ways in which the issues that I have faced becoming one are common to everyone. I try to show that in a fun and hopefully interesting way with song, dance and spoken word and more. Here's the official blurb:

"Josephine Wilson attempts to answer the universal question that equalises all peoples, 'how to be happy trans femme lesbian'. She presents her own answer here, arguing that in 28 simple years, one can easily become a happy, contented, well-adjusted trans-femme-lesbian.

Using song, dance, and spoken word (in a fun way) Josephine talks through the issues of a fluid gender sexual identity. She covers all the important topics, like sex, romance and... well,... sex, to show that these issues trans-lesbian-femme-inity are more universal than they first appear."

(Performing "How to be a happy..." 2007 - by AbsolutQueer)