Unbounded: THEYFRIEND Closing Party
Hosted by: LOTUS BOY
DJs: Lonald J. Bandz & Vin Seaman
Live Performances by: Trashy, Papi Churro, & theyfriend
View Festival Program
November 19, 2022 (Saturday)
9:00pm at El Rio
$15 early bird | $20 general admission
About the Event
Celebrate the closing night of the 2022 THEYFRIEND Nonbinary Festival with exciting, interdisciplinary performances by musician theyfriend, and local drag artists Trashy and Papi Churro! Hosted by 2021 THEYFRIEND Featured Artist and local drag king LOTUS BOY, the evening is sure to be full of nonbinary magic, celebration, and creation. Show up in your best look and don’t forget to bring cash to tip your performers!
This event is made possible with support from the California Arts Council, and is presented in partnership with KQED Live, and Intersection for the Arts as part of the Intersect SF Series (supported with funds from Grants for the Arts).
ACCESSIBILITY: To request live ASL interpretation, please email kiana@diamond-wave.org by November 10. El Rio’s entrance and most of the club is wheelchair accessible including the back deck but not the yard. There are high lips on doorways out to the patio.
BATHROOMS: 3 gender neutral single stall bathrooms, and one bathroom with 2 urinals. Two of our bathrooms are located off a narrow hallway (with a 22” entry), those bathrooms are both 6’x4.5’, with doorways that measure 21.5”. The easier to access bathroom in the front hall is 5’x5’, with a 25” wide doorway. All bathrooms with toilets have about 2 feet of clearance between the toilet and the wall/door, and they all have grab bars installed next to the toilets. The bathroom with two urinals is 5’x5’ with a doorway that measures 26”, with 3 feet of clearance between the wall/door and the urinals, it has no grab bars at this time. Bathrooms may not be accessible without assistance.
COVID: Vaccination not required to enter the bar, but required to enter the side room (where the event is), Masking STRONGLY encouraged. Participating artists/hosts/staff are COVID tested before the event
About the Artists
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Trashy is a non-binary swamp cutie who is on the quest of scaring the straights one layer at a time. They bring in an element of character work and theatre immersion in their drag. A tornado of chaos, Trashy is always sweaty, always hungry and WILL have you begging for more.
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As a Drag King, Papi Churro, I've performed for over six years. I've participated in Bushwig, Oaklash, Chico Pride, Redding Pride, Austin Pride, Texas Queerlesque Festival, San Antonio Burlesque Festival, Texas Burlesque Festival, Austin International Drag Festival as a headliner and Weaving Spirits Festival. I've been a featured Drag Artist for Tufts University and performed in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Boston, New York City, Brooklyn, Humboldt County, Redding, Chico and the Bay Area. I've also produced shows for over 5 years shows including: Divinas, Joterias, Toybox Austin, and Boyz of Austin. As Jinxy Deviate, I've performed Burlesque for over five years and I am the founder of Bizarre Stripper Burlesque, Austin's Premier All Trans Burlesque Troupe.
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theyfriend embraces the trans and nonbinary heritage of electronica and vaporwave through their ethereal and optimistic electronica songs. theyfriend has found success as a lofi artist, growing an underground following of video game lofi remixers, before breaking into the vaporwave scene with their vocal creations. Their new EP, 5STAR, is written as a celebration of the experience of nonbinary people, intersecting the ideas of love, isolation, and escapism into a tapestry of unique sound. They were featured at the Worldwide Wave festival in 2021, an international festival celebrating the wide world of vaporwave artists.
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My current practice is centered around building a deeper trust in my intuition. My hope/goal is to shed a need to "prove" anything with my art and to surrender to the stickiness of the making process. Currently a resident at Root Division Studios, Lower Grand Radio, and Bff.fm, I've also recently shown at ICASF for Queer Rain Magazine. Much like my sense of fluidity and how I like to present myself, my taste in music and how I process sound pays homage to our origins, while exploring our infinite potentiality. The tried and true genres I play are jungle, deep house, and clubby riddims, often blended or edited live with RnB, Soul, *and*/or Trap. Just as being genderfluid is limitless, so are the iterations of diasporic sounds.
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Kevin Seaman (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and the Artistic & Executive Director of Diamond Wave. Their videos centering queer history, symbolism and intersectionality were presented on SalesForce Tower in June 2021 in collaboration with Jim Campbell’s Studio. Their work exploring queer identity and drag culture has also been presented at The Stud, Brava, CounterPulse, YBCA, Frameline, the Tank NYC, the Austin International Drag Festival, SATTELITE ART SHOW Miami, the National Queer Arts Festival, Stockholm’s Stolt Scenkonst, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yale School of the Arts. They have been featured on Shondaland and Vice, were an inaugural Association for Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow, and received the 2017 Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award, the 2019 Theatre Bay Area Legacy Award, and a 2022 CALI Catalyst award. In their role as founder and Artistic & Executive Director at Diamond Wave (diamond-wave.org), they oversee the MASCellaneous workshop series exploring restorative masculinities, the THEYFRIEND nonbinary performance festival, and the Artists’ Adaptability Circles mutual aid and leadership development initiative.
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LOTUS BOY (Ze/Zir, He/Him, They/Them) is a shapeshifting, transgender and nonbinary, unapologetically disabled and chronically illUSTRIOUS, Chinese-American drag king, educator, and anti-disciplinary artist based in occupied Lisjan Ohlone Land (Oakland, CA). Ze explores gender fluidity, accessibility, healing from trauma, solidarity, and sustainability through the mediums of poetry, lipsync, ancestral movement (qigong and tai chi), monologue, and original music. When not onstage, King LOTUS BOY coaches a high school speech and debate team and facilitates youth drag workshops with Queens of the Castro, bringing drag and gender education to high schools in San Francisco and Oakland. LOTUS BOY is on the Board of Directors for Oaklash (@oaklash2022), the Bay Area's drag festival, and he is on the steering committee for the Drag & Spirituality Summit (@dragandspirituality). Connect with him on: Instagram @kinglotusboy / TikTok @kinglotusboy / Facebook: King LOTUS BOY.
To Attend
Ticket Pricing:
$15 early bird | $20 general admission
Discounted early-bird tickets are available until November 1.
About the Festival
Now in its second year, THEYFRIEND is the world’s first performance festival uplifting, centering, and celebrating nonbinary identity! With THEYFRIEND, we’re creating a space of trust and growth for nonbinary artists to connect and present their work.
