Heels on Wheels Roadshow

Originally posted here. by Damien Luxe, co-producer Heels on Wheels

“Wait…they expected STRIPPERS?” The glares from the audience confirm that whatever they expected, this North Carolina lesbian bar audience is not happy with our fully-clothed arts. In the middle of touring the first Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow, my annual all-queer-femme performance tour, we got an education in the social expectations applied to queer people who display femininity: just shut up and take off your clothes.

As a co-producer and co-founder of the Glitter Roadshow, I had a vision in which queer folks anywhere on the feminine spectrum — fey fags, high femmes, hard femmes, dandy genderqueers & more — could present high-quality interdisciplinary artwork that people would listen to and be inspired by that was not writing or burlesque, which have their own tours and niches. As working-class folks we knew we’d have to find a way to get this work into the world on our own, so like punks we started independently booking and touring the US in 2010, the year of this eye-opening encounter. We couldn’t figure out why the venue and audience at this one gig was acting so strangely to us until we examined the poster we’d sent them a few weeks earlier and saw that Lesbian Strippers was written on it, and then crossed out.