TRANSHUMANCE Will Play the 2023 Queerly Festival at The Kraine Theater

FRIGID New York will present Ania Upstill’s Transhumance as part of the 2023 Queerly Festival. Performances will take place on Saturday, June 17th at 4pm and Thursday, June 22 at 7pm at The Kraine Theater (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003). Tickets can be purchased on a sliding scale at www.frigid.nyc.

Take a surreal journey through the landscape of gender with Transhumance, winner of a Best Weekly Award for Circus and Physical Theatre at Adelaide Fringe in 2020. Award-winning clown Ania Upstill playfully explores what it means to be a trans human—or any human—in a society where the gender binary often blocks us from the richness of human experience. 

Join theater and circus artist Ania Upstill (they/them) for a heartfelt, physical exploration of gender norms. As a genderqueer and queer performer, the American Kiwi Upstill is excited to bring Transhumance to the Queerly Festival. “I know we will find an audience that needs, wants, and will enjoy this journey,” says Upstill. 

Reviewers called Transhumance 'a work of joy and playfulness – whimsical, witty, and replete with wonder' (TheatreView.org.nz) and 'a deeply personal story of self-identification and a universal experience of gender paradigms' (TheatreScenes.co.nz). The show returns to NYC following 4-star reviews at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where audiences said “my face hurts from smiling!” 

For Upstill, clowning brings buoyancy, joy, and fun into the often-heated conversations around trans and nonbinary identities. “We hear a lot about how difficult it is to be part of a gender minority, for instance having to explain your pronouns all the time. And yes, it is hard,” they say, “but it is also beautiful and exciting to be able to play with all the performative aspects of gender and find what feels right to you.” 

Butch Mermaid Productions believes that representation matters - you can’t be what you can’t see. Putting positive queer and trans stories on the stage helps us not just survive, but thrive. We make art that celebrates the beauty of embracing your authentic self because visible joy is a political act in the struggle for equality. 

Founded in 2014, Queerly is FRIGID New York’s annual celebration of LGBTQA+ artists. Queerly strives for diversity on and off stage, seeking out queer teams and artists of all kinds as well as a wide range of shows and performances. Our goal is to provide a space for queer artists who’ve rarely or never seen their identities portrayed on stage to be able to represent themselves and tell their stories their way, as well as to provide a space for queer celebration, pride, and strength.

FRIGID New York’s mission is to provide both emerging and established artists the opportunity to create and produce original work of varied content, form, and style, and to amplify their diverse voices. We do this by presenting an array of monthly programming, mainstage productions, an artist residency, and eight annual theater festivals that create an environment of collaboration, resourcefulness, and innovation. Founded in 1998, the aim was and is to form a structure, allowing multiple artists to focus on creating and staging new work and providing affordable rental space to scores of independent artists. Now in our third decade we have produced a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater. www.frigid.nyc