Join us Friday June 14th at 7pm for Active Bitch Face Productions Present: A Variety Hour. We’re celebrating Pride and the return of Chicago educated Wes Jamison and their new collection Carrion (Red Hen Press). Acts include: cowboy country crooning music by Andrew Sa & Friends, drag transcendence by Lucky Stiff, gutbuster standup by Sonal Aggarwal, original cello composition by Ari Hunter Scott, mixed media story telling by Mel Leverich, laugh so hard you puke standup-poetry performance by Khaya Osborne, pearl clutching cowboy fuck poems by C. Russell Price, and the belle of the ball Wes Jamison reading their critically acclaimed hybrid work. Fix your face and come have a good time on a Friday night. $10 (proceeds go to performers and the LA&M)

Performer Bios:

Actor and singer-songwriter Andrew Sa is Chicago’s premiere queer country crooner. He’s currently focused on his debut album with producer and co-writer, H.C. McEntire of Durham, North Carolina, and finishing an EP of Patsy Cine and Loretta Lynn covers with the late Patrick Haggerty of Lavender Country. Andrew hosts the Chicago seasonal cult sensation, Cosmic Country Showcase.

Lucky Stiff (they/he) is a trans/nonbinary director, writer, and performer working in Chicago and New York. Their work in new play and musical development and nightclub culture-inspired performance art has been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Blue Man Group Chicago, Boy Friday Dance Company, and the McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep No More) among many others.

Former international street performer turned emcee, Sonal Aggarwal has brought her talents to Chicago as an actor, comedian, producer and movement artist. Her one woman show The Alchemy of Bliss played for a sold out weekend at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater and you can see her on Netflix’s Easy as well as the short A Period Piece which debuted at SXSW 2020. She is a regular host of the Moth.

Ari Hunter Scott is a cellist, composer, and improviser based in the Chicago area. Scott’s practice as a cellist spans both orchestral, chamber, and solo performance across many styles. She writes for both the stage and for soundtracks, featured in venues like the Green Mill and Fulton Street Collective. Her work can be found at arihunterscott.com 

Mel Leverich (they) is a writer and rider of bikes in Chicago, IL. They are the Archivist & Collections Librarian for the Leather Archives & Museum and a co-producer of Movie Club, a club of movie-haters that put on a bi-monthly comedy variety show. See them at Movie Club: Your Mom’s Favorite Movie on Sunday June 23rd. 

Khaya Osborne is a poet, actor, comic & disaster. They were the 2019 Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate & a finalist for The Button Poetry Chapbook Prize. You can find them on IG at @bitch.of.color.

C. Russell Price is a Lambda Fellow, Ragdale Fellow, Windy City Times 30 Under 30 honoree, and a twotime Lit City Top 50 Writers of Chicago honoree. They are the author of Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other and Oh, You Thought This Was A Date?!: Apocalypse Poems. They are a poet-in-residence with the Chicago Poetry Center, a core faculty member for Story Studio, and an editor with The Anarchist Review of Books. They’re writing about a ghost cowboy and his ghost blue horse these days. Less honk, more tonk.

Wes Jamison is the author of the chapbook and Melancholia (Essay Press) and is a noted author in Best American Essays. After six long years in the Deep South, they return to Chicago to launch their debut collection, Carrion (Red Hen Press). Wes's lyrical prose dissects that connection between the flesh-and-blood self and that mythic self made of language--but think birds and mythology and folks plummeting from the sky.