Local performer-director John Jarboe talks busy LGBTQ+ season with ‘Rose’ and Late Night Snacks

Try talking to John Jarboe at any time of the day, and there’s likely to be a parade of fellow vocalists — cabaret, opera, rock, and performance artists — within a whisper’s distance. That’s because from now until Oct. 1, the performer-director is busy with two queer-artist focused live projects.

There is her currently-running curation-hosting of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret festival, Late Night Snacks, at the new pop-up venue, The Closet, at 201 South Street with Jackie Soro, co-director of LNS. Then there is Jarboe’s somewhat-autobiographical, “gender cannibal” original music fantastia, ‘Rose: You Are Who You Eat‘, at FringeArts HQ on Columbus Boulevard, written in collaboration with Emily Bate, Daniel de Jesús, Pax Ressler, and Be Steadwell.

“Every year around this time, it’s cabaret Christmas, one always celebrated in different Philadelphia neighborhoods,” said Jarboe of filling Late Night Snacks with dozens of vocalists and performance artists from around the globe, in connection with the Fringe Fest and Opera Philadelphia. “And socio-politically right now, it is a time of queer scarcity as people are trying to take away our rights. That’s nothing new, but now, there is an aggressive attack on queer and trans folk. So, when the Beards met to discuss Late Night Snacks this year, we agreed to fill it with queerness, take up as much space as possible with queer performance of every kind.”

With that, Late Night Snacks features seven rotating hosts — with Jarbeaux and Soro, there’s Jess Conda, Cookie Diorio, Eric Jaffe, Sam Rise, and US aka Anthony Martinez Briggs — with 75+ local and national performers doing different productions each evening, including Sunday afternoon Family Snacks events for families and children.

“I have a whole crew of queer-dos behind me looking to create Late Night Snacks as an accessible space, a conversational space and one that makes everyone feel welcome,” said Jarboe.

Then there is ‘Rose: You Are Who You Eat’, Jarboe’s soon-to-tour queer epic whose world premiere in Philly, this week, promises to be as funky and comically incisive as it is explosive.

“The journey of my earlier works came from the idea of ‘What does it mean to be a man?’ and ‘How I fit into all that,” she said. “Now, there’s enough heartache in the world that I’m not interested in making art from a perspective of personal trauma or obstacles.”

The blossoming of ‘Rose’ stems from Jarboe’s revelation to the family’s favorite aunt of the move from “he” and “they” pronouns to “she” and “her”.

“That’s when my aunt told me how that made sense as, apparently, I had a twin who she said I ate in the womb at birth. I didn’t know that I had a twin. My having eaten my twin is why I am the way that I am. As I say in the show, that was a lot to digest.”

While Jarboe admits that this new metaphorical performance starts from a place of dark humor and cutting puns regarding the absorption of a twin and vanishing twin syndrome (“a lot of jokes about being hard to swallow, hard to stomach”), her ‘Rosey’ original musical dramedy touches on the poignancy of how her lost twin is “eating me from the inside-out now,” she said. “I feel as if a shell, an armor, is being devoured, and I’m and revealing a soft underbelly, a femme human being that was there all along.”

With all of the inventiveness that Rose holds, the extra added bonus comes in the fact that this is the first show where Jarboe has written or co-written, her own music.

“I’ve created librettos in the past,” said Jarboe, referring to productions such as ‘Andy: A Popera’ and ‘You Can Never Go Down the Drain’.

“But ‘Rose’ is the first time I’ve expressed myself in song, in collaboration with queer and trans composers. This is a musical healing ritual that I’ve made for gender cannibals, trans folk, queer-dos and their guardians. ‘Rose’ is for anyone dealing with self-acceptance and what it mans to bring someone different into this world, and care for an nourish them.”

For Late Night Snacks schedules and tickets, visit phillyfringe.org/events/late-night-snacks

For ‘Rose: You Are Who You Eat’ schedules and tickets, visit phillyfringe.org/events/rose-you-are-who-you-eat