Cookie Diorio is a Philadelphia-based drag performer, a classically trained vocalist, a songwriter, an activist, a husband, mother of the House of Diorio, a music teacher and lover of all things sparkly. She mastered walking in 5 inch stilettos in the night clubs of Boston, achieved her hair fantasy by studying vintage videos of Grace Bumbry. Cookie grew up in historic Auburn, NY with gospel in her ears, civil rights in her blood and many songs in her heart. She trained at Ithaca College in the voice studio of Angus Godwin and learned from master teachers such as Carol McAmis in vocal pedagogy, Lawrence Doebler in choral arts, Dana Wilson in composition and Patrick Hansen in opera coaching. She founded the giving project Art of the Heel, has produced many solo shows including the off-broadway one-night-only Fire In My Bones: A Gospel Jubilee (Kraine Theater, NYC), given a TEDx talk at Rosetree, had a takeover at The Barnes Foundation and is an ASSociate Artist of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret.

Photo Credit: Pink Melon Media

Music is your birthright. 

Your voice belongs as it is, you belong as you are.

We can’t be afraid and sing at the same time.

These are the tenants and principles that guide Samantha Rise, a non-binary songcatcher and performer based in Philadelphia. As a self described ‘pollinator’ performer, their songs collect and evoke their myriad influences, across labels of genres and medium. Curiosity and vulnerability dancing between jazz and diasporic roots, folk and movement music traditions and neo-soul futurist explorations. Warm and adventurous, clear-eyed and compassionate, Rise’s writing and performance style is as much an invitation as it is a musical experience. 

Relearning themselves as a black person, a queer person, a gender expansive person, as a survivor, Rise’s lyrics and songwriting are both sensual and staggering in their unblinking accounts of what it is to celebrate and explore all of those identities in this moment of pandemic, and of uprising.  From unrequited love to police brutality, the #MeToo movement and mass incarceration, Rise gives voice to the struggles where words fail, with music we cannot help but love.  They invite us to wade through the grief and joy we know toward a future we create together, standing courageously and vulnerably, where the songs of our hearts begin. 

Rise’s debut release, Brighter Days, landed in four installments over the solstice and equinox in 2019. Their music is available on  Apple Music, Spotify, BandCamp and Soundcloud. 

Noelle Diane Johnson (she/her) is a multidisciplinary Theatre and Performance Artist, AEA Stage Manager, Director, EDI Consultant, and Artist Advocate. She has worked for multiple venues including The Wilma Theatre, Theatre Horizon, InterAct Theatre Company, Simpatico Theatre, Theatre in the X, Shakespeare in Clark Park, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, and Playbill among many others. Noelle is also the owner and founder of ARTISTS HEAL LLC, a company designed to center and provide resources for Black and Global Majority Artists while offering self-liberated, inclusive, and equitable spaces for healing and expansion through artistic practice. Learn more at warmweathernoelle.com. IG: @warmweathernoelle @artistsheal.

New Zealand-based drag king, comedian, and cabaret producer Hugo Grrrl joins Get Pegged Cabaret. You may have caught the performer on the inaugural season of New Zealand’s House of Drag, where he made history as the first drag king and trans man to compete—let alone win—a drag reality show. He has toured widely and created a reputation for crafting smutty, rough-around-the-edges, politically-charged late-night theatre that’s bound to excite the audience. ⁠IG: @hugogrrrl

The Bearded Ladies Cabaret is an interdisciplinary troupe of artists who reinvigorate and redefine the form of cabaret in the 21st century by fusing it with theater, opera, and dance. They play with nostalgia and humor to question the embedded social messages in popular culture and tackle the politics of gender, identity, and artistic invention with sparkle and wit. Their work has been seen all over Philadelphia including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Eastern State Penitentiary, Opera Philadelphia, the Wilma Theater, and FringeArts and they have brought their cabaret revolution to Miami, New Zealand, Seattle, Paris, Maryland, Delaware and New York City (Ars Nova, La Mama, and Joe’s Pub).

John Jarboe (she/hers) is a cabaret artist, director, writer, historian, and host serving you revolution, herstory, queer community making, and a whole lot of glitter. She is the founding artistic director of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. Going back to the interdisciplinary roots of cabaret, Jarboe is transforming opera, cabaret, and live performance from her home in Philadelphia, making work that is insistent on its liveness and interactivity, work that will make you sing, dance, clap and question. She plays host to a community of cabaret misfits from around the world, trying to stitch together the history of and practice of a much needed form.