“The closure of The Dragon, and the curtain closing on The Panti Show both had a big impact on the community.” So says, Beth Hayden, founding member of Glitter HOLE, a gang of performers who mix their response to a percieved lack of drag diversity with radical queer politics. So what we can expect from the inauguaral Glitter HOLE Fringe show, The Fianna Fellatio Party?

Back row, left to right: Tara McKeon, Daniel Power, Liadh Young, Emma Chubb, Jade O’Toole, Ryan McConnell. Front row, left to right: Pamela Connolly, Beth Hayden, Sophie Bradley

Photo by Hazel Coonagh.

Glitter HOLE is a queer performance space, a DIY drag collective and a bit of a laugh. It is a response to my own frustration over the lack of diverse, non-corporate queer events taking place in Dublin and an attempt to establish a bit of variety in an often stale and exclusionary queer nightlife scene. Above all that, it is an excuse for my friends and to dress up and show off.

The idea came about in 2016, when decided to create the kind of night out wanted to go on, rather than lamenting that it wasn’t there. While was in college was attending drag shows most weeks at Pantibar and The Dragon. found that the closure of The Dragon, and the curtain closing on the Panti Show both had a big impact on the community and the variety of nights out that were available. Along with the lack of dedicated events and spaces for queer people, the nights that are available often only cater towards cis gay men.

From my own experiences, know that misogyny in queer spaces is pandemic. Myself, and many women know have been verbally, physically, and sexually assaulted by gay men in what should be a safe space for all queer people. also know anecdotally that transphobia is a big problem in our spaces. We need more spaces catering to different needs, and we also need to be more rigorous about ensuring that all members of the community feel safe and welcome within them.

There are similar problems with a lack of representation within the realm of queer performance art. This is an interesting time for drag, with the popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race very much shifting the art form out of the fringes and into the mainstream. However, when the host of that show voices an open disdain for cis women performing as drag queens, and likens trans drag queens to athletes taking “performance enhancing drugs”, the widespread success of the show can hardly be seen as progress for queer people.

This binary attitude towards gender is the antithesis of the political origins of drag and unfortunately is pervasive across a scene, which is dominated by cis, white, gay men.

There are some incredible performers who have made great strides to resist this exclusionary outlook who have been a big inspiration to me such as Victoria Sin, Dorian Electra, Vaginal Davis and Jillian Gnarling. Some of the most exciting and innovative drag is being performed by trans and non-binary people and cis women, but unfortunately this is largely absent from the drag scene in Dublin. wouldn’t dream of comparing our work to any of the aforementioned visionary performers’, but Glitter HOLE has always existed to balance out the lack of diversity within the Irish queer performance circle.

Glitter HOLE exists to carve out a space in Dublin that feels more inclusive and more queer. The first show was created out of a budget of about fty quid and a sort of blind faith that people would want to come, and not a lot has changed since then. We run out of Jigsaw, which is an amazing DIY venue that is so valuable in a city where autonomous, community-focussed social spaces are vanishing by the second. At a Glitter HOLE show you can expect a mix of drag, comedy, opera, a reading from the letters of Sinead O’Connor, ceilí dancing, roller blading routines, and lesbians eating out tubs of hummus.

As a drag collective, none of us have a background in performing arts, so we’ve pretty much been winging it since day one. We rehearse in my parents’ garage and performances are built around ideas we come up with when we’re just having a laugh. “What if we attached a dildo to a drill?” “What would you include in a potion to hex the patriarchy with? Obviously an expired Jack & Jones voucher.” “I think you could tell the story of the Children of Lir through The Corrs’ back catalogue.” “’And I’m Telling You’ would be the perfect lip sync to do as Jesus dying on the cross”.

Our show in Dublin Fringe Festival is based on one of our earliest performances, where we created a queer political party called Fianna Fellatio, with its own short manifesto that we gave out to the audience during the show. What was intended to be a once-off performance ended up growing legs and has gone through a few iterations, leading to this Fringe event, which lies somewhere between a club night and a show. The Fianna Fellatio Party Launch is going to be a theatrical presentation of our manifesto, with a performance to accompany each of our intentions, ranging from making butt plugs available on the medical card, to achieving a full 32 county communist republic.

Glitter HOLE has always been about having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously, and the emphasis of the show is on giving people a really great night out – however, at its core it is a political show. Fianna Fellatio presents the converse of the dominant queer political ideology that aims for assimilation into the heteropatriarchal society that we inhabit, and instead aims to transform it. This is an exciting time for queer activism in Ireland, with groups such as ACT UP, Radical Queers Resist, and Trans Pride Dublin doing really vital work. We’re inspired by grassroots activism, in the same way that we’re inspired by the live shows of Kylie Minogue, and our show lies at an intersection between these influences. Come for a bop, leave with a butt plug. Oh, and it’s BYOB.

The Fianna Fellatio Party launch will take place on September 8 at The Complex, tickets from fringefest.com