Queer Lady Magician Enchants by Weaving Together Magic, Storytelling, and Social Justice

If you failed at something once, should you never try again? Can an overly honest person be a magician? And what’s with all the straight white male magicians in Orientalist drag?

Creatrix Tiara answers these questions and more in her Midsumma show Queer Lady Magician.

She revisits her childhood love of stage magic with a strong sense of social justice, using magic tricks to challenge social norms, such as assumptions made about peoples’ identities based on how they look, and the stereotype of the white male magician and his silent, sexy female assistant. In the process, she tackles a case of imposter syndrome and confronts past failures and personal hang-ups around deception.

Through the show, Tiara becomes a Queer Lady Magician, taking ownership of an art form that has traditionally been dominated by straight, cis, able-bodied white men, and makes it queer, feminist, accessible, and decolonial.

Queer Lady Magician transformed from an initial concept written about in an international LGBTQ women’s magazine, to a successful show in the 2018 Melbourne Fringe Festival. Tiara has since performed segments of the show at This Is Not Art in Newcastle and Queer Nu Werk in Sydney.

The Midsumma season is being updated and developed as part of the Midsumma Pathways program (for LGBTQ artists with disabilities) and is being mentored by Maude Davey (Finucane & Smith, former AD of Vitalstatistix).

Creatrix Tiara has produced and performed interdisciplinary work in writing, performance art, digital media, games, music and other forms across Australia and the United States.

She co-produced and performed in all-disabled, primarily-queer cabaret Quippings: Not Normcore! in  Midsumma 2018.

She was a Dandy Minion and Burlesque Dancer for the Helpmann Award-winning 24-Decade History of Popular Music by Taylor Mac in the 2017 Melbourne Festival.