The documentary Sissyboy , about a group of Portland-based performance artists, had its world premiere on Saturday at the 2009 South by Southwest film festival. The film captures the short-lived gender-bending drag troupe that thrived for three years in the mid 1990s. Not your traditional drag queens, and hardly drag queens at all, the members of Sissyboy strived to bring humorous but always challenging social messages to their audience. The Sissyboys wrote original songs about topics like abortion and Matthew Shepard and created lavish staged shows where their unique esthetic of drag-meets-punk-meets-circus-performance found a loyal audience and made them a Portland institution. Sissyboys follows the troupe for their final year of performances and firsttime director Katie Turinski delves deeply into the personal lives of the performers, which makes for a compelling documentary about an important piece of LGBT history.
One of the most interesting stories in Sissyboys is that of Lee Kyle, who as his alter ego "Splendora Gabore" was one of Sissyboys' founding members and was in some ways the face of the group. Lee Kyle is also a member of tEEth, the fantastic Portland base experimental dance troupe currently on tour and performing in New York this weekend.
See upcoming tEEth performances:
March 19-21 | Joyce SoHo - 155 Mercer St., New York City
April 30-May 2 | Fuse Box Festival, Austin
For more information go to: https://rubberteeth.com/index.php
