A remembrance of Martha Graham Cracker, in honor of Dito van Reigersberg

Later in the evening, the opening strains of Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” began to play, and the audience dissolved with joy as she turned to Gray.

She sang the whole song as if he was the only person in the room, and as she crooned the final lyrics (“Now that your rose is in bloom / A light hits the gloom on the grey”) in an almost-whisper, Gray, who’s even taller than Martha, opened his arms, and she climbed into his lap. He wrapped his lanky arms around her hairy shoulders and rocked her as she cradled her head against him, as if exhausted by her own tender emotions.

It’s one of my favorite memories of Dito van Reigersberg, one of Philly’s most innovative and memorable artists, also known as the drag queen Martha Graham Cracker. Something about the moment encapsulated Martha’s improvisational genius and signature warmth, and our willingness to go anywhere with her. We all would have opened our laps to her, and we all felt the love of Gray’s serendipitous serenade.

Now Philly is mourning van Reigersberg’s sudden loss, which his Pig Iron family announced today. He was fighting cancer in recent years, and passed away due to complications of a bone marrow transplant.

If you’d like, you can honor him by reading about his work, which we’ve been covering at BSR for well over a decade. Here’s a story about his original cabaret at the Weitzman (then the National Museum of American Jewish History) in 2014, It’s High Time I Said Something: Martha Graham Cracker’s Intervention at the Museum (written by our own dearly departed colleague, Naomi Orwin). In 2017, we covered Martha’s radically accessible drag show, incorporating ASL and captions. We reviewed some of van Reigersberg’s Opera Philadelphia work in 2018. Here, critic Cameron Kelsall describes him as possessing “a strong, dusky singing voice, perfect to shade the aria’s simple text with layers of meaning and feeling.”

And in September 2024, we ran our last story about van Reigersberg onstage with our review of the Philly premiere of Poor Judge, which critic Kiran Pandey says “emphasizes the audience as much as it does the artist—[reminding] us that for all the heartbreak and pathos of [Aimee] Mann’s music, it would be incomplete without all of us listening, feeling it too.” We also covered the show’s return earlier this year in a production from Pig Iron and the Wilma. Van Reigersberg had to drop out of the leading role at the last minute due to his medical complications, and rising Philly crooner Pax Ressler stepped ably into the part.

Cameron lauded the production as “a testament to the power of performance as a collective act and healing ritual,” adding that despite the last-minute change, Poor Judge was as good as ever due to “the thoughtful, detailed work of van Reigersberg” and his collaborators.

Sad times like this are also the times we at BSR are most grateful for the opportunity to do this work of exploring, promoting, and documenting the creations of Philly artists. This is what creators like Dito van Reigersberg deserve, now and forever. The BSR team sends our love to his family and to everyone who’s grieving this terrible loss for our community.

In their statement on June 2, the members of Pig Iron say that “In lieu of flowers, you can send memories, poems, artwork, photos, videos, and messages to Dito’s family at an email address we’ve set up: [email protected]. His family will be able to view all of these when they feel ready.”

At top: Dito van Reigersberg as Martha Graham Cracker in a 2017 performance in which she sang Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" to a fan named Gray. (Photo by Alaina Johns.)