Fringe 2026: FringeArts presents Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle by the Bearded Ladies Cabaret

As I made my way through Priority Hoarding, I was struck by the baggage of the Bearded Ladies’ storied past. The stuff on display is rooted in resilience, protest performance, being and belonging together, and the complexity of queer artforms, and it doesn’t skirt around hard times. This is in no way a retrospective that romanticizes the past. It looks backward in service to the future. The Bearded Ladies obviously care deeply for the detritus of their past. But, as the adage goes, “if you love something, let it go.”

Inside the Martha Graham Memorial Hairport

In this truly immersive experience, know that it’s time to move on despite possibly not knowing where to or even how. The feeling may be unnerving, but also liberating.

Enter the Martha Graham Memorial Hairport, and feel invited to interact with 16 years of Bearded Ladies baggage. It’s ok to touch, because as the pleasant disembodied voice in the vestibule for Receding Hairlines assures, “our baggage is yours!” In this first room, baggage takes the aesthetic form of Marcel Duchamp’s La Boîte-en-valise, which artistically treats luggage as a form of a miniature and transportable museum (very on brand).

Throughout the 60-75-minute mostly self-guided journey through the Hairport terminals (with helpful input from the on-duty Receding Airlines Stewardexes) enjoy the immersive multi-scene, multi-location, and full-bodied sensorium of the Bearded Ladies’ past.

Elsewhere in the Hairport, accessed through what feels like labyrinthian passageways, please proceed to your gate. Will you be departing, for example, from Gates J24-40 “Time to Dye Barbership”? Or maybe you need to get to Gates S28-42 “As Per Your Last Email”. Regardless of your departing gate, make sure your own baggage is adequately packed.

If you’re empty-handed, feel free to take some of the Bearded Ladies’ baggage with you! Each item (props from the troupe’s storied performance history) is already tagged for your convenience. Simply scan it to experience an audio-visual immersive story from the performance that originated the prop.

A dreamworld of reckoning

At every turn, Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle is an architectural, technological, and archival dreamworld. I strongly recommend you go. The invitation to reckon with their baggage offers you the chance to reckon with your own.

If you want to continue your Bearded Ladies retrospective, BSR has been covering their work for years, including 2018’s Do You Want a Cookie? and You Can Never Go Down the Drain, Bearded Ladies founder and artistic director Rose Jarboe’s 2024 Rose Garden installation at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, and the recent world premiere of Girl Dolls.

Know before you go: Priority Hoarding contains adult language, flashing lights, fog/smoke effects, low-vision areas, and video that could trigger motion sickness sensitivity. It deals with themes of loss and grief, sex, injury and illness, gender dysphoria, and airports. The installation is intended for ages 13 and up.

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