Bower Bird

Overview

BOWER BIRD is a multidisciplinary theater event featuring dance, film, and a design contest. If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite nature documentary might be like if David Attenborough was a drag queen, you should check this out.

The male satin bower bird is an unassuming little thing, with plain black plumage and a simple song. However, he is a masterful artist, collecting items from his surroundings – berries, flowers, bottle caps – to construct his bower: a colorful work of landscape architecture that will hopefully knock her bird socks right off!

Like the bower bird, us humans are physically rather boring. We don’t have impressive horns or brightly colored feathers to impress potential mates. Instead, we use elements of our environment to construct our own ornamentation.

Is a Lamborghini just a peacock tail?

Drawing from extreme examples in Western cultural history, two non-binary drag artists explore how we adorn our bodies and amass possessions to communicate our fecundity, social standing, and gender expression.

Emily Mayer

Emily Mayer is a multidisciplinary performance artist, an exceptionally wiggly noodle, and the genderfuck drag clown Edith Poussard. They received their degree in biology from Bard College in 2012 and went on to dance for the Boston-based contemporary dance company Urbanity Dance. Emily moved to Philadelphia to pursue a post-bac in performance studies at the Headlong Performance Institute in 2014.
Emily is obsessed with absurd humor and embraces being completely stupid, in the best way. They’re a stand-up comedian, a marathon runner, a proud Canadian, a costume designer, and your grandma’s best friend.

Credits

Lead Artist: Emily Mayer (Edith Poussard), Performer: Tyler Rivera (Oktober Third)