Five performers dressed in feathery white costumes and black boots dance energetically on stage, each holding large feather fans, with blue and purple stage lighting in the background.

Prep School: BRIEFS: The Second Coming

Briefs Factory was founded by Fez Faanana and Mark Winmill, who describe their work in a fabulous interview:

The Briefs Factory is this crazy illegitimate child of ours we dreamed up and it hasn’t gone away. It came out of a string of parties we were throwing in Brisbane – a few speakeasy, late-night warehouse parties which had a very strong performance element to them. It turned out people were really into it. We were invited to go to festivals and it’s evolved into a full production house 10 years later.

Since its speakeasy origins, Briefs Factory has become a producing powerhouse – they’re also bringing the femme-centric cabaret Hot Brown Honey to NYU Skirball in April 2019.

Learn more about the company and the show.

RELATED EVENTS
Seven performers pose dramatically with large white feather fans; the central figure wears a black costume and a tall feathered headpiece, while others display expressive poses and facial expressions against a white background.
  • Sun Jan 6 – Mon Jan 7, 2019

Briefs: The Second Coming

Learn More
indefinite article

Cari Ann Shim Sham on Briefs

What good is sitting alone in your room
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret.

READ MORE(opens in a new tab)
Six people in colorful, glamorous outfits sit at a bar table, holding drinks and posing playfully. The background features warm lighting and decorative windows, creating a lively, festive atmosphere.

GET INTO IT

“Briefs” trailer… really, it speaks for itself.

A fabulous ensemble number that highlights what Briefs is all about.

An interview with the cast

An interview and Rubik’s cube demo

GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY


Recommended readings to accompany the Indefinite Article by Cari Ann Shim Sham. 

  • M. Cryptkeeper, Drag Queen Coloring Book: Adult Color Therapy. CreateSpace, 2017.
  • David J. Getsy, editor, Queer (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art). MIT Press, 2016.
  • Moe Meyer, editor, The Politics and Poetics of Camp. Routledge, 2011.
  • Madison Moore, Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric. Yale Press, 2018.
  • Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp. Penguin Random House, 2018.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Briefs: The Second Coming review – a very adult evening of flamboyant fun

There is plenty of politics laced throughout the performance. There’s an Indigenous acknowledgement to country, the like of which you’ve never heard before, as well as a profanity-laden shout out to diversity and a sharp jibe at the lack of arts council funding for regional arts, although it’s all done with a light touch.

The Guardian | Jan 15, 2017(opens in a new tab)

Meet The Ringleader

Frankly, we are obsessed with Fez Faanana and you should be too.

In his own words:

Fez Faanana is an idiot, a clown, a drag artiste, a dancer/prancer, a Samoan (who is not a security guard, football player nor a kfc cashier), an Australian, a legal immigrant, an antagonist, a molly-coddler, an orchestrator, the love child of the bearded lady and ring master and the creative director of Briefs Factory.

A 20-minute interview with Fez & Rhianna Patrick:

EXTRA CREDIT

YouTube theoretician Natalie Wynn brings us up to speed on the political power of aesthetics in an appropriately glam-camp way, including a transfeminist re-read of Judith Butler, performance theory, and why “gender is aesthetic, not rational”: The 21st century is an aesthetic century. In history, there are ages of reason and ages of spectacle, and it’s important to know which you’re in.

Learn more about Natalie and her project of trans-feminist consciousness raising in this appropriately glitzy New Yorker profile: “The Stylish Socialist Who Is Trying to Save YouTube from Alt-Right Domination.”

She is one of the few Internet demi-celebrities who is as clever as she thinks she is, and one of the few leftists anywhere who can be nuanced without being boring. She knows her way around a syllogism, but she also knows that persuasion is not reducible to reason—that the best arguments, on their own, do not always win. Or, as she put it in a recent video, “Politics is aesthetics.”