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. And read NYU Professor Cari Ann Shim Sham’s Indefinite Article on the show, written exclusively for NYU Skirball.
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.
Briefs’ usual blend of questioning masculinity via circus, drag, burlesque and comedy means you should look forward to aerial acrobatics, biting politics, beautiful artistry and perhaps just a touch of nudity. Basically, all the best elements of Briefs they’ve flaunted over the past decade.
More than just the comedy, costumes and cheek, Briefs shows are stunning spectacles of talent and strength. Showcasing everything from dance and drag to acrobatics and aerials, the shows shine the spotlight on unique male artists from around Australia and beyond.
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.
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.
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.”