John Jarboe is the founder of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret company and its Artistic Director. A Philadelphia-based theatre artist, John graduated from the University of Michigan with a BFA in Theatre. In addition todirecting, choreographing, producing and performing with the Beards, John finds time to collaborate outside the cabaret world as an actor, musician, teaching artist and consultant. He volunteers for Attic Youth, a local center that creates opportunities for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth in Philadelphia. John appeared locally with The Walnut Street Theatre (A Christmas Carol, Love Story, Vincent In Brixton, Arsenic & Old Lace), Theatre Exile ( Cock ), People’s Light and Theatre ( The Rainmaker ), Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre ( Hamlet , As You Like It ) and The Wilma ( Macbeth ). Some favorite work includes turns as Julia Child in Inside Julia Child (Philly Fringe) and as the title role in The Green Fairy Cabaret (Philly School of Circus and Kimmel Center) which he wrote and performed in as part of the inaugural Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA). He collaborated with Applied Mechanics Theatre Company in Portmanteau, Vainglorious, Overseers and Some Other Mettle, and was a recipient of the 2013 Performing Arts Fellowship from the Independence Foundation.

Tareke Ortiz (Mexico) is a film and theatre composer, pianist, singer, actor, and cabaret performer. He currently serves as Artistic Director of the International Arts Summit in Cumbre Tajin, México. He has presented work at La MaMa ETC., Mexico Now Festival, The Kitchen, The Gate Theatre and Tate Britain Gallery in London, Two Worlds Festival in Spoleto, among others. Adrienne Truscott is a USA bases artist who works in Australia every year as a choreographer, circus acrobat, dancer, writer, storyteller and comedian. She has been making genre-straddling performances in New York City and abroad for over 20 years. She is one half of The Wau Wau Sisters, her boundary busting neo-vaudevillian collaboration with Tanya Gagne. They are winners of the prestigious 2009 Herald Angel Award and their contemporaries broadly recognize the influence of their radical and ludicrous take on circus and cabaret. Her form-busting and ground-breaking show Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! won the 2013 Edinburgh Foster’s Panel-Prize, was a finalist for the Total Theater Award for Playing With Form and is considered a critical impetus to the evolving conversation about rape culture. Her latest solo performance piece, THIS , was recently nominated for a 2017 New York Performance Award (Bessie) for Outstanding Production.

Cookie Diorio is a Philadelphia-based drag performer, a classically trained vocalist, a songwriter, an activist, a husband, mama to the cutest little Yorkshire Terrier ever, a music teacher and lover of all things sparkly. She mastered walking in 5 inch stilettos in the night clubs of Boston, achieved her hair fantasy by studying vintage videos of Grace Bumbry and founded the giving project Art of the Heel. Cookie grew up in historic Auburn, NY with gospel in her ears, civil rights in her blood and a song in her heart. She trained at Ithaca College in the voice studio of Angus Godwin and learned the many different skills of western classical music from master teachers such as Carol McAmis in vocal pedagogy, Lawrence Doebler in choral arts, Dana Wilson in composition and Patrick Hansen in opera coaching. While Cookie has been in and out of the drag scene since 2002, she began performing regularly in the Philadelphia area as host of the Art Song Repertory Theater Company’s salon series “Saturday Afternoon Drinking Songs” in 2013. Since, she has produced the shows Fire In My Bones: A Gospel Jubilee, Beauty From Our Sorrows, Telling Herstories, Forces of Nature, Music: The Food of Love and I, Too, Sing America.

Malgorzata Kasprzycka is a Polish musician, performer and theatre director living in Paris. She pursues her artistic path through different countries. Founder of Volcano Song theatre company in Paris. Laureate of Rutas Escenicas grant from the Ministry of Culture of Mexico for Sinon l’hiver / if not, winter , a show she wrote and directed. Winner of The Barrymore Award for Excellence in Theatre for her role as Julia Warhola in Andy: A Popera at Opera Philadelphia. Once a month she sings Edith Piaf songs in a little Parisian cabaret Le Vieux Belleville and performs her own songs as part of the musical project Gosia and the Flying Whales. Exploring traditional songs and then working with the voice and it’s relationship with the body has a special place in her work and leads her towards various projects, as well as the initiator of experiences, as a performer, or a teacher.

Machine Dazzle (designer): moved to New York City in 1994 after attending The University of Colorado Boulder. Mixing odd jobs by day with art and dance clubs by night erupted in a unique lifestyle grounded in costume and performance art. Machine's DIY and transgressive nature comes face-to-face with his conceptualist-as-artist identity; the results can be seen on stages all over the world. Machine has worked with Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond, Joey Arias, Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art Group, The Crystal Ark, The Dazzle Dancers, Pig Iron Theater, Stanley Love Performance Group, and The Pixie Harlots, to name a few.