What is Queertauqua?

Queertauqua is a reimagining of the late-nineteenth and early–twentieth centuries traveling tent shows–Chautauquas–queerly. Pitched in the portable edifices of large canvas tents, chautauquas provided temporal and easily repeatable educational lectures, inspirational speeches, and entertaining performances on pine platform stages that often acted as the only adult continuing education and contemporary art and cultural experiences for rural midwesterners of the era. At times campy and unhinged, at other times melodramatic and deathly serious, and all underscored by music and choruses of tra-la-la, Queertauqua is a performance platform to share LGBTQIA+ histories and culture that has been left unheard and unseen.