The Closties Variety Hour is a multi-disciplinary production that follows four friends as they express their lives in the form of a televised variety show. This work serves as a journal entry written in hot pink gel pen as the cast transform into their deepest desires, allowing viewers into an expansive world of dreaming while reflecting on shared memories and interests they hold closely. Delving into themes of friendship, childlike wonder, self-indulgence, and radical black joy, these friends embody and immerse themselves in transcendence, discovery, and pleasure in their own distinct ways.

Cast: Kashia Kancey, Khandis Merritt, Jailyn Wiley, Morgan Gregory, and Channce Willams.

Ensemble: Cristina Moya-Palacios, Alondra Balbuena, Kyla Thomas, Lakeria Robinson and Nayah Merisier.

Presented at Triskelion Arts, March 2025 and January 2026

Lighting design by Connor Sale

Photos by Kyla Thomas @kylaandrea and Jenna Maslechko @jennamaslechko

Video by TIM IS HAM @wa1lkersam and @a.g.oconnor