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.

The Closties Variety Hour is an extravagant evening that morphs realities and invites audiences into the souls of the characters, experiencing the way they all relate to themselves and one another. This work explores the many ways we can and do exist as individuals and the importance of community, while also celebrating our complex and multi-faceted natures.

Cast: Kashia Kancey, Khandis Merritt, Jailyn Wiley, Channce Willams, Cristina Moya-Palacios, Alondra Balbuena, Kyla Thomas, Lakeria Robinson and Nayah Merisier.

Presented at Triskelion Arts, March 2025

Lighting design by Connor Sale

Photos by Kyla Thomas