Cape Town – As part of the Cape Town Pride Festival programme this year, an intimate new queer reading event on Wednesday will see readers baring a lot more than their souls.
The readers will celebrate performance art, queer bodies, queer literature and the intimacy of being read to – all while doing so in the nude.
The Queer Reading Room is a brand new nude literary event taking place at Waves, 62 Hout Street, Cape Town, on Wednesday, March 1, at 7pm, that will showcase vulnerability and storytelling as five unclad readers.
The readers will take the audience through a literary landscape of all things queer.
Janine Adams and Kelly Smith from the Unofficial Pink Party said: “We have wanted to create this event for a long time, an intimate queer pop-up that celebrates LGBTQI+ presence.
“The Queer Reading Room is a brand new nude literary event celebrating performance art, queer bodies, queer literature and the intimacy of being read to.”
At the launch event, the Unofficial Pink Party explained that a small cast of unclad readers would saunter through a literary landscape of all things queer, sharing readings curated to be magical, funny and sometimes heart-wrenching.
“We invite you to experience this unique alchemy of vulnerability and storytelling (and yes, the readers are completely naked),” Adams and Smith said.
The organisers advised that no lewd behaviour will be tolerated.
This event takes place ahead of the pinnacle of the three-week-long Cape Town Pride Festival, the Pride Parade, on Saturday, March 4, starting as it usually does in the De Waterkant district of Green Point.
This is expected to be a loud and colourful occasion where members of the diverse LGBTQIA+ community march to celebrate their pride.
There will be marchers from many of the LGBTQIA+ organisations working in the Mother City, a pipe band, minstrel troupes and a lot more.