With: Vanity Dusk, Monique Doppert, Jennifer Hopelezz (aka Richard Keldoulis), Olmo van Kranen (Our Lord in the Attic Museum), Alex Kain (host), Guido Leguit (Café ‘t Mandje)

Concept: Taka Taka

Inside Amsterdam’s most famous hidden church, there’s more than just an altar

Secret Stage brings drag stories to a space that historically revolved around the forbidden. Our Lord in the Attic Museum was built at a time when Catholic worship was criminalised in the Dutch Republic, faith practised in concealed rooms, behind façades that betrayed nothing. That ritual of showing and hiding, of being visible and then vanishing again, runs strikingly parallel to the performance art of drag. Sometimes loud and present, then again invisible in dangerous times.

How does drag relate to visibility? Who gets to be seen and when does being seen become an act of resistance?

At the centre of the evening are Amsterdam entrepreneur, activist, and drag queen Jennifer Hopelezz and her daughter Vanity Dusk together the face of the Hopelezz family.

Programme

1. Welcome — Alex Kain opens the evening, with introduction of Olmo Kranen
2. Lezz is More — Monique Doppert gives a brief talk on the book
3. Photos That Didn’t Make the Cut — Jennifer guides you through the darlings that were killed: photographs that never made it into the book, but carry a story nonetheless
4. Growing Up Hopelezz — Vanity Dusk shares her experiences within the drag family
5. Q&A with Vanity & Jennifer — open conversation with the audience, moderated by Alex Kain
6. Procession to café ‘t Mandje — led by Guido Leguit, everyone leaves the church singing for an informal afterparty in café ‘t Mandje

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