ShakesQueer A bawdy, Bard-y ballyhoo burlesque show featuring Smoke & Queers

June 20, 2025

Doors open at 7:00 PM, Event starts at 7:30 PM

Get ready to party with CSC! Join us on Friday June 20, 2025, for a Pride bash like no other! 🌈 Cincinnati Shakespeare Company teams up with Smoke & Queers, a drag and burlesque troupe, for a night of Shakespeare-themed burlesque show, celebrating gender exploration in the Bard's plays.

Don't miss out on the drinks – alcoholic and non-alcoholic options available at Bob’s Bar in the lobby!

Admission

CSC requests a $14 ticket donation to support our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) commitment, which will help us continue our mission of bringing Shakespeare and the Classics to life for ALL.

NEW! $30 Bubble Trouble Tables- these premium Cabaret style seats are at tables on the floor and come with 2 Rhinegeist beverages and Pride Swag! 

Event is recommended for ages 18+.
For additional accessibility needs, learn more online here or contact Patricia Ryan.

Smoke & Queers is a queer-led, co-ed burlesque, drag, and performance art troupe that encourages all weird and wild expressions of self, gender, identity, and sexuality. As a budding nonprofit arts organization, our mission is to help connect and unify the LBGTQ+ community in Cincinnati (and beyond!) and to create a space where those outside the typical standard of beauty come to feel sexy, celebrated, and empowered.

Sm Fb Event Cover Engagement Shakesqueer

As You Like It 498 Web

Gender nonconformity is ubiquitous within the works of Shakespeare where, contemporary to Shakespeare himself, all female roles were played by men. But more than that, almost one fifth of Shakespeare’s plays feature a character who cross-dresses as a plot point. These characters resist gender conformity for myriad reasons such as to free themselves in a patriarchal society, to live their own truth and execute their desires with free will, or to achieve the love and partnership they want. The one thing still relevant today that they all have in common? The universal human need to invoke agency over their lives. CSC is proud to celebrate with Pride with this “Shakes-Queer-ian” experience where all wild expressions of self, gender, identity, and sexuality and welcome. 

Pictured: Courtney Lucien in As You Like It. Photo by Mikki Schaffner.

Photos in Gallery by Shonali Alm Basu

Why Give To The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, And Access (Deia) Fund

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company strives to be an inclusive space for all races, ethnicities, genders, identities, orientations, abilities, creeds, and ages, where artists and audiences of all backgrounds see themselves and their stories represented, where voices that have been historically silenced are amplified, and where the experience of live theatre is reachable for all.

Your gift to support the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Fund helps us become Cincinnati's Shakespeare Company, fostering a community of theater makers, patrons, supporters, and stakeholders who are representative of Cincinnati, united in their desire for artistic excellence, and unabashedly welcoming to all who wish to be a part of it. Because a world in which theatre matters to more people is one worth living in and one CSC commits to help to build.

Seymour Hiney 1

Seymore Hiney

Host

Salem Le Fay 3

Salem le Fay

Host

Mocha Mystique 2

Mocha Mystique

Andro Hathaway 1

Andro Hathaway

Dolly Partner 2

Dolly Partner

Moon Lyte 1

Moon Lyte

Luxe Lamour 1

Luxe Lamour

Vexx Zation 2 1749575010

Vexx Zation

Zena Bites 2

Zena Bites

ShakesQueer is made possible by the incredible support of thousands of contributors to the annual ArtsWave Campaign, your region’s premier source for arts funding.

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