An ice-skating drag show was pilloried on national television. Philly’s Bearded Ladies Cabaret holds that as a badge of honor

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A drag show on ice about the dangers of climate change is being remounted in two community ice rinks in Philadelphia by the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, which first debuted “Beards on Ice” in 2023.

“This is a new and improved version of the show,” said Bearded Ladies founder and artistic director John Jarboe. “The glacier [played by Rob Tucker] sings a bunch of songs now. Her name is Diane Slowly. She keeps changing her name during the show: from Diane Slowly to Diane Quickly to Diane Now.”

The show has already attracted negative attention nationally.

Because the cabaret company was awarded $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to stage this version of “Beards on Ice,” it was included in U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s 2024 “Festivus” report, in which the Kentucky Republican lists over a trillion dollars of government spending he regards as wasteful.

The report, released annually on Christmas Eve, lists expenditures such as $12 million toward a pickleball complex in Las Vegas by the U.S. Department of the Interior, $4.8 million toward online influencers in Ukraine by the Agency for International Development (USAID), and $3 million toward climate action in Brazil by the Department of State.

Although it is the smallest amount flagged in the report, the Bearded Ladies’ $10,000 grant received top billing in the report’s press announcement, in its introductory summary and in televised reports on Fox News.

“While artistic expression is vital, this funding decision may leave taxpayers wondering if the NEA’s mission has skated a little too far off course—on thin ice,” reads the Festivus report.

As a longtime and highly prolific genderqueer theater artist, Jarboe is not surprised by politically motivated mockery. But she holds up this jab as a badge of honor, on par with the award-winning, experimental Pig Iron Theatre company and Spiral Q’s community mobilization through puppetry, which were mocked by the U.S. Senate in 2009 after receiving stimulus funds.

Jarboe said her mention on Fox News brought her closer to her sometimes-estranged family.

“I come from the Midwest. My extended family is mostly Republican, Catholic, Trump voters,” she said. “I’m not often featured on the family chat.”

“But I have not heard so much from my family until this moment when we were on Fox News,” Jarboe said. “Everyone was like, ‘We’re so proud of you!’ There was no acknowledgement of the fact that it was negative news, or that I was being called out for being an artist, for being queer, or for doing shows about the climate. That’s like a triumvirate.”

The NEA funding is a reimbursement grant, meaning the $10,000 must first be spent before the agency releases it. Due to the uncertainty of government funding under President Donald Trump’s executive orders, Jarboe is not confident she will get anything in the end.

But “Beards on Ice” has a history of turning bad news into positive messaging.

The first time this queer ice-capade was staged in 2023, the venue was the outdoor RiverRink at Penn’s Landing. The first performance had to be canceled because the ice melted under 62-degree weather in February, which only strengthened the show’s message about the dangers of climate change.

This year, the show moved indoors to the ice rink at Tarken Playground in Oxford Circle in Northeast Philly, as well as the Laura Sims Skate House in West Philadelphia’s Cobbs Creek. The indoor venues guarantee skating-friendly temperatures and allow the Bearded Ladies to step up production value, adding fog machines and confetti that would be impossible outdoors.

The show also has a few ringers. Several performers have been or were competitive and professional ice skaters, including U.S. adult figure skating champion Michael Solonoski, former Philadelphia Flyers ice girl and Eagles cheerleader Snow Feng, and David Devan, former CEO of Opera Philadelphia who skated competitively in his native Toronto.

The indoor rinks are public, operated by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. The Bearded Ladies rehearsed “Beards on Ice” during open skating hours, which turned heads. A lot of young skaters were curious about the theatrics and asked when the show would be performed.

The production includes an adult version, “Beards on Ice: Still Edging,” with risqué parodies of pop songs that Jarboe describes as PG-13, and a tamer family version titled “Beards on Ice: Family Melt Down.”

Jarboe said it is crucial that the show appeal to both adults and children at their own levels.

“Young people are so brilliant. They’ve taught me so much about who I am,” she said. “They are the future. To make a climate-justice-themed show and not make it so that young folks can see it is kind of irresponsible. They are the ones that are inheriting all of our bad decisions.”

Jarboe hopes the negative attention on TV news will heighten her message.

“Nationally, it’s wild, but it also makes me nervous because there are a lot of people that don’t believe queer performance should be around children,” she said. “We get a lot of negative attention because we have an agenda, which we do. Our agenda is to welcome people into loving themselves and loving the world that they’re in and the gender-fully complex reality of existence. I am guilty of that agenda.”

The remaining performances of “Beards on Ice” will be performed this weekend at Laura Sims Skate House on Cobbs Creek Parkway.