The first Martha Graham Cracker memorial fund supports drag cabaret artists in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival

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In life, Dito van Reigersberg lit up Philadelphia’s cabaret scene with his alter ego Martha Graham Cracker. Now, just months after his death in June, two memorial funds have been created to benefit other edgy performing artists.

One of them has already started cutting checks.

Victor Fiorello, a writer for Philadelphia Magazine who moonlighted as a piano player with van Reigersberg’s cabaret act, has given $500 each to three drag and cabaret artists appearing in the upcoming 2026 Philly Fringe Festival. William Acker, Colby Calhoun and Taylor Alexander are the first recipients of the Martha Graham Cracker Scholarship Fund.

“There was some discussion after Dido’s death about the idea of remembering and honoring Dido, the person, and Martha, the character,” Fiorello said. “I really wanted the scholarship to focus on the drag and cabaret community. So it felt appropriate to call it the Martha Graham Cracker Scholarship Fund.”

The Pig Iron Theater Company, which van Reigersberg cofounded, has begun orchestrating a more ambitious Dito van Reigersberg Legacy Fund. With a planned $1.5 million to $2 million endowment, the fund will offer $50,000 annually in scholarships to the students of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training. Another $50,000 a year would support the school’s “Island” program, a theater intensive wherein students remove themselves from distraction for two weeks to focus on inventing new work.

“When we’re running Pig Iron, we’re often thinking about this year, next year, two years from now,” said Pig Iron’s cofounder Quinn Baureidel. “This really asked us to think about something eternal, something forever, something that would be an investment for decades.”

Funding the wild and gritty side of Philadelphia theater

Fiorello fast-tracked the Martha Graham Cracker memorial and put cash in the pockets of performers preparing for the Fringe Festival, beginning Sept. 8. He launched it two months after van Reigersberg’s death and says he raised $5,000 in just four hours.

Fiorello played behind Dito/Martha for 25 years. He said he selected recipients who carry the spirit of the performer he knew so well.

“He reprogrammed my brain to some degree about performance,” Fiorello said. “Those memories are so vivid that there’s definitely this certain something of, like: What element of Martha does this person embody?”

Acker will use his $500 to fund his Fringe show “William Acker is William Acker and William Acker is Running for Mayor of Philadelphia,” or “WAWA.” The absurdist show is a political campaign which Acker, the actor, refuses to say is fictional or not.

“I, William Acker, play the role of William Acker and I run for the mayor of Philadelphia. It is exactly as it says,” he said. “I am in pursuit of a beautiful way of life and I will do whatever is necessary to obtain my happiness, no matter the cost. So, you should get on board so I can have my happiness.”

Acker said he hired artists to create campaign graphics printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers, and the show includes campaign-style food for the audience. That bumps the show’s budget to about $4,000. A relatively modest $500 grant goes a long way.

“It’s really great that the focus is going to queer artists, drag artists,” Acker said. “Oftentimes, we get left behind, pushed aside or just left on the outside of the perimeter.”

Another recipient, Colby Calhoun, is the creator of “Invited Dress: The Porno,” a performance art piece described in the Fringe catalogue as a dress rehearsal for a transgender pornographic film, “a love letter to sex workers.”

“The Fringe Festival is so important because there is this wild, gritty side of Philadelphia that you don’t get at the Walnut Street Theater,” Fiorello said. “It’s important to me to showcase these young up-and-coming artists who have ideas that I would have never thought of. I like the ingenuity. It’s really important for us to make sure they have what they need to succeed.”

The third recipient of the microgrant, Taylor Alexander, is a founding member of The Bards. The queer theater company is marking its 10th anniversary in the Fringe Festival by staging a 1970s-style variety show of favorite original numbers from past productions. “The Bards 10th Anniversary Telethon LIVE!” is a fundraiser for The Bards next production, an original musical expected to be ready for the Fringe Fest in 2027.

“We have a cast of 12 people coming to help sing and do the show with us,” Alexander said. “All of them have been in our shows either once or multiple times throughout our 10-year history.”

Alexander said a typical Bards production will have a budget of between $1,000 to $2,000. The $500 grant from the Martha Graham Cracker Scholarship Fund represents a large portion of those costs.

“It’s definitely a big help for us, especially this year because it’s been rough all around,” they said. “All the arts organizations I speak with are, like, ‘The funding isn’t coming in right now.’”

Teasing out the next big thing

While the Martha Graham Cracker Scholarship Fund was implemented quickly to help theater artists in the Fringe Fest, the Pig Iron School is taking a more methodical approach to raising the Dito van Reigerseberg Legacy Fund endowment. Bauriedel said the school will first approach Pig Iron’s major donors before launching a more public fundraising campaign in 2027.

The Legacy Fund will support “The Island,” a process that Pig Iron founders developed. Members isolate together to try out ideas, no matter how far-fetched, that may eventually grow legs as fully realized theater pieces.

“The Island” process has resulted in such Pig Iron shows as “Isabelle” and “Chekhov Lizardbrain,” the latter of which won an Obie Award. Bauriedel acknowledged there is no guarantee that the process will result in something worthwhile every time.

“It’s a harder thing to fund because it’s very early in the process,” he said. “The first step of the process is to take away the opening night deadline and all of the decisions that have to get made before a project sees the light of day. It really is a time to see if the idea actually is interesting.”

Baureidel said there are some small scholarships available for Pig Iron students through Rowan University, which partnered with the school after its former sponsor, the University of the Arts, shuttered. He said the Legacy Fund’s planned $50,000 in annual scholarships will be more robust.

“Dito has so many miracles that he has done, but it would really allow us to be able to talk to really promising students and say, ‘Hey, you are a Dito van Reigersberg Legacy Fund Scholarship Award winner, and that means something,’” Bauriedel said. “You carry on a lot of the things that he was starting.”