What to see at Midsumma Festival 2024

The cinematic showcase that is the Melbourne Queer Film Festival is throwing a weekend-long viewing party under the magically rainbow-hued ceiling of the ostentatiously ornate Capitol Theatre. Highlights include the saucily outrageous comedy of Dicks: The Musical and Bottoms, a retrospective screening of Bend It Like Beckham, a bunch of Australian-made shorts and sweet-souled YA romance Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

If you’re after a mighty power-up of matriarchal energy this Midsumma, don’t miss this team-up between sex worker, writer and performance artist Frankie van Kan (AKA Frankie Valentine) and titan of Melbourne’s burlesque scene, Maude Davey. The latter directs the former’s heart-on-her-sleeve debut solo show at Carlton’s La Mama HQ. Expect an intimate confessional on strip club culture, whorephobia and the queer body unveiled.

There are plenty of magnificent free events on offer this Midsumma, including this mesmerising video installation choreographed by and featuring gifted dancer and proudly queer Wiradjuri man Joel Bray. Presented at Blindside Gallery and translated as ‘The Wind Will Bring Rain’, this unforgettably arresting work evokes Bray’s connection to home, carried by storms to Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri Country, hauntingly captured by cinematographer James Wright.

Melbourne’s out-there guardian angels of the beautiful and the bizarre, the Huxleys, have joined forces with Narangga and Kaurna Nation man Jacob Boehme to breathe luminous life into this heart-soaring tribute to the creative lights extinguished during the HIV/AIDS crisis. An empowering artistic celebration of never-forgotten heroes, it’s free to see at the Abbotsford Convent. You can also sign up to help craft a new memorial quilt at the Stitch ‘n’ Bitch event.

Things get super-messy in esteemed queer playwright Declan Greene’s saucy, spicy and often incendiary triptych, staged at St Kilda’s suitably named Theatre Works: Explosives Factory. As re-envisioned by feminist force and recent VCA graduate Stephanie Lee, who interned on Stephen Nicolazzo’s Looking for Alibrandi, expect teachers blurring the lines with students, a sugar addict targeted by seriously nasty dudes and a sex worker with a lot on their plate.

One of the undisputed legends of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival circuit and a regular on everything from ABC's satirical news wrap, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, to the only slightly more serious The Project on Network Ten, Kirsty Webeck hosts this laugh-out-loud line-up of queer comedians at local hero Pride of our Footscray Community Bar. You can also check out the fierce lewks at the First Nations Drag Festival at the same venue.

Australians love outrageous crime stories, and this whodunit unravelling at La Mama Courthouse is a cracker. All fingers point to trans businesswoman Denise when the men’s rights influencer she was rumoured to be dating disappears in this gripping fusion of theatre and film. Written by and starring Filipino non-binary creative powerhouse Dax Carnay, it’s directed by Mustangs FC lead Emmanuelle Mattana.

Sex sells, so they say, so consider us sizzlin’ with erotic anticipation for this raunchy, very much NSFW circus show raising the temperature at Gasworks Theatre in Albert Park. Featuring the nimbly limber, death-defying stunts of performers, including fire-breathing Aleisha Manion, Bede Nash’s hula-hoop mastery and the aerial acrobatics of Tro Griffiths, the big top energy is hosted by cabaret comedy superstar with the boofiest hair, Tash York.

Delivering exhilarating events at the cutting edge of the classical and contemporary, Forest Collective is at it again, asking us to unspool the thread and head deep into the dark heart of Greek mythology, winding towards the Minotaur stalking the bowels of the Abbotsford Convent in this immersive musical event. Enlisting composer Evan J Lawson, opera singer Daniel Szesiong Todd, pianist Danaë Killian, choreographer Ashley Dougan and dancers, prepare to get lost in music.

Co-host of Joy FM’s breakfast show, community hero Arcuri is a constant ray of sunshine on the scene. Blast off to a galaxy of glittering showtunes in his latest feel-good cabaret at Smith Street’s Grouse Melbourne, featuring a cosmic constellation of special guest stars.

Shake a leg with drag queen extraordinaire Dolly Diamond at Chapel Off Chapel, where she’ll graciously allow a host of celebrity friends, including ABC weatherman Nate Byrne, to roast her royally.