Nappy Grooves to visit Oct. 31

Lynn Heinemann, Office of the Arts
October 24, 2007

Nappy Grooves, an all-black drag king troupe will be artists-in-residence at MIT from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3. They will hold a public talk entitled "Too Hot to Handle: A Lecture/Demonstration by Nappy Grooves" on Wednesday, Oct. 31, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at the Broad Institute Auditorium.

Founded in 2004 by Nia Hamilton, Matt Richardson and three other Bay Area residents, and based in Oakland, Calif., Nappy Grooves was formed to give black drag kings an opportunity to perform.

Dedicated to fun, sexy, antiracist, feminist gender performance, the troupe has performed a variety of genders and sexualities for audiences across California and New York.

Nappy Grooves' residency is sponsored through the MIT Office of the Arts' Alan W. Katzenstein Memorial Fund, established in 1998 in memory of Alan Katzenstein (S.B. 1942), a long-time supporter of the arts at MIT.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 24, 2007 (download PDF).