CHICAGO — The city’s first trans pride festival is set to bring music, comedy, dance and drag to three local parks to be run by and for trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming people.
Transilience will come to Humboldt Park, Hamilton Park and Gil Park Thursday-Saturday, with different performances at each park over the three days. GF Productions, founded in 2022 to advance trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming equity and art, is putting on the fest in partnership with a grant from Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks program.
The free three-day fest builds on other one-night events GF has produced over the years that have centered queer and trans celebrations and voices like Queer Dance Freakout and a series showing new work at Steppenwolf.
The fest is the first city-sponsored trans pride event spanning multiple days and will include trans and non-binary vendors and community resources, said founder Dawn Heilung.
“The whole thing of [GF] is it’s trans work created by trans people,” Heilung said. “For trans people, we find liberation through creating our own tables, rather than finding a seat at someone else’s table. This trans pride celebration is a big piece of that.”
The fest kicks off 6 p.m. Thursday at the field house in Humboldt Park, 1440 N. Humboldt Blvd., and will feature spoken word and comedy performances and a fashion show.
Day two of the fest will take place 5 p.m. Friday at Hamilton Park, 513 W. 72nd St. in Englewood, and will include music and a dance party.
Day three will take place 4:30 p.m. at Gill Park, 825 W. Sheridan Road in Uptown, and will feature comedy, a country music band and drag performances.
Transilience comes at a pivotal time for LGBTQ+ people facing hostility by the federal government.
“The political of [the fest] is it needs to be free, because our community has challenges with economic access to artistic spaces,” Heilung said. “It needs to be on every side of the city, because the city is segregated and in access and equity, there needs to be an area on each side of the city that people can come to, and it doesn’t need to be Downtown, because that’s not always the safest place to be as a queer, trans or gender non-conforming-presenting person.”
GF Productions plans to keep the party going with an afterparty 10 p.m.-2 a.m. Saturday at Bookclub, 2871 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets are $15.
Gentle Applewhite, an artist and one of the fest’s producers, said finding spaces for trans and non-binary people has been a challenge since moving back to Chicago in 2021. Being part of GF has given them opportunities and access, which they are grateful for amid a tough climate for trans people, they said.
“The government is quite literally dismantling and erasing our history at this moment in time, with education, taking away our monuments,” Applewhite said. “It’s important for us to highlight our voices and the voices that are here today, so that other people know they’re not alone and that our history is continuing,”.
Transilience is foremost a celebration for trans and non-binary people, but allies are welcome to support and spend money on vendors at the festival and help “center the T” in the LGBTQ+ acronym, Heilung said.
“I see Chicago as a beacon of light in what the political economy and the U.S. is in right now,” Heilung said. “I want queer and trans people from near and far to be able to come to this event and see that there can be successful performing artists getting paid a reasonable amount for the work that they’re doing.”
The group hopes to make the fest an annual offering and is looking for foundations to sponsor next year’s festivities.
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