Today‘Dragapella Quartet’ glamorizes Dickinson
The college Women’s Center hosts The Kinsey Sicks for a night of singing, dancing and politics.
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Susannah Bartlow wanted something fun and entertaining for the Dickinson College Women’s Center’s first event as an official organization.
And for the former student-run organization, it probably could not have picked any group more glamorous to perform.
This Saturday, The Kinsey Sicks will perform at a free concert on campus at 7 p.m. during their nationwide tour.
The four ladies of The Kinsey Sicks describe themselves as “America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet,” and for the most part, people seem to agree. The Kinsey Sicks has performed at many of the state-owned universities in Pennsylvania, including Shippensburg University, which hosted the act last October.
Bartlow was only too willing to put them on stage in Dickinson College.
“I watched them online, and I’ve heard from some of the community members about them and how they’re fantastic singers and entertainers,” Bartlow said. “It was partly those recommendations that led me to them.”
After a number of critically acclaimed shows and two films featuring the group, The Kinsey Sicks will continue on with the tour of its newest show, which finds the four members hosting a morning network news show and blurring the lines between news and entertainment. The performers combine some high-brow politics with some low-brow humor for a night somewhat familiar to fans of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”
The antics of the gender-bending theatrical group was just the kind of entertainment Bartlow was looking for in the center’s first show.
“I think it’s important to have a dynamic, exciting and fun performance on campus,” Bartlow said. “In a college environment, we have a lot of conversation on serious issues, and I think that’s an important part of the educational environment, but I think it’s also good to have somebody engaging and fun. We also wanted to do this as an outreach to students across the campus.”
In addition to the main performance, The Kinsey Sicks will also be offering a question-and-answer session at the end of the program.
“The question and answer is something they do at all of their shows, but it will be a little different at our show,” Bartlow said. “It will be a bit of a shorter version where they’ll kind of mingle and talk to the audience instead of a formal Q&A session. It’s obviously entertainment, but it’s entertainment with a message.”
And the message is integral in just about all of The Kinsey Sicks’ shows. The ladies of the quartet aren’t made of just pretty faces. The original two members are both political activists. Ben Schatz, “Rachel,” is a Harvard-trained civil rights lawyer and former director of the national Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. Irwin Keller, “Winnie,” is a lawyer and linguist from the University of Chicago and former director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel of the San Francisco Area. Keller also authored Chicago’s gay rights ordinance, which was passed in 1989.
Clips of the lawyers turned drag queens and two of their friends can be found on the group’s Web site at www.kinseysicks.com.
The event is free and open to the public and starts at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium on West Louther Street between College and Cherry streets in Carlisle.
