The San Jose queer community put together a wildly entertaining day of performances, music and comedy on Saturday to help give back to the LGBTQ+ community.
During the Queer Homecoming livestream event, audiences experienced poetry, yoga, dancing, live music, comedy and a drag show that was hosted by San Jose Strong, a grassroots organization dedicated to helping the community.
“Queer Homecoming is a celebration of our culture, queer arts and queer community with a goal to uplift and inspire queer people,” said Kayla Layaoen, the public school education and safety team lead for San Jose Strong.
Layaoen said the event was supposed to take place in person at a church in Saratoga but because of the coronavirus pandemic, it was livestreamed on platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitch.
San Jose Strong founder Mary Celestin said the relentless work of her volunteer team helped bring the event to life.
“Everything that’s been done has been the amazing work of [Layaoen] and the committee that put in a lot of time to make this event and have it start rolling,” Celestin said.
She said the opportunity to have a platform to stream these performances is exciting.
Layaoen said the event was financed by The Awesome Foundation’s San Jose chapter, which is a global community initiative supporting a wide range of areas including arts, technology and community development. The foundation donates more than $1,000 toward each established chapter.
Individual donors also helped the organization pay the performers.
DJ Cruzita, a San Jose resident and artist, enchanted the audience with infectious groovy music varying across many genres as the evening progressed.
The audience was kept busy with yoga workshops, in addition to raffles and auctions that helped raise money for the chest binders, a donation drive for local transgender and non-binary people.
A 2016 SJSU alumna, stand-up comedian and producer, who prefers to go by the name Cynthiainpublic, emceed the event. She kept the audience’s attention with her humor and quick wit.
The stand-up session consisted of queer-friendly jokes by comedians Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Geulah Finman, Chris Ryan and Paula Comedy, who each talked about their identities and their family’s reaction after coming out as LGBTQ+.
The performances promoted important messages to queer youth about how to be patient when coming out to family members.
“Don’t give up on them, they will come around,” Porras-Hernandez said.
A drag show concluded the event with performers like Tori Tia and Sofia Dorado in extravagant costumes and colorful makeup reminiscent of artwork.
The bold performances and candid, fun conversations easily made the audience laugh, cheer and squirm.
San Jose Strong members said they were surprised they pulled off such an ambitious online project.
“I personally have been working on this almost, like, 24/7 for the past three months,” Layaoen said.
The switch from an in-person venue to an online livestream required performers to improvise their acts last minute, like performing on a chair instead of using the entire stage space and pre-recording their performances.
“I tend to just have everything in [Zoom’s gallery view] so I can observe the audience,” Cynthiainpublic said. “A lot of times I start my [comedy] set by just interacting with the audience.”
She said performing comedy is often easier in person because of the shared comedic atmosphere and contagious laughter.
“If one person is laughing, it’ll make the other person next to them more willing to laugh,” she said. “But [in a livestream] you really have to work a little bit more.”
Cynthiainpublic said although the new format deprived the performers of the ability to feel the audience’s energy, having the event online helps performers engage with the audience through interactions on Zoom.
“[For example] I’m sitting, not standing up,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll like to incorporate PowerPoint or I’ll do something like a virtual background.”
Drag performers had to be creative and adjust their performances, with many having to pre-record performances, which were later streamed on various platforms.
SJSU 2020 graduate Jiang Chen Rodriguez, who goes by the drag name
Sofia Dorado, said they were limited with no stage to perform on, so they had to get creative with demonstrating their skills like skating into their act.
Despite the online difficulties, the event gave LGBTQ+ artists an important platform, entertained the audiences and raised money through auctions to support the local transgender and non-binary community.
“It’s been a hard year for everyone,” Cynthiainpublic said. “But I think that we still need to try when we can define moments of joy and celebration.
