Drag, music and theatre return, alongside two shows about growing older.
This year’s Aberdeen Queer Arts Festival has drag, spoken word and a makers market on the bill, but the thing that stuck with us reading through the programme was how much of it is about what queer life looks like decades in.
Running from Thursday, November 5 to Sunday, November 8 at the Lemon Tree, the festival opens with a curated stage from Hen Hoose, bringing together R.Aggs, Susan Bear and Katya Mansell for a night that runs from post-punk to indie-pop. Friday adds Conor O’Dwyer’s Homo(sapien), fresh from a run at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, alongside Mattachine, a new variety night billing itself as an evening out for “lavender gentlemen, lilac ladies and those who love them.”
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Support POST from £3 → Get in touch to advertise on POSTTwo shows about getting older, on purpose
Two shows in particular put age at the centre of the story instead of treating it as an afterthought. On Saturday, Lucia brings Tales from your Queer Elder, drawing on 52 years of living openly as a plus-size lesbian artist, blending dance and spoken word into stories built from that lived experience.
Then, closing the festival on Sunday, dance artist Alan Greig performs Within Reach, a 40-minute piece in which he slips between Quentin Crisp, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Tennessee Williams. It’s billed as funny, but it’s also asking a real question: what happens to queer icons, and the people who grew up idolising them, once they’re no longer young.
Put those two shows next to each other and the festival starts to look less like a single celebration and more like a conversation between generations.
Katya Mansell, R.Aggs and Susan Bear play the Hen Hoose stage on the festival's opening night.
The rest of the weekend
Saturday also headlines Jock Tamson’s Bairns, an immersive after-hours-bar show where the audience is invited to speak up (respectfully). Sunday pairs the Makers Market with a screening of Pride, presented by Belmont Cinema, based on the true story of the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign during the 1984 strike.
Whether or not you catch every show, this is a festival that treats queer joy and queer ageing as part of the same story, worth telling together rather than separately.
The details: Aberdeen Queer Arts Festival runs Thursday, November 5 to Sunday, November 8 at the Lemon Tree. More info at Aberdeen Performing Arts.
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