When attending a cabaret, there a certain things you as an, audience member, expect. Any scenario I could have imagined was however turned upside down by a fishnet and racer suit clad drag artist with a string of baby heads around their neck screaming along to “teenagers” by My Chemical Romance. This, as I now know, is The Birdcage.
Off stage, The Birdcage goes by the name Avery McNeilly, who is studying performance arts at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. As well as their drag alter ego, Avery is a painter, a performer and a playwright to name but a few. When I ask them what title they’d give themself (if they reealllllyyy had to) they simply laugh with a sarcastic “fuck you!” at the mere thought of being confined to one form.
The 21-year-old is a native of the seaside town of Clacton in Essex, and they carry all of the rugged, cheeky charm of the place with them. There is a fire beneath their eyes. Ask Avery a question and await a lively epic in response.
Even when out of drag, Avery can be found adorned in a tasteful selection of tassels and fringe. Their style is too authentic to be flamboyant but is instead an external expression of their inner exuberance. On the day we spoke, they wore a baby blue belly top lined with banana yellow fringing - a top borrowed from the wardrobe of Orville Peck. This western style is intertwined with what Avery describes as their “queer origin story”.
As a child, Avery found a pair of heeled boots in their mum’s bedroom. Their response was what you’d expect from any seven year-old – “oh, Sick! Cowboy boots!” Without further thought, they wore the boots to play with their sister in the garden before receiving a swift telling off. This wasn’t for ruining her Debenhams’ Sunday best, but rather because it made Avery “look gay”. Their response is also what you’d expect from any typical seven year-old – “What’s ‘gay’?”
They tell me that they “didn’t know how to break the rules, because I didn’t know what the rules to break were”. For them, fashion is a rootin’-tootin’ act of reclamation, with this ethos being reflected in The Birdcage.
Moving from Clacton to London in 2020 allowed Avery to evolve, both personally and creatively. Being surrounded by other queer people gave them the language to come out as non-binary and the environment to work experimentally. “I’ve been a part of a cult, I’ve gotten in my pants on stage, I’ve done drag and I’ve done clowning”.
In the past five years, the popularity of drag has skyrocketed, with the commercialisation of popular reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race at its root. The show now has spin offs spanning 14 different countries. Although this has led to a greater LGBT representation from Hollywood’s silver screen to London’s west end, this has come at the price of the commodification of queer culture. Primarily, internet culture is the driving force in reducing an art form holding body and soul into a series of camp catchphrases that look good on a t-shirt.
It can be easy to be jaded by this as an artist, which Avery seems determined to avoid.
Avery finds the tangibility of creativity important. Although they admit that digital art is both important and vitally accessible, for them digital has a certain sadness like no other – an important thing to consider when battling the realms of cyber space.
Much of Avery’s work focuses on liminal space. The spaces in between. They find this both a good way to analyse humanity without borders and an expression of their own queerness. Within this concept of otherness lies The Birdcage.
Their drag alter ego is often seen in a My Chemical Romance-esque all in one suit – think Evel Knievel at the Met gala. Although she carries this spunky spirit with her, The Birdcage is from “A place and a time that doesn’t exist”. Avery tells me The Birdcage has an elaborate backstory. They seem reluctant to ramble on about their insular world, I couldn’t be gladder that I convinced them otherwise.
The Birdcage is from the future after things have gotten “unbearably hot”. The world is a deserted wasteland following an ominous apocalypse. Among other sources, she is “massively inspired by Tank Girl”, one of the few female lead comic book movies with a punk rock energy that cohesively translates into The Birdcage’s performance. In the world of The Birdcage, there us a “queer uprising” in which a conflict breaks out between queers and straight people.
Amid the chaos, she runs a radio station playing nothing but “gay bangers, to kill the straight people”. Within her record collection sits a healthy dose of Abba and Britney Spears alongside many riot grrrl classics. The likes of Courtney Love, Joan Jett and Patti Smith fortify her through war and woe. This is until “she does a guitar solo so sick and hard that it sends her back in time and that's why she's here now.” Sounds reasonable enough for an interdimensional being.
Although life in the creative sphere can seem directionless, Avery wants to channel this energy into something tangible. Their aim is to create an artist collective operating not virtually, as may have been for the past two years, but out of one address. They also have plans to ride the airwaves as the birdcage, bringing her radio station out of fantasy and into reality.
Until this can be fulfilled, Avery has plans for The Birdcage’s next performance. What they are I sadly cannot tell you, as I too have been left in the murky waters of mystery. All I can say is that she has some bad news to deliver. Avery’s cheeky smirk returns. If, like me, you are shivering in anticipation you’ll have to come to the next Queer Cabaret at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama to find out.
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