GAYLETTER

Beautiful weirdo Rumi Missabu is asking for our help, and when Rumi calls, we answer.

Featured in our latest issue of GAYLETTER, Rumi Missabu is one of the founding members of the Cockettes, the “acid-dowsed, anarchist drag queens who, in Rumi’s words, made a ‘brief but snazzy stand bridging the gap between the Summer of Love and the times of Harvey Milk.’” The group began in San Francisco in 1969 when a “visionary hippie” named Hibiscus gathered together 12 different performers. They began to put on a show featuring “fairy tales, show tunes and beautiful, chaotic drag while tripping on LSD.”

“We were instant stars,” Rumi says. “No one really cared if we could sing or dance; the fact that we dared to assume as much was enough. We evoked a vision of a bizarre utopia only to be found on the fringes of the mind, arranging the grotesque in scintillating homosexual, bisexual, asexual and quadric-sexual patterns, and decking it out in mocking rags and cock-flapping parody.”

Now, almost 50 years since the Cockettes began, Rumi is still a champion for performance art. He is working tirelessly to bring four artists; Bruna Palmeiro (Belle Zee Bub), Roxanne Redmeat, Donna Personna and Diego Gomez (Trangela Lansbury) from San Francisco to New York to appear in THE WITCHES OF SALEM. The performance is on October 5th at the historic Judson Memorial Church with additional shows to be announced.

From Rumi: “If you are in the Bay Area on Sunday, August 7 come check out our additional fundraiser; RUMI PALOOZA III @ Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley. Both events are FREE with donation, but sadly, today even glitter has its price! No contribution will go unrewarded and all will receive a 11×17 limited edition color commemorative poster of THE WITHES OF SALEM and your name or business will appear both on screen and in the program listing of the compendium of angels. Much love and thank you from the heart of my bottom!”

Check out our article on Rumi and the Cockettes in GAYLETTER Issue 4 and donate to his gofundme here.