What started out as one of the open space workshops at our Festival of Community 2025 has taken on a life of its own…heading for the West End, Broadway…who knows!

UNION funded a bunch of participants including alumni from UNION 19, UNION 24 and beyond to develop the idea. Hannah Whitlow, Jess Gibson, Saffi Brown, Tom Mayhew, and Sian Davies started with these questions, looking initially at a week-long residency in Liverpool:

A) How will we blend art-forms together to create a short piece of cabaret style performance, within themes of ecology & queerness?
B) How do we weave together our varying artistries (such as comedy, writing, dance and design) into a live performance focusing on queer ecology?
C) What does collaboration look like for us 5 artists from different art forms? What new ways of working will we discover?
D) How can we use performance and drag as a form of science communication?
E) How might this project might continue and sustain itself beyond this residency or not?

Their thoughts on the process are in the video below but the project certainly has continued with a further residency at Unity Theatre Liverpool in spring 2026 and the first public performance on March 27th

Exploring themes of life, sex and death through a queer ecology lense through song, dance, drag and a big fat dirty disco. The festering ideals of patriarchy, heteronormativity and colonialism have been consumed and digested by society and are beginning to rot the very thing they sought to uphold. Now is the time for the queer mycelium to break them down, permanently alter their structure, establish new roots and feed on anything nutritious that remains. Expect worms in drag.