Black, Fat & F**gy: A Born Diva, Milo Hartill Is Changing The Game

“Multi-hyphenate diva & dickhead”, reads the email signature of Milo Hartill. But a slightly more succinct descriptor for the stunning Hartill is ‘entertainer’: someone faithfully dedicated to making us laugh, think, feel – powered by love for community.

That instinct to uplift a room was on full display when Milo hosted the 2026 Midsumma Festival program launch. Effortlessly charming and hilarious — and our jaw was on the floor watching them hit the wildly high notes with seemingly endless power. 

That was a moment that “feels so full circle”, says Milo. Their first-ever big paid gig was Midsumma in 2020; now they are threaded all through Midsumma’s massive program — mainstage at Carnival on 18 Jan, and at FREAK OUT! The Afterparty. 

And of course, their own highly acclaimed show, Black, Fat & F**gy (BFF), is a major feature of this year’s program.

They laughingly share that that iconic show title emerged from a conversation with friends, about the qualities a performer can have which make booking jobs tougher — while actually being their greatest strengths. 

“What – like being Black, fat and faggy?” Hartill joked — and the phrase quickly became both slogan and challenge.

In general, Hartill’s practice lives where art and advocacy meet — celebrating queer joy, fat liberation, Black and brown excellence. Hartill explains it as “Trojan-horsing big conversations through comedy”. 

Hartill says a key motivator for BFF was their lived experiences of racism in the arts, staunch as they explain how it is deeply, systemically woven through the industry. 

The show blossomed out of painful industry rejections that pushed Hartill to really interrogate identity and stereotyping when it comes to body size, sexuality, gender, and race. Instead of despair, they instead created something defiantly joyful and sharp-witted. 

“I really just want people to be able to walk away and see that… being Black, fat and faggy isn’t doom and gloom,” they say — a reminder that joy can be political, a deeply nourishing form of resistance against an unfair system.

It’s not a cure-all fix for this embedded racism, Hartill says, but improving representation does make a difference, and performing BFF across the country, audiences have told them how profoundly their show lands. 

After one performance, a group of LGBTQIA+ African-Australian teens approached Hartill to share that they had never felt so accurately represented. It’s moments like that which Hartill uses to continue shaping the work, and fighting the system.

By speaking truth to power in Black Fat & F**gy, making people both think twice AND laugh through it all — the racism, the homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia – it’s defiantly refusing to play the system’s game. Milo Hartill is not just changing minds through empathy, raw honesty and high-spirited, campy comedy — they’re changing the game. 

“I really hope people can reckon with their preconceived ideas of Black, fat and gay people [and] hopefully dismantle some of them,” they explain. “All of the icky, sticky things that people assume — I hope that it can help people to humanise those identities.”

Midsumma gives that mission room to breathe. The gigantic 2026 program sprawls across theatres, galleries and streets across January and February — a glittering arc of queer resistance, celebration and collective joy.

Beyond the festival, Hartill is a busy lil’ multi-hyphenate diva: they’re already writing their next show, and even exploring yet-to-be-revealed ‘ventures in the sexual wellness space’. 

But their main focus is fashion work, or, as they put it with a grin, “being hot that’s accessible, but also cunty”. 

 

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