Queening Out At Sydney Fringe Festival 2025

Every September, Sydney Fringe Festival transforms the city into a giant playground of creativity. And this year, the festival’s beloved Queer Hub is back — taking over Qtopia Sydney from 2–27 September with a program that’s bold, glittering, and unapologetically queer.

And leading the charge is an award-winning show straight out of Los Angeles: Queen Out (Verb), a drag comedy that promises roller skates, drag, and a whole lot of community spirit.

Queen Out (Verb)

At its core, Queen Out (Verb) is a riotous one-hour comedy-variety show from Lorelai and Annie Biotixx, in which drag artists take on oil executives who are trying to bulldoze a beloved queer bar to make way for a fracking drill. 

Expect singing, roller skating, tap dancing, reality television parodies, video projections and more — all in the name of celebrating queer resilience and poking fun at the systems trying to shut our spaces down. 

It’s a campy, chaotic romp, but with a strong message about the importance of community spaces.

The show “was kind of a send off to this venue that had been a real staple in the queer scene here in Los Angeles, including for ourselves as individuals,” Lorelai told Star Observer. “And it blossomed into this really fun project where we were able to lean into each other’s skill sets as theatre makers.”

“It’s a one hour dark drag comedy,” said Annie. “There’s roller skating, tap dancing. We try to employ as many of our skill sets as we can, crammed into one show. We play multiple different characters. 

“It’s insane, but I think it has heart as well”.

From Hollywood Fringe to Darlinghurst

Queen Out (Verb) first premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. To their surprise, Annie and Lorelai’s absurd-yet-heartfelt drag comedy picked up the coveted Tour Ready Award, which has brought them to Sydney.

“I think we were both very surprised,” Annie said. “I think there were over 400 productions last year at the Hollywood Fringe. We were beyond thrilled”.

Lorelai added: “I think it stood out to people, because I think we were writing from a very organic place. Sometimes I think very complicated stories can make for very universal applications to the audience”.

On stage, Annie and Lorelai have crackling chemistry — but they actually met while in competition with each other. “It was like a 10-week-long competition about hosting, the prize was to host your own show,” Annie recalled.

After the contest, the bar asked them to co-host. “We started talking, and we kind of hit it off right away. Realised we both have very similar work ethics, similar training in theatre… so we just kind of started doing that show, and then we wrote this, and we’ve just been kind of keeping [on] going,” Annie said.

For Annie and Lorelai, Queen Out (Verb) is as much about pushing drag into new artistic territory as it is about making people laugh. Lorelai told me, “We are theatre artists who use drag as our medium, and I think our goal is to show people what that looks like”.

Annie agreed: “I think just on a base level that drag is more than what people see on TV, on Drag Race, or what maybe they see at a bar. Drag as an art form is so expansive. So I think I would love for people to walk away thinking, ‘oh wow, I didn’t know that that was drag!’.”

When asked to sum the show up in three words, Annie chose “energetic, fabulous, madcap,” while Lorelai landed on “absurd, thought-provoking, bold”.

Why Qtopia is the perfect fit for Queen Out (Verb)

Both Annie and Lorelai say they are thrilled to be presenting their show in Darlinghurst’s Qtopia Sydney, which itself is a repurposed site with deep queer history. 

Lorelai explained: “We learned a little bit about the history of Qtopia. We thought it was very fitting for our piece, specifically as it’s a piece that specifically deals with community space; creating space and the destruction of space.”

Why Queer Hub matters

Queen Out (Verb) is just one highlight of the Queer Hub program at Sydney Fringe Festival, which runs from 2–27 September at Qtopia Sydney. 

With 28 shows across two spaces, the Queer Hub is a joyful mix of drag, cabaret, theatre, and comedy — all speaking directly to queer identity, joy, and community.

Other standout acts include:

• Let’s Unpack That – featuring comedians Kate Wilkins and Nick Harriott with brand new music by Montaigne.
• Piss Be With You – Cleo Rapture’s immersive one-woman sapphic splash-tacular.
• Confessions of a Drama Queen – Songbird Siren’s wild ride through the highs, lows, and absurdities of life as a performer.

Sydney Fringe Festival’s Queer Hub runs 2–27 September at Qtopia Sydney. Tickets and the full program are available now.