Pecs

But Pecs’ performances often run deeper than pure entertainment, with past shows exploring gender identity, politics and sexuality. Among their stand-out works to date was The 80s Show, which enjoyed a sold out week when first performed at Soho Theatre back in 2017. ‘That show reflected what was happening in 2016 - with the rise of facism and the political climate we have today, mirroring the 1980s where a similar situation unfolded. We also celebrated the amazing 80s icons, many of which we sadly lost in 2016’.

Inspired by the work of Diane Tor and Jack Halberstam, and influenced by a breadth of queer and pop culture legends, Pecs expertly blur serious messages through fun performance. As they told us ahead of their Meltdown billing, ‘Through our drag king cabaret and theatre shows we centre creating cultural space for queer women, trans and non-binary folk. But also we are just really fun cheeky bois’.

Pecs are no strangers to the Southbank Centre and you may have seen them out on our Riverside Terrace before as they curated a day of events there back in 2019. ‘It was an amazing day. We got to bring multiple drag collectives to the stage,’ they told us. ‘We had families come and then there was a massive mosh pit at the end when we performed our emo number… so it's a special place for us and it's a place where we have a lot of fond memories of creating great experiences.’

And that creation of great experiences on our Riverside Terrace continues at Christine and the Queens’ Meltdown as Pecs join forces with DJ platform Sisu for what’s sure to be a fantastic Friday night. ‘We've got some group numbers up our sleeve,’ was what we were told when we asked what they had in store for us. ‘We've just created an amazing group number for Homovision at Eurovision, so we want to bring you a little taste of that and we’ll probably make a new number specially in honour of Chris too’.

‘As a collective of queer women and non-binary people being asked to be part of a festival curated by Chris, who is a queer icon and incredible artist, just made all our little queer hearts sing to be honest. There was much fever and excitement when our producer Dais asked the boys if they would be interested’.

And what else are they looking forward to with their performance at Meltdown? ‘Just having an amazing time! Sisu are an amazing DJ collective and so having people out on the terrace dancing, enjoying some electronic music and watching some incredible drag is just going to be an amazing vibe’. We certainly can’t argue with that.