Stage Managing WigOut! 2026
For the past month, I've been working as the Stage Manager for the fundraiser WigOut! In Atlanta, happening Saturday, June 6 | 1:00 PM – 7:00 PM at the East Atlanta Community Garden - 559 Flat Shoals Ave SE, Atlanta, GA
We're hosting a day of wigs, drag, performances of all kinds, an artist market, and some very special guests including the Atlanta Gay Men's Chorus, and drag legend, comedian & icon, Lady Bunny herself.
It's an honor and privilege to be supporting the show this year, since I helped with the first WigOut! in Atlanta, when I lived there over 15 years ago.
Fundraising for Several Great Causes
Brave Trails
WHERE LGBTQ+ YOUTH FIND THEIR PEOPLE, PLACE, & PASSION.
SNAP
Solutions NOT Punishment Collaborative (SnapCo.) SnapCo. is a Black Trans and Queer led organization fighting for everybody - even when they are not fighting for us! We are creating a powerful movement of people who are able to reimagine solutions other than police to build a safer, more inclusive, and litty Atlanta.
GLAHR
Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights
The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) educates, organizes and trains the Latino community in Georgia to defend and promote their civil and human rights.
It Takes a Village... An East Atlanta Village
I jumped onboard this year, since they needed a stage mother, and I knew I could button up the details like nobody else.
Talent Coordination
The performers signed up from a Google Sheet with their info, so I used Google Drive and several Google Apps to handle organizing the talent and assets.
I used Google Sheets to track the following info, per-former:
- Performer Name
- Performance Type
- Performance Tracks
- Performance Length
- Photos
- Phone #
- Instagram Profile
I shared the Sheet with the Coordinators for them to view it and locked-down the sheet with the performers' info, so nobody else could edit it.
I duplicated the sheet 1:1 so that we could sort and filter the results for different needs.
Then I created the Lineup Sheet that referenced the Table from the locked-performers-contacts sheet. This way I could organize the lineup of the show, and whatever info updated from the performers contacts sheet would update on the lineup.
We had about 20 performers to contact for the show, so I started with individual messages across, email, text, and Instagram, to introduce myself and establish trust that I'm actually the stage manager of the event.
Then as we got to the final week of production, I created a group text for the performers, so I could reach them all more easily and provide a space where we were all in it together.
Gathering Assets
I shared a Google Drive Folder with the rest of the festival coordinators, placing their Music Tracks and Social Media Pics in separate folders.
Then to handoffs were coordinated with the Social Media Manager, by sharing the Performer Pics.
The music tracks were handed off to the DJ from the WigOut Performer Music folder.
The lineup was handed off to the performers and emcee with the WigOut Lineup Screenshots, where I took screenshots of the Google Sheet, so they would be easier to share with the team & performers.
Producing Joyous Solutions
As an added Bonus, I updated the metadata of the music files, to compile WigOut The Album 2026, where I designed the album art in Affinity.
I updated the metadata of the tracks with the album name, artists, track names and track numbers.
So that when the music files were imported to the DJ software, they would be organized in a single album, with the flow of the show.
And then took the album artwork and the published studio tracks and made the WigOut The Album 2026 Spotify Playlist to share with the performers & team. The performers loved this, and corrected some of my song choices. 💕
The Lineup
Once I had all of the tracks, I had to organize the lineup, so I imported the music and listened to the flow of the show, as if I were DJing. When I lived in Atlanta, I DJed for about 6 years, producing several events at Mary's in East Atlanta, and Friends On Ponce.
This approach worked well, and I used my theater background of 17 years to imagine the run of the show, ending the first performer block with Panda Berry's Rose's Turn from Gypsy. Which is also the closing number of act 1 in Gypsy. Kinda perfect. 🥀
I imagined the higher energy numbers to go first, since the crowd would be excited and the sun would be hot. Then after the DJ break, we had the numbers that were a bit more dark and sultry, before the headliners would perform.
Factoring in the unknown of onstage banter was a bit of a challenge. But I worked with the emcee to schedule in about 2 minutes of freeform banter between performers, so that we would get a somewhat accurate timing for run of show.
We had to get a somewhat accurate run of show to provide to the headliners, since they had more strict timelines.
After finalizing the lineup with the emcee, I took snapshots of the spreadsheet per-hour to send out to the performers group text thread.
Getting the Wig on the Road
I'm wrapping up the details today, and looking forward to hitting the road on Thursday to drive up to Atlanta for the event on Saturday.
The day of the show I'm going to be positioned directly offstage with a huge drag fan to beat that Atlanta Summer heat, and get our performers in line for their time to shine. I'll have a mirror and a rat tail comb, in case they need to clock themselves before showtime.
I miss Atlanta, since I haven't returned after leaving. So this is a bit of a homecoming for me, in the sense that I haven't done any stage work since leaving Atlanta over 13 years ago. Looking forward to packing my wig, and driving towards this celebration of queer joy.