In a moment when anti-trans legislation and rising political hostility have reached a fever pitch, Fresh Meat Productions is answering back—not with fear, but with brilliance.
The 2025 Fresh Meat Festival hits San Francisco’s Z Space (Thu/19-Sat/21) with a three-night lineup that’s equal parts resistance and revelry, celebration and ceremony.
Now in its 24th year, the Fresh Meat Festival is not just an event; it’s also a sanctuary for queer and trans joy, a stage for experimentation, and a ritual of survival through performance.
As bills restricting the rights of transgender and queer people sweep the nation—more than 900 introduced across 49 states—the festival stands defiant, exuberant, and unapologetically itself.
This year’s edition features world premieres and new works specially crafted for the festival, with a genre-spanning roster that ranges from world champion bachata to South Asian contemporary dance, from drag and comedy to storytelling and trans-Americana music. It’s an intersectional mosaic of talent, heart, and radical presence.
Featured artists include Aísha Noir, D’Lo, Ishami Dance Company, Jahaira and Angelica, JanpiStar, Mudd the Two Spirit, Sean Dorsey Dance, Shawna Virago, and hostess Churro Nomi.
One of the festival’s most anticipated premieres is a commissioned work by Bay Area drag artist and performer Mudd the Two Spirit, voted Best Drag King in the Best of the Bay 2024: Arts & Nightlife readers’ poll. With an intersectional lens, Mudd brings unmatched depth and power to the stage.
The award-winning drag king, who identifies as a deaf/Hoh, neurodivergent, BiPOC, and Two-Spirit multidisciplinary artist, says their experience performing at Fresh Meat is a decisive step toward a transformative shift in queer art.
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“There are numerous narratives projected throughout the media about what resistance and celebration can be and what they look like,” Mudd tells 48 Hills. “Still, this festival is laying the groundwork for those stories to become possible. I’m so grateful and honored to be included in such a gifted and unique group of performers. To be selected for a feature is one of the highest honors in itself.”
Their new piece, “Ç u ļ t î v 4 t i || g” (“Cultivating”), is a collaboration with local drag luminaries Major Hammy, Glamputee, Cheetah Biscotti, and Sassi Fran, and includes costume design by Indigenous Two-Spirit transmasc/Mahū artist OMN (pronounced “Omen”).
There will be lip sync, choreography, and an all-POC cast. The work explores themes of identity, resistance, capitalism, and community, and is informed by Mudd’s lived experience of marginalization and their refusal to be erased.
Being raised as someone with multiple marginalized identities in a westernized, colonized American culture made Mudd believe that constant suppression, censorship, and oppression would shape their life. They never imagined they’d have real opportunities to express their experiences through art, let alone receive financial backing or support from any larger institution.
That perspective animates every moment of their piece. “Conformity isn’t an option when the things that make you ‘different’ are embedded into your DNA,” they say. “Many of us were not made to serve the machine that has been actively working against us… If you can break away from it, whether by rejection, by choice, or by personal expansion, there is always something that can feel far more gratifying if you just exist in the way that you want to exist.”
The visual language of “Ç u ļ t î v 4 t i || g” is as layered as its message. Mudd cites a wide range of inspirations, from Daft Punk to “The Twilight Zone,” from San Francisco’s dystopian AI billboards to community-led protest movements.
An underlying theme is how individual realities are always shaped by—and, in turn, help shape—the larger collective consciousness. Accessibility isn’t an afterthought in any of Mudd’s performances—it’s foundational.
“Accessibility in performance and inclusivity is a given for me because I exist as someone who requires accessibility to create,” they say.
In their piece, Mudd provides interpreters with the complete lyrics and incorporates captions throughout the performance. They convey stories through visual cues and expressive physical movement.
But it’s Mudd’s identity as Two-Spirit that lends an ancestral weight and urgency to their work.
“Two Spirits are the healers of their tribes and have historically engaged in their communities as medicine people,” says Mudd. “This piece is the ‘medicine’ I have the honor of giving to the people coming to the Fresh Meat Festival. I honor my ancestors by sharing stories of decolonization and community healing. I honor my indigenous heritage when I dance and put on my makeup; It’s all very ancestral. Knowing that I exist as a real, living being is more than enough proof of how resilient and powerful my ancestors were.”
In the face of systemic erasure, the Fresh Meat Festival becomes both an altar and an amplifier.
For Mudd, the socio-political climate is not abstract—it’s personal and omnipresent.
“I genuinely feel the unshakable reinforcement that I exist,” they say. “I have never felt more sure of my existence.”
They quote a powerful message they once posted to Instagram:
“Thinking about how no matter what happens in the next four years I’m still going to be a multiply-marginalized queer and I could care less about anything that could be ‘signed’ in because I still exist regardless. I’m not afraid because I cannot be erased. I’m not afraid because I have resilience embedded in my DNA. I’m not afraid because I’m only going to exist longer.”
That message of refusal, of indelibility, is at the heart of Fresh Meat’s ethos.
Mudd responds to ongoing efforts to erase queer identities—through laws, visa restrictions, or attempts to strip letters from LGBTQIA2S+—by asserting that their existence, and the truths of queer communities, are backed by science, society, politics, and culture.
Although systems may try to erase them from history, Mudd affirms their enduring presence: a multiply marginalized queer artist performing boldly in the heart of San Francisco.
With all this in mind, Mudd has one hope for the audience: that they leave the theater changed.
“I hope people leave with a sense of expansion,” they say. “I dream of a moment when folks can watch all of our often discriminated, oppressed, subjected, sexualized, and excluded bodies emulate incredible, powerful, profound, and delicious things. That what seems impossible can be made possible in ways that maybe one didn’t deem possible. I hope there’s an abundance of respect and a desire to see more, because there is so much more out there.”
And that’s the promise of the Fresh Meat Festival: that joy is possible, that beauty is resistance, and that there is, always, more out there.
FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL runs June 19-21 at Z Space, SF. For tickets and more info, go here.
