Black & Free: Pleasure Histories

On June 4, Black & Free: PleaOn June 4, Black & Free: Pleasure Histories comes to Weeksville Heritage Center for an evening of film and live performance honoring Black queer and trans legacies of pleasure too often excluded from dominant narratives.

As one of the nation’s earliest free Black communities, Weeksville offers a space to reflect on the present through histories of self-determination. Through moving image, storytelling, and burlesque, the evening highlights those who expanded the boundaries of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in New York and beyond.

The program features a screening of Mary of Ill Fame (2020–21) by Tourmaline, a fictional narrative grounded in the life of Mary Jones, a Black trans woman and sex worker in 1830s New York. The screening is paired with excerpts from We Been Here, a showcase honoring Black burlesque legends Sahji (1940s) and Jean Idelle (1950s–60s), alongside live performances by two of New York’s leading Black burlesque artists, Queerly Femmetastic and Aurora Boobrealis.

Mary of Ill Fame (2020–2021) shapes a fictional story around Mary Jones (played by Rowin Amone), a Black trans woman and sex worker who was part of a community of “girls of ill fame” and eventually incarcerated in the 1830s for stealing a man’s wallet. Mary of Ill Fame imagines Jones in Seneca Village, an autonomous New York City community of free Black and Irish immigrants located on the land occupied today by Central Park. Splicing between images of Jones in brutal confinement and in a gracious, picturesque Seneca Village home, Tourmaline builds a fantasy space of power, freedom, and pleasure that the actual Jones deserved.

Runtime: 17min 14sec

We Been Here:

Hot-cha girls. Strip tease darlings. Exotic dancers. Shake dancers. Hoochie coochie girls. Black women have always been a part of the building and rebuilding of burlesque in America, but are often left out of the history books. Our unique way of storytelling through movement, costuming, props, and performance is an integral part of the legacy of classic burlesque in the 30s, 40s, and 50s as well as the revival of the art form through neo-burlesque in the 90s. The We Been Here showcase pays tribute to Black burlesque legends by presenting their histories through TedX-style presentations, and features acts from New York's current vibrant Black burlesque scene.

6:30pm Doors open ( Enjoy offerings from community partners, including The Free Black Women’s Library, chair massages by Chauvet Bishop, and more!)

7:30pm Show Begins

8:45pm: Show Ends

9pm: Doors Close

Brooklyn Bred bombshell Queerly Femmetastic is a nerdy connoisseur of Blackness. Her pronouns are she, her, and ma’am. This Patron Saint of Multiple Orgasms is inspired by Black shake-dancers, strippers, and hoochie-coochie girls across generations. Known for snatching souls and taking titles, she is Grand Master Funk 2024, the Silver Tusk Awards 2025 Entertainer of the Year, and Miss Coney Island 2026. Fun fact: This is the first time there has ever been a Black Miss Coney Island since the pageant's inception in 1924. Queerly loves the smell of books, practicing sneaky splits, and the feeling of your money on her skin.

Miss AuroraBoobRealis lights up the night stage with her unique mixture of raw and earthy, wild and fearless burlesque! She is an interdisciplinary performing artist creating in the intersections of burlesque, dance, theater and poetry. Central to her existence is the fact that Aurora cannot and will not separate herself from her art, race, or political beliefs. She is a co-founder of Boombox Burlesque: A Hip Hop Burlesque Festival, brASS: Brown RadicalAss Burlesque, and back in 2007, Brown Girls Burlesque. Aurora has graced burlesque stages across the country from NYC to Seattle, Portland, Austin, Boston, Minneapolis, Philly, D.C. and more! She is a multiple Silver Tusk award winner, Board President of BurlyCon, mom to a brilliant kid, and an aspiring Beatboxer.

A Guggenheim Fellow and TIME100 Honoree, Tourmaline is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. Tourmaline’s history-making book MARSHA (May 2025) is the first definitive biography of the revolutionary Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson. Her art is in the permanent collections of The Met, MoMA, Tate, and the Whitney. Her award-winning films — including the critically acclaimed Happy Birthday, Marsha! — have been widely recognized for their unique blend of historical narrative and speculative futurism. She has built a career rooted in community organizing and trans liberation, and is a transformative voice in movements for racial, economic, and gender justice.

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Host or Publisher Weeksville Heritage Center