Black Benatar aka Mx. Beatrice Thomas
Black Benatar aka Mx. Beatrice Thomas is a queer interdisciplinary artist/performer, director and media maker, who comes from a family lineage of pastors, performers, doctors and healers. Beatrice has been pondering the meaning of things and making art from the moment they came into consciousness. From absurdist cabarets to vampire/witch love triangles,Thomas weaves the experiences of queers and people of color into magical realities with strong critical commentary, comedic satire and media rich production. A maker of objects, installations and theater, Mx. Thomas reveals, revises and constructs alternate realities. They use the artifice of drag to inhabit Black Benatar, an exaggerated black femme alter ego creature that challenges blackness, whiteness, oppression & convention. Thomas is a featured drag queen and the Director of Drag Queen Story Hour, a program that brings drag queens to read stories at public libraries. Beatrice’s work has graced the stages of the deYoung Museum, SF PRIDE Mainstage, CounterPulse, SomArts Cultural Center and the Institute of Advanced Uncertainty and has shown in galleries across the United States. Beatrice has been a KALW Audio Academy Fellow, an inaugural fellow of the APAP Leadership Fellows Program (LFP) and the 2018 Ebony McKinney Leadership Award Regional Awardee. Thomas works nationally consulting and advocating for equity and the inclusion of queer arts on national mainstream stages.