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Donna Sachet | |
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 Sachet in 2013 | |
| Born | Kirk Reeves South Carolina, U.S. |
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| Website | www.sundaysadrag.com |
Donna Sachet is the stage name of Kirk Reeves, an American drag actor, singer, community activist, and writer based in San Francisco.
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Donna Sachet | |
|---|---|
| Sachet in 2013 | |
| Born | Kirk Reeves South Carolina, U.S. |
| Occupations |
|
| Website | www.sundaysadrag.com |
Donna Sachet is the stage name of Kirk Reeves, an American drag actor, singer, community activist, and writer based in San Francisco.
Born as Kirk Reeves in South Carolina, Sachet attended Vanderbilt University, then she went to New York. [1] A job opportunity brought Reeves to San Francisco. [1] At a San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus event, she lip-synced to a Donna Summer song with a significant swagger which inspired her name. [1]
Sachet has been awarded many community honors, including serving as Grand Marshal in the San Francisco Pride parade and being named first lady of the Castro district by California Senator Mark Leno. She was elected by the Imperial Court System as the 30th Absolute Empress of San Francisco with Brian C. Benamati in 1995. She recently has served on the boards of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, the AIDS Emergency Fund, Positive Resource Center, the Imperial Council and the state board of Equality California. She co-chaired the San Francisco GLAAD Media Awards for four years. Sachet serves as an unofficial liaison for the LGBT and leather communities.
She currently writes a biweekly column for the SF Bay Times , wrote a quarterly newsletter geared to the LGBT community for the SF Convention & Visitors Bureau, and was the host of "Sunday's a Drag" a female impersonation, brunch show at Harry Denton's Starlight Room in the St Francis Hotel for 15 years. [2] With Tim Gaskin, she co-hosted a Comcast weekly LGBT television series called OUT Spoken for five years. On September 29, 2009, Sachet became the first drag performer to sing the United States National Anthem at the opening of a Major League Baseball game. [3] [4]
Sachet has presided at the lighting ceremony for the Rainbow World Fund's World Tree of Hope in San Francisco City Hall and Grace Cathedral for 10 years, presided over the lighting of the Castro Holiday Tree, and cut the ribbon for the opening of the Castro Farmers' Market for 10 years. [5] Donna Sachet co-created with Gary Virginia the annual Pride Brunch honoring the Grand Marshals of the SF Pride Parade and raising money for PRC. She created Songs of the Season, a holiday cabaret show benefiting AIDS Emergency Fund and PRC, now in its 30th year at Feinstein's at the Nikko Hotel.
Donna Sachet starred in three successful runs of Artful Circle Theatre's musical drag version of The Women, entitled Jungle Red, two original performances of Who Murdered Donna Sachet?, several guest appearances in Incentive to Intrigue's The Daddy, the Diva, and the Detective murder mystery dinners, a six-week run of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters, and four weeks as Sylvia in Ruthless, The Musical. Donna Sachet is the subject of Nick Jimenez' student film Sachet: a short film and had a featured role in Adam Reeves' full feature comedy film, My Brother's Shoes.
Donna Sachet can be heard on recordings of the benefit holiday compilation Carols Across America and Songs of the Season 2013.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), also called Order of Perpetual Indulgence (OPI), is a charitable, protest, and street performance movement that uses drag and religious imagery to satirize issues of sex, gender, and morality and fundraise for charity. In 1979, a small group of gay men in San Francisco began wearing the attire of Catholic nuns in visible situations using camp to promote various social and political causes in the Castro District.
The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration, usually known as San Francisco Pride, is a pride parade and festival held at the end of June most years in San Francisco, California, to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their straight allies.
The Bay Area Reporter is a free weekly LGBT newspaper serving the LGBT communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the largest-circulation LGBT newspapers in the United States, and the country's oldest continuously published newspaper of its kind.
The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (SFGMC) is the world's first openly gay chorus, one of the world's largest male choruses and the group most often credited with creating the LGBT choral movement.
The San Francisco Bay Times, the first LGBTQ newspaper founded jointly by gay men and women, launched in 1978 and remains one of the largest and oldest LGBTQ newspapers in Northern California. The business includes the 24/7 live-streaming Castro Street Cam that streams Harvey Milk Plaza and the Castro live to the world, serving as an emotional lifeline to LGBTQ people elsewhere, including internationally, who seek connection due to isolation in their regions. It also includes the LGBTQ news and events service "Betty's List," as well as "Harvey's List" and the "Bay Times List."
Michael Williams, known professionally as Sister Roma, is an American drag queen activist, gay pornography director, fundraiser, entertainer and event host/emcee. He has been a member of San Francisco's Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence since 1987.
Stefan Grygelko, better known by the stage name Heklina, was an American actor, drag queen, and entrepreneur in San Francisco. Grygelko's mother was Icelandic, and having been born in the U.S., he lived in Iceland in the 1980s; he named his drag character after the Icelandic volcano Hekla. Heklina founded the drag club Trannyshack in 1996.
I think that drag queens are still the eunuch clown that's safe to laugh at. It's definitively not shocking anymore. So I don't know if America's really embraced it. The early 90s was when RuPaul [was becoming famous] and it was the first time any drag queen had mainstream exposure. I don't really see a drag queen breaking out like that [again].
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California.
Halloween in the Castro was an annual Halloween celebration held in The Castro district of San Francisco, first held in the 1940s as a neighborhood costume contest. By the late 1970s, it had shifted from a children's event to a gay pride celebration that continued to grow into a massive annual street party in the 2000s.
Anne Kronenberg is an American political administrator and LGBT rights activist. She is best known for being Harvey Milk's campaign manager during his historic San Francisco Board of Supervisors campaign in 1977 and his aide as he held that office until he and mayor George Moscone were assassinated. As an openly lesbian political activist, Kronenberg was noted for her instrumental role in the gay rights movement, both for Milk's campaign and in her own right.
The Grand Ducal Council of San Francisco, Inc., is a predominantly gay 501(c)(3) nonprofit fund raising organization. Formed in 1973 as a more camp-oriented response to San Francisco's Imperial Court System by H.L. Perry, who reigned as the Court's Grand Duchess I, the Grand Ducal Council raises money for a wide array of charity organizations through large annual costume balls and various other, smaller fund raisers throughout the year. Both the Imperial Court System and the Grand Ducal Council of San Francisco are built using roughly the same power structure. "Monarchs" are elected and the nonprofit, 501(c)(3) portion is run by a board of directors or trustees.
BeBe Sweetbriar is the stage name of Kevin-Lee Junious, an American drag singer, actor, community activist, and host based in San Francisco, California. She has released two dance records, Save Me and Free to Be Me. BeBe is also host of multiple parties, such as Porno, a quarterly dance party and Play Trivia with BeBe at Harveys, San Francisco. She hosts a weekly webTV talk show, It′s Everything, on the Talk Stream Network.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
Nikki Calma, better known as Tita Aida, is a social activist from San Francisco, California. She is a long-time advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness, particularly among Asian American communities, and for transgender people.
Cecilia Chung is a civil rights leader and activist for LGBT rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, health advocacy, and social justice. She is a trans woman, and her life story was one of four main storylines in the 2017 ABC miniseries When We Rise about LGBT rights in the 1970s and 1980s.
Starky's Restaurant and Bar, or simply Starky's, was a gay bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon's Kerns neighborhood, in the United States. Established in 1984, the venue became a fixture in Portland's gay community before closing in 2015. It hosted LGBT events and served as a gathering space for leather enthusiasts and the Oregon Bears, among other groups. Starky's received a generally positive reception and was most known for its Bloody Marys, brunch, and outdoor seating.
Felicia Elizondo was an American transgender woman with a long history of activism on behalf of the LGBT community. She was a regular at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco during the time of the Compton's Cafeteria riot, a historic LGBT community uprising.
Pat Norman was an American activist for women's rights, as well as the rights of the African American and LGBT communities.
El/La Para TransLatinas is a non-profit organization that provides legal, fiscal, educational, health, and other services to transgender Latinas. The organization was founded in San Francisco, California, in 2006.
The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is an American memorial wall in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, New York City, dedicated to LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes". Located inside the Stonewall Inn, the wall is part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history. The first fifty nominees were announced in June 2019, with the wall unveiled on June 27, 2019, as a part of Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 events. Five honorees will be added annually.
