“This is the first time I’ve ever done any type of interview that is theater-related,” says iconic New York City club promoter Ladyfag. Born Rayne Baron, Ladyfag has spent the past nearly two decades producing queer nightlife in New York, shepherding dance parties like Holy Mountain, Battle Hymn, and LadyLand, a Pride beat festival whose headliners this summer were Cardi B and FKA Twigs. today Ladyfag is stepping off the dance floor and onto the stage to produce a play called Smuta, which premieres in Brooklyn on October 9.
“I guess I’m a theater queen,” she says.
Smuta isn’t much of a departure from strobe lights and the DJ booth. Written by up-and-comer Jacob Wasson and directed by Niamh Osh Jones, Smuta (pronounced smoo-tah) takes place in 2019, inside a club patronized by Moscow’s queer underground. The two-hander stars Oh, Mary! scene-stealer James Scully and The Morning Show’s Augustus Prew as Yakov and Goodboy, strangers who find each other as a spate of gay hate crimes ravage their community outside the club.
Jacob WassonRossCollab.
“It’s a play about two people caught in these circumstances that they have no way out of, and that’s something that’s familiar to me right today,” says Wasson. The 29-year-old playwright first wrote and produced Smuta in June 2023, putting the show up at Gymnopedie, a gymnasium in Bushwick that he rented by the hour. “I set up the whole show 30 minutes before we let people in, and then I had to take it down because the guy would have bookings afterwards,” says Wasson. He thought that short successful run would be the end of the road for Smuta. Then he found himself talking to Ladyfag at a Passover seder. “We got to talking, and she’s really interested in helping young artists in New York. And it got born out of there,” says Wasson. “It was like, ‘Oh, maybe this is an opportunity to do Smuta again.’” Ladyfag has one word to describe their unexpected collaboration: “Serendipity.”
“The only reason it’s actually happening is because of Lady,” says Wasson affectionately. “We’re just two Jewish girls.” Ladyfag chimes in: “Nice Jewish girls from the suburbs putting on a play.” Wasson finishes her sentence: “In the big, bad city.”
Rather than taking the traditional downtown or off-Broadway route, Wasson and Lady decided to take a big swing by mounting Smuta in an actual nightclub: Refuge, which recently opened in East Williamsburg and where Ladyfag serves as a resident promoter/rave thrower. “What I loved was Jacob’s use of an unconventional space,” says Ladyfag. “My career, which obviously is not in theater, I have also searched that out. I used to do a lot of [parties] in different places that people wouldn’t normally do.” Part of that was born out of necessity, as she explains: “There’s no funds and I want to do something wild that’s going to make no money: ‘Hey, I know this weird spot.’”
LadyfagPeter Tamlin.
The two-week-old Refuge is something of a culmination for Ladyfag. After moving from Toronto in the early aughts, she got her start in New York City nightlife as a cage dancer. “I moved here in the classic ‘I got a hundred bucks in my pocket and a dream,’ and I didn’t even know what my dream was,” she says. “I just wanted to come here for a few months as my last hurrah before I was about to open a vintage and antique store.”
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