By Helen Musa

Canberra is about to get a dose of queer brilliance as Queer PowerPoint rolls into town for a three-night takeover of The Q, Tuggeranong Arts Centre and Belconnen Arts Centre.

Part lecture, part stand-up, part community gathering, Queer PowerPoint takes the driest format imaginable – the corporate slideshow – and queers it.

Co-hosts Harriet Gillies and Xanthe Dobbie first dreamed it up while living in different towns (Gillies in Sydney, Dobbie in Melbourne) during the long isolation of covid lockdowns.

At a time when queer nightlife was shuttered and “being packed in like sardines into a sweaty club didn’t seem like a good option,” they wanted to create something social, safe and unthreatening.

“Queer PowerPoint was born out of the covid lockdowns,” Gillies says. “We wanted to create an event where the queer community could come together and have some fun amidst the general gloominess of the pandemic.”

The concept is simple. In each city, the hosts put out a public call for speakers – largely, though not exclusively, queer people – inviting them to prepare a 10-12 minute PowerPoint presentation on something personal or niche.

“It’s not about careers,” they say. “It’s about real stories and real experiences.”

Creative producer Thom Smyth, speaking from Sydney, says the idea gained traction when post-lockdown creative funding began flowing.

“During covid, almost everybody depended on the internet,” he says. “We thought – why not give people an opportunity to try out their ideas and then come back together in a social way?”

It’s not theatre, not quite comedy, not exactly a talk. “The closest thing would be stand-up,” Smyth says. “But it’s its own thing.”

Smyth admits he was initially “bullied” lovingly into helping make it a standalone event. 

Five years on, that labour of love has toured across Australia and even to NZ and Taiwan. This will be its first visit to the ACT, leaving Tasmania as the only state yet to experience the phenomenon.

Each Canberra-region night will feature a completely different line-up of local speakers, ensuring three distinct shows. The team works hard to source local content wherever they go, using venue networks, community organisations and word of mouth to find presenters.

When a scheduling hiccup forced the postponement of November’s planned visit, the producers opted to reschedule rather than dilute the local flavour.

“That’s important to us,” Smyth says. “We want each show to reflect the community it’s in.”

And what communities produce is wildly varied.

In a recent first, Queer PowerPoint staged a Sydney Festival run inside a queer-run funeral home. Unsurprisingly, the theme veered toward mortality, including what happens to Hollywood stars after they die. In the US, Smyth says, commemoration can become “insane”, with celebrities laid to rest at places such as the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, “it’s like Disneyland”.

“Doing it in a funeral home was quite fun,” he says. 

“It’s an unassuming format, which actually provides a way into that space without challenging people too much.”

Other presentations have explored human composting, the possibility of uploading your consciousness to the internet to extend longevity and, in Brisbane, a tongue-in-cheek examination of an alleged “gender conspiracy” against Diet Coke that supposedly led to the creation of the more masculine-sounding Coke Zero.

“It’s a real thing,” Smyth insists.

Queer PowerPoint plays, The Q, Queanbeyan, March 11; Tuggeranong Arts Centre, March 12, and at Belconnen Arts Centre on March 13.