ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and analyses The Posh Club – an afternoon cabaret event produced by the queer performance collective Duckie for older working-class people at risk of isolation – and argues that it materialises a better world for its marginalised participants. It outlines Duckie's company history and the origins, operation and growth of The Posh Club, locating it in relation to the structural marginalisation of older people, austerity policy in the United Kingdom and dominant understandings of applied performance work. Rooted in participant observation, it argues that the club at once endows guests with high status and cultivates a low-stakes environment, supporting new kinds of confidence, understanding and relationality and enabling fun and fabulous experiments in dressing up, dancing and performance. These cumulatively materialise an expansive and expanding better world for the club’s marginalised participants, notwithstanding certain structural and logistical challenges.
