Vaginal Davis is an American genderqueer performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Davis' name is a homage to activist Angela Davis.

Davis is often associated with the formation of the Queer-Core Zine Movement. She has performed with such artists as Lisa Lampanelli, Margaret Cho, Beck, and Ernesto Tomasini, and has collaborated with underground photographers/filmmakers Bruce LaBruce, Rick Castro, G. B. Jones, the performance artist Ron Athey and, more recently, with the Cheap art collective in Berlin, Germany.

Since the late 1970s, Davis has led many conceptual art bands, beginning with "The Afro Sisters". Davis is also a founding member of "¡Cholita!" with Alice Bag (of seminal 1970s punk band The Bags). He co-founded "Pedro, Muriel & Esther (PME)" with Glen Meadmore. PME recorded their first single for independent record label Amoeba Records, and went on to record The White To Be Angry with producer Steve Albini. She was in a band called Black Fag with Beck's mother Bibbe Hansen, and more recently, as a part of her collaboration with Cheap in Berlin, Davis formed a band called "Ruth Fischer" (Fischer was a leader in the Communist Party of Germany).

Margaret Cho (born December 5, 1968) is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and singer-songwriter. Cho, of Korean descent, is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music videos and has her own clothing line. She has frequently supported LGBT rights and has won awards for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of women, Asians, and the LGBT community.

As an actress she has played more serious parts, such as Charlene Lee in It's My Party and that of John Travolta's FBI colleague in the action movie Face/Off. She is part of the TV series Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime Television, playing the role of Teri Lee, a paralegal assistant.

Cho was born into a Korean family in San Francisco, California. She grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, which she described as a community of "old hippies, ex-druggies, burn-outs from the '60s, drag queens, Chinese people, and Koreans. To say it was a melting pot — that's the least of it. It was a really confusing, enlightening, wonderful time."

Jackie Beat is the drag persona of actor, singer, songwriter and screenwriter Kent Fuher. Beat has appeared in a number of independent feature films both in and out of drag, including Wigstock: The Movie, Flawless and Adam & Steve (for which he also wrote and performed the song "Dance Off"). In television, Beat has appeared on Sex and the City and was a writer for the short-lived sketch comedy series Hype on The WB Television Network. Beat is a fixture on the New York City cabaret scene and performs a sold-out Gay Pride and a sold-out Christmas run every year; in 2009 his Christmas dates take place at the Laurie Beechman Theater.

Jackie Beat is the lead singer of the Electroclash band Dirty Sanchez. Beat is also a columnist for IN:LA magazine.

Ron Athey (born December 16, 1961) is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally (especially in the UK and Europe). Athey's work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality, and traumatic experience. Many of his works include aspects of S&M in order to confront pre-conceived ideas about the body in relation to masculinity and religious iconography.

Athey's work frequently explores religious subjects. For example, Athey concluded his 2005 operatic performance Judas Cradle (performed in collaboration with Juliana Snapper of the band Cypher in the Snow) by speaking in tongues, and his theatrical multi-media performance Joyce unpacks the feverish environment of his religious upbringing. He has staged himself as a modern era St. Sebastian. Some of these performances were re-staged for the photographer Catherine Opie.

Athey collaborated with filmmaker Catherine Gund from 1996 to 1998 to produce a feature length film Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance. Hallelujah! presents Athey's life and work - including Four Scenes in a Harsh Life, Martyrs and Saints, and Deliverance - and spends time with him on and off the stage in Mexico City, Zagreb, and Los Angeles.

John Cameron Mitchell (born April 21, 1963) is an American writer, actor, and director. He is best known for his motion pictures Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus and Rabbit Hole.

Mitchell was born in El Paso, Texas. The son of a retired U.S. Army Major General, he grew up on army bases in the U.S., Germany, and Scotland, and generally attended Catholic schools including St. Xavier High School (Junction City, Kansas) and St. Pius X High School (Albuquerque) from which he graduated in 1981. His mother is from Glasgow, Scotland and emigrated to the United States as a young schoolteacher. His brother Colin is also an actor, writer, and filmmaker.

Mitchell's first stage role was the Virgin Mary in a Nativity musical staged at a Scottish Benedictine boys boarding school when he was 11 years old. He studied theater at Northwestern University from 1981 to 1985.^{[citation needed]}

Mitchell's first professional stage role was Huckleberry Finn in a 1985 Organic Theater adaptation at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Mitchell's first New York acting role was Huck Finn in the Broadway musical Big River (1985). He originated the role of Dickon on Broadway in The Secret Garden, and appeared in the original cast of the Off Broadway musical Hello Again. He received Drama Desk nominations for both roles, and can be heard on the original cast recordings for each. (His rendition of the original demo version of "Giants in the Sky" can be heard as a bonus track on the 2007 remastered release of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.) He appeared in the original cast of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (off- and on Broadway) and starred in Larry Kramer's Off Broadway sequel to The Normal Heart, The Destiny of Me, for which he received a Village Voice Obie Award and a Drama Desk nomination.