Making her way to pride _{by Madelaine Empson}

When Laura Piccinin first came out, she did what she calls a “soft launch” with her best friend Adriane.

“When I finally found the courage to tell her, she lit up and blurted out, ‘Can I marry you?’, and I thought she was telling me that she was also secretly gay, and in love with me, waiting for me to finally say something out loud so we could be together forever”, the Canadian artist recalls. “Turns out, she just wanted to officiate the wedding. I love that girl, and I totally would have married her just to save face, but I’m glad we cleared that up.”

In her tell-all stand-up hour Lesbihonest, Piccinin will recount a lifetime of coming outs on the 24^th and 25^th of February and the 3^rd, 4^th, and 11^th of March at Ivy Bar, with a bonus night at The Fringe Bar on the 8^th of March. This hilarious yet sentimental autobiography reflects on a journey spanning three decades of change in the perception and treatment of LGBTQIA+ people. As an ex-religious queer performer, Piccinin grapples with a shifting identity and unease in her sense of self, eventually navigating her way to pride.

While this isn’t her first visit to Aotearoa, having lived her “best boho life in a van” road-tripping around the North Island in 2012, it will be her New Zealand Fringe Festival debut. Piccinin hopes Lesbihonest audiences will laugh, then cry, then laugh one more time on the way home.

“I hope they come away from the show feeling like whatever journey they’re on, it’s the right one.”