• Favorite Performance Art Creator
• Best Performing Arts Organization

The Happening at the Orange Show, a winner of the Best Performing Arts Organization honor, is one of the wildest and most difficult things to describe. When asked what it is, the trans man who hosts and organizes The Happening, Andrew Whit, simply states, “It’s an experimental and performance-art showcase that happens at the Orange Show the last Friday of every month, from January through October. It is actually the Orange Show’s second-largest self-produced and funded event, second only to the Art Car experience.”

Typically, they gather together six or seven different “acts,” and the audience wanders around a warehouse or parts of the Orange Show on Munger Street, where anything can happen. You could see puppets, poets, musical acts, or anything else the performance-art rebels of Houston can dream up. 

Whit says, “The Happening started in the Orange Show Monument itself, but that has been closed for the last year for renovation. This moved us into the Orange Show headquarters, which is a large pavilion-style warehouse located right behind the monument. We are in the second generation of The Happening, which was actually founded by Alex Lechin. Alex was a University of Houston student pursuing her Master of Arts degree, and she started volunteering at the Orange Show by helping with restoration work. She developed a relationship with them, and she had this vision for doing performance and experimental art.

If you are unfamiliar with the Orange Show, you are not alone. Uber drivers and Houstonians often have no idea what this folk museum and brightly colored tribute to kitsch is, but The Happening has put the place firmly on the map with its monthly shows. Whit muses,  “We’re on our 32nd show now, so when you multiply the math out, and you think about how many artists and how many audience members came to the Orange Show for their first time through the doors of The Happening as an active program, that’s really something very special. The Orange Show is really blossoming. It’s like a big orange blossom now!”

When asked how he describes his role, Whit responds, “Now I work as the creative director, which I absolutely love. I’ve been doing it for over a year now, and it’s amazing to get to collaborate with so many artists each month. I also usually host the event. In the past, The Happening would have rotating hosts. But in an effort to allocate more of the budget for the performing artists, I took on the hosting position myself.”

The Happening is a unique experience every time. “No two Happenings are ever the same,” says Whit with a shrug. “To describe The Happening as one event would be really hard, but I can give you an example of what a recent Happening was like. We had a witch’s circle, and then a photo shoot. There was an album release, and then a cardboard puppet show! Then we had Dr. Aisen, who is an experimental artist and also a medical doctor who designs medical equipment, get up on stage and play experimental music. In between songs, she pulled out a syringe and injected these two pearls with something that was unknown to the audience. Then at the end of the show, we found out that she had married two female eggs together and inseminated them. You can bring people in for kind of a surprise experience—they’re there for one thing, but then they can be introduced to another.”

Contemplating how The Happening has become so much a part of the fabric of the community, Whit says, “Art is queer. It’s strange in nature; strange people do it. Think about the kind of person who would make a cardboard puppet show and spend time doing that! I would never go so far as to say that you have to be queer to be an artist, but it helps. It’s a historically safe environment. It’s always artists and queers together. Whatever you want to think about art history, they’ve always been married together. The Happening wasn’t conceptualized as a queer event, and it’s not marketed as a queer event. It’s just a byproduct of who’s reaching out and who the movers and shakers are right now in our cultural landscape.”

The Happening at the Orange Show is definitely happening, and it’s certainly one of our Gayest & Greatest events!

For more information, visit orangeshow.org/thehappening