Cologne Burlesque Festival: Two nights of variety at the Gloria theatre
For the fourth time, the Cologne Burlesque Festival brings international performers to Cologne – across two nights, each with its own programme, at the Gloria theatre.
Archive image · Photo: Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The fourth Cologne Burlesque Festival opens on Friday, 16 October, at the Gloria theatre on Cologne's Apostelnstrasse. Each of the two nights, Friday and Saturday, has its own line-up; doors open at 7 p.m., the show starts at 8 p.m., and the hall is seated. The organisers promise more than twelve international burlesque and cabaret performers for the opening night, without naming them in advance. According to the organisers, the first three editions in 2023, 2024 and 2025 sold out.
The programme mixes neo-burlesque, boylesque, drag, singing, dance, theatre and acrobatics. The organisers cite the Paris revue houses Crazy Horse, Folies Bergère and Moulin Rouge as models. The Gloria is also close to the site of the former Vaudeville theatre on Schildergasse. The festival is run by Tara D'Arson and Sheila Wolf, who also stage the Frankfurt Burlesque Festival. Wolf also produces the Boylesque Drag Festival in Berlin and the Vaudeville Variety Revue.
The Cologne festival falls on a busy burlesque weekend: according to the festival calendar on burlesque.de, the Berlin Burlesque Festival and the Bavarian Burlesque Festival in Munich also run from 15 to 18 October.