Playbill opens its 2026 season on March 28 with a concert by Baby Dee, who will perform songs from across her body of work, including several dirges and recent compositions titled Bucket of Eyeballs. Dee has long resisted the discipline of the setlist, allowing her performances to unfold in real time and, in this spirit, the evening promises no fixed script. Songs will drift from mournful ballad to mischievous confession, from cathedral hush to carnival lament. Carried by voice and piano, she moves effortlessly between tenderness and theatricality, the sacred and the absurd.

In the 1990s, Dee summarised herself in a brief biography: ‘Baby Dee is a child of light, a circus freak and a happy whore.’ The description, containing both humour and honesty, captures the peculiar mixture of devotion, spectacle, vulnerability and wit that runs throughout her body of work. Yet a more extended biography would state that Dee was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1953, with her life following an uncommon path traversing music, faith, street theatre and performance art. A transgender woman and classically trained harpist and pianist, she spent a decade as music director and organist at a Catholic church in the Bronx before the unpredictable pull of circus and sideshow life took hold. At Coney Island she appeared as a sideshow attraction and later became bandleader for the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, touring Europe with the Kamikaze Freak Show and performing widely as a street artist.

Her years as a travelling performer carried her across cities and continents. For a time she could be found busking on the streets of Amsterdam, balancing on a unicycle with a concert harp attached. Later, encouraged by collaborators such as Marc Almond and David Tibet, Dee began recording at the turn of the millennium, releasing her debut album Little Window in 2000, after which a string of studio albums followed.

ACT XVI offers a rare encounter with Dee, who has largely stepped away from the stage in recent years. Join us to celebrate her return to the spotlight, with a special evening of songs shaped by decades of wandering, where echoes of old dear friends, circus adventures and street life meet again, guided by the sounds of robins in the distance.