Queer Horror Cabaret ‘Spooky & Gay’ Comes To St. Pete’s Book & Bottle

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Orlando-based performer Bruce Costella will bring his single-person queer horror cabaret show “Spooky & Gay” to St. Petersburg’s Book & Bottle Sunday, 7:30 to 9 p.m.

The show will feature original scary stories, songs and stand-up comedy, all performed in total darkness.

Costella, who has been performing one-person shows since 2018, slowly amassed “a lot of horror-centric notions,” he told Patch. “I’d think ‘Oh, that’s really funny,’ but it was never quite a full show.”

With so many ideas, he imagined it would work well in a variety or cabaret show format and he performed the first incarnation of “Spooky & Gay” at an Orlando gay bar.

He creates his own lighting for the show, which is an important element of the production.

“Clamp lights, flashlights, at one point the show was just lit by candle,” Costella said. “I’ve always had an affinity for telling a story around the campfire kind of thing. That’s the building blocks of storytelling.”

During the COVID-19 lockdown, he even hosted an outdoors version in his backyard.

By 2022, he compiled all of the best bits from each show he’d perform, as well as some new material, “to create a best-of version,” he said. “And I started to take it on the road.”

He performed at theater festivals and other venues across North America, including the Twin Cities Horror Festival in Minneapolis.

And at one stop on his tour, in Edmonton, Canada, he met a producer for the Soho Playhouse in New York City. They connected, and Costella brought “Spooky & Gay” to the city in June for two weeks during Pride.

Now, it's heading to St. Petersburg for an intimate show at the bookstore.

“The nice thing about the show is the people that I want to see it tend to find it,” he said. “It’s easy to connect with the queer community in different spaces.”

Costella calls the show “a magpie in a lot of ways.”

“I like to do a lot of different things,” he said. “Sometimes I get bored, and I also like to try stuff out and see what sticks. I’ve always enjoyed vaudeville and traditional cabaret. If you’re at the show and something’s not for you, the next thing might be or probably will be.”

Throughout the performance, he tells scary stories, sings songs — “some I’ve written and a couple people may now” — and there’s even puppetry, he said. “It casts a wide net.”

While anyone might enjoy the show, it was written with a queer audience in mind.

“All people almost always have a good time,” Costello said. “But there’s a lot of queer content. One story, one of my favorites in the show, is about the significance of queer spaces and what sort of psychic resonance they have in a community. Another one is me tackling the fallout of the AIDS crisis. So much is inspired by history and riffs on history.”

He added, “So much of understanding history is what we’re fed in school, but there are tons and tons and tons of folks who have lived in the margins who haven’t had their stories told. As a queer person, you almost have to be a historian to understand where you come from.”