Robert Dennick Joki named grand marshal for Pride in the Valley 2021 – Mahoning Matters
YOUNGSTOWN — Robert Dennick Joki, Youngstown LGBTQIA+ activist and owner of The Rust Belt Theater Company, was recently named grand marshal of Full Spectrum Community Outreach’s Pride in the Valley Festival on July 31 in Courthouse Square in Warren.
Plans call for Dennick Joki, whose preference is for a gender-neutral pronoun, to lead the parade and be part of opening ceremonies, as well as perform a kid-friendly drag show in the afternoon with members of The Rust Belt Theater Company. The group is also closing the festival with a performance geared toward adults.
“As an organization, we select representation that displays the ideals that we hold so dear. Robert Dennick Joki is a talented artist, compassionate humanitarian, and emphatic activist,” Full Spectrum Pride in the Valley wrote on their Facebook page. “They have found a way to bring light to the Mahoning Valley over the years through their work with The Rust Belt Theater Company, along with their drag career, and other ties to the area. Rob has helped so many people in the local LGBTQIA+ community and beyond to not only showcase and grow their talents, but to promote using their voice for the greater good. They have always stood for social justice, human rights, and equity for all without wavering. For this, we are glad to announce Robert Dennick Joki as the Grand Marshal for Pride in the Valley 2021.”
The family-friendly event is free to the public and will feature live entertainment, food trucks, carnival games, health screenings, a beer garden and more.
As the June 2021 Pride Month wound to an end, Dennick Joki told Mahoning Matters that although grateful for the honor: “I always feel a little bit awkward when I get complimented on work that I do, especially about social change, because I feel like, it’s not something I really set out to do. … I feel like I do things that everyone should be doing, or that a lot of times that I assume everyone is doing.”
Dennick Joki is a Youngstown native. Growing up in the Mahoning Valley during the 1980s as a gay and nonbinary person was challenging. They wonder what life would currently be like if there had been more queer people to look up to as a kid.
“I think about how my life would have changed if I had seen just one Pride Parade, or just one positive role model that wasn’t, like, a queer person being made out as a joke on television, because that’s all we saw,” they said. “I feel like I’ve done pretty well with my life. But I’ll always wonder what it would have been like if I had come to acceptance earlier.”
“Anything I can do to help, especially young people, realize that it’s OK to be who they are … anything I can do to help with that, I will do. That’s been my life’s work,” Dennick Joki added.
Dennick Joki has been most successful in the pursuit to help young people with acceptance within the Youngstown theater community.
Studying musical theater at Youngstown State University in the late 1990s ignited a love for theater and social change. Then, Dennick Joki worked 12 years at the former Oakland Center for the Arts in downtown Youngstown, eventually becoming the director of the children’s theater program before establishing The Rust Belt Theater Company 11 years ago.
“I realized in college that theater didn’t just have to be about being entertaining, that it could also be used as a vessel [and a] vehicle for social change,” Dennick Joki said. “The Blackbox Theater at Youngstown State University was doing a play called ‘What Are Tuesday’s Like?’ and it was about the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic. As a young gay man, that really hit home with me … realizing that something can be entertaining and beautiful, but also it can help change the world for the better.”
Dennick Joki said The Rust Belt Theater Company has a reputation of being the most diverse theater in the area and rarely does shows that are solely for “spectacle.”
“When we do shows, I’ve always just [cast] whoever was the right person for each role regardless of ethnicity, or like even on many occasions we haven’t always stuck to traditional gender roles in our shows.”
In addition to performing and directing local theater shows, Dennick Joki has written a few plays and musicals — the most successful being “How The Drag Queen Stole Christmas” in 2006. “… And that’s kind of what made me realize that there is a market for locally written shows with kind of like local flavor.”
“It sounds like it would be just a big silly Christmas spectacle, but there’s a message underneath all of that. And that message is about acceptance and diversity and equality,” they added.
Parallel to Dennick Joki’s career in musical theater is a two-decade long career in drag performance under the stage name Starrlet O’Hara.
In 2001 they started competing in drag and entertainment pageants to “help pay the bills” and along the way won Mr. Ohio Allstar in 2001and won the talent competition for Miss Ohio Allstar. Dennick Joki said winning pageants meant they were contracted to perform at venues across Ohio.
Even though it “opened up a lot of doors” for Dennick Joki at the time, performing at bars five nights a week was tiring and they gave up full-time drag performance indefinitely until the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During the restrictions, we were still able to perform in a bar, or a [restaurant] as long as you followed the social distancing guidelines. When the shutdown happened, I was working at three different places, doing theater, and all those jobs just disappeared overnight. I was faced with the challenge of trying to still make a living, doing the only thing that I’m trained for and the only thing I’ve done for the last 20 years.”
“Performing at gay bars was interesting. I’m suddenly doing the same thing I was doing when I was 18 years old,” Dennick Joki added.
Dennick Joki’s “style” as a drag performer is untraditional, too. Instead of lip-syncing with a focus on dancing, like many drag performers, Dennick Joki sings live and creates lavish costumes inspired by different era’s in art history.
“I love costumes that focus on periods of excess in humankind,” they said. “The Renaissance, Ancient Egypt, The Victorian era, especially. My aesthetic is a little bit different from other performers. I’m a live singer and there aren’t a lot of live singing drag queens. The industry standard is lip-syncing.”
“I’m not lip-synching. I’m not dancing. I try to make sure that my costume is always original and interesting enough that it kind of makes up for my lack of dancing, lack of splits and death drops. I [also like] doing comedy numbers that have a little bit of a message, because, if you make somebody laugh, I feel like they’re more likely to pay attention to what you’re saying,” Dennick Joki added.
As Pride Month comes to an end, Dennick Joki shared an opinion on ‘“the corporatization of pride” with Mahoning Matters.
“I have mixed feelings about that, because all I can think about is the little kid growing up in a small community who has never seen a rainbow flag flying in their town, and how even if it’s a T-shirt at Walmart, how that could change their entire life,” they said.
As far as LGBTQIA+ pride pertains to the theater community, Dennick Joki described being simultaneously loved and hated during their career.
“In the past, people have said, because I am a gay person, that children shouldn’t work with me,” Dennick Joki said. “15 years ago, people wouldn’t let their kids do children’s theater with me, because they thought of me as some kind of a threat. And now, people are inviting me to come and do drag queen storytime at the library. That is such a huge change, and it’s a good thing.”
Go here for information on Full Spectrum Community Outreach’s Pride in the Valley Festival.