Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza is a musical documentary about homophobia, surveillance, the military, and drag. It tells the story of the Newport Sex Scandal of 1919, the result of an anti-gay sex sting conducted by the US Navy shortly after the end of World War I.
In this artist talk, Matthew Lawrence and Jason Tranchida will discuss several years of research that went into their project and their use of source materials in their multi-channel video installation. They will also show excerpts from the video and open the discussion up for a Q&A period. The artists will also speak a bit about a proposed sequel project, one that follows the truly fascinating afterlife of one of the accused men.
The Newport Sex Scandal took place over a century ago, but its themes are as timely today as ever. Sailors were recruited to seduce and entrap other sailors, reporting every detail of their sexual encounters back to their creepy higher-ups. Those first-hand reports (housed at the National Archives) became the foundation of their hour-long multi-channel video. The reports are paired with movement-based choreography inspired by archival photographs, and juxtaposed with recreations of five musical numbers from The Strange Adventures of Jack and the Beanstalk, a vaudeville/drag production staged in Newport by the Navy while the scandal unfolded.
Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza premiered in 2024 in Newport, Rhode Island, just blocks away from the parks and theaters and YMCA that acted as cruising grounds for some of the 30,000 sailors living in the city at that time.
Participant Bios:
Matthew Lawrence is an archivist, writer, and editor currently living in Providence, Rhode Island. Lawrence previously edited Law and Order Party, a curated email-based guide to art events happening in Rhode Island. The newsletter included 262 weekly issues from 2015 – 2020. He has written about art for many local and regional publications. He was a 2021 finalist for the Rabkin Prize for Visual Art Journalism.
Jason Tranchida‘s creative practice is a multi-disciplinary intersection of art, design, and curatorial projects. Born in Detroit and living in Providence, Rhode Island, his project-based art practice includes objects, installations, video, and digital explorations. His creative agency LLAMAproduct specializes in graphic and exhibit design, creative direction, and event production. His work draws heavily on his foundation in architecture and stage design.
Most of Jason’s curatorial work is in collaboration with partner Matthew Lawrence. Their collaborative practice is interdisciplinary and centers around curatorial projects and performance events that amplify the work of queer artists and forgotten LGBTQIA+ histories. Artists featured in their assignment-based publication Headmaster explore themes of gender, queerness, and masculinity. As creative director of the publication, Tranchida has received two Print Merit Awards from the Society of Publication Designers.
Tranchida and Lawrence’s current collaboration, Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza, is a multimedia documentary musical retelling of the events of the Newport Navy Sex Scandal – a Navy-sanctioned raid on homosexual activity that sparked national scandal shortly after the end of World War I. Scandalous Conduct premiered in September 2024.
This lecture is organized by Matthew Lawrence and Jason Tranchida as part of Circa: Queer Histories Festival 2025, presented by One Institute.