Fausto Fernós (born April 16, 1972) is an

openly gay Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

er,

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

ist, and

drag performer The term "drag" refers to the performance of exaggerated masculinity, femininity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. A drag queen is someone (usually male) who performs femininity and a drag king is someone ( ...

. He originated and co-hosts the Feast of Fun, an award-winning daily comedy talk show, with his partner Marc Felion. They were the first openly gay couple to win a People's Choice Podcast Award, which they have won five times (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011), and been nominated for the top prize of "People's Choice" six times in a row. Fernós currently resides in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

Biography

Early life

Fausto Fernós was born in

Santurce, Puerto Rico Santurce (, from the Basque '' Santurtzi'' which means Saint George) is a barrio or district in the municipality of San Juan. Its population in 2020 was 69,469. It is also the biggest and most populated of all the barrios in the capital city wi ...

, in 1972. He is the son of Puerto Rican architect Gonzalo Fernós-López and of the educator Patricia Fernós and is related to the first Puerto Rican cardiologist and its longest serving resident commissioner Antonio Fernós-Isern. Fernós was featured at age of 10 in the cooking section of

El Nuevo Día ''El Nuevo Día'' (English: ''The New Day'') is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Puerto Rico. It was founded in 1909 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and today it is a subsidiary of GFR Media. Its headquarters are in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. ...

newspaper about being one of the youngest boys studying the confectionery arts in Puerto Rico. The article focused mostly on the fact he and his sister Talia Fernós were being homeschooled by their mother.

Career

Fernós left San Juan and enrolled at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

at the age of 17 in 1989. There he studied performance art with

Linda Montano Linda Mary Montano (born January 18, 1942, Saugerties (town), New York, Saugerties, New York (state), New York) is an American performance artist. Early life Montano was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic household, partly Irish and partly Itali ...

. One of his class projects became a long running performance art experiment, ''SoftMen'', a weekly improvised soap opera which involved fellow performers Chris Rincón and Andrew Johnson performing all the roles simultaneously, in the tradition of plays like ''

The Mystery of Irma Vep ''The Mystery of Irma Vep'' is a play in three acts by Charles Ludlam. It is a satire of several theatrical, literary and film genres, including Victorian melodrama, farce, the penny dreadful, ''Wuthering Heights'' and the Alfred Hitchcock fil ...

''. In 1992 he began organizing musically oriented variety shows. They were originally titled ''Big Wig Revue''. While the name suggested traditional cabaret, the goal was to redefine the genre. In 1993 he started the performance art collective Performance Art Church, better known by its abbreviation Pe.A.Ch., with artists Kerthy Fix, Sheelah Murthy, Diana García, Scott Alton Dulaney and Carol Gilson. Most of their shows were short performances hosted by one of the performers tied around a central topic or theme. One show was a tribute to

Lawrence Welk Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was an American accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted the ''The Lawrence Welk Show'' from 1951 to 1982. His style came to be known as "champagne music" to his radio, tele ...

, while another was a discussion on the Superhero/Comic book genre. Fernós started the Feast of Fools in Chicago in the spring of 1998 with the Chicago

Radical Faeries The Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and countercultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality. Sometimes deemed a form of modern Paganism, the movement also adopts elements from an ...

as a fundraiser for the struggling Randolph Street Gallery. Obejas, Achy
''"Feast of Fools" - A Celebration of Diversity. Colorful Fausto Fernós - An Appropriate Host for Radical Faeries.''
''Chicago Tribune'' 31 March 2000. Section: Friday; Page 28. In 2004, Fausto Fernós turned to audio and video blogging as a way to promote his unusual live musical variety shows. On February 8, 2005 the first ''Feast of Fools'' podcast was posted on his LiveJournal blog, FaustoFun. Within several weeks of posting shows, the audience for the online show grew beyond the size of the local Chicago audience. In 2009, the name of the show was changed from ''Feast of Fools'' to Feast of Fun to better reflect changes in the program's design and functionality. Along with his partner Marc Felion, Fernós currently hosts the ''Feast of Fun'' podcast, one of the top rated talk show for an

LGBTQI ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is an ...

audiences on iTunes.Heidemann, Jason A.
Personal Best: Cheers to the Queers Who Made Our City Better in 2006
'

Time Out Chicago ''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 328 cities in 58 countries worldwide. In 2012, the London edition beca ...

28 December 2006 - 3 January 2007. Issue 96; Section: GLBT, retrieved 29 August 2011.

References

External links

Feast of Fun Podcast

Interview with Fausto Fernós on ChicagoPride.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernos, Fausto 1972 births American male comedians 21st-century American comedians Gay comedians Living people People from San Juan, Puerto Rico Radical Faeries members Puerto Rican LGBT comedians

Biography

Early life

Career

References

Further reading

External links