A new podcast follows the lives of Provincetown’s visitors and residents in one summer.
Stitcher’s “Welcome to Provincetown,” hosted by Mitra Kaboli, provides an inside look at those who call the Cape Cod town home.
“You walk down the streets of Provincetown, and people are just begging to perform to you. It's a town just full of interesting characters, interesting people,” Kaboli told Boston Public Radio Thursday. “It has a really long history that is well documented at this point — this isn't the first time someone has made art about Provincetown.
“In the summers, the population swells. Normally there's like 3,000 people, [but] in the summer, there's 60,000. We really felt that there is something interesting to be shown there.”
Kaboli and executive producer Ben Riskin started releasing episodes in mid-June. The series follows performer Qya Cristál, dubbed the “It Girl” of the summer; artist Jay Critchley, who’s lived in Provincetown since the 1970s; comedian and activist Kristen Becker, who leads Summer of Sass, a program that brings LGBTQ+ 18- to 20-year-olds “from oppressive areas in the U.S.” to Provincetown for the summer; Vanessa Magixx — known as Stacy Star in the podcast — and Ethan, both Summer of Sass participants; and Sonny, who says he wants to be a “dumb slut for the summer” after being laid off from his job in Boston.
Their stories are just a handful of those missing from what comes to mind when people think of Provincetown.
“The people that I know [in Provincetown] are working really hard, are coming here trying to achieve their dreams as performers [and] artists, or just as kind of young queer people that are just trying to make a living out of the hand that they were dealt,” Riskin said. “They're trying to figure out where they're going in their lives.
“I don't think that those experiences are any less important than perhaps the celebrity experience here — the authors, the playwrights, the celebrities that come here,” he continued. “But when you're in this town, especially as a tourist, you really only see that top level, and you don't realize what's happening behind the scenes.”
And when hostility against LGBTQ+ people in the United States rises and year-round residents on the Cape are being priced out of their homes, “Welcome to Provincetown’s” creators think these stories are all the more important to share.
“It's just getting harder and harder to live here at a time when so many people need it. You have the U.S. becoming an increasingly inhospitable place for LGBTQ+ folks, particularly in the South and in the middle of the country,” Riskin said. “Places like Provincetown are a safe haven for those people, and if they can't get here — which is already tough, you know, having to work three, four jobs simply to have a place to live year-round — it's very tough.”
Kaboli points to an interview she did on the podcast with David Dunlap, New York Times architecture critic and author of the book “Building Provincetown,” on what makes Provincetown so special.
“At the end of the interview, [Dunlap] said something like, ‘Everyone is trying to protect the first Provincetown that they experience,’ Kaboli said. “And I thought that just really encapsulated how I felt, and I think how everyone feels when you come here and have a really kind of transformative experience. You want to protect that.”
