By Denny Patterson

The stars will align as Joe Posa and Seth Sikes unite to perform Tributes, a one-night-only loving homage to female leading legends. The event will take place on Saturday, January 14, 2023, at the Sunshine Cathedral Center for the Performing Arts.

Produced by the leading men themselves, Tributes will bring two worlds of performance art together: female impersonation and live song. Posa will impersonate Joan Rivers, Barbra Streisand, and Liza Minnelli, while Sikes will dazzle audiences with his soulful voice singing nostalgic tunes made famous by Judy Garland and Bernadette Peters, among others. 

“I’m thrilled about this show,” Posa exclaims. “I love the venues and this show is just going to be amazing. There’s comedy, there’s lip syncs, there’s that aspect of old school drag, and Seth is an amazing vocalist.”

“I saw Joe’s show as Joan Rivers this summer in Provincetown, and I laughed so hard for like an hour and a half,” Sikes adds. “So, I’m looking forward to being on stage with him, and I’m looking forward to not having all the pressure be on myself!”

This is the first time the duo is performing and collaborating together.

“We talked about doing something together when we ran into each other in Provincetown while working separately,” Posa explains. “So, we’ll see where this goes. We each do our own thing separately, but I think this concept is really going to be great because it involves all different aspects of these legendary women. I’ve been around forever, and the way Seth commands the stage as a vocalist, it’s shown that he’s like a true showman, and I was very impressed with his talent. So, I’m thrilled to work with him. And we’re performing in a cathedral, so maybe this is a blessing.”

Posa has made a name for himself in show business, starting his career in musical theater as a performer/dancer featured in the international touring company of West Side Story, plus other musicals including Anything Goes, Grease, A Chorus Line, and South Pacific. In 1993, he found his wings as a sought-after female celebrity impersonator. 

“South Florida knows me mostly as Joan Rivers, but I started out performing in An Evening at La Cage in New York as Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Gloria Estefan, and even Michael Jackson,” he says. “That’s how I really started, and then I took my act to Provincetown and other areas. Then, the more I did Joan, I kind of put Barbra and Liza on the shelf because I’ve been doing them for a long time, and I loved being live and making people laugh, especially post-pandemic. I knew Joan and she loved what I did, so I felt like I just wanted to keep that ball rolling.”

Sikes, on the other hand, is one of New York’s most popular young nightclub performers. Hailed as “the best male singer of his generation” by Theatre Scene, he has been selling out venues since his 2014 debut of Seth Sikes Sings Judy Garland. The show recounted how Garland inspired Sikes as a young boy in Paris, Texas, while he belted the legend’s greatest hits backed by a seven-piece band. 

Reviewers were equally enthusiastic toward his follow-up show, Seth Sikes Sings Liza Minnelli.

“I’ve been performing since I was like five years old,” he says. “At church, I was the kid who would get up and sing, star in the Christmas musicals, etc.” 

Since this is the debut performance of Tributes, both Posa and Sikes hope audiences simply have an enjoyable time.

“I always sort of feel like it’s my mission to keep these songs alive,” Sikes says. “Not that I think Judy and Liza are going anywhere, but I always get excited when people come up to me and say, you know, I’ve never heard that song before. I assume they’re going to go home and look into it. Maybe there will also be some young people who don’t know some of these songs, and they’ll go home and listen to them. We hope to keep these ladies’ legacies alive a little longer.”

And if successful, the pair would be more than happy to turn Tributes into a long-term production.