(Photo courtesy Mariah Seeley.)
The Good Page features positive LGBTQ+ news in Central Florida and Tampa Bay, uplifting and inspiring stories highlighting locals in our community. Here, we meet Orlando performer Mariah Seeley.
For Seeley, being a shapeshifter is about more than changing costumes.
The Orlando performer and independent artist has built a career singing, dancing, acting and creating, moving between masculine and feminine characters and finding new ways to express herself along the way. It is the kind of artistic freedom she did not always know was possible.
“I think in this industry we start to force ourselves to fit into a box,” Seeley says. “I also think it’s important not to pigeonhole yourself into a type because it limits you as an artist.”
Seeley grew up in a small town in Iowa, where performing became part of her life early. Her parents entered her in local talent competitions, including the Bill Riley Talent Search, while community theater camps gave her additional places to create. She remembers singing with family, performing solos and eventually earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in musical theater with a minor in dance.
“I always felt a certain sense of home and release when performing,” she says.
After college, Seeley planned to move to Chicago. Instead, she changed course and headed to Orlando in 2022 knowing just one person. The decision would become transformative both professionally and personally.
Newly out when she arrived, Seeley found opportunities to originate characters and explore her identity through performance. Her first Orlando gig, a one-act festival with Playwrights’ Round Table, also gave her the opportunity to portray an openly queer character for the first time.
From there came cabarets, Orlando Fringe and “Dungeons and Drag Queens,” where Seeley originated Steven the Stage Manager, a character she describes as “a little masculine lesbian.” She has since performed throughout Orlando’s entertainment industry and spent 10 months at sea as a featured vocalist in Royal Caribbean’s “Spectra’s Cabaret.”
The range suits someone who has never been particularly interested in choosing one lane.
At Hamburger Mary’s, Seeley recalls occasions when a production needed another male dancer, so she learned basic drag king makeup, put on the costume and stepped into the track. When the next number needed another woman, she switched again. That freedom has become intertwined with Seeley’s queerness.
Growing up, she understood life through a relatively prescribed path: school, college, career, partner, children and staying close to home. Becoming a professional performer already disrupted that expectation.
Understanding her queerness expanded the possibilities further.
“When I started to come to terms with my queerness, I truly started allowing myself to create and stopped holding myself back,” Seeley says.
Orlando also gave her opportunities to find queer community through places like Exchange Dance Studio, Mystix Burlesque classes and local creative meetups. Those spaces allowed Seeley to experiment with movement and presentation as an androgynous performer while meeting other queer creatives.
Now, she wants to help create that same freedom for others.
“I just want everyone to be themselves and have the best time,” she says. “I think it’s so important to keep being loud, bold and queer in every way.”
Her next transformation may be her most personal yet: releasing music of her own.
Seeley is preparing her debut single, “Not My Business,” a song she first wrote in 2021 and expects to release this fall. Producing her own music had long been a dream, but surviving a 2024 Halloween shooting in downtown Orlando gave that dream new urgency.
In the aftermath, Seeley realized there was something she was unwilling to leave undone. A month later, she scheduled her first studio session. Now, some of her greatest creative joy comes from developing the single alongside close friends, hearing ideas that once existed only in her head become something tangible.
“Seeing them so excited about producing it and helping to develop the instrumental lines that had been in my head, it brought me so much happiness,” she says. “Yeah, this is it. This is the dream.”
“Not My Business” is only the beginning. Seeley envisions more songs, music videos and, eventually, a tour.
Her language around that dream is deliberate.
“Not if,” she says, “but when.”
Interested in being featured in The Good Page? Email Editor-in-Chief Ryan Williams-Jent at Ryan@WatermarkOutNews.com in Tampa Bay or Central Florida Bureau Chief Bellanee Plaza at Bellanee@WatermarkOutNews.com in Central Florida.
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