I'm the First Drag Laureate—Performing Is More Dangerous Than Ever Before
newsweek.comMary Poppins for the first time, and I asked my mother to buy me a dress, an umbrella and some high heels. She did, and from the moment I started clomping around the house in those shoes, drag became something special to me.As I was growing up in California, I became interested in theater and wrote a number of plays and musicals.
I found that I could harness a different kind of comedy and pathos when I was in drag. It resonated with me and with audiences, so I kept doing it.In my mid-20s I was fascinated with drag, having fun and figuring it out.
It didn't really click for me until I was living in New York in 2004 and I realized that I could truly make a living doing drag.
I wrote a show I could star in called S*** and Champagne, which we performed in the Lower East Side in Manhattan for nine months in a burlesque club.That's when drag transformed me into who I am as an artist, and really affected the trajectory of my career.While there have always been people who are anti-drag or homophobic, in earlier days I don't remember feeling that drag was such a hotbed topic.
