Inside Winnipeg’s ‘Drag Renaissance’
Credit to Author: Isaac Wurmann| Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2019 15:51:42 +0000
It’s nearing midnight at Club 200, a gay bar in downtown Winnipeg, and local drag queen Stara David steps out onto the stage. She’s wearing a white dress, black heels and a fiery red wig, and she’s lip syncing to Neil Sedaka’s 1961 song “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” which recently appeared in the trailer for Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Egged on by the cheering crowd, Stara twirls around the stage until a crack of thunder comes over the speakers and she strips off her dress to the soft guitar intro of Neko Case’s “Vengeance Is Sleeping.” She kneels down on the club floor at a small table and begins furtively writing a letter, before ripping the paper to pieces and tearing off her bra and wig. The crowd goes wild.
Out of drag, Stara is Ezi Raizen, a 21-year-old theatre student at the University of Winnipeg.
They performed that number at a show in December hosted by Slunt Factory, a group they started last year along with their friends Caity Maskiew, who performs as Moxie Cotton, and Brielle Dorais-Fleming, who performs as Dirt.
Many of the students who graduated from last year’s class have become regulars at Slunt Factory and other drag shows in the city. One of those former students is Alex Nguyen, who performs as Ruby Chopstix.
“Now they’re like my family,” Nguyen says about the community of people he’s met through drag. “I feel at ease that I’m in the community now.”
For the founders of Slunt Factory, fostering connections between Winnipeg’s newer and established drag performers is central to their goal. Some of the most memorable moments they share from the past few months include sitting down with their mentors and hearing about the history of Winnipeg drag and learning about the community they’ve become part of.
“Drag has been the way that I’ve found my queerness and how it works for me,” Maskiew says. “I’ve found the biggest network of support.”
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