“It’s like a dress feels like armour, or when makeup feels like a helmet for my soul.”
At Carousel Theatre for Young People’s drag camp, participants are asked to step into someone else’s shoes for the day — and in letting go of their worries and pretending to be someone else, they often find themselves emerging with more confidence.
UBC alumni David Ng and Jen Sungshine’s documentary Drag is for Everyone follows camp participants, parents and mentors — familiar faces in the Vancouver drag scene like Rose Butch and Gaia Lacandona — to learn more about the program.
The film is part of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival’s The Coast is Queer showcase, which highlights short films by local artists. An in-person viewing will take place on September 20 at 9 p.m., but films will also be screened online from September 21–24.
For the past few years, the camp has been teaching youth the basics of drag performance, including costuming, makeup, performance and choreography. By encouraging campers to build a drag persona — the identity they assume while in costume or performing — the mentors help them learn to connect with other people while staying true to themselves.
It’s clear how much this program means to the kids and their families even in these short interviews, particularly Queer kids who are coming to terms with their identity, and are still trying to build their circle of friends.
“What was really beautiful about working with the youth that are in this film, for example, is they already know about the beauty of gender diversity and queerness,” said Ng, the co-artistic director of Love Intersections, a media arts collective for Queer artists of colour, as well as the co-director of Drag is for Everyone.
“They're far, far more advanced than I was at their age. I think they're even more advanced than I am now. And so I think there's so much we can learn, actually, from young people and their experiences of gender.”
But in 2023, drag camp organizers faced pushback against the program including hate mail and death threats against staff members, reads an article written by Carousel Theatre’s co-artistic director Jennica Grienke.
Ng also pointed out that the in-person film screening happens to fall on the same day as a march put on by Hands Off Our Kids — an organization aimed at “safeguarding parental rights and advocating for the removal of intrusive elements of sexual orientation and gender ideology from the educational system,” their website states.
This is why educating people on drag, and the existence of programs like drag camp, is so important. Drag is often misperceived as being explicit and inappropriate for a younger audience. But like any other art form, it’s diverse. It can be explicit, but that isn’t the default — and shows not intended for a younger audience would never be marketed as such.
“Drag is putting on makeup and performing. It sometimes is about gender, but it doesn't necessarily have to be about gender. It is also about celebration of identity,” said Ng. “Even if we may not identify as Trans or non-binary or even a drag performer, all of these topics intersect with who we are, in literally all of us.”
“I think what you do have to know if you want to do drag is to understand the history of drag and its roots in Queerness and Queer history,” said Shea Heatherington, Carousel Theatre’s education coordinator, in the film.
“But you do not need to be Queer to do drag. You don’t need to be anything other than excited.”
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