Welcome To The Dragaret

I was raised in a pretty heteronormative household on the East Side of Detroit. My mother, who put herself through college and has had a full-time job since age 21, does not find anything remotely funny about drag. For her, drag is clear-cut, simplistic, and injurious.

Here’s her deal. Being a woman means overlooked promotions, rubbery glass ceilings, and constant childcare-related compromises because of a certain missing piece of hardware. Anyone wishing to emulate that position because they find some inherent freedom in high heels and panty-hose doesn’t get how maddening those missing couple dozen cents on the dollar can be.

And in theory, I know where she’s coming from. In almost every job I’ve had since college, I’ve gotten questions that would be deemed inappropriate for my male colleagues. I’ve listened to conversations about Giselle Bundchen’s breasts in the staff break room and helped organize exhibitions on Helmut Newton that set the art museum back about 30 years.

But drag is so, so not the problem.

Drag is complicated and messy, and when it’s done in a cut-and-dried way that furthers the exclusion of women, it’s not funny. But it’s also a tradition that has lived on and offstage since before the emergence of its name in the 1870s, and at Yale since the 18th century. Think of Rosa Bonheur, drag king by necessity, winding her way through Paris’s butcher shops and horse fairs, brandishing her dripping brush as she walked. Or the postwar ​“Amputettes,” who defied the solemnity of their amputation as they high-kicked, prosthetics and all, in frilly dresses and feather boas. Or Dorian Wayne and Nicki Gallucci, who live on as icons in and outside of the dragalicious community.

Yes, y’all. In thumbing its fabulous, confetti-kissed nose at the hetero establishment, it’s part of the solution.

Which is why the Yale School of Drag at the Yale Cabaret last Friday was so delightful.

It was Friday night before Valentine’s Day, and Ato Blankson-Wood looked better than he had all week. From the stage side seats, a murmur of approval and excitement whizzed through the sold-out audience. A few shouts of ​“get it, girl! get it, girl!” rose through the darkness, traveling to the set in the center of the small black box theater.

Lights dimmed around him. The house music ebbed. In a tight, shimmering blue dress with a bright tulle skirt, pumps, and a short electric blue wig, he strutted forward, an LED display over his head making colorful ripples on the ceiling as he walked. Beside him, James Cusati-Moyer twirled and teetered in a tight orange-red dress that would transform, throughout the course of the evening, into a gold-sequined evening gown and shimmery red cocktail getup. Blankson-Wood took a deep breath and smiled gregariously, his waxy-red lips glinting beneath the lights.

“Heyyyyy, bitches. Get ready for the drag show,” he said.

A tradition that started with Dustin Willis and Ethan Hurd three years ago, the drag show is now a robust, three-shows-in-one-night affair that includes the large and extremely blithe group of its actors, dramaturges, and artistic directors. And despite its lack of polish — it is, by tradition, put together in the form of a loose skit, rather than one of the Cab’s obsessively rehearsed, deeply researched, and artistically directed shows — it fits right in. The Cabaret has long been about subverting artistic hierarchies (there was a much deserved dig at the Rep during the show), and queens Blankson-Wood and Cusati-Moyer, as well as drag king emcees Kelly Kerwin and Emily Zemba, delivered on a show that they promised would bring the house down.

Like a tribute to Labyrinth that brought much of the audience back to its youth …

… some pretty fab dance interludes …

… an Ursula that Disney does not yet have the ingenuity to imagine …

… and some thrilling performances that left the audience dancing at the end of the evening.

Sooyoung Hwang, MFA candidate in theater management and a house manager at the Cabaret, explained the artistic concept behind the show.

“It is so special because it is once-a-year, one-night-only event. YSD can get really transformed and celebrate the talent on stage — and it disappears,” she said.

She added something that the audience would have wanted to hear, too. ​“It is a lot of fun!”