Review: Drag Queens Down Under
Friday 23 May
Sydney Writers’ Festival @ Carriageworks
Reviewed by Jo Falvey
Having been glued to the edge of my seat for the various RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under seasons, it was such treat to see a handful of the Sydney-based competitors up close-and-personal, including Coco Jumbo, Space Horse, Etcetera Etcetera and Maxi Shield to celebrate Art Simone’s book, Drag Queens Down Under: Australia’s Drag Superstars in Glorious Technicolour.
Normally you might see a single performer on stage so it was nice to see them sitting together, casually having a chat. Leading on from Art Simone’s introduction in the book that ‘I don’t do drag, I am drag’, the queens talked about what drag means for them and how they all met each other, how they support each other and how they love discovering new drag performers.
Geelong-based queen, Art Simone, the instigator of the book and the glamorous MC for the event, was great at asking the questions, specifically about the uniqueness and passions of each performer-slash-book contributor
Maxi Shield shared tales about about being on stage with Madonna and performing at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics while Coco Jumbo shared a story about the time she and her posse of drag queens got into a fistfight in the Oxford Street bus lane outside a kebab shop with some homophobes.
After seeing just five of the diverse contributors to the book, I’m now keen to read the stories of the other 25, especially Art Simone’s interview with drag icon Cindy Pastel, who inspired the movie, The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.
How special it was to see all of these drag queens all together on stage at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and ending with a drag performance, no less.
