Drag Rides The Edge For Pride Week

Host Maddelynn Hatter broke in the crowd at Gotham Citi Cafe on Orange Street Wednesday night by establishing a few guidelines regarding drag shows.

“If you ever know any drag queens, you know the most important rule — other than to be able to paint your face — is to be kind,” she said. ​“All of the queens have passed the test. They are very kind. Which is good, because I am an awful person.”

That remark — telling people to take things seriously by not taking them seriously — set the tone for Drag on the Edge, an event in Ninth Square that was part of the New Haven Pride Center’s ongoing week-long PRIDE New Haven. PRIDE began on Monday with a flag-raising ceremony on the Green and will culminate with the day-long PRIDEfest, full of family activities, live music, drag performances, street artists, food vendors, and more. (See a full schedule here.)

Drag on the Edge’s place in the middle of the calendar in some ways was no accident.

“Drag is important for a lot of reasons,” said Patrick Dunn, the New Haven Pride Center’s executive director. ​“Every community — minority, majority, doesn’t matter, historic or present day — has an art form that embodies their community and represents their community.”

For Dunn, who is a drag artist and consumer of drag as a queer person, ​“drag is one of those art forms that is quintessentially queer, and is subversive like queer culture is, challenges norms like queer people have to every day,” he said. ​“It plays in gender, it plays in different ways of existing and presenting yourself, and at the same time, it also is an art that requires you to be good at putting on makeup, styling wigs, sewing costumes, mixing music, making music videos — all of these different art forms come together in the same thing. So to me the art of drag is the defining art of the queer community. So, having it be a centerpiece to anything queer is important because it is our art form. But also, as an artist, it challenges me to think about existence in so many other ways.”

“I think everyone should do drag once in their life,” he added. ​“Straight or gay, doesn’t matter. Because being a drag artist has made me a better feminist, has made me a better rights activist. It has made me better understand so many aspects of queer community. It has made me better at talking to anyone and being around anyone.”

He has noticed that, when he is fully dressed as a woman, ​“people treat me completely differently. And it’s wild.”

Dunn programmed Drag on the Edge to be true to its name. It’s ​“edgier drag, more expensive drag,” he said. The artists lined up to do it, ​“do it because we love it. There’s nights I could be wearing $2,000 worth of costuming, makeup and jewelry. Nobody has any idea, and we’re not getting paid anything close to that. And I have two or three more looks to wear. There’s so much love and passion that goes into the art of drag.”

Drag also brings out a fundamental idea that one’s clothes are always a costume, whether it’s a dress and stiletto heels, a business suit, or a T‑shirt and shorts. ​“RuPaul says you’re born naked and the rest is drag,” Dunn said. ​“You’re always presenting yourself in a way to the world, and your drag may be ​‘cis man,’ but that doesn’t mean it’s not a form of drag — and there’s probably a drag king out there wearing that outfit,” he said with a laugh.

With fleet, hilarious hosting by Maddelynn Hatter (“I’m an idiot and slightly offensive, but I’m desperately beautiful,” she said by way of introduction), a parade of queens — Chai, Midnight, Ambrosia Black, Ill Ell, Paxx Headroom, Iridessa Søul LaFlare, Rory Roux Lay, Ram Shackle, Giri Spades, and Glass Staine — made it happen at Gotham Citi Cafe. Midnight whipped up the crowd with an athletic performance including jumps and splits. Rory Roux Lay got people to give her money almost by sheer presence alone, her snake prop a harbinger for the sinuous performance that followed. Ram Shackle delivered a wardrobe change that was part striptease, part aerobics workout. Paxx Headroom gave off the ferocious energy of a caged animal. Ambrosia Black, arriving onstage first in a motorcycle helmet, had the sleek, confident moves of a gymnast. Iridessa Søul LaFlare stripped off her astronaut suit to reveal the truly otherworldly alien within. 

Drag on the Edge, for Dunn, was ​“about celebrating the vast diversity of drag as an art form,” he said. ​“In many different platforms — particularly the larger platforms, such as RuPaul’s Drag Race — you really see one style, or one type of drag. Even the people who are on the edge of that are still very much in that box. Tonight is about taking the box, putting it in the garbage can, and setting it on fire. What people create on the stage tonight is going to be edgy and different and out there, different types of drag that you might not see on any other stage in Connecticut.… It’s about bringing in these artists who don’t feel part of Pride because what they do is too sexual, too out there, too edgy, and making sure that, one, they’re a part of Pride, and two, they’re celebrated.”

Dunn is also celebrating PRIDEfest’s full return to New Haven’s downtown since before the pandemic. In 2020 the festival was almost all virtual, with a few events held at the North Haven Fairgrounds, ​“because it’s super-big and open,” Dunn said. ​“We were full steam last year” in scheduling live events, Dunn said, but they remained North Haven Fairgrounds for the same reason, and ended up moving the festival a month later to wait for a spike in Covid cases to subside. This year, events during the week are scheduled at venues all over downtown New Haven, and Saturday’s PRIDEfest will happen on the New Haven Green from noon to 7 p.m. — for the first time since 2004.

“Some of the reasons we took a leap of faith this year was because next year is our 25th anniversary, and we knew we want to be on the Green for the 25th, so … let’s do the first year, where there might be some hiccups, trial and error, major mistakes” — Dunn said with a hearty laugh — ​“the year before the anniversary.” Preparing for the Green this year has involved everything from pricing out the cost of port-a-johns to navigating with various city departments how to throw a major even in the middle of town.

“I will say the city has been an awesome partner,” Dunn said. ​“All the departments have been super-supportive and super-responsive,” especially the parks department, in helping the New Haven Pride Center bring its plans to fruition. ​“They want to help. They want to figure it out. They want to help you make it happen.”

Giri Spades gave an emotional, empathetic, and in the end cathartic performance, a story of liberation that ended with the performer casting off a false mask. Glass Staine mixed female and male in rough, heady fashion. Chai literally threw off sparks with a power tool ground against a steel belt, drawing the biggest cheers of the night from a rowdy, robust crowd that cheered for everyone and littered the stage and the performers again and again with money. Ill Ell finished up the performances with a slasher-inspired routine, complete with stage blood and a plate full of (presumably) fake but real-enough-looking intestines.

“Do you love me?” Hatter asked at the end of the performances. The crowd roared. Hatter gave a hearty laugh. ​“I’m so stupid,” she joked. But the affection, for her and for the night overall, was completely genuine.