Drag: The Fine Art of Gender Expression

Imagine spending years creating a person who only exists for a few hours at a time. You give them a name, a personality, a signature look and perhaps an attitude you would never dare have in your everyday life. Then, with enough makeup, costume and practice, you become them. This is part of the art of drag, although the curious thing is that the person you've invented might not be so different from you after all.

Most of us know drag through RuPaul’s Drag Race, but the art form has a much longer history, and not every performer is interested in becoming a glamorous woman. There are drag queens, kings, pageant performers, club kids and monsters, each with their own traditions and approaches to performance. Guy Anabella will introduce us to these different worlds before taking us through the process of creating a drag persona, from choosing a name and developing a character to putting together a signature look and mastering the physical transformation. We'll learn what goes into the performance, why these characters can take years to develop, and how much of the person beneath the makeup finds their way onto the stage.

Guy Anabella is a drag artist, powerlifter and award-winning professor based in Toronto. She is the Professor of Creativity & Communications at Sheridan College and also teaches design at Toronto Metropolitan University. By night, she performs across Ontario, drawing influences from her Guyanese roots. Her work brings together creativity, identity and performance, and she makes a rather good case that brains, brawn and beauty can all belong to the same person.