A club for queens

CHENNAI: Through the course of the lockdown, Adam Pasha, one of Bengaluru's earliest drag queens, and an artist who has been at the forefront of the growing drag culture in the country, has been working hard to nurture the art form and create a talent pool, through Instagram lives and interviews conducted as his drag avatar ‘

Empress Xara

’.


But his latest brainchild, Studio 69, will perhaps be the most significant, towards building a network, resources, opportunities and monetary scope for up-and-coming drag artists, and educating the country about the vibrant history, craft and diversity of the performance art.

A virtual space for drag under the roof of Royal Campus 1927 — an LGBTQIA+ safe space created by the country’s openly gay Prince of Rajpipla, Manvendra Singh Gohil — Studio 69 will launch on September 2 with performances by Adam, and artists Abhishek Singhania and

Patruni Chidananda Sastry

, who also constitute the core team.

According to the Prince and his partner

Duke Hanumanteshwar

, Studio 69 will be a "platform that gives visibility to drag artists, creates awareness and removes misconceptions about the art form and its practitioners."

“Drag artists will showcase their work twice a month, nationally and internationally on this space. We also plan to start an open mic featuring the queer community and hosted by our drag queens, and later, a school where we will rope in international faculty and conduct masterclasses for established queens,” says Adam, who is also the ambassador of Prince Manvendra’s Lakshya Trust that works with sexual minorities.

Abhishek, a member of

the Haus of LaBeija

fraternity - one of the oldest and most celebrated houses of drag in New York - will bring in his knowledge of the ballroom drag (an underground western LGBTQIA+ subculture wherein African-American and Latin American artists face off against rival houses). And classical dancer Patruni, who runs DragVanti, a blog and directory of Indian drag queens, will bring lesser-known artists including those from smaller towns into the database and give them a platform to showcase.

“There’s a whole lot of Indian drag that I want to bring to the fore, including folk forms such as Launda Naach from Bihar, Lavani from Maharashtra, and Pothuraju from Telangana,” says Patruni.

The project is also supported by Hyderabad-based queer rights group

Mobbera Foundation

.