FFWD Weekly
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| BOOKS Edmonton drag artist, playwright and composer Darrin Hagen's new book, The Edmonton Queen: Not a Riverboat Story, may have become "a sort of family bible for a vanishing family," but it's not simply addressed to the circle of drag initiates. Hagen, who launches the book in Calgary on Saturday, March 28 at Chapters McLeod Trail, wants to see how "the not-gay crowd" receives his chronicle of Edmonton drag culture from the early '80s to recent years. "I'm not in the business of preaching to the converted," he says. Sounds like a bit of missionary zeal from the glamourous resident of Canada's Bible belt. There's more than one side to Hagen's mission. His book presents the reality of a culture known mostly through a few Hollywood sterotypes. "True drag is more radical than simply donning another outfit," he insists. Straight men in heels, skirts and wigs at "gender-bending" parties can even end up making fun of women. That's not Hagen's idea of drag. "Straight men are missing the joke. We're actually making fun of straight men. We're throwing their fantasy picture of women right at their crotches, and saying 'How do you like that?'" The Edmonton Queen began as a series of stories about Hagen's drag mother. Hagen, who performs as Gloria Hole, developed the stories into a one man/woman play chronicling the Hole family, the "drag dynasty" whose reign began in the early 1980s. The play became a hit at Edmonton's Fringe Festival, where Jane Dorsey of Slipstream Books approached Hagen with the idea of creating a book. Now The Edmonton Queen is approaching a second printing. A further aspect of the book became clear once an increasing number of deaths in the drag community began to create "a sense of tragedy in the culture." Preserving a record of artists and their creations became another mission for Hagen, whose adult life has developed along with Edmonton's drag scene. The quest to understand his own history provided yet another motive for writing. Hagen recalls arriving in Edmonton from "a real normal childhood" in Rocky Mountain House, to (literally) find himself at Flashback, "the biggest, hottest nightclub in Western Canada - in Edmonton of all places." His first drag show was an experience of instant self-recognition. "I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. I just knew this was something that was in me that had to come out. It's something I saw happen over and over again. People would arrive and just re-invent themselves." As an artist Hagen has continued that re-invention. He now uses drag to explore areas that are not about drag. He describes his recent play, Tornado Magnet, as "a tribute to trailer-park women. It lets the audience open up to something they recognize - the everyday reality of growing up white trash in Western Canada." Despite the success of The Edmonton Queen, not everyone in the drag community is thrilled to see Hagen telling their stories. "Some people have said, you know, 'That's our laundry.' But I don't use boy names, I just talk about the artistic creations." In any case, it's too late to put the brakes on Hagen's love affair with writing. Once he began, he "just fell in love with musicality of language. "I think anyone who performs is exposed to so much beautiful language that eventually you want to create it for yourself." The experience has convinced Hagen that everyone should write a book sometime. "Even if no one else ever sees it. Everyone should have that experience for themselves." |