Newspaper Page Text
arts & culture
Queer
art notes
Revolutions
ALEX SUAREZ CELEBRATES INTERSECTIONALITY WITH FEMME
By Alden DiCamillo arts@flagpole.com
In conversation with Alex Suarez about the
origins of their drag show Femme, launched
in January and now two shows into its
second season, they spoke about using the
vibrancy of revolutionary femme-bodied
narratives to create a space in Athens that
is resounding with differently gendered per
sons allowed to exist
fully as they are.
“The word ‘femme’
has such power to
me... the [queer] rev
olution was led by the
drag queens, and the
femmes, and the trans
women... we wouldn’t
be able to do the things
we do if it weren’t for
the femmes who led
that revolution and the
people who were iden
tifying as women lead
ing that charge, and
throwing those bricks
and being at those pro
tests... And if it weren’t
for people like Sylvia
Rivera and Marsha
P. Johnson and all of
those strong women,
all those femmes.”
Suarez began their
personal drag career
in January 2017. Two
years later, they started
Femme, a monthly,
intersectional perfor
mance that, instead of
working with theme
nights and only drag
queens, plays with the
concept of bringing in differently gendered
drag performers and allowing complexity
and variety to take precedence. “I wanted
to create a night where you can drop your
guard and also see different talent that
embodies different things,” says Suarez.
“I want to put [the performers] in a place
where they are very seen.”
Talking about their own gender, Suarez
speaks about having masculine traits,
feminine qualities, femme personas, butch
trappings and masc-isms all wrapped into
one person. Rather than engaging a singu
lar gender, Suarez performs and embodies
all of these, letting them mix together or
allowing one to take the spotlight if need
be, whether in drag or out of drag. “Even
not being in drag, I still feel like Queen Alex
Suarez... But when I’m in drag, I still also
very much feel like the first 20 years of my
life—that Alex exists in that body, as well. I
very much exist in the middle.”
Insistence on flamboyant, vivacious
existence can be seen in both Suarez and
in Femme: There is not a performance
that isn’t an entanglement of genders and
identities.
“I have kings; I have queens; I have
things. I have non-gender-conforming drag
personas,” says Suarez, talking about the
inclusion of differently gendered perform
ers in Femme, including burlesque dancers,
who were originally part of drag show
lineups. Femme surpasses the quota-driven
concepts of diversity and drops straight to
intersectionality. There isn’t a number of
alternative identities to be filled, and there
isn’t a script that’s being followed.
“Femme is about having a fresh mix of
performers every month so people get a
new show every time,” says Suarez. “And
then, my assignment to all of those per
formers is, ‘Bring your bread and butter,
bring your best, bring the things that you
really like to do, or the things that your
community doesn’t exactly expect you to
do.’”
In the last seven months of Femme—
now starting on a second season after a
summer-long break—there have been
incredible moments, like queen Dynisty St.
James singing a number, performer Taylor
Alxndr (who runs the Church shows in
Atlanta) performing to Lizzo’s song “Juice,”
Priscilla Chambers (a trans woman who airs
on the third season on the Boulet Brothers’
“Dragula”) coming down from Nashville to
perform and the uproarious response to the
appearance of a burlesque performer during
the first Femme show that each speak
power to queer femme identity. Audiences
of queer, trans, nonbinary and allied gen
ders have rallied around Femme to pack out
each show.
There’s a Southernness to Femme that
Suarez describes through the architecture
of Church bar. “I think where [Femme]
comes into this Southern identity is that we
are kind of just performing in a space that
isn’t really a show space. It’s this little nook,
and we are all very packed in there... It’s
like we are very much
part of the crowd, and
we’re very much on
the level, and it is this
really nitty gritty, it’s
this raw kind of talent
that is out there on the
floor... You’re part of
the party.”
Shows like Femme,
and queer leaders like
Suarez, don’t just pro
test spaces of harmful
binary or cisgendered
social normatives that
exlude queer, trans and
nonbinary persons.
These queer move
ments twirl past those
constructs towards
a flamboyant resil
ience—one that allows
femme identities to
resound both in the
moment of perfor
mance and elsewhere.
Through this, perfor
mance ceases to be
an escape or a hiding
place. It becomes an
existence.
The next Femme
show is Thursday, Oct.
3 at Sister Louisa’s
Church at 9:30 p.m. The lineup includes
Atlanta performers St. Lucia (a fellow com
petitor on season three of “Dragula”), Syraja
Sinclair Dupree and Royal Tee, plus Colana
Bleu, the “MuuMuu Mistress of Auburn.”
D J Quincy will lead the music, and Suarez
will keep spots open for newer performers.
Keep up to date with upcoming Femme
shows on Suarez’s Instagram, @queenalex-
suarez. ©
Alex Suarez
Republic
salon
312 E, BROAD ST. • 3RD FLOOR • 706.208.5222 • FRIGIDAIRE BUILDING
ENTRANCE ON JACKSON ST. • WWW.REPUBLICSALON.COM
14 FLAGPOLE.COM | OCTOBER 2, 2019