Featured photo: Andy Monroe performing drag during a New Year’s Eve party (photo by Ciara Kelley)
When drag king Ellis D. started performing five or six years ago, he says no one else in his community did anything quite like he did.
“I wanted to do more alternative stuff, like monsters, more goth,” he said. “No one else in my community was doing that.”
Ellis D. met a lot of pushback against his art. Eventually, he met up with Hysteria Cole, a drag queen, and the two formed Underground Presents in Greenville, North Carolina.
Since then, the group has traveled all around North Carolina performing. On Jan. 7, they will have a show at Monstercade in Winston-Salem. Ellis D. says they are looking forward to performing at a more inclusive, welcoming environment.
“We want to give the best damn queer showcase you can give,” they said. “All these performers of all kinds just having a fucking good time.”
Underground Presents will be Monstercade’s first drag show of the new year; the last was on Halloween with Queer Winston-Salem.
“Monstercade caters to an alternative crowd, so we’re kind of the weirdo bar in town,” said Carlos Bocanegra, the owner of Monstercade.
“Anything with the alternative arts, we’re ground zero for that,” he said. “You’re not going to see this at a brewery or at a Joe Schmo bar. We seek out these types of performances. We’re extremely proud to host a show like this and give a place where alternative artists can use their creative voices.”
The upcoming show will feature several drag performers, burlesque dancers and combinations of both. Katie Murawski, who performs drag as Roy Fahrenheit, says she does “boylesque,” where she reveals a male illusion body under her clothes. As Fahrenheit, Murawski is known amongst her friends as the “smiling king.”
Murawski has never trained in burlesque, but says that performing makes her feel good about her body. She started performing in 2019, after she met drag queens through her partner’s best friends. She and her friend Andy Monroe, drag name Andy Droge, now perform with Ellis D. and Hysteria in Underground Presents.
Overall, her experience with drag has been empowering, but Murawski says she has also been pushed into boxes by the community.
“Some things, like misogyny, are universal,” she said. “There’s a lot of that involved. It’s not uncommon.”
For example, Murawski and the others in her group have been told that they only showcase drag queens, not kings.
“Trans and AFAB [assigned female at birth] performers are often pushed to the side or not taken seriously,” she said. “The whole reason me and Andy joined forces with the Underground is that there’s a new show in Winston-Salem that popped up that I thought would be inclusive, but it wasn’t.”
After she posted about it in a Facebook called Drag Kings Unite, she says Ellis D. saw her post and reached out. Ellis D. and Hysteria have both experienced similar prejudice in the drag world.
“For me, [there were so many] hoops I had to jump through to get stage time,” Hysteria said. “We had to compete in amateur nights, on Thursdays, once a month. You had to do what the bar wanted. It was judged heavily. Now, we invite new people in where people collect the tips for our performers, then they do a guest spot, then we book them. It’s nothing like what I went through to get stage time.
“I started doing drag in 2002, so going on 19 years ago in Greenville,” they continued. “I was also put into a box by many of the queens in Greenville. One of them came up to me one day and said, ‘Don’t change who you are for someone else, because you’re the only one doing what you’re doing in the state.’”
facebook.com/undergroundpresents, Instagram at @underground_presents and underground-greenville.com
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