Friday 7 February 2025, 3pm - 5.30pm
Moser Theatre, Wadham College
Register via Google Forms.
Join us to create your own ✨drag persona✨, discover the art of drag through acting exercises and costume fitting, and take your look to the catwalk in a fierce group performance. The 2-hour workshop is a breathing space to explore your identity and develop a communal sense of hope. You'll also get to learn about drag outside of the Western tradition with the workshop facilitators in the Q&A.
How has drag become a form of resistance in countries where LGBTQ+ identities are being increasingly repressed by so-called “anti-gay propaganda” laws and other harmful legislation? How can drag be used as an instrument of hope? How can drag help build a better future for marginalised communities?
Thanks to the TORCH Critical Thinking Communities Fund and the Wadham College Equality Fund for making this event possible.
The Clothes
There will be a wardrobe of masculine, feminine, and ambiguously gendered clothing in a range of sizes for participants to use during the session, but please also feel free to bring clothes that can be used as costumes. Those can be clothes that you want to wear for your act, or that you are willing to lend to someone else during the workshop, or even donate. The clothes should be in good condition and fit for dressing up. Typically, there are 3 categories of clothes: a) labelled as feminine b) labelled as masculine c) fluid/fun/quirky clothes without clear gender attributions.
About Tana Theatre Company
The Tana Theatre Company works with queer communities from Eastern Europe and Asia who have relocated to the UK, helping them develop unique drag acts as an instrument to facilitate identity migration for queer refugees and asylum seekers like themselves. The interactive workshop will challenge the notion that drag is a Western practice and is developed from a previous successful workshop, titled ‘Drag for the Future’, run by the Tana Theatre Company at Pushkin House, the UK’s oldest independent Russian cultural centre.
Masha and FJ
Masha and FJ met at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama while studying for an MA in Applied Theatre. Together with Isabella Londono, they started Tana Theatre Company to create spaces for people to resist intersectional identity limitations and be seen in the depth and beauty of our shared humanity. Masha wrote her thesis on “Drag as a Methodology for Staging Personal Stories”, which laid the foundation of this workshop. She is working with queer communities from Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a facilitator and theatre-maker.
FJ initiated the decolonising performance-making project Drag Up! that engaged participants from the East-Asian queer community and is creatively involved in London queer-led performances. Masha and FJ graduated from Michael Twaits’ Art of Drag course and performed at the showcase at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
QUEERCAMP is part of TORCH Student Networks
