For about an hour this past Friday night, Page Commons was transformed into a drag club by the Curbside Queens. Organized by The Bridge, the College’s LGBTQIA+ student-run club catering to the queer community, this year’s Spring Drag Show was full of color, noise, dance, and unabashed queer joy.
The event was very well-attended. Gigi Gabor, one of the founders of the Curbside Queens, described the audience as “one of the biggest crowds [she’s] seen at Colby.” Gabor has been working with the College to organize a drag show every semester for six years.
It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly why this Spring Drag Show drew such a crowd, but its advertising was certainly unique. Posters for the show featured a close-up photograph of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, the main characters of the Canadian television series Heated Rivalry, staring intensely into one another’s eyes. Text on the poster read “come to the cottage,” referring to a pivotal moment in the show.
Laila Clarke `26, President of The Bridge, credits the club’s sponsor Nathan Baird with the Heated Rivalry theme idea. “Nathan Baird is really obsessed with Heated Rivalry,” Clarke said. “He asked if I wanted a theme for the drag show…and he was like, ‘what if we do a Heated Rivalry one?’…I personally haven’t seen the show yet…but he seemed really passionate about it and it was really popular and it just felt like a relevant theme.”
Incorporating the theme into the show was a task the Curbside Queens took on readily. Gabor and another performer, Chartreuse Money, opened with a reenactment of Hollander and Rozanov’s relationship arc to the tunes “What is This Feeling” and “Popular” from the Broadway musical Wicked, and later on in the show a burlesque dancer performed a striptease in full hockey garb. Picking hockey equipment off the stage after the opening act, Gabor playfully commented “ew, sports…so butch.”
Clarke described their experience working with the queens: “They’re always really professional, really friendly, super helpful…I had never handled running a drag show before this year, but…they made it as easy as possible.” These rave reviews check out—they are New England’s #1 traveling drag show, after all.
Not only did the show feature talented professionals, but it also included two student performances. Nicholas Srunn `29 was the only student to do a solo act, performing as drag persona Phnom Penhetration (named after the capital of Cambodia). They shed light on the confidence demonstrated onstage, explaining “I kind of exuded the personality of Phnom Penhetration rather than Nick Srunn, which is like…being able to be a different person in a sense.”
Lachlan Klaes `28 choreographed and danced in the other student performance, along with five other students. He went into it feeling nervous as he had just been in the ER the day before, but he was still able to dance with energy and confidence. He was proud of his group and said, “I watched a recording after the fact and I was like…we actually ate up and the audience loved it. It was just very heartwarming to see how well we all did together.”
According to the students I spoke with, being queer at the College has its challenges. Clarke explained, “Since my time as a freshman, I feel that it’s been quite isolating to be queer here.” They have found it difficult to find space to embrace both queerness and their racial identity. “I didn’t really feel like there was a welcoming queer space that was welcoming for everyone. It felt very white…sometimes here I feel like I have to put on my race hat or my queer identity hat and I can’t really think about both at the same time.”
Even within “gay” spaces at the College, Klaes has struggled to feel entirely at home as someone who inhabits multiple queer identities. “For the gay spaces that you can find on campus, it’s very much gay and not queer…anything that’s more flexible is kind of pushed on the outside. Especially for trans people, it’s really hard to find a space within those gay spaces.”
Feelings of isolation and repression were a common theme among their reflections on the queer experience at the College. Referring to markers of queer identity, Klaes expressed that “it kind of feels like the environment of Colby asks you to not exhibit that.” Srunn, describing how their relationship with their queerness has changed since arriving here, shared that “it feels like I am more detached from it at Colby because of how I’m not able to express myself or how I’m not able to interact with people who share the identity.”
Drag shows provide spaces in which big, brazen expressions of queerness are celebrated. Having that kind of space is incredibly important to these students. Srunn was surprised at how emotional the experience was.
“I actually almost started crying at the drag show because I was like, damn, I love gay people so much. I love how we’re able to just be,” they said. “I think it’s really beautiful, like, just seeing that we can be gay or be queer or be trans…and have everyone love that instead of it being something you’re afraid of being.”
~ Anna Izquierdo `29
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