A bright spotlight shines across the dark room, illuminating their beautiful androgynous figure as they walk down the steps to a crowd of people. While drag queens are known across the world with the rise of popular reality show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the drag community has far more diversity. Mia Giglio and Valerie Denton are University of Idaho students who perform in drag for local Tabikat Productions. Giglio and Denton demonstrate a spectrum of gender expression through their performances with some sets following the masculine drag king persona, others expressing a more feminine persona as femme queens and a whole range in between.
“My body is my canvas for the night. I decide what I want to paint on it. I decide how I want to dress it, what kind of frame I want to put it in.”
-Valerie Denton
Before a performance, Denton spends time contouring her face strategically to create the illusion of male facial features despite her female bone structure.
“Something I really enjoy about theater and performances in general, is it’s almost like sidewalk chalk. You go oustide and you draw it, and you have a great time, people see it all day long. They get to enjoy it. But by the afternoon it’s raining and its washed away.”
-Valerie Denton
Tabikat Productions provides performers like Giglio a space to express themselves any way they choose as well as a family to support them.
Performing drag has not only improved Giglio’s confidence but created a new career path for them to explore their art.
“I wanted to be a drag thing, which is somebody who’s not necessarily a king and not a necessarily a queen but also kind of both. I wanted to remove any sort of barriers and rules from my gender expression in this form.”-Mia Giglio
Photo Story by Brianna Finnegan
Design by hagen Hunsaker