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Freakshow-a-Go-Go Press
>Freakshow-a-Go-Go: Dislodging Normal.  5/09.  Austin Chronicle
>PDX Drag is Dead, Long Live PDX Drag!  5/08.  Just Out.
>LINK: FAGG: Austin Makes the A-list

Freakshow-a-Go-Go: Dislodging Normal
May 29th, 2009.  by Cindy Widner. Austin Chronicle

Austin Drag Collective in host mode.  In retro parlance, drag is about divas. For the Austin Drag Collective – which is hosting Austin's first Freakshow-a-Go-Go at Emo's this Saturday – it isn't even necessarily about drag. Embracing the non-diva-ish notion that collective action can produce damn fine spectacle, the group has gathered from across the nation, yes, drag performers – but also burlesque troupes, puppeteers, and cat dancers – to upend expectations and, oh yeah, put on a gigantic show.

The first Freakshow, held last year in Portland, Ore., traced its lineage to the roving International Drag King Extravaganza and Washington, D.C.'s Great Big International Drag Show. Unlike those festivals, Freakshow-a-Go-Go is a one-night performance event that casts a wider net. "We wanted to bring different kinds of performance artists into a space on a shared stage to highlight more than just drag," says Eaton Johnson (a former Chronicle intern). "We wanted to highlight performance in general and foster communication between different members of performance troupes and styles, in Austin and in the nation."
The result, he says, is "fun, kind of circusy, kind of out-there" – a Felliniesque gamut that encompasses the "significant, meaningful pieces" of Durham, N.C.'s Cuntry Kings; Oakland, Calif.'s Butch Tap (performing both drag and full-on tap-dance pieces); Portland, Ore.'s Cattitude dance ensemble (focusing on "cat positivity"); and New Orleans' Crescent City Kings. The hometown represents as well, with the Jigglewatts' burlesque, Baruzuland's shadow puppetry, gonzo dance troupe Little Stolen Moments, and WinoVino's roving carnival of musicians. Emceeing is PJ Chavez, the Bowie, Texas-spawned practitioner of "hair arts" and hostess of Live! From PantsuitLand With PJ Chavez.

For the Drag Collective (all members of local drag king troupe Kings N Things), the event's biggest challenges involved conveying the inclusiveness, both to potential performers and publicity outlets, of a show that encompasses so many categories. "I think the toughest thing is those little [online] check-boxes that only make you define yourself further; it's harder to do so when you're so broadly based," says Johnson.

The show's eclecticism is "a way to perform ourselves and to reveal new definitions of 'sexy' and 'performance,'" he continues, "dislodging notions of normal and creating new narratives. I think that within drag and performance you can hit those new narratives and stray away from what 'normal' might be. We're reclaiming terminology – like 'queer' has become reclaimed. It's a mixture of reclaiming terminology and doing it."
It's time, in other words, to take back the freak

   
Photos: Freakshow-a-Go-Go PDX: Gender Offenders, Smarmy Chorus Girls, KO&Co, Gender Fluids (photo cred K. Williams)


PDX Drag is Dead.  Long Live PDX Drag!
May 2nd, 2008.  by Stephen Marc Beaudoin.  Just Out

The Portland drag scene is not dead. But it sure looks like it’s got one foot in the grave, at least according to 26-year-old drag king Max McGrath-Reicke, aka Max Voltage.  Which is why the self-described “genderfuck artist”—who in conversation refuses to adopt a masculine or feminine pronoun—is stoked about Freakshow-a-Go-Go, a circuslike night of vaudevillian drag antics May 17 at the Hippodrome Center, 315 S.E. Third Ave. The heyday of Portland drag might be gone, Voltage says, but many of its VIP members—from now-defunct groups like Sissyboy, DK PDX and Übergay Cabaret—are still kicking around and itching for new performance ops. Enter Freakshow-a-Go-Go.

With almost a dozen solo and group acts from the Northwest and around the country in the lineup, the show could signal a new renaissance for drag in Portland, according to Voltage, a classically trained violinist and winner of the 2003 San Francisco Drag King Competition. And the performers will be flying their freak flags high and proud.
“The whole show is circus-themed and is about this whole idea of freaks and who identifies as a freak. I identify as queer, but I also strongly identify with the term ‘freak,’ ” a word Voltage says was hurled left and right in childhood. “Growing up as a kid not being ‘gender normative’ and being called a freak, that word had a lot of sting and power to it.” So Voltage wants to reclaim the word by infusing it with the artist’s own brand of arty power.

Voltage will have a host of help, from Portland’s newly minted Gender Fluids, which arose from the Sissyboy ashes and includes local drag luminaries like Splendora, Kaj-anne Pepper and Pony Boy, to out-of-town acts like Chicago’s Smarmy Chorus Girls and a queer black intermedia performance artist named Thisway/Thatway, offering “a meditation on the historical consumption and exploitation of black women.” Voltage will perform in a few numbers, including the opening, a newly choreographed quasi hip-hop routine to Portishead’s pounding “Glory Box.” Sossity Chiricuzio, host of In Other Words’ Dirty Queer open mike night, is the evening’s host/ess.

Tickets are $10-$15 from Brown Paper Tickets. Doors are at 7 p.m., with the show at 8 and a post-show DJ’d dance party following.