Loud and Proud: Annual Drag Show Held for EFF

By Connect Mason Reporter Kenneth Trotman
Photos by Broadside Asst. Photography Editor Laura Foltz

George Mason University’s Pride Alliance hosted a drag show in the Johnson Center Atrium on March 28 filled with glitter, dancing, music and humor. The Every Freakin' Friday event was free and open to the public and featured student and local performers.

• See photos from the drag show here.
• Watch video footage of the performances.

The Program Board teamed up with the Pride Alliance to help provide advertising and pizza. Ryan Allen, a GMU junior, hosted the event in his popular stage name, Reann Ballslee, along with GMU alum Oliver Clothesoff. Macy Penny, Kim Chi, Brenda Tittelsworth, Brianna Spice and Jake Wolf strutted their stuff as Mason students made their way into the atrium.

Students packed the crowd with flying $1 bills, laughter and constant cheering. Junior Taylor Bray said curiosity and talk around campus brought her out. “The night was very funny and extremely entertaining!” Bray said.

In the late 1990's, Pride Alliance sponsored at least two drag shows. The first one was held in an afternoon in SUB I. For the first few years, the show was fairly controversial, since in public settings like Student Union Building I or the JC individual students and groups who did not choose to attend the event were exposed to folks acting in nontraditional ways that some found offensive, according to Ric Chollar, assistant director of LGBTQ Student Affairs in Diversity Programs and Services.

By 2002, the event was a knockout with high attendance and support. Since then, the show has educated Mason about drag queens and kings, subgroups of transgender communities and smoking cessation programs. It has featured celebrities, like Adam Pascall, from "Rent."

The drag performances were meant "to show the larger Mason community a fun, exciting, vibrant aspect of LGBTQ culture," said Chollar. "[The event was] to give the LGBTQ community at Mason the chance to have fun, celebrate, build community and critique gender roles all at the same time.”

In accomplishing this goal, Pride Alliance helped bring LGBTQ organizations for a resource fair such as Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays, Human Rights Campaign and Metropolitan Community Church.

For more information about Pride Alliance and Diversity Programs &
Services click here.