What: Big Gay Cabaret
Where: Metro Studio, 1411 Quadra St.
When: Friday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $15 at door (advance available via ticketrocket.co)
By day, Kelly Legge works as a curriculum developer for a First Nations organization. At night, she transforms into an elegant fop called Persi Flage.
With a 17th-century-style green velvet jacket and a pencil mustache, it’s the outrageous Persi Flage who’ll perform at Big Gay Cabaret on Friday night. As part of the two-hour show, Legge will lip-synch songs by David Bowie and possibly “don a big puppet head”.
The event raises funds for Intrepid Theatre’s OUTstages, Victoria’s first queer theatre festival, now in its second year. Offering drag routines, musical theatre, dance and burlesque, Big Gay Cabaret will host performances by Mr. and Miss Gay Vancouver Island (a.k.a. McLyons Ru and Mileena Mortality) as well Badman Throbbins, Marilyn Manskin, Jenson Kerr and 10 others.
Legge began performing only last summer. She’s a drag king, that is, a woman who publicly dresses as a man (the opposite of a drag queen). Persi Flage is a play on the word “persiflage,” an archaic term for witty banter.
“I always wanted to do drag,” said Legge, who also teaches martial arts in her spare time. “I wanted to do drag for 10 years, but before, I had long hair.”
Since making her performance debut last July at the Victoria Pride Parade, she’s done her drag king show at Paparazzi Nightclub, Sugar and The Cobalt nightclub in Vancouver. Legge notes Persi Flage is a “fem king,” a less masculine style of drag king.
“There are hyper-masculinized kings. I mean they’re there and it’s a look and it’s great. But there’s other sorts of kings, too. I can get away with being a fem king. People like the diversity on stage now,” she said.
Big Gay Cabaret is organized by Sean Guist, Intrepid Theatre’s marketing and development director. Guist, who founded and curates OUTstages, is also a performer. For Big Gay Cabaret he’ll lip-synch A Whole New World as Princess Jasmine from the Disney movie Aladdin.
Guist will appear in full Jasmine regalia, sporting size-11 women’s high heels in blue.
“I bought them at Design Shoe Warehouse. I went shoe shopping yesterday,” he said.
This year’s OUTstages festival runs June 23 and 24. The “daring and edgy” roster includes Cocktales with Maria (descriptions of sexual encounters set to an operatic score), Ivan Coyote’s Tomboy Survival Guide and Nancy Kenny’s Roller Derby Saved My Soul.
Guist says last year’s OUTstages was not only well attended but drew an audience outside the usual theatre-going crowd.
He notes both Big Gay Cabaret and OUTstages (while not appropriate for children) are suitable for any audience, queer or straight.
“What’s nice about giving voice to queer stories is that they’re really interesting, they’re really current, they spark a lot of conversation and inspire ideas,” Guist said.
“Whether you’re gay, straight, questioning your identity, there’s a lot of things to take away. And, in the end, I just want people to have a big celebration.”
