What Is A Drag Daddy? | Stéphane Magloire | TEDxDonauinsel
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvG2qk21mhM Video ID: JvG2qk21mhM ============================================================ Transcriber: Catarina F Reviewer: Beatriz Nicolau Who am I? I was born in Haiti... I’m an Aquarius. Audience member: Woo! Stephane: Hey! By my accent, you can tell that I’m American. I’m black. Obviously. But most importantly, I am a queer artist. I am a fierce activist and a Drag Daddy. I moved from Haiti to America when I was three. Fun fact: Haiti is the only slave country to win its independence through strength and resistance. So coming from the poorest country in the western hemisphere and moving to one of the richest countries - the land of opportunity - I was already rich. Haiti had gifted me this powerful, this rich sense of community values. Land of opportunity. What is opportunity? Opportunity is a time or a set of circumstances which create a possibility for you to do something. And that’s exactly what my mother taught me from a very young age. “Stephane, you have two hands and a brain. Do something!” And so I did. If you want to, imagine with me now. We’re in a playground and - in America we call it the monkey bars. Yeah? So it's like kind of like a ladder at the top and two on the side, and you’re just swinging from one to the next. Yeah, that was my adolescence. I was swinging from sports to the arts to music, and then all of a sudden, in the distance, there was this, like shiny light last bar and I grabbed it and it shocked me, threw me in the air like an Olympic gymnast. And I landed perfect! Then I found it - musical theater. I became in four years the Renaissance man of Maplewood, new Jersey. A generalist in the artistic sense. But while I was... Running... Inside, time stood still. Because I was struggling to figure out how to come out, how to come out to myself as gay, how to come out to anyone around me. But I remember the day it happened. I was with my best friend and her mom. We had gone into New York City for the weekend because we were looking at colleges, universities, and I... My dream was to go to NYU. And so we get there, we do the campus tour. It's cute. And then she's like, let's get some lunch. So we leave the campus, we turn the corner and pure New York City moment. We run into a fabulous gay man. A Toro. Come to find out, he’s actually a really good friend of my friend’s mom. So I look at him, he looks at me, I quickly look away because he was so hot. And then I like looked back at him and he looks at me and he smiles. And then he whispers over to my friend’s mom, “we gotta bring them to drag brunch.” And so all of a sudden we are standing in front of Lips Drag Bar And Restaurant. It's the oldest drag bar in New York City. And the first time I ever saw drag. So I’m feeling very exposed and nervous. And so I was like I need to go to the bathroom. On my way to the bathroom, boom, here she is. Purple heels, long legs for days, dark chocolatey skin, big hair, fabulous dress! And she looks at me and goes, “ooh, child, you want my wig?! Cause you got a face for drag.” I was terrified. It’s like she plucked the internalized homophobia out of me and set it right in front of me to look at. I’m from Haiti. From the Caribbean. And as much as I had this powerful sense of community values, that culture is not so kind to the queers. And as terrified as I was looking at myself, I was equally inspired by the courage she had to be unapologetically herself. So the next day I came out to everyone. And then three years later, I got my acceptance letter that said, “you are going to New York University Tisch School of the Arts musical theater program.” Yes! (Applause) I promise you, I’ll get to the Drag Daddy part. So I get to NYU. First day dance audition, singing auditions, theory, acting class. They put up the list. We have our groups. We run into our classes so inspired, ready to change the world through art. Bam! Door opens. Alexandra Borrie, my favourite acting teacher, walks in. She’s about this tall... And this woman taught me how to stand tall. “How many of you are lucky,” she says. “Who here thinks they’re lucky? Who thinks that they are lucky to go to New York University Tisch School of the Arts?” So, we all sheepishly raised our hands and then she goes: “Boom! There’s no such thing as luck. Luck is opportunity meets preparation. Your job as an artist is to suspend time and look for what is missing, and then create something.” My next 12 years were a privilege and a curse of a series of more monkey bars. Except this time it was mixed with heartbreak, several creative jobs, including touring the world with a rock star. Two around the world's. And then in the last year of being this creative nomad, two important things happened. One, I was hit by a truck while doing a motorcycle trip from North to South Vietnam. And number two, luck somehow found me standing in a city center called Stephansplatz, in a city called Vienna, in a country named Austria. The first time I came to Vienna, I got out of the airport. I got into the cab and on my way to the Airbnb, quickly googled “Gay Vienna.” Bars, cafes, clubs, parties. Nothing in the daytime, y’all. Absolutely nothing. This was 2015, just to give you perspective. What? Like not even a drag brunch? Like, who doesn’t like queens? Some mimosas. Eggs? See, when you’re healing for five days in the middle of nowhere - no hospital, no friends, no family anywhere in sight - from an accident, a near death accident, you start to rethink your life. What the fuck am I doing? Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Sorry. What am I doing? What’s my purpose? Where am I going? And so for the first time in these five days, the universe - life made me slow down, made me suspend time. What was I looking for? What is missing? Six months later, I’m standing in the center of Stephansplatz and I found it. I need to create. Queer. Daytime. Visibility. Representation. Diversity. Inclusion. So one year later, I moved here as a resident to do something. Now we talk about the Drag Daddy. I never... I didn’t come here to become a Drag Daddy. I didn’t have a dad growing up. So what job do I have? Parenting, teaching queer young artists. I’m not a drag queen. I’m not a drag artist. But I’ve got three things. Powerful sense of community values. Now a master's in theater education and performance. And somehow the third showed up - Because now I’m the fabulous gay man. And as a Drag Dad... You know, it’s different when you have the biological DNA. I happen to have creative DNA from an amazing school, and I brought it here, and I gave it to the artists in ways that they didn’t understand. How to prepare yourself as an artist, how to make it into a job that you can live from. You can't live from representation, y'all. You live from real money. Learning about their history. And that was a unique experiment because it went from three local Austrian queens and a queer community cafe, and in four years expanded to 160 international drag artists that have come here through Vienna. That is drag kings, drag queens, HIV positive, trans, non-binary. They’re performers, they’re artists, they’re singers, they’re dancers, they’re instrumentalists. They are artists. And they are representing 40 countries around the world. So in that time, we really get to know what's going on. And from this little brunch: Hotel sponsors. Museum exhibitions and performances. Odeon Theatre. And with all of this, how proud and excited I was in developing this. I was just as afraid if not more, than the first time I was looking at my first drag queen. Why? Because last year, while I was having fun, I had this idea for a drag story time for a kids event. And that was the first time I was met with resistance. Right wing extremists, religious extremists, political extremists, Nazis. Came to the cafe’s front door to protest kids being taught how to love themselves. How dare I? That they have the God given right to be whoever they want to be. And I remembered hearing, you know, the community... “Stephane, thank you so much. Vienna needs you. You brought this here, it’s in the daytime, I feel seen. I’ve come out of the closet. Meet my grandmother. What’s non-binary? Can I take pictures with your Queens?” To... “You have made Vienna unsafe for me. How dare you? This is your fault. Where are your international queens?” And in this fear, I knew I had to keep going. And so I remember the day I was heading to the cafe and I turned one corner and you see the police in riot gear. Then you turn another corner and it's just a sea of rainbows and colors and signs, and 2000 of you people here who showed up to support my tiny little event to protect queer art. And in that time... Did I understand what is family? In that time, I understood my powerful sense of community values. In that time, I became a Drag Daddy. (Applause.) And so I will ask you a question. How do you create your powerful sense of community values in your community? Has luck found its way to you? Have you found a way to suspend time to look for what's missing? To create something? If you haven’t, it’s okay. I only found it at 39 years old. But if you do have it, I will give you the same advice that I give to my kids. Prepare yourself, find the opportunities and make your own luck. Thank you. (Applause.)