About this event
Masha Tiunova and Felicia Jiang of Tana Theatre Company welcome you to the ‘Drag for the Future: a Workshop to Explore the Power of Drag as an Instrument of Hope’.
The art of drag is a form of creative expression that discovers new identities, celebrates chosen communities and provides visions for the future. Multiple ways of being that are plausible for us today were once imagined within queer communities through queer performance. Drag questions the existing order of things and envisions possibilities.
Drag for the Future is a 2-hour journey of creating your own drag persona from sharing the perceptions around drag through acting exercises and costume fitting to the fierce catwalk. It is a breathing space where you can explore your identity and develop a communal sense of hope.
'A wonderful and liberating experience!'
The workshop doesn’t require any drag or performing experience and you don’t need to think in advance about who you want to be, we will take care of that in the process.
What you can do in advance:
Please feel free to bring clothes that can be used as costumes. Those can be clothes that you are willing to lend to someone else for the time of the workshop or give away permanently. The clothes should be in good condition and fit for dressing up.
Typically there are 3 categories of clothes: a) labelled as feminine b) labelled as masculine c) fluid/fun/quirky clothes without clear gender attributions.
Please inform us of any access needs.
About the facilitators:
Masha and FJ met at Central while studying for an MA in Applied Theatre. Together with Isabella Londono, they started Tana Theatre Company to create spaces for people to resist intersectional identity limitations, and be seen in the depth and beauty of our shared humanity.
Masha wrote her thesis on Drag as a Methodology for Staging Personal Stories and devised this workshop out of that experience. She is now working with queer communities from Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a facilitator and theatre maker.
FJ initiated the decolonising performance-making project ‘Drag Up!’ that engaged participants from the East-Asian queer community and is creatively involved in London queer-led performances.
Both Masha and FJ are graduates of Michael Twaits’ Art of Drag course.
Accessibility:
The Centre's accessibility statement is here.
Covid and mpox safety at the London LGBTQ+ Community Centre:
To keep our community safe, we ask that all visitors do not visit the Centre if they are feeling any Covid-19 and/or mpox symptoms including headache, fever, sore throat, consistent cough, chills and unusual spots, scabs or ulcers.
You can wear a mask if you feel more comfortable. We also have masks and hand sanitiser available at the Centre.
For current information on Covid and mpox please visit the NHS website.