Drag workshop CampOUT gives B.C. youth a lesson in self-confidence

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Most kids lucky enough to go to summer camp get to sleep under the stars, make new friends, and escape parents who tell them how to behave, what to do, and who to be.

But camp isn’t just a place to find refuge from the banality of everyday binaries.

At CampOUT, a UBC summer camp on Gambier Island for queer, trans, and Two-Spirit, questioning and allied youth ages 14-21 from across B.C. and the Yukon, campers get to build leadership skills, self-esteem, hope and resilience.

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They can also put the “camp” in camp, in a week-long drag workshop.

CampOUT hosts up to 95 campers and mentors annually, and is fully funded by UBC.

For Daniel Gallardo, 36, aka the drag artist Gaia Lacandona, it’s a unique opportunity to mentor youth through drag.

“Drag is about self-confidence, and allows us to see beyond other people’s perceptions of us,” said Gallardo.

“The first day they get to embody every way of understanding their being, whether as an alien, a creature in a forest, or a runway model,” said Gallardo, who is the SOGI UBC coordinator and a PhD candidate in gender identity and drag pedagogy.

At the end of the first day of the workshop, budding artists choose their drag names. Some know who they are right away, others take more time. “It can take a lot of exploring,” said Gallardo.

By the second day, campers dress up with treasures from the free store, and learn to create the face of their new persona. “Sometimes it’s just a beautiful mess. Drag is an art form and it takes practice and time. You have to understand your face, colour theory, structure, contour and shading,” said Gallardo.

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And of course, the week culminates with a performance.

Last year’s campers made Gallardo a “Proud drag parent” badge to wear. They wear it with pride.

As a young child growing up in a traditional family in Mexico, Gallardo was enamoured with Mexico’s first openly-gay celebrity, Frances, who lip-synced and imitated popular singers on television.

“The first time I saw her, I was like wow!,” said Gallardo.

He imitated her — “lip syncing like a Diva” — until, he said, “the machista culture”, expressed through strong disapproval from his father, shut him down. Although he later experimented with drag in Mexico city clubs, “it wasn’t a safe place for me,” said Gallardo.

He gave it up, grew a beard and became an educator. It wasn’t until 2006, when drag began to enter the mainstream, that Gallardo began to explore his own drag persona. “RuPaul’s Drag Race created a big safety net for people who identify as drag queens. There was a big shift,” said Gallardo.

Drag, no longer consigned to the narrow tropes of cross-dressing or female impersonation, emerged as an art form.

In the CampOut Drag workshop, drag is more than imitation of western ideals of beauty, kings and queens.

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“I challenge participants to think about bringing out creatures, things that are not necessarily human — a passionfruit flower, a unicorn, a creature from the sea. It’s about playfulness, experimentation, and imagination rather than gender.”

His drag persona, Gaia Lacandona, is a botanical creature, part of the mythological earth, trailing vines and greenery, a plant goddess.

While the discourse around drag has become deeply divisive, Gallardo hopes that education will bring understanding.

“Although people typically think of drag as part of the nightlife, it really is an art form that can be adapted for any audience, taking into consideration the context and the time. It is about performance.

I hope that takes away the fear that we are imposing ideals on people. We are not. We are only asking: Who do you want to be?”

dryan@postmedia.com

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