Kevin Aviance is an American drag queen, club/dance musician, fashion designer, and nightclub personality. He is a personality in New York City's gay scene and has performed throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is a member of the House of Aviance, one of the most notable vogue-ball houses in the U.S. He is known for his trademark phrase, "Work. Fierce. Over. Aviance!" He won the 1998 and 1999 Glammy Awards, the award for nightlife personalities in New York City. He has worked with several artists, including Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston. In December 2016, Billboard Magazine ranked him as the 93rd most successful dance artist of all-time.
Lady Bunny, originally known as "Bunny Hickory Dickory Dock", is an American drag queen, nightclub DJ, actor, comedian, and event organizer. She is the founder of the annual Wigstock event, as well as an occasional television and radio personality. She has released disco singles such as "Shame, Shame, Shame!" and "The Pussycat Song", and has hosted two one-woman comedy shows, 'That Ain't No Lady!' and 'Clowns Syndrome'.
Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, and fashion designer. Bowery was known for his conceptual, flamboyant, and outlandish costumes and makeup, as well as his live performances.
Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone who performs femininely and a drag king is someone who performs masculinely. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
Wigstock was an annual outdoor drag festival that began in 1984 in Manhattan's East Village that took place on Labor Day. Continuing, with a few gaps, until 2005, the festival would traditionally act as the unofficial end to the summer for the gay community of New York City. After a 12-year gap, the festival was revived by Lady Bunny and Neil Patrick Harris on September 1, 2018 at Pier 17 of the South Street Seaport in New York City. The name refers to the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
The Pyramid Club was a nightclub in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. After opening in 1979, the Pyramid helped define the East Village drag, gay, punk and art scenes of the 1980s. The club was located at 101 Avenue A in Manhattan.
Stephen Tashjian is an American artist. His drag queen character Tabboo! became known in the East Village underground scene of New York City in the 1980s. He is also a puppeteer, painter, and singer.
Candis Cayne is an American actress and performance artist. Cayne performed in New York City nightclubs in drag since the 1990s, and came out as transgender in 1996; Cayne came to national attention in 2007 for portraying transgender mistress Carmelita on ABC's prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in primetime. She is perhaps best known for her recurring role as the Fairy Queen on the fantasy series The Magicians.
Wigstock: The Movie is a 1995 documentary film focusing on Wigstock, the annual drag music festival that had been held New York City's East Village through the 1980s and 1990s. The film presents a number of performances from the 1994 festival, including Crystal Waters, Deee-Lite, Jackie Beat, Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery, Joey Arias, Freddie Pendavis, and the Dueling Bankheads. The film also captures a performance by RuPaul at the height of his mainstream fame during the 1990s.
Dorian Corey was an American drag performer and fashion designer. She appeared in Wigstock and was featured in Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning.
World of Wonder Productions is an American production company founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company specializes in documentary television and film productions with a key focus on LGBTQ topics. Together, Barbato and Bailey have produced programming through World of Wonder for HBO, Bravo, HGTV, Showtime, BBC, Netflix, MTV and VH1, with credits including the Million Dollar Listing docuseries, RuPaul's Drag Race, and the documentary films The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016).
Roy R. Haylock, better known by the stage name Bianca Del Rio, is an American drag queen, comedian, actor, and costume designer. She is known for winning the sixth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. Since her time on Drag Race, Del Rio has written and toured several stand-up shows, including It's Jester Joke (2019), which also made her the first drag queen to headline at Wembley Arena. She has also performed as a host for various international tours, most notably Werq the World. In 2018, she published her first book, Blame It On Bianca Del Rio: The Expert On Nothing With An Opinion On Everything.
Our Lady J is a screenwriter, producer and director, best-known for her work on Pose, Transparent, and American Horror Story. She is the first out trans woman to perform at Carnegie Hall, as well as the first out trans writer to be hired in a television writers room.
Chris Moukarbel is a film director, writer, producer and contemporary artist. His first feature documentary Me at the Zoo premiered in competition at Sundance Film Festival in 2012 and was acquired by HBO Documentaries. The film charts the rise of YouTube and tells the story of an early viral Internet celebrity, Chris Crocker of “Leave Britney Alone!” fame. Moukarbel was approached by Sheila Nevins to direct the Emmy nominated documentary Banksy Does New York for HBO.
Matador Content is an American production company founded in 2013 by Jay Peterson and Todd Lubin. The company produces feature films, unscripted television, scripted television and digital programming. Some of Matador's television series include the Hulu series Drag Me to Dinner, AMC series Geeking Out, the GSN series Hellevator, the A&E series Epic Ink, Cement Heads, and Country Bucks, the Lifetime series Project Runway: Fashion Startup, the History series Great Minds with Dan Harmon, the Syfy series Cosplay Melee, and the Discovery Channel series The Impossible Row. Matador's scripted programming includes the Emmy Award-winning Netflix original series The Who Was? Show, and Viceland's first scripted series What Would Diplo Do? starring James Van Der Beek.
Sandra "Sandie" Crisp, better known by her stage name The Goddess Bunny, was an American entertainer, drag queen, actress, and model. Footage of her tap dancing, originally recorded around 1987, was the subject of one of the first viral videos.
Mrs. Kasha Davis is the stage name of Edward Paul Popil Jr., an American drag queen, actor and television personality from Scranton, Pennsylvania. She is best known for competing on the seventh season of RuPaul's Drag Race and the eighth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. After appearing on the reality television show, Mrs. Kasha Davis toured internationally, released several musical singles, and performed in film, television and theatre.
Barry Shils is an American film director and producer. He is best known for directing and producing the films Motorama and Wigstock: The Movie, and for producing Vampire's Kiss starring Nicolas Cage.
Charlene Incarnate is a Brooklyn-based female performer and writer. She started out her gender transition as a drag queen as part of her life experience.
Nashom Benjamin Wooden was an American performing artist. Wooden was a member of the electronic dance music band The Ones and performed as a drag queen under the stage name Mona Foot.
