Drag Show: Oxford Pride Edition

In the spring of 2015, the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies partnered with the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council and Lamar Lounge (since closed) to sponsor a drag performance as part of the Isom Student Gender Conference. It grew, as so many events did back then, out of Matt Kessler’s connections and vision. Matt was an MFA student with endless energy and unsinkable enthusiasm, and he loved creating queer spaces and experiences in Oxford. He suggested we invite interviewees from the documentary Small Town Gay Bar to talk about their experiences, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the film. Then he said, “Why don’t we have them perform when they are in town?”  We scrambled to make it happen. We had no idea if people would show up, but they did.  In droves. It was standing room only inside, with twice that many people outside trying to get in. We learned that there was an eager audience interested in drag performance, one of queer culture’s most distinctive art forms. (For more about Matt and the history of queer programming in Oxford, we suggest listening to an episode of our Swerve South Podcast: Queering Oxford - It’s been a Drag)

Matt created Code Pink the next year, and the Isom Center was happy to help support and host those early inclusive dance parties. When Matt graduated, Blake Sommers and Jonathan Kent Adams took over Code Pink, and they have built it into a vibrant, delightful queer force on the Square. We could not be more proud of the space they have created for queer folks in Oxford. We are delighted that they are joining us this year for Oxford Pride Week.

Because there are so many more venues for drag performances in Oxford and the surrounding areas, we, as a Center, have focused our programming efforts elsewhere: bringing in speakers for our annual Trans Studies, ACE Studies, and Queer Studies lectures; supporting queer artists at Sarahfest and Glitterary; sponsoring activities and programs across campus, with departments, centers, and student groups.

We do make one exception every year, and that is our annual Oxford Pride Drag Show. We always sponsor this event each Saturday evening during Pride Week; we use it as a fundraiser for the Isom LGBTQ+ Arts, Culture, and Community Development Fund at UM Foundation. Building on drag performance, we are able to showcase queer thinkers and theorists, writers and artists who might not otherwise come to Oxford, Mississippi. In addition to the programming listed above, it has supported OUTGrads’s annual Friendsgiving, the Psychological Services Center’s purchase of new materials to help queer students of color, and other LGBTQ+ student organizations’ programming and outreach efforts. 

We invite you to come enjoy the drag show on May 6 at the Lyric. You may see performers you know and love from Code Pink (and these amazing artists perform at a number of venues in the region); you may also meet some new performers.  More importantly, while you enjoy the artistic performance, you are also supporting LGBTQ+ programming and broadening the exposure to queer culture at the university and the broader community. All the money raised from the night (once the performers and venue are paid) goes directly into the Isom LGBTQ+ Arts, Culture, and Community Development Fund.  

We hope to see you at the Lyric!

If you cannot make the show but still want to support queer programming at the University and in the Oxford Community, you can make a donation using umfoundation.com/pride.