Season 5, Episode 6: Queering Oxford - It's been a Drag
Tune in this week as Jaime and Operations Coordinator, Kevin Cozart, interview UM English MFA graduate and current USC Ph.D candidate, Matt Kessler, about founding Oxford’s queer scene with events like Oxford’s first drag show, Code: Pink, and Oxford Pride. While studying creative writing at UM, Kessler began to reflect on the importance of finding queer community. “Every space I went to felt so macho. There were just no queer spaces,” Kessler said. So, after meeting Isom Center Assistant Director Dr. Theresa Starkey on the balcony of a local bar, she invited him to come by the Center and talk more about his ideas for queering Oxford. It wasn’t long after that Kessler began making the connections necessary to bring his vision of queer world-making to Oxford.
Kessler’s first idea was to screen Small Town Gay Bar, a documentary about gay bars in Meridian and Shannon, MS, in conjunction with the Oxford Film Festival. Kessler invited participants from the film to a Q&A following the screening and one of the participants, drag queen Eric GoDiva, suggested having a drag show, too. Inspired by the success of the drag show, Kessler began to realize there was a lot more interest in Oxford than most people realized for “queer community, queer entertainment, queer lifestyles.” Thinking it’d be really great to model a night at a bar in Oxford after Chances, (a gay bar he frequented in Chicago), Kessler spoke with a local bar owner about hosting a night that wouldn’t just be welcoming to the queer community, but would be a night to showcase queer talent, and “for people in the community to have a stage for their community.” This idea for a once-a-semester queer night at the bar became CODE: Pink, which has grown so popular that had to be moved from its original location at Proud Larry’s to The Lyric Oxford, a venue that will hold 1,000 people.
The Oxford Pride Parade rolls through Oxford.
The week of Oxford’s first drag show, March 25, 2015, was what Cozart calls “the queerest week Oxford had ever had.” In addition to the drag show, the Isom Center had their Gender Student Conference and the Center, in collaboration with several other community partners, screened two John Waters’ films in anticipation of Waters’ lecture at the Ford Center on March 28. These events led to the idea to host a Pride Parade in Oxford in 2016. Listen as Jaime, Kevin, and Matt share the heartwarming details of how Oxford’s first Pride parade came together and how supportive the town continues to be in creating a better, queerer Oxford.
Oxford’s Pride Week is Sunday, April 24 - Saturday, April 30. For a full schedule of events, click here.
