'It takes a village to put on a drag show'

Eight hours before her drag show, Annie Bartholomew drove to Costco, looking for a hot dog.

One year ago, the independent musician and KXLL-FM disk jockey took to the drag show stage for the first time, adopting the persona of “Marty Weiner” to raise money for the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association, better known as Four A’s.

On Friday, she was preparing to do it again by appearing in the Four A’s Femme Fatale, the annual drag show hosted at the Rendezvous bar. It’s a colorful, loud event that always attracts a standing-room-only crowd.

This year promised to be different. When Bartholomew donned a mustache and wig last year, she was one of a few “drag kings” — women dressing as men. Drag queens — men dressed as women — were the top billing.

This year, it was the other way around: seven kings and five queens, all from Juneau.

“There’s seven kings in the show, which is amazing, so it’s the king explosion,” said James Hoagland.

Hoagland works for Four A’s as its Juneau coordinator, but might be even better known as the drag performer Gigi Monroe.

Last year, it was Hoagland’s “Drag 101” weekend workshop that helped encourage Bartholomew to create a drag-show character.

“I think that drag in general has become a lot more accepted,” explained Stefanie Davis, who plays Stevie Smalls, one of the kings.

With shows like “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” garnering big ratings on TV, and national conversations about gender happening almost every day, drag shows aren’t the rare spectacles they once were.

Femme Fatale, which includes a Friday locals’ show and a Saturday show including performers from Anchorage, competes for a drag show during Juneau Pride Week as the biggest of the year, Hoagland said.

Friday was a busy day for Bartholomew, who attended a class at the University of Alaska Southeast before making her Costco run and stopping at the Rendezvous for a walkthrough and planning session.

“Do you think it would be safe to do a somersault?” she asked, pacing off space on the stage.

Bartholomew’s character is a sleazy, middle-aged man with a moustache.

“The joke with Marty is he thought he was cool,” she said.

For this show in particular, Bartholomew wanted to escalate the act by putting Weiner in lederhosen, a Bavarian hunting hat and exaggerated Germanic flair.

“I wanted this idea of Oktoberfest, Weiner, sausages, beer, and so I’d hunt down the lederhosen … and then ordered makeup weeks in advance,” she said.

Ideally, it’d be over the top, akin to “Springtime for Hitler” from “The Producers.”

Hoagland said Bartholomew’s preparation is typical for the performers who show up at Juneau’s drag shows.

“This is not like, come to the bar and we’ll put you in drag,” he said. “People are really preparing, people are really investing in their performance.”

That includes picking the right music, dance choreography, costume and makeup, whether it’s a drag king or a drag queen.

“Do whatever you want,” Hoagland said of the attitude, ”but you’re responsible for doing everything.”

“It takes a village to put on a drag show,” Bartholomew said.

There’s also a competitive aspect. Each performer in Friday night’s show was judged by a panel (one judge was deputy mayor Jesse Kiehl) and by the amount of money collected in tips to Four A’s.

“If you win, you get to do Saturday” alongside the visitors from Anchorage, Bartholomew said.

Did that really matter?

“Are you f***ing kidding me?” she responded rhetorically.

After a quick walkthrough on the stage, Bartholomew left for the KXLL-FM studios, where she hosts an afternoon show.

She went home, grabbed her costume and equipment, then returned to the Rendezvous, where fellow performers were already at work two hours before the 8:30 p.m. start.

“Originally, I was going to do this jump-rope routine with sausage links along the jump rope,” Bartholomew said. It was more difficult than she thought, so she satisfied herself by adding a sequined, cursive-script “Weiner” on the back of her Bavarian cape.

“I feel like I’m on ‘Project Runway,’” she said.

In a crowded back room, performers competed for space on mirrors taped to shelves holding liquor bottles and paper products. Empty beer kegs and disused tables lined a wall covered in peeling paint.

As the glue dried on her cape, Bartholomew sat in front of one of the mirrors, between Davis and Cate Ross, who performs as “Ryder Strong.”

“The makeup can be fast or slow, just depending on how much focus I have,” Bartholomew said. “It doesn’t take as long to become Marty as it does for the queens, because if you’re doing a good job (as a drag queen), you’re going to have fake nails, you’re going to have the eyelashes, you’re going to have accessories and costume changes.”

“Not everybody does that,” she added, “and everybody has their own interpretation of what it is to be feminine or do drag, which is cool.”

One of Bartholomew’s first steps in her process is to cut pieces from the end of a braid of bound hair. Using a bottle of spirit gum, she applied the hair on her chest.

“The chest hair is the grossest thing,” she said.

To her left, Ross was deliberately applying makeup to her face. As she explained it, the process is the same for most drag kings: Use different shades of colors to create shapes that look three-dimensional in the light of the stage.

“That’s really the basic principle,” she explained. “Two-D colors to make 3-D.”

To become Ryder Strong, she wants her nose to appear wider and her cheekbones prominent. There’s also the 5 o’clock shadow along his jawline.

The transformation is an odd feeling, Bartholomew said. She performs music solo and in groups, but performing as the off-putting Marty Weiner can feel more comfortable.

“I feel that there’s something about a woman playing a man that takes away the gross factor in it,” she said. “When I put on the outfit and I’m taped down, I feel like a have weird armor on. Whereas when I play shows as a woman — so many creepy dudes.”

The transformation from Bartholomew into her character came when she donned the mustache and peered into the mirror to check the view.

Marty Weiner was the seventh act to go on stage, which gave him time to mix with the audience as the first performers danced to music.

Among those watching alongside the stage and carrying a clipboard was Laura Herman, development director for Four A’s.

Friday night’s festivities may have been a party, but they had a serious purpose. Four A’s supports 33 people with HIV/AIDS in Southeast Alaska, and the organization has become critically important in the past year because it also operates the only needle-exchange program in the region.

As the heroin epidemic spreads here, that program is a bulwark preventing disease from spreading alongside drugs.

“We projected 15,000 syringes distributed this year, and we’re at 41,000,” Herman said. “The need … is massive. They’re in higher demand than ever before.”

That sobering statistic didn’t make an appearance, but Monroe did make a plug for Four A’s safe-sex program with a comical demonstration of how to apply a condom correctly.

After that concluded, Weiner made his grand, sleazy, stumbling debut to music. He promenaded through the cheering crowd, accepting dollar bills shoved into his costume and falling into the arms of friends.

As his performance concluded, Weiner danced atop the Rendezvous’ pool table and dramatically pulled a hot dog from the pockets of his lederhosen. With fanfare, amid blaring music and applause, he took a bite, held it aloft, then hurled it into the crowd.

It landed on an astonished woman who, mouth open in surprise, held it up as if to return it to him.

Bartholomew, in the guise of Marty Wiener, didn’t see the offering, and in the dimness beyond the spotlight, it was difficult to see what the woman did do with the wayward dog.

The one clear thing was what she did next. As Weiner bowed on stage, the woman opened her purse and pulled out a dollar.

Marty Weiner won first place.

• Contact James Brooks at 523-2258 or at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.

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Correction

The first version of this story incorrectly identified the people on advertising material for the Femme Fatale drag show fundraiser. They should have been identified as “Marty Weiner,” portrayed by Annie Bartholomew, and “Lituya Hart,” portrayed by Ricky Tagaban.

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