Slunt Factory will be celebrating its six-month anniversary with Slunt: A Drag Showcase April 7 at Club 200.

The showcase will feature special guests Feather Queen and Sapphoria.

Slunt Factory was co-founded in September 2018 by Dirt (Brielle Dorais-Fleming), Moxie Cotton (Caity Maskiew) and Stara David (Ezi Raizen). Their first event was held Oct. 31, 2018.

Slunt Factory hosts events on the first Sunday of every month. The group’s mandate is to create a safe space for drag performers, with a focus on introducing new talent to the community.

“We focus on making a space for new performers, people who have maybe not had a chance to experience the scene before or who are having a hard time finding their way into the performance scene,” said Dirt.

“We want to help build bridges between new performers and old performers, we want to help them have a stable monthly thing where they can come and perform and hopefully get paid,” they added.

“We wanted to give young queens a place to get some experience to try new things, to perform where they know they’re not going to be judged,” said Moxie Cotton.

Slunt Factory has also featured drag artists from different Canadian cities in an effort to connect drag communities across Canada.

Dirt, who performs as a drag king, said drag is a form of entertainment that plays with gender through makeup, costumes, music, comedy and other art forms.

“Drag is really any sort of artistic expression of gender,” said Dirt.

“Often that comes out in a club scene as someone very performatively dressed up in a super exaggerated version of a gender.

“Whether that’s like drag queens, you can be these extremely, overtly feminine people or sometimes it’s kind of a mix, you see a couple of queens in town who will have a full beard but also these huge wigs and lots of makeup or people like me who are drag kings, so kind of an exaggerated or warped version of masculinity,” said Dirt.

Moxie Cotton defined drag as “performative gender,” where someone of any gender exaggerates and deconstructs gender constraints. Moxie Cotton explained that drag consists of a myriad of different performance types, such as lip syncing, dancing or ballads that are often performed on a stage, usually for a club audience.

Dirt explained that they, Stara David and Moxie Cotton are all non-binary people who were assigned female at birth. Winnipeg’s community has been supportive, caring and inclusive to the three performers, according to Dirt and Moxie Cotton.

“As for Winnipeg’s drag community as a whole, I find it’s really quite accepting. There are a lot of [drag communities] where people who are assigned female at birth would not be as accepted as we are,” said Dirt.

Moxie Cotton has also thrived in Winnipeg’s drag community.

“Drag has brought me nothing but joy and community and family,” Moxie Cotton said.

“Everyone here is amazing.”

 

Slunt: A Drag Showcase will be held at Club 200 on April 7. Cover is $5. For more information or to get involved with Slunt Factory, contact their Facebook page, their Instagram @sluntfactory or email them at sluntfactory@gmail.com.