One Can Make a Difference by Ingrid Newkirk Read Free Book Online Page A

that, offering nothing, I was able to round up my sister and other kids in the neighborhood to perform. Since my dad taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, I was sometimes called upon to play the child part in college productions, too. Were these half-assed reviews the foreshadowing of Wigstock?
    In The Winter’s Tale , I played the prince. Wrong gender, but still royalty, honey! In grade school, I was cast in the school variety show as a snake charmer. If I could have looked into a crystal ball I would have seen that in the years to come I would “charm” many “snakes” indeed! I convinced my mom that slanted eyeliner, a la Barbara Eden on I Dream of Jeannie , would “exoticize” my look; together with a turban and harem pants, it might as well have been drag. I assumed that I’d continue acting, but when college hit and I was cast in the supremely dull Our Town as baseball player number two, I remember thinking, “I’ve been forced to act straight throughout high school. I’m ready for some more flamboyant parts—this isn’t ME!” Plus, an actor is a mere pawn. A drag queen is able to be her own costume designer, choreographer, makeup artist, hairstylist, scriptwriter, arranger, director, etc. So I have more input and control with what I do, not that I’m an impossible, controlling monster bitch or anything!
    And why is Wigstock so important? Hmm. Well, the only thing worse than sounding pompous is an old battleaxe like me coyly batting her long, fake lashes in a failed attempt at false modesty, so let me brag a bit about starting Wigstock! In 1982, I moved to Atlanta to study at Georgia State, but who needs a degree to become the town drunk! Besides, I found the future superstar drag queen RuPaul and his cast of crazies far more interesting than the college curriculum of an undecided major. I tagged along on one of Ru’s trips to perform at NYC’s Pyramid Club and never left, rising from the ranks of go-go dancer to Wigstock organizer. I organized the very first one—an all-day drag festival of dancing and music and stage acts, including me as the emcee—in 1985. It was supposed to be a little transvestite festival and about a thousand people showed up! Everyone wanted to see or be seen or both. We had terrific acts every year, from recording artists like Deborah Harry, Deee-lite, and Vickie-Sue (“Turn the Beat Around”) Robinson to big name queens like RuPaul, Lipsynka, and John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig.Wigstock continued to grow and probably reached its zenith with the 1995 release of the thoughtfully named documentary Wigstock: The Movie .
    I am proud of several things. I was single-handedly responsible for the massive East Coast syphilis outbreak, for example—oh, just kidding—but organizing Wigstock is even more important than that. And it lasted twenty years, not a bad run for New York City. For a couple of years we had terrible weather—it’s hard to clap and hold an umbrella at the same time—and we lost money hand over fist. At present we’ve stopped putting the festival on as an annual event, but who knows what’ll happen in the future. Wigstock transformed people. It allowed me to bring a lot of zany, bewigged freaks together in the light of day for a very memorable annual blowout bash—even the somber New York Times wrote that “the karma was dynamite.” And it allowed me to use my smart-ass humor—with the emphasis on ass, of course.

SUE COE
    Illuminating the Truth
    Sue Coe’s work shocks and upsets people, in no small part because it encompasses such shied-away-from subject matter as the Ku Klux Klan, apartheid, Malcolm X, skinheads,AIDS, labor and sweatshop conditions, war, and animal rights. Her paintings are whole depictions, rather than glimpses, of what goes on in places most of us will never set foot in because we never, ever want to go there, physically