GENDERBENDERDRAG BALL

Thank You–event co-host

Nick Peladeau, The Queer Artists’ Collective

check-in table

Rachel Chasteen

production team

Dan CallahanJulian CintronGabe Goldfarb

documentation team

Shannon GallagherAsh HenrySteph Houten

logistics

Captain Keith Kasprzak, Public SafetyDeb Flohr, Chartwells Catering

free hiv testing by boston glass

Daniel Lima Mio TamanahaBoston GLASS Peer Leaders

emcee

Jada T.

performers

Jada T.Professor DeejayDesert StormSeawall Lychee SaigonKotton Candy KrayvonQueer CultNicki PlaydoughScottMohiniThe Lotus ButterfliesVideo NastySparrowhawk

and especially

Max Azanow, SIM Studio Manager Dana Moser, SIM Faculty Nita Sturiale, SIM FacultyThe Studio For Interrelated Media

I wanted to have fun.on the conception of the gender bender drag ball

To cap my time at MassArt, but more specifically my time in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM), I wanted to produce a fun event. Much of my artwork and practice during my time in SIM focused on presenting and framing critical social justice issues in accessible media. So, I wanted to produce an event that was artistically produced to bring in the lighting and pro-duction aspects of my practice into the space, but I also wanted to have a spin on the event that would make it something more than just a party in the Pozen Center (and it was!). Boston GLASS was one of the organizations I reached out to while planning, and they were able to provide two HIV testers for the evening to perform confidential, rapid HIV screenings for anyone who was attending the event.

Because of my time in SIM, I think about life and events as spaces and moments open for fa-cilitation. So, the Gender Bender Drag Ball didn’t initially look in my mind like how it came to be on the day we had it. In many ways, the event was my own selfish way of finding a produc-tive, meaningful, and truly unique way to hang out with some of my favorite people in Pozen. Most of my time in SIM was spent in Pozen either for class, hanging out, or producing huge events like the SIM Big Show and All School Show. It felt as though I needed to resolve that re-lationship somehow before I graduated.

why a drag show

While in recent years, RuPaul’s Drag Race has significantly increased widespread attention and praise for the drag community, many drag performers, especially those of color, seldom have opportunities for safe exploration of their personas especially when they’re first start-ing out. For this event I could have funded the hiring of popular drag performers, but rather instead I sought out drag performers of color in my network. For some folks in the show, this was their first time ever performing in drag, and for others it was their first time performing in a world-class lighting and sound production. An added benefit for the performers is that ample documentation was taken through photo and video, so that moving forward they have an ad-vantage to booking future events by having the documentation of their performance.

There’s no limitations here.on finding performers and curating the production lineup

The Pozen Center for Interrelated Media is one of, if not the, most flexible space on MassArt’s campus in terms of what can happen inside of it. I wanted to collaborate with each performer as much as possible, and support their creative instincts as much as my own.

Professor Deejay was spinning 80s & 90s hip hop, but was also mixing live video on the projec-tion screen behind him throughout his set. Initially a technical disaster, we were able to trou-bleshoot the equipment to allow him to send his video feed into the projector without needing a video technician on standby during his performance.

For all of the drag performers–there wasn’t a single moment where I had to say “no” to anyone. Their performances were as experimental for them as the event was for me, and while I was lighting the performers throughout the night we inevitably found an invisible sync between us where I was able to use a variety of lighting effects and transitions to further push their perso-nas into a realm that went beyond basement drag shows.

Scott’s stand-up interlude between the drag performances and the last two musical sets of the night was a much needed break for many of the event attendees. By having a half hour without music, people who were there had an opportunity to access free HIV testing, hang out and cool off outside, and laugh. It was a great way to lighten up the room for Video Nasty, as it was also one of her first times performing in a space of that capacity. She performed a forty minute DJ set she had been working on for months.

Closing out the event was Sparrowhawk who had built gigantic sconces on the back wall that had been projection mapped with colors and gradients all evening. Their performance had audio by Dan Callahan and the video was live mixed by Julian Cintron, which was mapped by Dan on top of the sconces that Gabe Goldfarb had built.

Avoid complications.on deciding to use the pozen center vs. the new design and media center

Initially in my planning process I had identified the new Design and Media Center as the ideal spot for the event since it was visible and accessible from Huntington Avenue, it could hold a ton of people, and because of its immensity in scale there were so many opportunities to fill it with light and sound in really unique ways.

It turned out though, that booking and using a highly desired space at the college was more taxing than it was worth. Merely the logistics of booking the space were complicated because of its popularity, so many people were in competition for it so there was no way I’d be able to book it for an entire weekend Friday-Sunday for setup, the event itself, and striking. And I refused to have to set up and strike on the same day of the event because it would have made my team feel over-exerted and the whole point of the event was for everyone to have fun.

This was an aside to the even more complicated process of going through the MassArt Complex Event meeting where I had to prepare estimates of attendance, door costs, and bud-geting money for public safety and facilities. By the time the event happened, most of what I had initially planned to do had been replaced by cooler, more innovative things that I’d figured out with my team the week of the event. In a last minute decision, I decided to change the space for the event from the Design and Media Center to the Pozen Center because I had more creative freedom. This created a marketing challenge, because not as many people are as fa-miliar with the space and it’s not as visible as the Design and Media Center from Huntington Avenue.

The event itself had so many complicated moving parts within it that I had to avoid as many institutional complications as possible, and build relationships with the right people so that they would have trust in me and my plans. This totally worked out, too, because on the day of the event I was working with a caterer who was super flexible in setting up the cupcakes how I wanted them; and the obligatory Public Safety details I had to have present were completely understanding about my sensitivities to LGBTQ people and people of color having to navigate a police detail. Public Safety was totally hands off for the event, which meant that everyone was able to feel safe and have fun without feeling as though they were being watched.

Don’t forget to look up.on designing the lighting and sound for the event

I spent a lot of time in SIM and the Pozen Center working with colored LED lights and stage lights, and I was getting a little bored with how I’d previously seen Pozen lit up. I wanted to do something that was different but again, not too complicated, so that I could run the light-ing board during the event without too much frustration. We had three DMX universe, one for the house chandeliers, one for the on-stage LEDs, and the main house universe which had LED lights on the truss aimed down on top of pieces of fabric I purchased for the event, and some other lights to flood the walls with color, and red and blue gelled stage lights to give the space some dimensionality. The lighting was so important for the event because I had antici-pated that there wouldn’t be enough people to fill the entirety of the Pozen Center, so I tried to compensate by integrating the lighting with sculptural and spatial elements to try to make the space seem less empty. I used a few dichroic glass gobos for the front walls, and these spaces unintentionally became the spaces where groups were taking photos of themselves.

Both the stage lights and truss colorados were attached to two separate Jands boards which made it easy to quickly apply chases, flashing effects to both the stage and the room during performances. Particularly with Sparrowhawk, this was really exciting because Dan’s sound works heavily with sound dynamic, so when the volume was at a low I could bring the whole room to a dim level of lighting, but then when his sound would get louder or change tonal-ity, I could quickly adjust the lighting to change with it, as well as strobe random lights above in the truss to give the audience a feeling that light was coming from all around them and not just focused specifically to the stage. Most importantly, I was able to run the lighting boards without flooding out the projections that were being mapped behind Dan while he was per-forming, and this is always really difficult–finding a balance between room light and having enough darkness for the clarity of projected visuals, but it worked out great.

And, of course, we set up two sets of cross-faded QSC speaker systems with two gigantic sub-woofers for the ultimate soundscape.

Treat your crew right.on space setup and striking

Finding people who want to lift heavy staging up from a basement on a Friday night is not an easy task, and this time wasn’t any different. I think the only way I was able to get the help that I did was because the people I worked with were a lot of the same folks that were on our production team for the SIM BIG Show. So, we had already had a context for working togeth-er and they knew that I’d take care of their food and get them paid for their time. By having already worked with them, they also knew my management style and knew that I wasn’t going to be short or rude during the process; and at the end of the day it just felt like we were all hanging out and having fun (with really heavy and expensive equipment).

Surprisingly, striking down the event the next day was so much easier than I thought it would be. No one else was around, so Dan and I struck even the staging just by ourselves and were able to get it all in the basement and bring Pozen back to an orderly fashion. Sometimes you don’t need a huge team if the people you’re working with are totally on the same page as you when you’re working together. It also helps if you both already have experience in striking things efficiently.

I would be lying if I said their weren’t any kinks in the setup of the event that came up. For example, we initially thought Boston GLASS was going to be bringing tents to do their HIV testing in across the hall in N181. But when they arrived, of course twenty minutes into the event, they needed confidential spaces to be set up ASAP. So, because of the awesome team of producers I was working with, we were able to quickly get a ton of base and poles and fabric upstairs to create some faux walls for them that totally worked out. This was, of course, the same room that earlier that day had been filled with toxic fumes as a result of an unprecedent-ed Iron Pour that occurred in the courtyard just outside, but after having a fan blowing the fumes into the hallway for four hours before the event, the fumes had finally dissipated.

Get the word out!on social media and outreach

Hire a social media manager early on in your planning process, if you can. And don’t be afraid to cold-call and email organizations within your area that can help promote your event. I kept my outreach channels pretty limited, because I didn’t have a strong idea of what the event was really going to look like, so I tried to build most of the hype for the event within MassArt. That being said, there were quite a few people at the event who I’d never seen before, and it was ex-citing to have new people in the space.

One of the more useful things I had done for this event was creating a website for the event which had all of the event and contact information, as well as some images and GIFs of drag queens and other cool things so that when someone visited the site they got a better sense for the feel of the event, and also when something has its own website, it becomes established as something more than just another Facebook event.

Leading up to the event, Nick Peladeau and I hung posters across campus and aggressively shared the event information within the MassArt social networks and also with Queer Ex-change Boston, the Boston Alliance of GLBTQ Youth (BAGLY), Boston GLASS, the Colleges of the Fenway, and the ProArts Consortium. I made the event youth-friendly so that if there were area LGBTQ youth in our surrounding community they could get involved with Boston Glass and have a safe space to meet friends and have fun, since these spaces are seldom available otherwise.

gbdb2016.squarespace.com now features a slideshow landing page with photos from the event, and still has my contact information for anyone who attended and wants to get in touch about finding documentation photos and videos.

a production by aleX nally, sim ‘16