By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The drag scene in Bowling Green is getting a reboot.
Starting Monday, Feb. 17, Ember’s Drag Inferno will make its debut at Howard’s Club H. The show will start at 9 p.m. and continue to midnight. Cover is $5. The shows will be staged Mondays a couple times a month.
The new drag extravaganza is being organized by Ember Holiday Monroe. She’ll serve as MC and hostess for the event as well as recruit talent from the Toledo area, Columbus and Dayton. (Ms. Monroe prefers to use her stage name for the interview.)
Drag shows have been on the Bowling Green scene for years — at Uptown, Ziggy’s, and most recently at Howard’s.
When Ember moved to Bowling Green she wanted to keep that tradition alive, but also give it a new twist. “We’re really pushing for this to be more of a community thing. Yes, we still want the college kids to come and know it’s a safe space. But it’s also for Bowling Green as a community to have a space that’s queer friendly, just a place where people can exist and their identity doesn’t define them. They can just come as they are.”
Patrons will even be given name tags as a way to get around the awkwardness of what pronoun is correct.
Ember feels that Howard’s is the perfect venue in town for the event. “That’s the bar I go to,” she said. It doesn’t attract the crowds of college students other bars do. “I’ve made a family there. They call it ‘How Weird’s’ for a reason. Everybody is welcomed there. It’s been a staple in this community for so long and so many people know and love it. I thought: ’That is the exact right place to have it.’”
Mondays were chosen so as not to conflict with other drag shows established in Toledo, Findlay, and Fremont.
“I wanted to have a date that wouldn’t conflict with any of the other awesome shows and take away from their audiences because that’s when places start shutting down when they lose crowds.”
Ember also hosts shows at Hamburger Mary’s, a drag-themed restaurant at The Docks in Toledo.
The restaurant is family friendly, and draws diners from toddlers to elders in their 90s.
Ember glories in the difference having drag and LGBTQ culture presented to the public can have. “It’s just dress up,” she said. “It’s not this big scary thing, right? Just to see kids light up when they see you, that’s why I do it.”
Ember was created seven years ago as a 19-year-old student at Miami University. She was one of two students into drag. The scenes were in Dayton and Cincinnati. “It was kind of cool. I was in this special club. No one else knew anything else about,” Ember said.
“I was always a performer. I did theater my whole life. For me, it was the opportunity to play one character for a long time and craft that really well. Then I got into the fun of special effects make up. That made me love drag even more.”
Being a drag queen offered an art form in which she could continue honing her craft. “You can entertain people and for two hours take their minds away from whatever their problems are for that day.”
The community nurtures each other, Ember said.
“Nobody starts off and looks good, nobody never ever ever. … When you start out it really is the ugly duckling, hope to become the swan.”
More experienced performers help bring the novices along and learn the basics of performance, make up, and dressing.
Ember took “Holiday” as a middle name to honor National Holiday, the drag queen who helped her. National Holiday will be featured at a later Drag Inferno show at Howard’s.
The characters are always changing, and the queens have to learn new skills, including sewing.
Ember has just acquired a Singer sewing machine but admits “we are very early on in the process.”
Sewing for a drag queen is challenging. The outfits are made of four-way stretch fabric, not the easiest material to sew but essential to fit the queen’s form.
Getting proper measurements is difficult “because in order to measure yourself, you have to put everything,” Ember said. “Our bodies are entirely fake. Our hips are made out of couch cushions, and most some of us aren’t born with breasts, so we have to make your own. You have to put it all on to get your measurements right.”
The four-way stretch fabric “hugs you where you need it.”
Drag queens must also master lip-synching, which is more difficult than it seems. Entertainers lip synch 90 percent of the time. The only time Ember sings live is when she’s doing a song parody she created.
Ember’s Drag Inferno will not just feature drag queens but the range of drag entertainers, including drag kings, female entertainers who dress as males, and fem queens, females who create drag queen characters.
On Monday fem queen Ulani will perform along with Willow Skyhart and Sharin Skyhart and male entertainer Colin Brandeberry, former Ohio male stripper of the year.
And a raffle will be conducted during the first three shows on Feb. 17 and March 9 and 23. The winner of the raffle will be dressed in drag costuming of their choice, and be the featured performer at the April 6 show.
