Act one of the drag transformation, the makeup session. Which can last almost two hours. To get help depending on the number of participants in the course, Venom Roger surrounded himself with a makeup teacher in the person of Miss Martine, a drag friend.
Each has its own technique, but in either case, the result is stunning.
During the workshops, the two friends explain to their trainees for a day how to hide their eyebrows. First spread them with paper glue, brush them, flatten them then dry them with a hair dryer. And start again a second time. You must then powder them roughly and then mask them and your entire face with foundation.
Once this step is completed, it's time for eye makeup. You have to redraw higher contours, color them… And the color doesn't matter, as long as there is intoxication.
“We will do the makeup according to our moods, according to our desires, according to our inspirations. It’s like a canvas that we are going to paint”explains Miss Martine.
And Venom to complete: “Drag is above all the art of hiding mistakes. It’s an art form like any other, it’s very therapeutic.”
For me, drag is an extension of yourself
For Brandon/Venom, it’s a way of rediscovering himself and also asserting himself: “What I like to say when we put people in drag is that we create monsters. You never know what will come out. It uninhibits parts that we never imagined.”
For Nadège, one of the two students in the course that day, it was a revelation: “I usually never wear makeup, I feel like I’ve rediscovered my femininity.”
Once the makeup is finished, we put on our outfit. Fake breasts, fake hips, sequinned Arabian Nights dresses, flashy colors, sparkling, even flashy jewelry, in drag nothing is for lack of taste, everything is accepted. And above all, no one is judged.
Open-mindedness and kindness are values that Brandon and Etienne wish to convey loud and clear through their theater and performance company.
“What motivates me personally is to be able to make people understand, to allow those close to us, those around us to let those we love be able to be who they are, to put them at ease and allow them to be themselves. Because we have the right and we can be whoever we want.”
We work on essential values such as inclusiveness and kindness
Etienne Capart alias RowenCo-founder of the Pink and Blue Company
Act two, learning to walk in heels. At least ten cm preferably.
“The technique for heels, contrary to what we might have the reflex to do, is to do heel-toe and not toe-heel”, Venom specifies.
“And above all, we think about walking as if we were on a tightrope. Very confident, very “bad bitch”, explains the drag, the mischievous look. That is to say, determined, dynamic with a precise look. The eye knows where it is going, then you have to move forward with determination.”
An experience appreciated by the two drag apprentices in the course: “It’s still a bit complicated, because it’s quite high, it requires a little bit of effort”says Salomé.
“Having heels made me want to have a certain attitude”confides Nadège.
And Venom adds: “It's normal girls, and if there's no platform sole, it hurts your feet, you get blisters the next day, it's horrible. If you find the right shoe, you can hold on and be comfortable”. Every detail counts.
Act three: Once made up, the drag students can learn to let themselves go to music of their choice, to dance and sing playback to the rhythm and choreography.
One goal: to have fun, to let go, to let go.
“The most important thing is to enjoy it, even if we can say to ourselves “ah, the make-up could have been prettier, oh, the look, it's not great”, as long as we like it. have fun, that’s all that matters, as long as you enjoy it, that’s the most important thing”, Venom insists.
For Miss Martine too, it is a liberating experience.
“We live in a society where we always have to contain ourselves. You shouldn't cry in front of people, you shouldn't get angry in front of people. You shouldn't laugh too hard, otherwise it will be disturbing. In society, you always have to contain yourself.”
-Being a drag queen, you can do anything, people love it. And that is very liberating.
For Miss Martine, being in drag also means sending a message.
“In a show, the priority is to send a message. It can be a message of love, a comic message, but you have to send a message. Personally, I am not an LGBT personality who goes to extremes, but I am one of those people who prove to the new generation that they can be free, that they can feel as they want.”
We are not spokespersons, but we act
And can we make a living from drag?
It remains difficult, as Miss Martine explains. “Drag is expensive, in makeup already and then during the performances that I have been able to do, I often earn just enough to reimburse my travel expenses. From time to time, extra tips or tips are appreciated. But we all have a job in parallel. I'm in human resources. Drag remains a passion on the side for the moment.”
You don't make a living from drag, unless you're extremely famous
In Vendée, a rather conservative department, creating a drag queen school was a daring bet. But that did not discourage the young, lucid couple.
It was a little difficult at the beginning to mark the occasion of drag in Vendée, because few people are aware of the subject
Etienne Capart alias RowenCo-founder of the Pink and Blue Company
“But that said, drag still existed in La Roche-sur-Yon before, notably with Eva at the Macumba Club in La Roche-sur-Yon, who established drag evenings for at least twenty years now. helped us a lot”explains Etienne.
The biggest difficulty is the mentalities of people who are not aware of it
Etienne Capart alias RowenCo-founder of the Pink and Blue Company
And Venom adds with humor: “I'm personally tired of traveling to Nantes all the time to be able to do scenes and it's true that playing local is more pleasant. In fact, it came naturally, we said to ourselves, hey, maybe it's time. Perhaps it is time for things to change and evolve in Vendée!”
Miss Martine agrees: “With this art, I want to prove to people that it is possible to do anything. That even if we don't love ourselves, even if we don't love our body, we can be magnificent. I had a really hard time accepting myself as a drag queen because I didn't like my body, I didn't like my face. And by going into extreme femininity, I realized that ultimately, I was very good as I was.”
It is through extreme femininity that I managed to embrace my very masculine side too.
What has helped the Yonnais drag queens a lot is also the French reality TV show “Drag race France”, launched from 2021 on France 2. Inspired by an American show model, it is a competition of drag queen to select the French drag queen.
“It was when Drag Race France came out in 2021 that I said to myself, go for it. Otherwise, I couldn't get started, for fear that in the region, it would be too closed, for fear of being judged, of being criticized. Thanks to this show, it helped open minds more.”
From February 2025, partly at the Macumba club in La Roche-sur-Yon, in the center of the city, Loire residents will be amazed: place for the drag queen courses of the Pink and Blue company.
“In our school, we will offer regular courses, introductory courses, for example in make-up, we will also be able to do a more specific course around what we call lip-sync, therefore playback choreography . We will also, why not, work on stand-up, walking in heels,” Brandon finishes.
“It's going to be full of little notions like that in drag that we're going to exploit over afternoons or weekends with the aim of helping people to reveal themselves in one way or another and to explore this new artistic phase which has not yet been worked on in Vendée.”
The report by Juliette Poirier, Damien Raveleau, Louis-Julien Pannetier, Valérie Brut
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