#umagahd

If you’ve seen drag in Montréal, you’ve either seen Uma Gahd on-stage or heard her applauding from the sidelines. A cornerstone in the city’s queer arts scene on several fronts–performer, organizer, mother–Uma Gahd recently celebrated 7 years in drag, a milestone worth commemorating and celebrating. We asked her a few questions about life and drag in Montréal, and much like with her perfected makeup and looks, she covered every angle.

01.   Happy lucky number 7! How has your drag changed and evolved in the past 7 years? Could you give us a short timeline of your upbringing and growth as a drag artist? How does Montréal influence your drag and how does the city foster and support its drag artists?

I originally had no intention of ever doing drag. After moving to Montreal from a very tiny village, I started dancing for Jimmy Moore, local drag queen and celebrity impersonator, and while I had a newfound respect for the art and business of drag, I still didn’t want to do it. Some time later, I appeared in the Mainline Theatre production of The Rocky Horror Show, as Rocky. The person playing Frank N Furter, drag queen Connie Lingua, ended up becoming a good friend, who invited me to start doing drag in the context of a Fringe Festival play that we would write. Doing drag as a character piece, in a limited run, was more enticing to me, “You can do 9 shows and then quit!”. The show was called Laureen: Queen of the Tundra, and it was a hit… and I haven’t stopped doing drag ever since. At the time, there wasn’t an underground, alternative, or anglophone drag scene here in Montreal. So, using our contacts in queer-friendly spaces like Café Cléopatre, Notre Dame des Quilles, and at events like POMPe, our drag theatre troupe (formerly called House of Laureen, now called House of Gahd) forged spaces for ourselves and built up a fantastic following in the queer, drag, and theatre worlds. I eventually broke through into the Village, especially at Bar Le Cocktail, by doing multiple competitions and hosting Drag Race screenings. But, I still hold a really special place in my heart for underground and DIY drag, so while I spend a lot of nights working the stages in the Village, I still produce and celebrate a lot of queer culture happening all over the city. Now I help produce several monthly shows (Church, my congregation of queers and weirdos to lift each other up, and Coven, our underground weirdo drag show celebrating horror, punk, and weirdo power), as well as regular appearances in the Just For Laughs festival, Montreal Fringe, Comiccon, Otakuthon, and the international Bagel Burlesque Festival.

These festivals and spaces have heavily influenced my drag. Because we have actual drag CABARETS in Montreal, it means that people come to sit down and actually watch our drag, as opposed to a drag show happening in the periphery of a nightclub or bar. With these attentive audiences, we get to create drag art that can explore a message, can be campy and theatrical, and can be conceptual. Montreal is known all over the world for the calibre of its drag artists, especially our theatrical campy drag, which happens to be my speciality. Uma, as a character, is everybody’s favourite unofficial auntie. A cartoon woman who, when you run away from home, you come to stay at her place. Positive, kooky (and sometimes magical and spooky), Uma is comedic, caring, political, and weird.

02. More broadly, how has Montréal’s drag scene changed and evolved in that time? Where do you see it heading? What does Montréal do better than other cities, and what do you see as under-represented drag-wise in our city? In the time that I’ve been doing drag, one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen is the proliferation of underground and anglophone drag. When I started, I faced a lot of push-back because my drag was seen as too strange, political, or “too anglo” to be accessible to the average audience on a regular Saturday night at the cabaret. So, my drag family and I made our own spaces. For a long time, people looked down on us for that, or weren’t even aware that there was drag happening outside of one or two bars in the Village. Now, drags from all over the city are realizing the opportunities that events like Coven, Unikorn, and Glitter Bomb (just to name a few) provide for us as multifaceted artists! The underground scene is held up by weirdos and people who don’t speak French as a first language, but there is space for everyone – and as these underground artists flourish, their talent can’t be denied and they find more stage time on the more mainstream stages. It wasn’t like that when I started, and I am thrilled to see the scene expand and diversify! As I mentioned before, Montreal does camp and theatricality better than a lot of other cities. We are blessed to have spaces that allow us to perfect that kind of art. But, I think that something we will come to be known for is our drag kings (people who perform drag in a masculine presentation). We have some of the most talented kings in the country! Kings like Hercusleaze (of OutTV’s Call Me Mother), my drag son Charli Deville, or fellow thespian drag artists like Rock Biere and RV Métal are all changing the drag scene and showing the entire world that drag kings are not only “valid” but they are kick-ass performers that deserve just as much stage time as any queen. The drag scene in Montreal is diversifying in so many interesting ways; whether it be with more women doing drag (if any kind of gender expression), the strong appreciation we are building for non-binary and creature drag, and so much more. But we struggle, like so many drag scenes in North America do, with racial diversity. So, I’m hoping that in the years to come, we see a boom in performers of colour that will enrich our scene immensely, and bring a cultural history and a point of view that we so sorely need in the world of drag. Black culture, such as the vogue Ballroom scene, have such strong influences on drag culture that we are doing ourselves a disservice by not pushing for more racial inclusivity on all levels.

03. Uma Gahd has links with several scenes in Montréal, both as a headliner at storied institutions like Bar Le Cocktail, a splatter queen with the House of Gahd, and an online queen with your tireless appearances throughout the pandemic on zoom and other streaming platforms. Girl, you multifaceted. How do you keep yourself so visible across all of these platforms? Firstly, I’m a Sagittarius. I like to talk a lot, and I like when people notice me. Being on multiple platforms is as much for me as it is for my audience! No one platform can contain the multitudes of silly things I need to say and do! But a lot of the credit there needs to go to my drag sister (and my out-of-drag husband) Selma Gahd. She is the Mistress of Business, and the brains behind so many of the key decisions that the House of Gahd makes. She knows how to write a comprehensive contract, how to commit to a deadline, how to network, and how to save a struggling situation at the drop of a hat. In 2019, coming back from a month-long residency in Puerto Vallarta where I performed my one-woman show, Are You There Margaret? It’s Me, Gahd., we already had three gigs lined up the following week, one of which was a self-produced Drag Brunch. While we performed the brunch, the lockdown was enacted, and the restaurant had to lock the doors while we finished the show. By the end of the next day, we already had a small studio space set up in our tiny apartment to start streaming Drag Race watch-alongs online, and throughout the entire experience Selma was behind the scenes learning about new platforms and tech, improving not only our experience, but our audience’s as well. So, I’m able to do everything I do because I have support. I paint my face, but Selma gets me to my gigs on time. I write my silly little tweets, but Selma edits my photos. I film and edit my TikToks, but Selma helps to write and direct my plays. Teamwork makes the dream work!

04. You’re not just a local drag hero, but also a mother. Tell us about your drag family and your proudest moments as a drag mom. For those who don’t know, when a drag artists says they are a “mother/father/parent”, we usually aren’t referring to biological children. We often mean the members of our “drag family”, which is a very special chosen family that expresses itself differently from family to family. So, I have three drag sons (Biggs O’Toole, Charli Deville, and Slick Hardwood), all three are the last three winners of the King of Kingz drag competition here in Montreal. I fell in love with their performances in the competition and offered to, as we say, “adopt” them. For me, this means that I endorse them and their art in our community which can give them a leg up in some situations. I keep them at the top of my list when I do bookings or give referrals. We help each other create art, and we try to be there for each other in a personal way as well. Obviously, I’m very proud of each of them for being crowned King of Kingz, but also seeing them, especially Charli Deville, work so tirelessly to break the glass ceiling in our community regarding kings. Charli is a title holder and has produced the only drag king cabaret show in the city, called Manspread, as well as performed on the biggest stages in this city, including the Drag Race Allstars show during Fierté! My sons are brilliant performers and passionate people that I hold so much respect and admiration for.

05. What are your 5 Montréal must-sees you’d suggest to visiting drag artists?

1 . Church, my monthly show where I gather the most uplifting and energizing drag artists of all styles from this city and beyond, deliver a sermon (and a slideshow!), and generally celebrate queerness, drag, and our community with concept numbers, comedy, and a lot of heart. Monthly, at Bar Le Cocktail.

2 . Coven, Selma Gahd’s monthly drag cabaret. We find the freakiest, weirdest, wildest creatures and give them free range to express themselves as terrifyingly or messily as they want! It’s a show with elements of community, horror, filth, glamour, comedy, oddities, and magical power all wrapped up in a drag sensibility and sprinkled with punk rock attitudes! Monthly, at The Diving Bell Social Club. 3 . Manspread, the only drag king cabaret in the city. Produced and hosted by Charli Deville, this show lifts up some of the most overlooked artists in our field. Full of kings and creatures, the show has everything from romance and sex, to politics, rock and roll, comedy, and a very well-developed sense of self-worth (because every king should be get to experience male privilege!) Monthly, check Charli’s socials for upcoming dates and locations.