Families with young children were among visitors from throughout the region who gathered Sunday in Blue Island to enjoy a drag show performance during an outdoor market.
“It’s normal life, and it’s a fun celebration,” said Tim Jury of Homewood, who visited with his wife, Jessie, and their three school-aged children.
Sunday’s event was the first in the Southland since a federal judge on Friday struck down a Tennessee law that made it a crime to expose children to drag shows in public. The judge ruled to law was unconstitutional because it infringed upon First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and speech.
“Let’s ban important things, like assault weapons,” Jessie Jury said.
Republican-controlled legislatures in several states have enacted measures that target drag performances. Numerous political figures have drawn attention to themselves by falsely saying drag performers are like pedophiles trying to groom children for sexual gratification.
Drag performers in Illinois and their supporters are fighting back against the paranoia-fueled narratives and showing how their work is good, clean, family fun.
“Currently if this show was happening in Florida I could be arrested,” drag artist The Dommm told the crowd after performing during the monthly Witch-O-Rama market at Blue Island Beer Co. “Did anything we did today seem arrest worthy?”
The crowd responded with a loud, “No!”
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The show lasted about 45 minutes, with a 10-minute intermission for costume changes. Performers including The Dommm, Julez Osco, Ginger Ambrosia and Kerosene danced, lip-synced to popular songs spun by a DJ and interacted with kids and others in the audience.
The experience was like watching an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The TV show has aired 15 seasons since 2009 and won four consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for best reality or competition show. RuPaul has won seven consecutive Emmys as outstanding host of a reality or competition show.
I saw nothing during the performance that appeared sexual in any way. Is “Mrs. Doubtfire” a threat to children because the late actor Robin Williams performed in drag? The 1993 film depicts Williams masquerading as a nanny so a father could spend time with his children after a divorce.
“Make some noise for all of the parents in the audience for doing an amazing job,” The Dommm told the crowd.
Sunday’s performance in Blue Island kicked off Pride Month, during which members of the LGBTQ community celebrate their right to exist without persecution.
“Personally, to me, pride means the community that we make, the community that finds each other and the community that supports each other,” The Dommm said.
The Dommm is a drag persona for Dominic Mascio, 20, of Chicago. His mother, Erica Mascio, founded the Witch-O-Rama market a couple years ago in a Pilsen backyard as a one-stop shopping experience for candles, incense, tarot card readings, fortunetelling, jewelry, crafts, traditional Cornish magic and other properties that tap into mystical energy.
Witch-O-Rama’s name was inspired by Swap-O-Rama in Alsip, Erica Mascio said. The market bounced around from Summit to Bridgeport and now Blue Island as it has increased in popularity and outgrown spaces, she said.
“People have just embraced us,” Mascio said as she worked the gate and collected a $1 entry fee from visitors while her husband worked security. “We’re an eclectic group of all types of practitioners.”
Sunday’s event featured more than 30 vendors. Some sold tacos or other food. Guests sipped beer or other drinks as they roamed tents displaying crystals, dream catchers and various forms of alchemy.
“They have all kinds of things I didn’t know I needed,” Mascio said of the vendors.
Mascio’s Instagram handle is TheMamaSweetz, and The Dommm praised her during acknowledgments at the end of Sunday’s performance.
“My relationship with my mother has been a big source of my pride,” The Dommm told the crowd. “My father and my brother, they have all been so loving to me since the very beginning. Me and mama and papa we do all of this together. This is what happens when you support your queer child.”
Proprietor Alan Cromwell said he invited Mascio to hold Witch-O-Rama at Blue Island Beer Co. beginning in March. Three events have been held inside the brewery’s spacious “backroom” where concerts, a Christmas market and other events have been held. Sunday’s was the first to be held outdoors, in the parking lot.
“I’ve always loved craft breweries and taprooms because they are the new cultural epicenters where coffeehouses left off for art, the community and conversation,” Cromwell said.
Cromwell said the nominal admission fee is to ensure no one could complain about the nature of the drag show, even though there was nothing in the performance that could be perceived as inappropriate for children.
“This community in particular is one we’re happy to help and support, especially living in such a violent society,” Cromwell said. “Ultimately we’re not going to do anything that is that outrageous or illegal.”
Visitors came for the Witch-O-Rama market, which ran from noon until 6 p.m., but the crowd seemed to swell in size for the drag show at 3 p.m.
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“They come for it,” Mascio said. “The crowd is here to support the show.”
As performers began to lip sync and dance, nearly everyone in the audience seemed to want to give them money. Parents handed dollar bills to their preschool aged children to hand to the performers.
Money seemed to offer a way for people in the community to show their support as drag performers symbolized the struggle by marginalized populations to advocate for diversity, inclusion and liberty.
“To me, pride means the ability to express my creativity in whatever shape or form that is,” performer Julez Osco told the audience.
Men have dressed as women to perform in public since the days of ancient Greek theater. Such TV hits as “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Kids in the Hall” owe a debt to drag as an art form.
Drag is men performing in costume and character. I think it falls somewhere on a spectrum that includes circus clowns and professional wrestlers.
“I think sometimes in the world we live in it’s little hard to be proud of ourselves, yeah?” performer Ginger Ambrosia told the crowd.
Ambrosia said pride meant expressing the freedom to be different.
“I also work in health care,” she said. “I have a normal life like all the other boring straight people. I just also do this. I think pride to me just means being able to celebrate who you are and love one another.”
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.