The Column has been named a finalist for the Knight Foundation’s St. Paul Arts Challenge, which “draws the best and most innovative ideas out of local organizations and individuals seeking to transform the community through the arts.”

The Column submitted an idea earlier this year for the arts in St. Paul, and that idea was one of 61 selected out of 450 submitted. Knight Foundation announced the finalists on Monday. The Knight Foundation is awarding more than $1.5 million in 2015 to the St. Paul Arts Challenge.

The Column is proposing a documentary and performance project called “Dragging Through History.”

Drag as an art-form is gaining popularity in popular culture, but has been in existence in one form or another for more than a century in St. Paul. The Column will trace this history through a short documentary film, capturing scenes from the vaudeville heydays of the 1890s to the underground drag balls of the 1940s and 1950s to the importance of drag in the HIV epidemic in the 1980s to the transformation of the art-form over the last few years.

Because much of the history of drag has been erased due of queerphobia, The Column will also produce a performance festival where St. Paul drag performers will impersonate drag performers of the past to help bring that lost history to life.

We hope this project will help the Twin Cities community learn more about this art-form and help preserve some of the history and contributions that drag queens, drag kings, and genderqueer performers have made in St. Paul.

Here are some of the stories the The Column will bring to life on stage and screen with “Dragging Through History”:

Herbert Crowley
In 1888, the St. Paul Daily Globe wrote a review of a local performance by Herbert Crowley, a female impersonator on the vaudeville circuit. The Globe set a scene that Dragging Through History hopes to reproduce for audiences: “They had not long to wait ere a symmetrically proportioned blonde in a well-fitting black toilette appeared, long black silk gloves covering the arms, while at the wrists gleamed two rows of brilliants and in the center of a black velvet band around the throat gleamed a diamond cluster pin. A carefully and tastefully arranged blonde wing complete the make-up of the prima donna, and the deception was complete when the first bars of “Let Me Dream Again” floated out into the crowded hall.”

Drag Balls
In the 1940s and 1950s, drag was very much an underground art form. St. Paul had ordinances on the books until 2003 that made it a crime to cross-dress in public, and homosexuality itself came with jail time. Drag queens in this era held huge drag balls at supportive locations. The founders of these drag balls were the Knutsen brothers in St. Paul who took advantage of the few establishments like Herbs, Curlies, and Kitty Kirsmers on Wabasha who allowed drag on the premises.

Anita Bryant
In April 1978, singer and Florida Orange Juice spokesperson Anita Bryant was supposed to make an appearance in St. Paul as part of her “Save Our Children” campaign to repeal an LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance. She cancelled at the last minute, sending her husband instead, but it didn’t stop members of the LGBT community from showing up in exaggerated drag to protest her appearance. Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but on that day, the drag was only meant to make Bryant look bad. That tradition could continue for the next two decades as drag queens lampooned those opposed to LGBT equality such as Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, and drag kings did the same to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and George Bush.

Charity
In the early and mid-1980s, gay men in Minnesota were dying in large numbers from a new epidemic called HIV. Because it hit mainly gay men, and being LGBT in the early 1980s was heavily stigmatized, government and private charity response was lackluster at best. One of the few sources of funding that could be counted on were charity events organized by drag queens. The Townhouse, the Grand Finale, and other LGBT bars in St. Paul, was often the sites of these charity events which provided much needed funds for hospice care, prevention, and education around HIV. Performers mimicked Cher, Bette Midler, Judy Garland and a host of other LGBT supporting celebrities in glamorous gowns and makeup. That tradition continues today across the Twin Cities including the Townhouse which hosts drag queen Mary Brewster and the Triangle of Hope has raised more than $100,000 over the last two decades for HIV prevention and support.

Winifred the Queen
Not all anecdotes from the history of drag are about fighting for rights or helping those in need. The Star Tribune published this anecdote from a St. Paul event in 1994, which Dragging Through History will recreate:

“A drag queen dropped DFL lieutenant guv candidate Nancy Larson to the floor last week. Being known as the hugging candidate has its price. “I should let Nancy call you,” said candidate handler Elizabeth Franz. “I’ll probably get in trouble for talking to you about this one. It was a Halloween fund-raiser on Monday night, and what happened was this guy came up and, yeah, he was dressed like Winifred the Queen and gave Nancy a great big hug and kind of leaned like he was going to dip her a little bit, and they both went over on the floor.” Winifred the Queen is apparently not some long-forgotten character from a nursery rhyme. Partygoer Mick-Dean Gross, a St. Paul copywriter, thought Winifred was costumed as either a witch or fortune teller, and Winifred and Nancy made “a very large booming crash” when they hit the floor. “I did end up on the kitchen floor with Winifred, whoever Winifred is,” Larson said. “It was really uneventful except, candidates aren’t usually seen lying on kitchen floors.” Franz, an eagle eye for the most positive image, said, “The one thing I was pleased about? Her skirt stayed where it should have been – it stayed down. It did not hike up.””