Hi friends!

Here's a peek into what BOSS has been up to for the past 2 years. Scroll down and click 'Read More' for the story behind this wild ride, where it has lead me to today, and how you can support! 





As my friends and family well know, I’ve been training almost my entire life as a performer. When I started drag three years ago, I found that using my gifts to bring joy to rooms full of queer folk is what I was made for. Over the last three years in drag, I’ve forged a strong presence in the local Phoenix drag community and become a member of DAHLHAUS, a world famous drag family. When the pandemic hit, I used my BOSS platform to create a queer mutual aid network called NOURiSH PHX, which has been delivering free groceries to queer and transgender families in the Phoenix Valley for the past year and a half.

Last month, I visited LA and entered a drag newcomer competition hosted by Biqtchpuddin, a former contestant on AMC Shudder’s Dragula. Since then, I’ve competed every Tuesday for five weeks, and nearly every time I have been approached by producers from a drag television show who have expressed their piqued interest in having BOSS audition for the show in 2022. Though hundreds of performers audition, few are personally invited, and even fewer have just had two drag family members on the most recent season of this show. 

Needless to say, this is a once-in-a-gay-lifetime opportunity for me.

 

Photo: Christina Faye

The privilege of appearing on this show could mean a career's worth of performance bookings for me and the chance to grow exponentially as an artist and professional. Beyond me, the visibility of AFAB (assigned female at birth) queer folk in drag is critical to the expansion of this artform. My drag is unique in its embodiment of gender-queer femininity, and BOSS’ presence in drag spaces is a radical reclamation of a traditionally cis-male-dominated arena. BOSS enables other AFAB performers to see themselves in drag, pushes the limits of what is understood as drag, and challenges the cultural production of gender within the drag community. 

Television could be a powerful platform for this message, as well as to the medicine I offer as a queer health coach. As a health professional and dedicated community member, I seek opportunities to support queer folk in their wellness through education and example. For generations now, there remains a pervasive stigma in and around the LGBTQ+ community that being queer means living a life of mental and physical illness. I want a platform that will enable me to inspire my community toward well being, create safe spaces for queer healing, and redirect resources toward the overwhelming need for transgender healthcare.

Alongside BOSS' expansion, my presence in LA could offer NOURiSH the boost it is ready for. Over the past year, NOURiSH's grocery crates have become vital staples to the families we serve. The demand for our service continues to pick up momentum amidst an increasingly trying economic time. As institutions of alleged protection continued to fail the people, it is critical that mutual aid networks are nurtured and funded so that we as communities can be prepared for oncoming waves of challenge in our global trajectory. For NOURiSH, this means creating an app that connects our network of families with ease and protection, then using this tool to expand our reach to neighboring cities in Arizona and California. 

Photo: Paulann Egelhoff


In order to respond to these opportunities within the sensitive window of time I’ve been given, I am calling on support to move to LA, prepare for some major forthcoming bookings, and position NOURiSH to sustain and grow without my physical presence in Phoenix. 

THE BUDGET

80% Of this budget accounts for my physical move to LA, and the resources (materials, time, travel, labor) I’ll need to respond to the caliber of these opportunities.

10% of this budget is dedicated to creating an app for NOURiSH, which will not only allow NOURiSH to be sustained remotely, but will also enable the work to expand to Flagstaff, Tucson, and eventually LA. 

5% of this budget is set aside for bodywork and gym access—two key means of ensuring that I can safely sustain my work and continue to meet the challenges before me. As a performance professional, the maintenance and preservation of my body is central to the success of my work. While I am extremely mindful in practice and well trained in injury prevention, my longevity as a professional requires routine supplemental support.

5% of this budget will be redistributed to QTBIPOC business + mutual aid efforts in Phoenix.

Photo: Paulann Egelhoff

The timing of these offerings in LA are ideally aligned with my readiness to explode into the next level of my craft and artistic expression. I’ve been offered an apartment in the heart of downtown LA for a very affordable cost, living with a professional tailor who can support me in production (and who also appeared on a previous season of said show). I have been welcomed into a tight knit network of queer artists and performers in LA that are eager to help me succeed.  I have been training most of my life as a performer and I can say with certainty that I am at the top of my game, ready to respond to this call with the full range of my skill and passion.

I come from an incredibly supportive community of queer folk in Phoenix who have held BOSS up in the light since my first performance. Preceding that, I come from an ancestry of artists and performers who have shaped me through formidable training, and instilled in me the core value that performance is about bringing communities together to storytell, celebrate, grieve, and connect. I take this leap to LA in honor of all those people, certain that now is my time to exude the love and work they’ve poured into me.


I thank you for being one of those people.

 

Photo: Joel Maduro

xoxo

BOSS



BUDGET

40% Move BOSS to LA
40% Prepare BOSS for television show
5% Body Maintenance
10% Create an app for NOURiSH to enable expansion
5% Redistribute to QTBIPOC business and mutual aid in PHX