The Drag Scene is growing on the South Coast thanks to courageous performers, hard-working show promoters, and larger audiences wanting something provocative and fresh.
By Steve Desroches
Photography by Jes Fritze
Crystal Diamonds works the room at a recent United Way fundraiser in a dark blue bedazzled leotard with risqué peek-a-boo cut-outs. She dons a big, blonde wig, fish net stockings, and larger-than-life earrings. But it is the black stiletto heels that make her almost six foot five and towering over everyone at the event. With her ruby red lips and high-arched drawn on eyebrows, her look is as come hither as it is fierce. All of the sparkle and shine is what makes her a force in the South Coast’s nascent but growing drag scene.
Mike Mahan, as she is known out of drag, had been performing as Crystal Diamonds throughout New England for several years when he decided to try his luck in Las Vegas, famed for its drag queen scene. So he packed up his wigs, make-up, and sparkly wardrobe and headed west. Not long after arriving in Sin City, Mahan landed a gig in a drag revue on the Strip. All was going according to plan. Although he was a long way from his hometown of Dartmouth, he was living the dream, working in one of the most competitive locales for drag in the country, if not the world.
But something was missing, or more accurately, Mahan was missing something.
The ocean. As much fun as he was having and all that he was learning from seasoned entertainers, Mahan missed the smell of salt water, the sounds of the waves cresting on his favorite beaches in Padanaram, and the cool summer breezes off Buzzards Bay. It sure beat the dry heat of the Nevada desert.
After a year and half, it was time to go home.
Upon returning to the South Coast, Mahan put his newly refined performance skills as well as the business acumen he learned from more seasoned performers to work right away when he created the production company Queens of the South Coast. It was a slow burn at first with a few shows here and there with large gaps in between.
Now, however, Mahan puts on a solid twelve shows a year and at times takes the Queens of the South Coast name on the road throughout New England. Mahan is the ring master of a constantly revolving cadre of drag performers, including those with the stage names Kelsea Taylor-Rose Quartz, Monica Moore, Ivanna, Katy Soqueera, and Lady Sabrina.
Nearing its tenth anniversary, the Queens of the South Coast has been entertaining audiences throughout the region and in the process creating a drag community that is developing a distinctive vision and voice all its own.
The community of drag queens on the South Coast can be traced back to the arts revival in New Bedford about twenty years ago and embraced the diversity of the region, which included the LGBTQ community. Thanks to new local Pride events and organizations like the LGBTQ+ Network, the LGBTQ Community has grown on the South Coast. And with that is a growing appreciation for drag, which was once relegated to only the big cities.
The art form – and it is an art form – dates back over 100 years. While female impersonators were always a popular aspect of vaudeville and cabarets, the modern concept of drag and its overt ties to the LGBTQ community dates back to the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition. And when it comes to New England, Provincetown, the libertine town at the end of Cape Cod, has long been a drag hotspot with an international reputation.
That’s where as a teenager Mahan first saw drag queens. His family would go enjoy the annual Carnival celebration each August, planting the seed for him to pursue drag someday. But for Fall River drag queen Kelsea Taylor-Rose Quartz, aka Mitchell Cohen, it was Key West, another end of the road destination known for its large LGBTQ community. “I cried the whole time,” says Cohen. “I thought they were so beautiful. I thought to myself, ‘I can do that!’ It inspired me to do it.”
With plump lips and, as the queens say, a face beat for the gods, Cohen is one of the stars of the Queens of the South Coast roster; he is also Mahan’s boyfriend. With a rotating crop of blonde wigs and a penchant for jump splits, Cohen is a standout with his high energy performances at LGBTQ bars and clubs like Bobby’s Place in Taunton or La Place in New Bedford, as well as at Pride events that have recently been established throughout the South Coast. Be it a community fundraiser, Pride events in the region each June, venues like The Washington Club and Moose Lodge in New Bedford, shows at Bristol Community College, and their most steady gig, a monthly night the Oriental Pearl Chinese Restaurant in Westport, drag performance is on a steady climb to becoming a fixture of entertainment options on the South Coast.
It’s been fun, for sure, but also a lot of hard work. There is of course the issue of day jobs as supporting oneself through drag can take years. Plus, securing gigs is increasingly competitive with the popularity of the pop culture phenomenon that is RuPaul’s Drag Race. Since the show began in 2009, drag exploded out of its usual confines of urban areas and into living rooms across America inspiring legions of new drag queens as well as garnering fans outside the LGBTQ community, with teenage girls and young women becoming a huge part of the drag fan base. The support from allies of the LGBTQ community is what has made the Queens of the South Coast so popular and successful
Drag is for everyone, say Cohen and Mahan, not just the LGBTQ community. While drag is about dressing up, camp, and glamour, at its core it’s a celebration of being oneself and giving room for others to do the same. At the end of any drag show, the goal is to have everyone entertained, especially at the Oriental Pearl.
“About 90 percent of our audience there is heterosexual,” says Mahan. “They’re always great audiences. We had a woman celebrate her 80th birthday with us. She won that night’s twerking contest. Lots of mothers and daughters come. One night this man came in. He made me nervous as he looked out of place at a drag show. I thought he was there looking for trouble. It turns out he and his wife are farmers and were interested in seeing a drag show after hearing about them on TV. They come every show now and always bring me home made beef jerky. It’s just proof that drag builds community.”
Based on how packed the drag shows are on the South Coast many within and outside of the LGBTQ community agree. Drag shows have become incredibly popular with bachelorette parties or those who just love a little sparkle and glitter on a Saturday night out. And there are drag events for all ages, including drag queen story hours at the area’s public libraries, meant to let children know its ok to be yourself even if you don’t fit in.
“If everyone embraced drag, the world would be a better place,” says Cohen.
In January 2023, young drag queen Monica Moore, portrayed by Jason Carter, was reading the children’s book The Mitten for about 40 attendees of all ages at the Taunton Public Library when members of a neo-Nazi group stormed the reading room calling Carter anti-gay slurs and a “groomer.” The disturbing event was met with widespread condemnation and made headlines nationwide. But out of this frightening experience many offered support to Carter. He was offered a regular gig hosting a drag revue at the New Bedford Harbor Hotel, and the drag queen story hours since have been packed.
This past August he served as the grand marshal of the Provincetown Carnival parade riding down Commercial Street on top of a big pink high heel shoe wearing an iridescent purple jumpsuit and a shag blonde wig with neon pink and green streaks. Moore is quick to admit that since the traumatic event in January he needed some time to process it all, but come spring he dove headfirst back in to drag and was caught by the drag community. He giggles when he thinks of how far he’s come with his makeup skills since then learning that using a glue stick on your eyebrows helps when painting on new ones as well as how to contour and blend. His newfound confidence shows in his demeanor as Monica and he abandoned the “garage doors”, what drag queens call it when another queen only uses one color eye shadow. Now he’s painting with all the colors in the box.
“I’ve been so grateful to everyone who reached out to me,” said Carter. “It really made a difference. It helped me to feel safe. I’ve only been doing drag for about a year and half and so much good has come out of it. I’ve met so many great people. And my drag sisters have been the best.”
Indeed drag performers often are a chosen family that has each other’s backs. Cohen moved to Massachusetts explicitly to find a more accepting community than where he grew up. He found that safety and acceptance on the South Coast where he’s worked in the beauty industry since he arrived.
Mahan says there is a vision for a home grown drag scene rather than just replicating what’s done elsewhere. Here they can pursue their own take on performance as it’s so new to the region they don’t have to adapt to what’s already popular as they set the tone. It will take time, but this young drag scene is growing legs so much so that queens from Boston and Providence now asked to be booked in New Bedford and beyond.
“The South Coast has come a long way,” said Mahan. “Back in the day we would have to take off to Boston or Providence to see drag shows and to do drag and to just be around gay people. The South Coast has definitely changed. There’s always been LGBTQ people here, but now there is a real community. And the South Coast has become much more accepting, definitely so from when I was young. I love living on the South Coast. When I was young I never thought I could stay here and be myself. But now I can. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
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