Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.

So my name is Monique Madison, and I’m one of the co-owner of the Kalamazoo Kittens.

We have been a staple in Kalamazoo.

This is our 10 year anniversary show today, and the Kalamazoo Kittens is basically a representative of the community.

That kind of brings all of the misfits together.

That’s how we created the group.

It was the different styles of drag of like comedy and theater and improv and drama and horror and all the fun things that sometimes you don’t see it like a typical drag show.

We kind of wanted to do something a little different by creating a Girl group kind of scenario, like a. a glamour team that would be able to travel all over and give people a different style of drag.

Me and my husband, my husband is Yolanda Del Fierce, and I’m Monique Madison, and we’re the owners.

Our assistant event coordinator is Sapphire Shade, and she’s the one that runs the shows when we are not there.

We’ve got a couple newbie kittens, Jade Harmony, Nebula Voyant, and we’ve got our OG.

Been with us since the beginning, 10 years, Reba Rose Row.

She’s everyone’s favorite glamour.

That’s what we call her.

Old as hell and she’s been doing drag for 300 years, but she’s amazing.

She’s not today’s show because she’s in Las Vegas right now performing.

And then today, actually, today we announce our newest kitten, which is a drag king, and his name is Jax.

So we’re gonna have seven members, tons of different variety for people to get any kind of performance that they’re looking for.

You know, I started in 1996, so I’m going on my like 30 year anniversary, which is crazy, and... You know, I moved to Kalamazoo in 2013, and I just kind of noticed the same style of drag everywhere that I went, and I had lived in Indianapolis before in Chicago prior.

I do stand-up comedy.

I an author, I’m an actor.

There’s all these different levels of drag.

Drag should be your medium, you know, to be able to bring other talents to the stage.

But I was kind of seeing the same drag.

I thought, you know, wouldn’t it be great to have a fantastic girl group that, like, traveled around, gave production numbers, did all these fun, different styles of thing, and then made people that weren’t the typical drag look, like, feel celebrated and have a stage that they were able to create their art on?

I’m not drunk, but I had a red bull.

So we’ll see Give me one more number.

I’ll be pretty lit Oh, you’re excited for it.

Oh my goodness, like it’s insane.

So you’ve obviously got to book the talent book, the venue, you’ve got to get the DJ, the tech, the audio, then you’ve got to put it all together, then you’ve got to make it flow, then you’ve got to fill the spaces of the 4 to 5 people that are most likely going to cancel, and then you have to do the whole thing all over again.

But really, it’s like so stressful right up until the show.

And then when it’s showtime, there’s nothing else you can do except enjoy it and go with the flow.

So it’s a ton of hard work, but it’s worth it for 90 minutes of glamour, fun, and hilariousness.

It’s our 10 year anniversary show, so Louise was our very 1st venue in 2016 that gave us an opportunity to have a regular show every 6 weeks.

And we started here, and we started building, and another venues got interested, and then we went from one venue to 5 venues, and now we’re in 45 venues all over Michigan.

And but for our 10 year anniversary, because we’re here every 6 weeks, it felt like this needed to be the place that we did it.

The oldest bar in Kalamazoo, it’s 107 years old, which is absolutely amazing, and they’re still standing, they’re still thriving.

They’re literally, they win every single year for the chili cookoff.

Louie’s is the place to go when you want to have, like delicious food, incredible drink, and wonderful entertainment.

You know, it’s crazy because we could run another 10 years.

I’m writing a couple theater plays for us where we’re adjusting shows.

We’re creating new venues, we’re creating new formats.

Or we could, in 6 months, pull a golden girls and say, you know, we’re on top, let’s cut this and always have it be, you know, this... But I don’t think we could do that because the community depends on us so much, but I definitely want to continue to grow.

I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, and I want to bring new queer art into the spaces that we’ve been, and then maybe create it in some new spaces as well.

So, I guess my answer would be stay tuned.

You know, I love it because It’s just such a way to get back to the community that’s... Given so much to me, like, I love to see the joy in people’s faces, like, this is a concert.

This is a live performance.

This is a stand up comedy show.

This is theater, and this is all an affordable price for people that maybe don’t have the budgets to go out and do that.

They can see, if they can’t go see Beyonce, they can see a Beyonce impersonator.

You know, things like that.

But for me, it’s just about.

Feeling the love and the joy in the room during the show and going to the smaller towns and bringing queer spaces to the smaller towns, we had to do meet and greets afterwards where literally it’s like, Thank you so much for coming here because, like, we have nothing to do around here, and for this one moment, I forgot about all the insanity that’s going on in the world, and I just experienced pure queer joy.

Yeah, okay.

Wasn’t there such a beautiful and lovely and long, long number?

She’s 80 years old.

a long number.

You know, I think that was the focus when we started the Kalamazoo Kittens 10 years ago is we wanted to make sure that we gave back to the community that supported us so greatly.

So we work with, uh, out front.

Kalamazoo’s LGBTQ resource center.

With cares, which is a sexual awareness clinic.

We work with the homeless.

We do so many different things to just try.

To do drag with purpose, you know, and even on social media, you’ll see, well, hashtag drag with purpose.

So that doesn’t mean that you can’t do drag without purpose.

Have fun and that’s great.

But for me, making a difference is giving back, because I am so celebrated and I have had so much success and so much joy in my life, I just want to share that.

Oh my gosh, chaotic, nervous, excited, drunk.

You know, it’s all the fun things, but in reality, it’s just about.

This is the way that we get to get back to our community and with everything that’s currently going on in our country, with the current administration and all these ridiculous things, queer spaces are closing left and right, and there’s not a lot of... Representative.

to be able to have Safe spaces.

as there’s no queer spaces in Kalamazoo.

I mean, we have queer friendly spaces.

We have a nightclub that does one gay.

Night every single week on a Saturday night, but we don’t have, like, a queer space like larger cities do.

So when we do these events, I mean, they sell out pretty quickly and people are, it’s a party.

They want to come have a good time with their community.

I think with all of the different events that go on, just showing up, you know, showing up, supporting local drag, supporting local queer friendly spaces.

But also when you’re hitting social media, it doesn’t take any effort to hit that like, to hit that share, to just be like, even if I can’t be there, you should be there and just make sure that there’s queer joy spread all over everywhere so that we’re not extinguished like they’re trying to do.

So what we like to do at the Kalamazoo kittens is we like to create queer, friendly spaces all throughout all different towns in Michigan, including three rivers, Sturgis, the tiniest of towns.

So the biggest of towns like Traverse City and Grand Rapids, but... Transparency is so important right now, and we have to make sure that regardless of the country is fighting drag and for it to be celebrated as an art form.

We have to make everybody realize that we’re queer, we’re here, and we’re not going anywhere.

Una Legend is loud and crazy and charismatic, and I love walking in the door and just looking at everybody and meeting everybody, and just having a blast, doing it.

Got into drag.

I was, my roommate at the time, had been doing drag for quite a few years, and then put me in drag one night.

I went to history from there.

We started at the zoo bar, got into my first pageant, and one of the first pageant, and then has been, have been doing it ever since.

It’s gotten a lot bigger and a lot more notice, which is nice.

Because they’ll have a lot of other places that’ll let us do different shows and stuff like that, where it was just literally just gay bars.

You can do it at.

So, which is, it makes it a little bit nicer that it’s a little bit more accepted.

Coming out on stage and seeing everybody’s face light up and just smile and like, or you’re wearing a new dress.

And they’re just like, ah.

Are you wearing new hair?

And they’re like, that’s so pretty.

Oh, that’s one of my favorite parts between drag.

Just that 1st interaction in front of the stage.

Thousand There’s a lot of wigs.

This is one of the, uh, one of the weeks that I’ve done.

Just big, poofy, big curly in the wit in the front.

And this is just one wig that’s just been redded and nested up in here, and then style that used to be about this long, and then I cut her and put her up a little bit.

Gotta have a backcoming brush.

This one and then this one, as you can see, there’s blue hairs, green hairs, yellow hairs all tucked in there.

Try to get as much as I can, but sometimes it’s just not coming out, but back combing brush, need those to get that big, huge poof.

And then smooth it out with this brush or this brush, just that.

So it glides through the hair and not actually pulling out what you just finished teasing.

And... Pick to push all that matting down when you’re doing here.

So it just pushes all that down to the base of the root, and then you can... Comb it out as you’re doing it, and it just moves it out a little bit better.

I actually use a steamer.

So I’ll take rollers.

These are my rollers here.

So, I’ll get them all rolled up, and then put it under a plastic bag, and then run the steam underneath it for about five ish minutes, and then let it steam.

Let it sit for about an hour, let it dry.

And then take a blow dryer, make sure that heat gets the curl set into the wick itself.

This one was two straight blonde wigs, and then it just got curled from the back.

Cause if you use anything else, it’s gonna melt the hair, ’cause it’s all synthetic, it’s all plastic.

I actually was making a blonde wig that literally crumpled and just totally just turned into a big old mat of just plastic.

Yes, it was one of my cool wigs too.

I was like, dang it.

Yeah, burned it.

Just burned it.

I was like, man.

Because if it’s not working what I want it to, I just redo it.

So it makes it look a little different, or I’ll have to recurl it, or restyle it, or... But I try not to waste what I buy.

So if I have it, and I’ll, I may even cut it up and put it into something different.

Watching tutorials and practicing and practicing and practicing, get cheap wigs, go to.

Uh, thrift stores and buy get cheap wigs and just work on those and then once you get that down, then start buying the more expensive.

This one I wore to the Grabby Awards in Chicago.

And she’s two separate bobs that are together, and there’s, like, stuff that’s underneath here to make this even bigger.

Just that wig that’s underneath it.

Because this was 2 different blondes, but I wanted to kind of incorporate those 2 colors.

So, you can see it in the back and then see it towards the bang area.

Gives it more dimension.

Yeah, she’s just blonde and beautiful on that one.

That one’s actually one of my favorites that I did.

I like going in and seeing one inspires me or I have the... bed of wigs that I’ll pick from, like, this one here I wanted to work on.

That.

It’s just that curliness, but then putting another one underneath or putting this one on top to make it even bigger.

Or, like, this one here.

This is just a ponytail that’s on here, and then attached to the wig itself.

So it just makes it live more full.

But you can feel there’s paper inside here to make this even more full.

Just staying strong for the community.

Can we try to do as much as we can because... We literally take our Saturdays every Saturday and take over the blue dolphin.

We don’t have to.

We want to.

So it... gives the community someplace to go.

It gives the community to be themselves.

We’ve got straight guys, gay guys, doesn’t matter.

We’re like family.

Everybody knows everybody, and if you’re new.

everybody’s gonna come talk to you, because it’s just, we want to meet you and see how you are, and... It’s more friends than anything else.

Um.

Know your words.

Practice your makeup.

Make sure your hair stays on.

Greta Vendetta is a drag queen who’s existed for like 4 or 5 years.

I’ve been practicing makeup for Greta since, like, 2014, 2015.

So in a way, she’s existed for that amount of years.

She was very ugly.

the years before the last five years.

She’s.

A drag queen in the Kalamazoo area, she does a lot of, like, comedy.

I like creating like crazy outfits like... All the ones around here, like, this one is a Grinch costume.

I hadn’t really even heard of drag besides the time I went to Kalamazoo Pride in, like, 2018.

I went to a show, didn’t even really know what a drag queen was, and then I had my 1st show.

not having actually seen a show, rather than seeing someone just host at Kalamazoo Pride.

I was so new to it all.

Most drag shows, when you go to it, they bring, like, 3 different numbers, and each number has a different costume.

I brought one.

same wig, same everything.

I just had, like, this, like, little baby, um, like ostrichy feather.

Actually, it’s probably chicken feather.

I didn’t have the budget for that.

Chicken feather, kind of like material that was like a little coat.

And so each number, I would just like take one thing off or like try to rearrange it, like put one on the shoulder and.

It was kind of a disaster, but once I got through the 1st number, it was a lot of fun.

All very self-taught.

I started using patterns only the last 2 years.

Like, this one right here was a pattern.

This one was not, um, but when I don’t use patterns, it’s just a lot of, like, putting something on, taking it off and, like, trying it back on and, like, trying to, like, figure out where to, like, bring things in, like, use darts and, like, things like that.

So, I think my very first drag look took me, like, in the entirety of everything that goes into, like, what goes on me took, took, like, weeks, if, like, not a month to, like, figure out and find.

But then there’s also, like, the costume, there’s, like, shoes, there’s nails, there’s perfume, if you want to wear it.

There’s like body glitter, like there’s like so many things that you can add.

And then at that point, like, you can just like start throwing on belts and, like, jewelry.

Like it’s just, it can really never stop.

But like my favorite looks have maybe like 30 different pieces of like outfits and like jewelry and nails and rings and like things like that.

It really depends on each outfit.

If I’m, like, fabric dying something, or if I’m using a pattern, that can take up to months just because you want to construct it the right way.

And even when you get it done or individually die, all those pieces, then you want a rhinestone on top of that, and that’s very big.

in drag that if you are not rhinestoning something.

Then usually Queen would be like, this is cute.

However, I think you could rhinestone it.

But yeah, it can take up to months.

So usually it starts with me having to decide on like a somewhat of a silhouette, otherwise I go into a project very blind.

And, and it can either get great there or it can just, like, go all out of left field or from that point forward.

this one was a pattern that I replicated from... There was some queen that had like a Pinterest post with like a similar coloring and like a similar design.

And I want to make something for pride.

And so then I just had to make the pattern, figure out seam alone, and just, like, practice it from there.

But that one probably did take, like, 6 months.

This one was for Kalamazoo Pride this year The theme was, it was like Disney princesses or, like, something involved with Disney.

And so I went the route of like making the snow white look.

There’s like a photo of me when I was like four.

And my sister was dressed as Snow White, and I was dressed as Elmo, and I’m literally crying as my mom was holding me back because I wanted to be Snow White, and I had been wearing that for like months, but... for the picture, they’re like, you’re gonna want to look back on this.

And, like, you’re gonna want to be wearing the Elmo, and now I just look back at him, like, I wanted to be wearing snow white.

And so I created this Drag Look For Kalamazoo probably to be like, I’m snowy like.

You can’t stop me.

This one was for Kalamazoo Pride this year.

This one has like so many stones on it.

The back is in more rough shape because... It survived pride and has been worn maybe like.

I don’t know, like 20 times like in a row.

So after doing something like that and wearing it so much, you kind of figure out, like, your weak spots and sewing and... spots where you want to like improve on and Like how to make zippers hold better.

and learn how to, make outfits that will last and stand the test of time.

So then this one... was definitely a pattern that started with each of these pieces having, like, a seam allowance of, like, an inch or so, just so I could, like, mess around and make sure it did.

In fact, fit me.

It took a lot of times of trying on and like taking off to make it fit right and look even, rhinestoning probably took just as long, if not longer.

I recruited, like, everyone in this house and everyone I knew to come over and help me rhinestone it.

Um, and then these feathers too, thankfully came, dyed already, so I’d have to individually dye ostrich, because I have no idea how to do that.

But thankfully they matched pretty well.

But yeah, this one was a very long pattern to make and a lot of trial and errors for it.

definitely have to build drag outfits to a different level.

Like, you can’t just buy something on Sheen and... Hope that little mini skirt will last you a couple months.

Like, most times, it might, but drag stuff like you want it to be rhinestone, do you want it to, like, fit you perfectly, especially if you’re doing, like, dramatic like hips and waist?

This one looks so good on me because I did spend a lot of time like bringing things in.

Like, there’s random lines and like, you can kind of see it.

There’s like a random line right here.

where this fabric didn’t really have a lot of stretch and that I like put in so that like it pulled it, like hold my waist and look a little better on myself.

So yeah, you definitely have to build things better.

A lot of the zippers have, let’s see if it’s on the bottom of this one.

Oh, you can’t see it.

I covered it too well.

Oh, you kind of see it.

So, like, the zippers were like the bottom right here that, like, it can kind of undo and latch are way better than like one of these zippers that, oh, it’s brand new, that, like, has, like, doesn’t come apart.

Because if this comes apart, the zipper’s done.

This one, if it comes apart, you can just replace like one side.

And that’s kind of a big thing with drag stuff, especially gowns.

If drag queens are spending like thousands on thousands in gowns, they do not want to... have a cheap zipper that’s gonna break on them the day of the show after they spent that much money.

This started as a white material, and I wanted it for a show that was happening, I think, within like a week to two.

And so I made this one pretty quick, but it all started as white.

Like, you can kind of, like, see the pattern on it down more at this part, where, like, I dyed it, and then I like hand painted it with like acrylic paint.

Not the best thing to survive the test of time.

Um, and then I, like, sew down, like, these, like, little fur pieces.

I rhinestoned it.

But this one was a challenge because I didn’t really have a lot of materials to work with.

I think this green used to be like a green coat, um, this like little bra bralette piece.

Um, I think I, how did I start, let me look at it, so I can tell you how I made it.

Yeah, so this one is made with like a, like kind of like a foam, like material that I made the shape of a bra, and then put that on top.

But this one has a lot of like trying on and taking off just because fur doesn’t always have the most stretch.

And then on the inside, it actually has like a white zipper, which not my 1st choice.

But how I hit it was, let’s close it.

I made like the seams of it.

Like, just fold over a little bit, and so like, you can get to the zipper, like, by doing that.

So it like isn’t quite as visible.

And no one’s gonna be looking at, like, the back of you when you’re doing drag.

So I kind of, like, got around it with that.

But this one was a very quick turn around for me.

I dont usually finish something in, like, under 2 weeks that.

I actually like, but this is one of the few exceptions.

I say you just got to jump into it.

Best drag starts from the bad drag, and we all were ugly at one point.

Not all of us were gonna make up.

Not all of us were good at sewing, not all of us were good at wigs.

But as you try doing it, you might find one thing you’re good at, and then you can ask your other queens to be like, can you make me a wig?

Can you make me outfit?

Can you redo this dress?

Because it really sucks.

Like, whatever it is, um, a lot of the queens in Kalamazoo are very welcoming.

Be sure to find us on YouTube and Instagram.

Exclusive videos extended content, and behind the scenes pictures.

Just search Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.