PODCAST:

The Drag Bazaar, an all Drag King show, will be at the Looking Glass at IX Art Park on Saturday, August 8.

TRANSCRIPT:

Nadyah Ahmed:
You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. For Arts this week, we spoke to Viktor Lickter, drag king and brains behind the Drag Bazaar. Coming up on August 8th.

Viktor Lickter:
I am Viktor Lickter, and I am a drag king. Viktor Lickter is my stage persona, but it’s really just a piece of who I am overall.

Nadyah Ahmed:
How would you describe the Drag Bazaar?

Viktor Lickter:
The Drag Bazaar is an experience. It is an all drag king show, it’s produced by, hosted by, and featuring drag king performers. We have raffles. We have vendors, we have go-go dancing and silent auctions. It’s just a whole experience, and the event is August 8 at 7o’clock. It is 18 and over.

Nadyah Ahmed:
Why Charlottesville?

Viktor Lickter:
I lived in Charlottesville for a while before moving to Richmond, and I love the city. It’s like where I feel home the most. I still have a lot of friends here and a lot of connections here, and there’s not quite as much drag here as there is in Richmond. So we had a lot of success with this show in Richmond, and honestly, a lot of my friends were coming from Charlottesville to see it, so it seemed like a natural place to sort of take the show on the road.

Nadyah Ahmed:
What does this show mean to you, especially as somebody who is a drag king in a space where we most often see drag queens?

Viktor Lickter:
It’s really supportive, is the overall word that I would use when I started doing drag. There weren’t a lot of opportunities for drag kings, and especially not in a competition, so I told myself if that was still the case after a year, I would create the opportunity. So with a few close drag king friends, I did that. We started the drag bazaar, and having the focus be all drag kings is not something that we saw much of. And having an opportunity and a stage for people to express all the weird and wacky, wonderful things that are in their head in an atmosphere that’s not competitive is even more rare. There’s a lot of reasons to come to this show: supporting artists, supporting struggling artists, supporting queer artists. There is a lot that we can still do in this day and time, to not just create queer spaces and safe spaces, but to support them. And going to shows like this, and really any drag show where it’s still safe to do that in Virginia, it’s not in a lot of places. So it is super important for those in the community and allies to our community to continue to support the arts and the queer arts and feminine arts shown in a masculine way and and all of the the really important stuff that it is. This show is my form of resistance and rebellion to what’s happening in the world, and I do believe that a lot of the folks in our cast feel that way as well. It’s an amazing way for us to express our creativity in a really free and welcoming way, and we need more of that in this world altogether.

Nadyah Ahmed:
Is there anything else you think we should know?

Viktor Lickter:
Yes. So one of the exciting parts of this show is the raffle. We have a few hundred dollars worth of merchandise that has been donated to us, and all of the proceeds, 100% will be going to two nonprofits. One is Out and About Virginia, which is here in Charlottesville, run by Jason Elliot, and the other is SARA, the Sexual Assault Resource Group, and two very very important groups to not just me, but everyone involved, and 100% of the money we get from the raffle goes to those folks. So it’s super exciting to be able to support the community, as the community is supporting us.

Nadyah Ahmed:
The Drag Bazaar will be at the Looking Glass at IX Art Park on Saturday, August 8. For more information, you can go to the IX Looking Glass Instagram page, or go to simpletix.com/the-dragbazaar. Arts this week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu. For WTJU, I’m Nadyah Ahmed.