Company Carolina will be putting on a Womanless Beauty Pageant on Thursday at 8 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Student Union. Proceeds will benefit Company Carolina as well as the LGBT Center of Raleigh.
“We’re pulling from a pageant structure, but we’re putting it into this event, which is more theater oriented,” said Bradley Barefoot, the choreographer and emcee for the pageant. “Instead of really worrying about beauty and trying to do an impression of the female gender — which is totally not our intention at all — we’re more focused on them pulling from their character and getting really deep and creating something hilarious that doesn’t necessarily pull from a female reference.”
Barefoot said that the pageant is not the same as a drag show.
“With drag culture, there’s a long history that goes into it, and there’s a lot of elements of drag culture that we just are not affiliating ourselves with,” he said. “We have decided not to term it as a drag show because drag artists put so much money and time and effort into what they’re doing, and this is really just a one week gag for us. This isn’t a drag persona that’s going to follow these people for the rest of their lives.”
The pageant includes events such as an evening gown portion where the audience will meet the contestants, a Q&A, a talent show and two group performances. Contestants develop their characters and practice their individual performances on their own. In rehearsal, they learn the group numbers and practice the Q&A.
“The talent portion is quite incredible,” said Grayson Hahn, who will be competing under the name Belle Tower. “We have a lot of interesting and unexpected talents from people that I think people will be very surprised to see. It’s very entertaining and very funny.”
Hahn said he came up with his character by searching for a name that would be funny to an audience of UNC students.
Caleb Puchalski, performing as Doris Locht, is approaching his character from a more traditional drag stance.
“I do gender performance as a hobby and low-key job,” he said. “Mine is less of a character, but I’ve definitely added characteristics to her for the purpose of this performance. Doris is a very vintage-inspired character with vibes from the 1920s, '40s and '60s. She’s a performer — kind of like a small-town-girl-trying-to-make-it-big-vibe. She really gets into her craft as a performer and as an artist. She’s just a really fun-loving, bubbly, low-key Southern type character. I basically took all of my favorite parts of theater and put them into a character. I’ve always loved doing costume design, and I wanted my character to really do that. And so, Doris is a costuming queen, and as you will see in the womanless beauty pageant, she’s got a look for every event.”
