Trama

Drag Heals is a documentary TV series that follows drag artists building their own stage show. Drag Heals examines soul-deep story sharing techniques as well as the unique talents and skills required from a drag performer.

RuPaul brought Drag Race into the homes of millions and made the once taboo art form mainstream. This newfound renaissance has inspired a new generation to explore the art of drag and challenge the constructs of gender. While RuPaul's Drag Race is a competition, Drag Heals is a documentary journey that follows men who have never worn heels or make-up but have always dreamed of letting their inner drag queen out. These men (and aspiring queens!) enter Canada's first ever Drag class to explore how to create a compelling drag persona based on personal experience. For most, this is akin to a second coming out process. The culmination of the workshops will be a public performance where they will face down their fears of stepping into the limelight. Drag is typically viewed from a distance; Drag Heals gives unparalleled access to the creation of a performance that is more than just your average lip sync. The classes are structured so the men must reveal their true selves in preparation of their public performance. In order to do it, they must be brave and vulnerable. As performance time draws near, the urgency to create a compelling piece forces our Queens to face down their nerves and personal demons in order to deliver a quality performance for people who have shelled out money to see just that. Deeply personal and raw, these Queens tackle prickly issues like gender identity, mental illness, heartbreak and feminism to better understand themselves and their queer experience in an otherwise straight world. Welcome to the new generation of drag.—©2018 Border2Border Entertainment

Drag Heals is a hybrid stage workshop and documentary TV series that follows eight drag artists over an intensive ten day workshop to build their own show. In each workshop, a guest coach joins stage director Tracey Erin Smith in exploring soul-deep story sharing techniques as well as the unique talents and skills required from a drag performer. The guest coaches include Leon Silvers, who developed drag therapy into a clinical practice, professional make-up artist Kosta MUA who helps refine and elevate the performers looks, a publicist who assists in crafting marketing and social media messaging to cultivate an audience, choreographer Jeff Dimitrios who brings the moves, and community mentors Flarington King, Titus Androgynous, Beardoncé and Champagna who offer sage advice from their experience working as drag artists in Canada and around the world. Over the course of the intensive workshops and story crafting, the participants dive deep into their personal lives to unearth lessons learned and bring them back to the audience as a gift. They are both the pirate and the pirated, the island and treasure. The resulting stories are emotional and cathartic, both for the drag artists and the audience who share in the experience.—Border2Border Entertainment