#Drag queen makeup coaching chicago tv

How fortunate I am to have Leo (Vodde) as my boss and for him to let us bring this art of female impersonation and give it a home.ġ2.

The bar After Dark has given Tula and other female impersonators a home in Fort Wayne. “Priscilla” (has) such a wonderful interpretation of gay life.

#Drag queen makeup coaching chicago tv

Drag and the art of female impersonation has grown more visible thanks to movies like “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and the TV show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Which one better represents the drag world? Oh, the lessons it taught me, the strength she had.ġ0. I took care of her for the last three and a half years of her life. You took care of your mom when she became ill, right? I’ve taken care of a lot of HIV patients until their deaths, and that’s given me an inner strength I hope I never lose.ĩ. Gay life in Fort Wayne back then was about cruising the streets, and now we had a place we could go to.Įverybody thinks I’m mean, but I’m not mean. Then I bought Tulisa’s, and that’s when Tula exploded. I had capes flowing, and it was a show and people loved it. I could make those tassels twirl! It was a gimmick! Tula just kept evolving. I was one of the best old-time strippers. I started working at the Rathskeller in the late ’60-early ’70s. When I got back from (the first show in) Chicago, I hid it. The teachers and the coaches, a lot of them are bullies. If we look at the world, we have to look at the politicians. I honestly think the majority comes from the church. Why do you think some people are still afraid of homosexual people? My father died two weeks after he retired from Harvester, and I was finally able to talk my mother into coming down to Tulisa’s (the Miller-owned first openly gay bar in Fort Wayne). My mother, she’d say “Dickie, if you’re gonna do that, please pull the curtains closed.” They just wanted me to be careful. He was in World War I, and he had seen all the female impersonators on stage in Paris. And the bullying we took – but I was never afraid. I had eggs thrown at me when I was playing at Lakeside Park. Today people don’t realize the extent of the bullying back then. When you first realized you were gay, what were your thoughts? It really is an illusion, and they work hard to be convincing.Ĥ. The illusion of turning a male body into a very female body. You have to understand, I had a lot of feminine features, my hands and my eyes, and everybody called me a sissy, of course. Irwin, she put lipstick on me and two dots of red on my cheeks, and I had a cape she’d dotted with black to look like ermine. In kindergarten! It was a (play), and the girl who was supposed to be the queen was sick so I got to be the queen. When was the first time you dressed in drag? I was scared to death! There were so many people there! But on the other hand, I knew I wanted to be on the stage.Ģ. What was it like, the first time you performed in drag?

Follow this amazing story as we play 20 Questions with Charles Miller, aka Tula.ġ. There, he put on an evening gown and stepped into a new world, a world of fashion and makeup and fabulous people and a life that would lead him to embrace both his homosexuality and to open Fort Wayne’s first openly gay bar and to become Tula, a drag queen who has taken so many others under her wing and set them free.

In 1958, a 17-year-old man – boy, really – plucked up his courage, sneaked out of the house and drove to Chicago with some friends to the Trianon Ballroom.