Justin Miller has performed and toured across Canada as Pearle Harbour for more than a decade.Tanja-Tiziana/Supplied
On the morning I announced the world premiere of my short film Bunker Time!, starring my drag alter-ego Pearle Harbour and comedy (and LGBT+ rights) icon Colin Mochrie, gay Instagram blew up. And for good reason, albeit one that had absolutely nothing to do with me: the trailer for the new season of Canada’s Drag Race had dropped.
For more than a decade, I’ve performed and toured across the country as the sweet-as-pie and sharp-as-nails Pearle Harbour. My life in drag began as something of a lark, with little one-night specials at Jordan Tannahill and William Ellis’ haven for alternative performance, Videofag. Almost immediately, Pearle gulped up the entirety of my professional career. Justin Miller has never been seen onstage at the Stratford Festival, but Pearle has. Pearle has been streamed on CBC Gem, has been interviewed live on television, and even sold a pilot to Peacock, showing up to the pitch in full drag.
And now, my film debut: Bunker Time! is a surreal dark comedy that exists somewhere between Peewee’s Playhouse and The Shining.
But despite all this, after all these years, there is one question audiences can’t stop breathlessly, relentlessly asking me: “When are you gonna go on Drag Race?” After all, it is the biggest stage a queen could possibly hope for, so surely that’s what I must be hoping for, too.
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Pearle has done more and gone farther than her maker ever could. But when it comes to Drag Race, I’m digging in my heels.
RuPaul’s Drag Race is a reality competition show that pits a gaggle of queens against one another to see who can snatch the title of America’s next drag superstar. Since its first episode aired in 2009, Drag Race has become a continent-spanning empire, launching franchises in Canada, the U.K., Thailand, Mexico, Sweden, South Africa (to name a few), along with a live Vegas revue, albums, expos, the careers of hundreds of drag artists around the world, and the movement of the art form from the margins into the mainstream.
Bunker Time! is a surreal dark comedy that exists somewhere between Peewee’s Playhouse and The Shining.Supplied
The mother of this immense industry, RuPaul Charles, describes Drag Race as “the Olympics of drag.” Except the Olympics only happen every two years, and Drag Race is now a constant, endlessly grinding content machine. All of us drag artists, across the world, labour under Mama Ru’s long and glamorous shadow. She is our trailblazer, starmaker — and gatekeeper.
With Bunker Time!, I’m looking for a way around her system.
I have no problem admitting: Pearle would be terrible at Drag Race. I don’t lip-sync, I can’t dance, I’ve never sewn so much as a muff. Worse still, my personality type is primed for reality show villainy: Type A theatre kids are notoriously hard to root for (just too needy).
Money is another factor: a typical runway package – all the showstopping outfits, wigs, goops and gags – easily runs tens of thousands of dollars. Most of my costumes are moth-eaten polyester knits. I think they’re divine, and I know I would be utterly destroyed for wearing them on TV. Drag Race-drag doesn’t look like that. Over the years, as its viewing audience and market share became larger, moving from basic cable (LogoTV) to VH1 and now MTV, Drag Race became more polished, and shaved off its more subversive edges. A predictable sameness has settled over the series. Drag Race: putting the ‘homo’ in homogeneity!
Compare that to the recent, surprise breakout of non-binary auteur and drag performance artist Cole Escola, who somehow became mainstream by never compromising their niche. Escola is fresh off their Tony Award win (paradoxically for best actor) as a fabulously deranged Mary Todd Lincoln in their play Oh, Mary! (exclamation points in titles are canonically queer).
During Oh, Mary!’s extended Broadway run, the role of Mary is sometimes played in drag (Escola, Titus Burgess), sometimes not (Betty Gilpin, Jane Krakowski), and sometimes simultaneously is and isn’t drag (when starring trans actor and drag legend Jinkx Monsoon).
Bunker Time! is set to premiere at Toronto's Blood in the Snow Film Festival on Nov. 19.Supplied
A two-time Drag Race winner herself, Monsoon is now a regular presence on Broadway, from her debut as Mama Morton in Chicago to playing opposite David Hyde Pierce in Pirates of Penance. In an interview for W Magazine, Monsoon reflected on her success, and how something as off-kilter as Oh, Mary! had become a megahit: “[Cole] created something that meant something to them, and then the success followed because they stayed authentic.”
It’s here that I think Drag Race has led us astray. Drag has always been a wildly diverse art form, one encompassing artists as singular as Escola, RuPaul, Dame Edna, Paul Reubens, and Divine. But for too many, especially younger drag artists, Drag Race isn’t a jumping-off point — it’s the entire point. And the formula of a long-running, reality TV competition series necessarily edits its queens into neat, digestible boxes. Not for me: I want Pearle to stick in your craw.
Clearly, the queens that make it on Canada’s Drag Race are inarguably, astonishingly talented individuals, regardless if they leave first or win the whole thing. I believe every artist on the newest season deserves all the flowers, followers, and gigs imaginable. And I believe there must be an alternative route to a successful drag career. For example: a demented short film about a Cold-War era kids’ TV host, trapped in a bunker with her puppet pals, starting to crack. Might just be niche enough to be a hit.
Bunker Time! premieres Nov. 19 at the Blood in the Snow Film Festival in Toronto.