Eric Murphy
Drag performer Dream D. Ross sashays across the lawn before grabbing some tips from appreciative fans.
Jennifer Hedstrom arrives at her first ever Madison pride celebration decked out in summer festival gear: colorful shades, flower-patterned shorts, and a bright flag celebrating pansexuality tied over her shoulders like a cape. As others stroll past vendors or seek shade under Warner Park’s rainbow shelter, Hedstrom is planning to spend this sweltering August Sunday at the Magic Pride Festival broiling at the music stage.
“We might wander, but everything that’s happening at the stage, I’m like, ‘oh, I want to see that! Oh, I want to see that!’” says Hedstrom. About 50 feet back from the stage, two large white tents give refuge from the sun and, for now at least, everyone can find a seat. A musician herself, Hedstrom says she is most excited to see her friend DJ Femme Noir — who is currently on stage DJing between performances — this evening. “I’m a huge fan of their work and love going to anything that they’re DJing at,” she says. “The way they transition between songs, and the beat matching — it feels like my brain is exploding.”
The musicians met as instructors at Girls Rock Camp, a summer day camp for girls, transgender and non-binary youth in Madison. The two help young musicians write original music during the day, and at lunch staff perform for the campers. When Femme Noir launched into a lunchtime DJ set, says Hedstrom, “there was a camp-wide dance party, and that was super awesome.”
Back at the Magic Pride Festival, the dance party won’t officially begin until 5 p.m. In the meantime, the crowd starts to spill beyond the tents into a large semicircle, anticipating a performance from about a dozen drag artists. Performers strut down a ramp from the stage to the lawn, performing among the gathered crowd and snagging the occasional tip.
Some get more daring, as one performer named Dream D. Ross flips across the lawn, goes back up the ramp, then jumps high off the stage and lands in the grass doing the splits. “We don’t got insurance for that,” cracks the host. Ross points up to the stage roof shading the performers: “You’re lucky I didn’t go up there.”
Until 2018, one of the marquee Pride events in Madison was a parade in downtown Madison. But celebrating pride with a festival setup has some advantages, says Steve Starkey, executive director of OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center, which organized the festival. Starkey is sitting in a golf cart, across the bridge from the stage in the shade of the rainbow shelter, ready to give a ride to anyone who needs one.
“Having all the groups show up and march up the street and then be done in like an hour and a half, it didn’t really engage the community,” he says. With the current format, he adds, “we could bring in a lot more people and have a lot more opportunity to mingle with each other.
“I think this is a really important event, especially this year, because there have been so many attacks on the LGBT community, especially the transgender community,” he adds. “There’s been so many laws passed, and events that have been protested.” Earlier this year, Tennessee and Montana passed laws making public drag performances illegal, and more than a dozen other states passed or introduced similar laws.
In the Madison area, a drag performance at a staff talent show at Middleton High School and a student-organized drag show at East High School have drawn ire from conservatives after being shared by right-wing social media account LibsOfTikTok. And three weekends before the Madison festival, a group of Nazis waving swastika flags, at least one armed, protested Watertown’s Pride in the Park.
“It’s important for us to come together as a community and realize that we’re strong and that we don’t need to be afraid,” says Starkey. “There is real unity and strength in numbers. We’re not a tiny fringe community, we’re a pretty big, powerful community.”
