By Kevin Ferrisi –
Move over Ru-Girls, there’s a Dragula ugly in town! The Chez Est in Hartford, CT has a reputation for hosting some of the biggest names in drag and is a regular host to RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni year after year. This past weekend, the Chez Est was host to special guest Violencia Exclamation Point from season 3 of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. The show, commonly referred to as Dragula, is a series created by famous drag performers Dracmorda and Swanthula Boulet that has risen to become a mainstay in drag horror as a whole, in search for the World’s Next Drag Supermonster. And for those who are not aware, the show uses the word ‘ugly’ as a term of endearment, addressing its contestants and viewers with a chilling “Hello, uglies…” every episode.
It was a notable evening for Connecticut drag celebrity Mia E. Z’Lay as she hosted a special show in celebration of her birthday. The night’s theme was Creature Feature, with a lineup that included Mia herself, local drag artists Rory Roux Lay (Mia’s drag daughter) and Kenya Mone Heart, and of course, the Dragula alum and Mia’s longtime friend, Violencia Exclamation Point. This was Violencia’s first time to our state. Each performer took to the stage in a series of two sets where each performed a lip-sync and dance number.
Mia has been doing drag for 11 years, curating a drag artist-owned and operated business in Connecticut for 6 years and organizes drag events throughout the greater Hartford area. She organizes the highly acclaimed bi-annual 10 week drag competition, Chez Legends, and the largest annual drag event in the state, the Trans Lifeline Benefit, which raises money for the national non-profit. For her first number she hit the stage as Tiffany Valentine, also known as ‘The Bride of Chucky’, the murderous female doll from the Chucky movie franchise. Accompanied by Mia’s boyfriend Spencer on stage and a Chucky doll held in her arms, Mia recreated the infamous bathtub scene where Chucky electrocutes Tiffany in order to turn her into a doll. She performed a lip-sync to a mashup of dialogue from the movie perfectly paired with ‘Living Dead Girl’ by Rob Zombie, ‘Crazy Garbage’ by Clark In The Cave, ‘Call Me’ by Blondie, and ‘Celebrity Skin’ by Hole. Local drag artist Enigma Jones also joined on stage playing the role of Chucky.
Closing out the first set, Violencia Exclamation Point shocked the audience when she emerged wearing a flesh-tone jumpsuit protruding arms from every direction, reminiscent of something not of this world, only to be unzipped to reveal a flesh-tone two-piece swimsuit with hands strategically attached covering her intimate areas, which led to the final reveal stripping down to her nude body as she pranced around in nothing but pasties. She performed a lip-sync to ‘Much To Touch’ by Planningtorock featuring Maija Karhunen. Violencia then invited Mia back on stage to wish her a happy birthday and to serenade her with the traditional birthday song as the crowd sang along.
After a short break the night’s cast returned to the stage for their second set of performances. Mia reappeared wearing a black, puffy shouldered, form-fitting mermaid-cut gown lined with black rhinestones only to be unzipped and removed to reveal a skintight dress that looked as though large swatches of skin were sewn together to create a quilt of flesh or perhaps a corpse that was torn into pieces and stitched back together. She performed a mashup that included ‘Scin’ by I:Scintilla, ‘Devilicious’ and ‘Vena Cava’ by Angelspit, ‘Goodbye Horses’ by Q Lazzarus, and ‘The Devil’s in the Details’ by Aesthetic Perfection. To close out the night Violencia took to the stage one last time sporting a black leather mini dress and matching gloves paired with a long black layered sheer skirt which was removed mid-song to reveal the leather mini dress. She sang live to a rendition of ‘Toxicity’ by System Of A Down.
Violencia discovered drag while she was in college, and actually left school to pursue it full time because she had such a great passion for it. Doing drag for over 15 years, she is known today as Boston’s beloved creepy-campy-comedy queen. From Boston, Massachusetts, Violencia Exclamation Point, stylized as Violencia! on the show, is a drag performer and was one of the eleven contestants to compete on season 3 of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. Her exit: beaten to death and melted with acid. Although Violencia was first to leave her season after she was confronted with her fear of heights and unable to complete the challenge of jumping out of a plane, making it onto the reality show is a success in its own feat and one she should be proud of. To make it onto the small cast of the reality series out of thousands of auditions is a testimony to her exemplary drag skills. Can we blame her? After all, we know many people who say they would not have jumped.
In an interview with the online publication Thotyssey, Violencia shared about her time on Dragula and explained how it did, in fact, help her career. She said, “Oh, I don’t know if I’d say it was a positive experience! It definitely helped out my career because people know a little bit more about me than they did before. People recognize my name. If I pop up in a chat on Twitch or something, people are like, ‘oh my God, Violencia from Dragula!’ So it definitely gave me some recognition.” She went on to say, “During the filming, though; it really sucked to go home first. I did not expect it. It’s like, I built up my drag career for ten years to this point. And then it’s just… that’s what happened. That’s what I got.”
“I’m just super, super afraid of heights, and I couldn’t do it. I really fucking wanted to do it, I thought I could do it and then I got there and was like, no, I can’t jump out. I couldn’t do it. It’s literally the most terrifying I could have done. Any other challenge from any of the three seasons I’d do, except for that one. Drink some blood, eat a roach, get a tattoo; oh, please, give me a fucking tattoo!”
Currently you can catch Violencia at Legacy in Boston, MA for Serve Thursday, hosted by Violencia and Neon Calypso, with music by DJ Coleslaw. You can also join her at Boston’s gay dance party, Gay Bash’d. Gay Bash’d kicks off the 2024 season with their iconic annual Anti-Valentine’s rave on Saturday, February 10th at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA.
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