WERRRK.com has proudly partnered up with the Austin International Drag Festival this year and we have been given the privilege of announcing this year’s headliners first! We are so excited about being a part of this amazing event this year and we cannot wait to bring you all the fabulous drag artists that are going to be headlining this year!
Our next headliner is a drag superstar who won’t be traveling far as he hails from the city of Austin! We are super excited to announce that Rowdy Rory will be headlining the Austin International Drag Festival this year! (Get your tickets here and join us in Austin this fall!)
We were able to get a few words with Rory about being part of this year’s Austin International Drag Festival!
Congratulations on being named a headliner Rory! How did you get involved with the Austin International Drag Festival and what does this opportunity mean to you?
I got involved in Austin International Drag Festival when I moved to Austin close to three years ago, and attended as an audience member, and I had so much fun I KNEW I had to audition the next year. Being asked to headline this year is already the highlight of 2019! This will be my first time headlining a festival, and I’m so thrilled to have been offered such an exciting opportunity! I felt honored to bring trans representation to the festival stage when I performed last year, and I’m absolutely ecstatic to bring that representation again as a headliner, especially when headlining is an opportunity trans men are so rarely offered.
For those people living under a rock, can you tell us a little bit about Rowdy Rory and your drag?
I played acoustic punk music nearly every weekend for most of my teens, and released three albums before turning sixteen. After I came out as a trans man and began transitioning, consequently losing my music career, burlesque and drag called out to me as, not only wonderful creative outlets, but safe havens with communities I wanted to be a part of. So I kissed my entire life goodbye, and moved to the city to pursue performance art. My act is all about self love for trans people, defying what people expect of us, and having fun while flipping the binary the bird. I like to bring themes of positive masculinity to strip tease, with a punk aesthetic that says “trans men can do whatever we want – even wear dresses – and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop us – and it’s the sexiest thing that’s ever happened” Since leaving my home town I’ve been in festivals in and out of the state, and I hold a residency in two city’s as a cast member with Mustache Envy in Dallas, as well as The Boiz of Austin, in Austin of course. I also had the opportunity to be an extra in Hurricane Bianca, and I was featured in a documentary called “Undefined: Dallas Burlesque”
We can’t wait to see what you’re planning on bringing to the stage in Austin! Can you give the WERRRK .com universe a little tease of what’s to come this fall in Texas?
I’ve been retiring some of my old acts to create new ones, so you can definitely expect to see some new costumes and new concepts. Lately I really love to build sexual, fierce, dramatic scenes, that I ruin completely with a bad pun or a meme.
