Growing up as an obviously gay child is difficult in Alberta, and when I was a kid there was a role model that I could tune into on Access Television right before supper time Monday to Friday. This tall, boisterous man with the effeminate swagger and the long, strawberry locks informed me of easy ways to get your house ready for winter, how to cook emus, and relayed his experience of grand events and art all around the Edmonton Area and beyond. All the while, I was serving a twelve year sentence in the jail that I found Sherwood Park. His voice and personality brought a kind of calm to me, as if he were silently saying “I know”. It made me forget the unbearable social life as the big nelly spaz that I was. Unbeknownst to me, Darrin Hagen was at the time receiving accolades for a show called “The Edmonton Queen: Not a Riverboat Story” in the same theatre, drag, and queer community that I would later be a part of. This is the hardest thing I’ve had to write yet, because I’ve learned some of the things Darrin mentions in his book in my own drag decade. Like he writes, the outfits were a lot less fabulous than we remember.

I sat down with my youth idol Darrin Hagen, otherwise known as the splendiferous Gloria Hole, to ask him about his most celebrated play…but all we did was talk, talk, talk and have a hootenanny! This year he will be mounting “The Edmonton Queen: the Final Voyage” for the last time (that’s what Cher said). I asked him if there was anything he regretted not including in the new edition of the fabulous book version of the award winning play, because the stories have been all re-worked many times.

“I don’t regret one moment of my life. I wish I could’ve written the never-ending story, but you can’t put everybody you love into a body of work like this because there’s always a new story. I like to think of those stories as beautiful little jewels connected to big shining jewels, who are the queens themselves, to create the magnificent tiara that is the Edmonton Queen.”

With more and more people passing to the next world, a lot of those untold stories could be lost forever. In the new version, Hagen asked his friends to write to him about how they felt being mentioned in his work, and to clear up any mistakes he may have made.

“A lot of people got upset when it was published, saying there wasn’t a single truth. Honestly, I thought everyone would thank me.”

Unfortunately, a lot of them aren’t around to bitch or compliment him either way.

“Drag queens as we knew them are disappearing; many of them moved away, you lose touch and then you get the call… We had this huge brilliant life together and then before you know it, they died. In a way, those girls were lucky to have not gotten old; yet at the same time, they were robbed of decades of majesty, decades of potential. They left behind the memories, so why not leave behind a body of work glorifying them?”

Darrin’s own drag mother, Chuck MacDuff Gillis a.k.a. Lulu LaRude, passed in February 2007; it was she who inspired Hagen to do drag and to actually record the insane happenings from the 80’s and 90’s.

“I never got to say goodbye to a lot of the girls, but the book made Lulu very happy; it was always about her, for her, practically by her! She would turn it all into mythology. She always told me, don’t ever miss a chance to change the world.”

Darrin himself has certainly changed since the first time The E.Q. was performed 12 years ago. For one, he now sports a butch hairdo. But does he miss all that hair and the drag lifestyle?

“For me, drag is ALL about the hair. But to do drag again after all these years is hard! You forget that you can do it, even the lip-synching gets hard. I miss the Value Village shopping trips; if it didn’t fit, pin it up, add a cape or don’t turn around!”

I feel extremely honoured to be a drag performer who broke into theatre, because I couldn’t have done it without the pioneering efforts of Darrin Hagen and all those mentioned in his book. If you remember the good old days of Flashback (or you don’t), if you’re curious about this amazing sub-culture and important piece of local history or you just want to experience a rip-roaring and moving piece of theatre, I suggest you attend this amazing event because it’s your LAST chance to see it!