Datum der Aufzeichnung: 22.06.2023

Ort: TQW Studios

Im Rahmen von: S_P_I_T_ Day 1

Madame and the mask. The mask is the make-up. It’s make-believe, it’s pretend, it’s to be and not to be, it’s to accept what was assigned to you by others. What is identity but the meeting of both our gaze and the gaze of others? The performance deals with how we perceive bodies, especially those differing from the norm. Black bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies... All of those who do not belong. In order to be accepted we are forced into masks that are not our own. Why am I just acknowledged as an entertainment but not as a black person? Madame Léa and the Mask is a mix of drag performance and spoken word performance. Based on a text on identity and acceptance, the performance aims at enlightening to what extent drag art can empower those who do not fit in and become a way of self-learning and a causeway for others to understand.

Madame Léa is a Brazilian drag queen who calls herself the brown goddess, in allusion to the beauty and empowerment of being a black queer person doing drag. Behind this drag diva persona is Leandro Barros. Leandro was born in 1991 in Santo André. He studied interior design and fashion. Léa is the art product of Leandro’s long-time dream, who wanted to exercise all that he had learned in the famous Brazilian fashion college Faculdade Santa Marcelina, not as a model but by using his body as a platform for change: to defy gender rules and dichotomy, and at the same time bring empowerment and beauty without leaving aside the political aspects of the black queer body presence on stage.