Photo: Mettie Ostrowski
by Steve Desroches
Plasma had just been eliminated from RuPaul’s Drag Race, but couldn’t talk about it with anyone as she couldn’t even say she had been cast on the show, non-disclosure agreements being what they are to keep every twist and turn a secret. Filmed over the summer of 2023, season 16 of the pop culture phenomenon wasn’t going to premiere until January 2024. But she needed to get all of the emotions she was feeling off her chest. On one hand it was the dream of a lifetime to be cast, but now that dream was over, and she left the electric pink workroom without the crown. In a moment of reflection Plasma thought, “What would Barbra Streisand do?” After all, she was one of the main influences on Plasma’s drag and also a personal hero.
And then it clicked! Plasma would take Manhattan a la Streisand as Fanny Brice in the 1968 film Funny Girl. All she’d need was a cast of extras, a drag-friendly cabbie, the indifference of New Yorkers to someone filming a musical number in their midst, and a tugboat. No one was going to rain on her parade. But how the hell does a drag queen find a tugboat?
“I have a friend who has a friend who has a friend who has a cousin that works at the South Street Seaport Museum,” says Plasma. “They have this 1930s tugboat and they called and said I could use it. I just sat there and quietly shat myself.”
Over five days Plasma and crew filmed a spot-on recreation of the “Don’t Rain on My Parade” segment from Funny Girl, which required filming on the subway at 2 a.m., running through the streets of Midtown in a Tiffany-blue dress, quickly shooting in Moynihan Train Hall in Penn Station, and then of course hopping on a tugboat belting her heart out as she passed the Statue of Liberty in one of the greatest drag queen stunts of all time. Testament to the accessibility of film technology and the level of determination and uncompromising vision exhibited by the real Streisand, Plasma released the video a few weeks after the start of her season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which instantly made her a fan favorite and positioned her well for life after the show.
Since the show Plasma, a.k.a. Taylor Ratliff, has been working to make the best possible use of the golden ticket that appearing on Drag Race is and present to the world all that Plasma is, which doesn’t fit neatly into television. After all, Plasma is rooted in old Hollywood glamour, and since graduating from the University of Oklahoma’s musical theater program, Plasma is also best experienced live on stage. And she’ll be making her Provincetown debut this week at the Art House to show the town what New York City has known before RuPaul’s Drag Race; that Plasma is ready to go to the next level.
“It’s really an exciting time to be a drag artist,” says Plasma. “Drag is viewed as part of all sectors of entertainment now. Places where queer people were excluded are now open to drag, especially in New York.”
While being involved in theater since childhood, Plasma didn’t come about until during the pandemic, where ironically enough, this drag queen born for the stage came into the world virtually as her live acting gigs dried up during the global calamity. But in hindsight, drag was her destiny. At the age of three her parents let her dress as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz for Halloween, a loving and progressive thing to do for any “obviously queer” child, but all the more so in her small Texas hometown, and even more so considering who her family is. Plasma’s grandfather Bill Ratliff was the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Texas from 2000 to 2003, while her uncle Bennett Ratliff spent two years in the Texas legislature, also as a Republican, and her father Thomas is a Republican lobbyist. But for as long as she can remember, her family has been nothing but loving and supportive of Taylor as queer and the pursuit of drag as Plasma. In fact, it was her father who first dared her to enter a drag contest in New York (which she won) and he would go on to lobby against Republican-led efforts in Texas to attack drag queens and drag performance in the Lone Star State.
Plasma is a long way from home now, and is completely focused on coming to Provincetown. After coming with friends for a quick trip last summer, to rejuvenate after the stress of competing on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Provincetown proved to be exactly what she needed. She was enchanted upon arrival and then fell further under the town’s spell, both personally and professionally, once she learned of the town’s drag legacy, which she is about to join.
“Visiting Provincetown last summer changed my life,” says Plasma. “It was sort of….it felt like a fairy tale. I’ve never been anywhere like it and I have never felt like how I felt when I was there. I just felt completely free. Completely free to be exactly who I am without fear. Even in New York there’s this carbon-copy culture in Hell’s Kitchen that can shame people for not looking a certain way or what have you. But in Provincetown, you could be whoever you are and be celebrated for it. I don’t intend to squander this opportunity to become a part of Provincetown.”
Plasma presents All That Plazz at the Art House, 214 Commercial St., Wednesday, August 14 through Saturday, August 17 at 5 p.m. Tickets ($50/$75) are available at the box office and online at liveatthearthouse.com.
