Lady Camden Sashays into Provincetown
by Steve Desroches
It’s amazing the amnesty that being in drag provides. Like modern-day court jesters, drag queens and kings speak truth to power, tell outrageous stories, and revel in wild antics. And audiences cry for more, more, more. But if you’re a drag performer with a British accent in America, well, you’ve really crossed the rubicon into the land of free rein. There’s just something about English accents that Americans love, even though the United States came into being by a revolution against its country of origin. Just the sound of it elicits a myriad of thoughts, many of which are utter mythology. Ten years ago, several cast members of Downton Abbey were on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and read scenes from the hit British television show in American accents. It just didn’t have the same charm and attraction. Lady Mary can get away with her conniving ways with an English accent and it’s endearing, while as an American, she just sounds mean. Born and raised in London, RuPaul’s Drag Race star Lady Camden is quite familiar with the phenomenon, and based in San Francisco takes great glee in the power of the English manner of speech.
“I feel sometimes I can get away with much more because of my accent because people think I sound more educated, sophisticated, and sweet,” says Camden. “I’m not always that way. I’ve always been like that crazy exiled member of the royal family who’s always drunk and a little trashy. But the accent covers a lot.”
Since finishing as the runner up on season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Lady Camden has been able to soothe and surprise with that accent as she tours not just the United States, but the world, in that marvelous maelstrom that queens find themselves in after appearing on the pop culture mega hit show, where she wows crowds with her quick wit and classical dance moves informed by her background in ballet. Lady Camden, born Rex Wheeler, was born to a mother who is a designer and a father who managed the Electric Ballroom, a night club and performance venue, in Camden Town, a delightfully dizzying creative neighborhood in London where “punks,’ “goths,” and artists set the tone.
“It’s very much changed since I lived there,” says Camden. “Like most of London, it’s been gentrified.” While its edge may have been suffocated by over-priced condominiums and pretentious restaurants, the artistic soul of the neighborhood and its former denizens that got pushed out, still soothes Lady Camden’s soul as do her supportive parents.
“I’m a mixture of the combination of these two crazy people mashed together,” says Camden. “I was surrounded by the most interesting people. No one in my life growing up, no shade, worked in an office or anything. That’s why I chose the name Lady Camden, because when thinking of a drag name I wanted to pick something that sparked joy in me.”
Growing up around the arts drove Lady Camden towards the arts, pursuing studies at the Royal Ballet School, after which she danced with the Ballet of the Slovak National Theatre. In 2010 she landed at the Sacramento Ballet, bringing her to the United States, before moving over to the Smuin Contemporary Ballet in San Francisco, the city which she still calls home. A life in drag was the furthest thing from her mind, until a back injury laid her out of ballet shoes for months while she recovered. She spent her time playing with makeup, looking terrible, but enjoying a new creative outlet. You Tube tutorials and a friend Mara Guevara, an Oakland-based performer who became her drag mother, helped to form Lady Camden into a full-fledged drag queen.
“After a while I felt I was pretty enough to go outside,” says Camden. “I get a lot of attention and people would buy me drinks. And I’d get asked if I performed and I would lie and say I performed all the time, which is kind of true as a ballet dancer. But ballet dancers don’t entertain using their mouths or a microphone, the idea of which terrified me.”
Perhaps it was the accent that helped, but she was a sensation taking the stage for the first time in a completely new performance genre. Then came Drag Race and the life-changing effects it can often have for a queen cast on the show. And now Lady Camden can add a new merit badge to her drag queen sash as she makes her Provincetown debut with Lady Camden’s Queerterion Collection: The Sh*t That Made Me Gay at the Pilgrim House. While the Criterion Collection seeks to make public the best in classic and contemporary cinema, the Queerterion Collection is all about the random, obscure, or seemingly non-LGBTQ materials that ding the antenna of queer youth letting one know that there is a la vie en rose out there, somewhere.
“I’m a 90s baby,” says Lady Camden. “So that’s the decade that really impacted me. Ballet of course made me gay. But so too did Titanic, the Power Rangers, Barney and Friends. They all had something that just felt gay to me. It’s that language that gay people speak and how we relate differently to things. It’s a celebration, really.”
Lady Camden’s Queerterion Collection: The Sh*t That Made Me Gay is at the Pilgrim House, 336 Commercial St., from Sunday, August 3 through Friday, August 15 nightly (except Saturday, August 9) at 9 p.m. Tickets ($40/$50/$75) are available at the box office and online at pilgrimhouseptown.com. For more information call 508.487.6424.
