Editor’s Pick: The Boulet Brothers’ ‘Dragula: Titans Tour’

metroweekly.com:

Metro Weekly three years ago.Back then, he wasn’t actually “a biker or a leather person or anything like that, but I had a giant mohawk.

I was so weird looking. And that’s the only place that people just wouldn’t look at me like a total freak.”Several decades later, Drac is still weird looking compared to your average drag queen.

He’s one-half of the Boulet Brothers with Swanthula, or Swan, his partner in life and drag — and his brother only in a nominal sense.The duo is chiefly known for creating and hosting the popular alt-drag reality competition series Dragula — a show derived from a popular punk drag party the duo previously threw at a Los Angeles leather bar.Dragula, both the party and the show, were launched partly in reaction to the type of drag that has become mainstream almost to the point of ubiquity over the past dozen years with the rise of RuPaul’s Drag Race: Broadly speaking, that show largely features well-established gay men presenting in an exaggeratedly pretty, glamorous, feminine, sassy yet non-threatening and often predictable style — all inspired by today’s most popular artists, shows, and entertainment brands.By contrast, Dragula presents a wilder, edgier, riskier, and more surprising and shocking drag, from a wider range of both LGBTQ-identified performers and allies, many of whom came from the underground or alt-drag scene, and with inspiration from more niche genres of horror, fantasy, cartoons and the graphic arts.

As Drac put it, “I feel like we’re giving a safe home for outcasts and freaks.”With their strong affinity for and connection to horror, the two have been dubbed “Horror’s New Icons” by the horror magazine Fangoria.