Audience members hold up cash tips for Alexus Daniels at a "Spring Fever Drag Brunch" in Kulpmont, Pennsylvania, in March.
Drag performers are shining deep in coal country
Photographs by Carolyn Kaster/AP
Story by Kyle Almond, CNN
Published September 3, 2023
Audience members hold up cash tips for Alexus Daniels at a "Spring Fever Drag Brunch" in Kulpmont, Pennsylvania, in March.
While on assignment in Pennsylvania’s coal country last year, Carolyn Kaster was surprised when someone invited her to their cousin’s drag performance.
The Associated Press photographer wasn’t expecting to see drag shows in this conservative region.
And then she saw how big of a hit they were.
“The shows were sold out. People cheered for them. People got there early and lined up at the door,” Kaster recalled.
The Daniels drag family has become a vibrant part of their small-town community, hosting bridal party brunches, bingo fundraisers and many other colorful performances.
“These are local people, living and working in the community, and they also perform drag,” Kaster said. “This is their art form. This is their way of expressing themselves to the world and making people happy.”
After seeing that first show in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, Kaster wanted to know more about the performers.
“For more than a year, I drove up from DC to see their performances and learn about their lives and challenges,” she said. “They shared so much joy and kindness.”
She photographed them along the way, both behind the scenes and during their shows, in rural towns such as Nescopeck, Kulpmont, Mount Carmel and Coal Township.
To many of the performers, doing drag in a small town is important, Kaster learned.
“They want to show everyone that this is here,” she said. “This is happening. ... You don’t have to leave your family and your roots to do drag performance.”
Representation means a lot to Trixy Valentine, a drag queen in the group portrayed by Jacob Kelley.
“I never had a person like me growing up, and now I get to be that for everyone else,” Trixy said.
Trixy told Kaster that being queer in a rural town can often feel like a curse: “The curse is that we’ll move ... because there’s no one like us here, there’s no one that can understand us.
“And drag now can be a place or a thing to show people like you that you don’t have to go to the cities. It’s here in your backyard.”
Kaster was inspired by the group, which she calls “an oasis of acceptance.”
“I got so much out of it, just being around them,” she said. “Just how they support each other and how they want to support their community and help people in that region.”
The matriarch of the group, Alexus Daniels, is the child of a coal miner and a textile worker. She works at a local hospital as an MRI aide technician.
She told Kaster how a female co-worker came to see her in drag for the first time. The co-worker probably would never have went to the show if she didn’t know Alexus.
Afterward, she told Alexus, “I would absolutely defend you if someone said hateful things about what you do because now I understand what you do, and you are out there just trying to bring joy to people and stuff,” Alexus recalled. “And I thought, wow, that’s what it’s all about, is changing people’s minds and showing people that we’re not what people think we are, whatever their misconceptions are.”
But they are keenly aware that there are those out there who don’t approve of their art.
In recent months, there has been a slew of bills, mostly in Republican-led states, looking to restrict or prohibit drag show performances. In June, a federal judge in Tennessee ruled that a state law limiting public drag show performances represented an “unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, signed a bill in May that, among other things, gives his administration the power to take away licenses from establishments if they allow children into an “adult live performance,” widely interpreted as a crackdown on drag shows.
There isn’t any pending legislation in Pennsylvania, but those in the Daniels group have still experienced plenty of backlash in their lives.
“This region voted for Trump. It’s a conservative region. It’s a red region. ... There’s been hard times for members of this family growing up in this part of the country,” Kaster said. “But they found each other and formed a family.”
In March, members of the Daniels family held a “Drag Bingo” fundraiser for a local theater that needed a new roof. Meanwhile, on social media, they could see a small group of protesters outside the theater, holding signs and praying.
“There’s hundreds of us in this room and only nine of them on that street,” a defiant Trixy told the audience inside. “So all I have to say is, I don’t care what you believe in. But do not force it down my throat and tell me I shouldn’t be here because you think I’m wrong.
“The Lord gave birth to me, too.”
Kaster said the performers she met stand up for who they are and who they want to be and who they want to love. But that doesn’t mean they don’t take precautions.
“Alexus, after a show, she knew her gas tank was running on empty. And she was in full Dolly Parton, beautiful,” Kaster said. “Usually she’ll drive home, but she knew she had to pump gas. So she took her makeup off before pumping gas. So there’s this kind of understanding of the world.”
There are five core members that make up the heart of the Daniels family, Kaster said. It grew from Alexus and Tequila Daniels, who started doing Halloween parties and drag shows out of high school and came together on early social media platforms.
Trixy is an LGBTQ+ activist and educator with a master’s in human sexuality. Trixy’s real-life twin, Joshua Kelley, portrays drag queen Harpy Daniels and serves in the US Navy. Then there’s drag king Xander Valentine, played by Gwen Bobbie.
“My personal goal as a king is to have the audience question my off-stage gender identity,” Xander said.
The reasoning, Xander said, is to convey the message that “it’s OK to not immediately know how a person identifies or who they are attracted to, and still be kind to them. It’s OK to accept someone as different, even if you don’t fully understand it.”
As you drive through this region of Pennsylvania, Kaster said, you can see piles of coal and the tipples used to transport them. There’s no mistaking that it is a coal community.
“Coal is what made this part of the country,” she said. “It’s a place where people work really hard.”
That includes those in the Daniels group, both in their private lives and during their shows, she said.
“There’s a history and a heartbeat of a place, right? And you can feel it and you can see it, everywhere you go. And you can see it in these performers, too.”
