STEYTLERVILLE, South Africa: A glittering monthly drag show in an ancient hilltop hotel excites a sleepy conservative hamlet deep in South Africa’s semi-desert Karoo region.
In the little hamlet of Steytlerville in the Eastern Cape, Jacques Rabie, and Mark Hinds proprietors of the Karroo Theatrical Hotel, astonish its guests with a night-long cabaret and drag show every Saturday.
The duo performs in “The Steytlerville Follies” as their extravagant theatrical personas, Dame Leyla Lamborghini and Freddy Ferrari, a piano virtuoso and desert diva, respectively.
As he completed the set, Hinds told AFP, “If you tell someone there is a drag show occurring in the middle of nowhere every Saturday night, it sparks curiosity.”
Around 20 people sat their seats in the dimly lit hotel restaurant as a grand piano sat on stage in front of pink party foil curtains, disco lights, and feathers. Rabie remembered how “it was challenging” to set up the show in the area of mountains and untamed expanses that are famous for ostrich farming in his dressing room moments before the performance started.
He added while applying his makeup, “But after some time, more people like us, more gay people moved here, and it got more acceptable in town.
Rabie, who had been welcomed onto the stage by his girlfriend, tore off his pink feather tutu skirt as he launched into song and dance while sporting a blonde bob wig, high heels, and a glittering pink corset dress.
For show-goer Lara Engelbrecht-Wilbraham, the performance was “classy and beautiful.” Celebrating her birthday, it was only the second time in her life that she had attended a drag show.
The 44-year-old solar energy products seller brought her two friends and partner. The performance, which the producers called an emotional rollercoaster that ranged from hysterically funny to sentimental, is “packed out every Saturday night,” according to Hinds.
Having learned about something they had never heard of before or would have never believed possible, he continued, “Curiosity is one of the biggest things that draws people here.” — AFP/APP
