“I actually did it on a dare.” said Kisha Summers, a Cincinnati-based drag queen. “Somebody dared me to do it and said I wouldn’t do it because I was so masculine. And then I did it.”
Since November 2012, Kisha Summers has been cultivating her persona, dedicating several hours a week to honing new skills and creating new routines. Now, she serves as show director of Bar 1868 in Oxford and is on cast at The Bar Complex in Lexington, Kentucky.
Summers said between sewing her costumes, adding embellishments, practicing new looks, figuring out routines and marketing her performances, drag can add up to being a lot of work.
“You’re basically living a double life [...] it’s a full-time job plus a whole life on the side of that,” Summers said. “It’s not for the faint of heart.”
Although she claims that local drag is nowhere near as competitive as reality TV, Summers said her friends in the drag community push her to become a stronger performer.
“There's some sort of drama on every show; We don’t have challenges, but we challenge each other,” Summers said, “the best drivers can push each other and not make it a competition.”
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Summers attributes the foundation of her skills to her strong background in high school theater; however, other performers, such as Scarlett, showed her how to sew initially. Fellow queen, Dalicious, encouraged her to make the craft a part of her regular practice.
Summers said her persona is always evolving, but the name “Kisha” has been the same since the start. She added the last name Summers after joining her current drag family.
“They put me in everything, let me borrow everything I didn’t think of, and for about two years, I did that,” Summers said. “Then I became friends with my current drag mom, and it kind of happened just over time. One day, she asked me to be part of the family and make an extension of the name.”
Although Summers has a family to help her out, she said she puts in a lot of work to put on a good performance over the weekend.
“You really have to put blood, sweat and tears going to the fabric store,” Summers said. “[I] sew my own costumes, and then embellishments and putting together concepts, and figuring out the songs – it’s a learned behavior, and you work towards it all week to be able to be good on Friday and Saturday.”
Summers said a lot of her current success comes from trial and error, both in her performances and off the stage.
“Try everything,” Summers said. “You never know what you’re going to like until you see it.”
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