Known for representing multimedia artistry, occasionally wild humor and fierce activism in their drag performances, Switch n’ Play’s Wo Chan aka The Illustrious Pearl is a shining orb of excellence this AAPI Month and beyond. [Cover photo: Mettie Owstrowski]
Thotyssey: Pearl, hello and happy AAPI Heritage Month! Other than just being generally fabulous, are there any ways you intend to celebrate?
The Illustrious Pearl: I wanna do karaoke for my newly dead mom around Mother’s Day. Maybe go to the Iris Van Herpen show at the Brooklyn Museum when it opens, and then have a big drag dinner after? (Hit me up drag friends, I wanna gawk at garments and eat afterwards!)
In the worlds of nightlife or art / performance in general, are there any AAPI individuals you’d like to shout out and that the world should know more about?
Just let it be known: I am an Emi Grate fan. See you at her show at Caveat, July 11, 7pm. I’m also a big LaWhore Vagistan fan.
What are your thoughts about the overall representation of Asian and Asian American culture in drag and nightlife today, from your own perspective as an artist in the scene? NYC has so many wonderful AAPI kings and queens for instance, but I’m not sure they’re all getting all the eyeballs they deserve.
I think the Asian and Asian American kings and queens and things are out there making their own scenes and making things happen, for sure. I was recently in Shia Ho’s “Made-in-Asia” festival, which was fierce! I loved meeting the Rice Rockettes and seeing their “Cell Block Tango” Number. One queen–a beauty, sweetie, and powerhouse–that stands out to me is Destiny. Her stage presence and hair flips were everything to me that night. Asian American drag is so, so, so fierce, so (dare I say) cunty, but also steeped in a rich tradition of CAMP. We do it all, really.
I remember walking to Sasha Velour’s crowning party, on the VIP list and everything, and someone (white twink) saying “Look, it’s Kim Chi!” as I walked past them in the line. He literally pointed. Like, what the fuck? I was ching-chonged and kimchi’d quite a lot in the early 2010’s doing drag, and it’s quite an indignity to just have to hold onto… and it’s because Anti-Asian sentiment exists in a very casual and permissible space in our culture, to this day. Even the “very Chinese time in my life” meme is frustrating. It’s shallow and somewhat fetishistic. You don’t know this life! And you will never live this life.
I think what I hope to see more and more–and this is true across ALL drag communities–is more intergenerational connections and more body diversity in casting. I’m gonna stand on that with my two good character shoes. I wish I had more connection with an elder generation when I started drag, Asian or not… but we all know our history and how the AIDS epidemic killed so many artists and cast a humongous deadly fear onto the possibility of being a queer person at all. I am only now learning the names our elders– the ones whose works were archived, at least.
Can you share a bit of your origin story with us? Where are you from originally, and what was your relationship with art, music, performance etc. growing up?
I grew up in a Chinese restaurant in Fredericksburg, Virginia. If you’ve gone to a Chinese spot and seen the little kid doing Algebra homework at the back table, then you have seen me. I grew up pretty deprived of art, and I would say deprived of the attention that a child needs to properly enrich their mind. My entire family–three older brothers, my parents, cousins–all worked and worked all day while I was too young. My parents survived a famine in their early lives, and so it meant everything to them that they could open a restaurant and keep us fed. It is difficult to compare childhoods, right? And art, music and performance seems frivolous, almost offensive, to bring up. As so, I would recount that the fundamental feeling that I remember about my childhood was boredom. But art, music, performance are at the core about connection. I now know that the oceanic boredom I felt was profound loneliness.
My first art love was opera. In 8th or 9th grade I started going to the public library after school and found performance after performance of The Three Tenors on early YouTube. Short of my middle school bestie’s mom taking me to see West Side Story at the local dinner theater, opera was the most beautiful, dramatic, and expressive window I had into an outer world–a place that was not General Tso’s Chicken and Beef and Broccoli. It was in another language; it was two-hundred years ago, but it felt like exactly what was happening inside of me. In La Boheme which “Rent is based off of”), Rudolfo sings “Che gelida manina” to his neighbor Mimi who is a seamstress who embroiders flowers all day looking out her little window. Mimi responds with the sweltering banger of “Si m’chiamo Mimi”… She stands to deliver the climax:
“ma quando vien lo sgelo
il primo sole è mio
il primo bacio dell’aprile è mio!
Germoglia in un vaso una rosa…
Foglia a foglia la spio!
Cosi gentile il profumo d’un fiore!
Ma i fior ch’io faccio,
Ahimè! non hanno odore.”
The first sun, like my
first kiss, is mine!
Buds in a vase…Le
af and leaf I spy!
That gentle perfume of a flower!
But the flowers that I make,
Alas! no smell.
I think I felt like this a lot as a teen, this trappedness in a little restaurant booth, wanting so much to touch the real beauty and desires of the world. So that’s my brand of queer yearning, if you need a diagnosis.
I finally went to see Tosca at the Met a couple years ago, and I kid you not, I teared up at the very first chord of the production… So many times I had listened to that two-disc album in the white case rented from the Fredericksburg Library on my childhood home stereo, thinking this Italian fantasy was just fantasy… something really delusional in my head that had no holding on the reality of the Chinese restaurant that I grew up in. My life was eggrolls and algebra and cargo shorts from Kohl’s.
And so, hearing the orchestra hit the first chord, the lights going down, the curtains opening, and the revolutionary artist and painter Calvaradossi run onstage (hiding from the cops no less), I understood–this is actually reality. The fantasy that protected my mind from the oppressive setting I grew up in is real! Isn’t that drag? The ideas and formulations that we carry around in our minds as we listen to music walking down the street or find a song that transform us in the club into something diva, divo, Divine, or divan (if you’re a Drag Thing).
To cut the story short, I began selling chocolates in high school so I could afford to pay for voice lessons. I eventually started singing opera in college and such, but felt myself press against the nasty gender roles of being a baritone. I had no interest in playing the controlling patriarch or soldier, or even Javert the cop.
So here I am, just crossdressing for Buddha now. If anyone knows a good countertenor teacher, please let me know!
Did you have any particular “divas” or artists in general that inspired or shaped your own art?
There is no way I can be fair or full inclusive all this, so I’ll just start listing in no order: Anita Mui, Klaus Nomi, Dynasty Handbag, Puccini, Stephen Chow and the whole aesthetic of Hong Kong comedy cinema in the 90’s, William Blake (the poet), Liza Minelli, Whitney Houston, Kylie Minogue, the optimism and camp aspect of The Three Tenors, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Celine Dion, Rupaul (particularly the 2000’s film work), Wanda Coleman, Kurama from YuYu Hakusho, Angewomon from Digimon, Ester Perel (her voice), Fem Appeal, every member of Switch N’ Play (after performing together for almost a decade how could you not be inspired): K. James! Vigor Mortis! Miss Malice! Nyx Nocturne! Zoe Ziegfeld! Divina Gransparkle! Sasha Velour’s projection work for sure has helped me shape how I use language onstage, the candor, honesty, beauty and power of Nina Simone, lots of choral music and Broadway–just oceanically bathed in it as a teen, Annie Lenox, Mariah Carey, Mirella Freni, The Three Degrees, Jewel, Alice Coltrane, Beverly Glenn Copeland, Ohyung, Shirley Bassey, Teresa Teng, Kathleen Battle, Renée Flemming, Björk, Kennedy Davenport, Tamisha Iman’s talent number in Miss National 1996, Cher (especially her 1975 show), Faye Wong, Cyndi Lauper, Dido, Beata Mona Lisa, Angela Bacari, Donna Summer’s music but not her end-of-life viewpoints, Freddie Mercury, Judy Collins, Miss Piggy, and probably Emily Dickinson.
PS. I don’t believe in worshipping any person, so don’t hold me to the moral standings or actions of these people or anime characters… I just find aspects that I glimpsed as inspiring, beautiful, or badass to me.
How did you discover and then start performing in drag?
My roommate showed me Season 3 of Drag Race. I specifically locked on to Manila Luzon, who was the one queen who somewhat looked like me. That’s such a gateway, right? To be able to see yourself? Thankfully at the time Manila, had a iMovie makeup tutorial that she filmed at her grandpa’s place in the Bronx that I watched over and over to learn how to paint myself. I was working at Ulta at the time, so that summer I dropped like $400 bucks in makeup and would beat my face until 2am on a Wednesday night with nowhere to go but Chatroulette. And what happens on Chatroulette stays between me and whatever data server in Arizona that’s depriving a community of fresh water.
You were known first as Pearl Harbor before becoming The Illustrious Pearl! What inspired that “name journey?”
True ones in Brooklyn who knew me can still call me the ol’ PH. But really, Pearl Harbor was born out of a lot of what I felt was an ambient, ever-present low grade anti-Asian environment that I grew up in in Virginia. And I’m speaking as an East Asian, but sinophobia is very quiet and sneaky always–the ideas that are casually inserted into casual conversation. Most people saw my race / my face before they saw me. This is part of the idea in Asian American studies called the Perpetual Foreigner, as in however much you naturalize or assimilate, people will always see that face and label you The Other. And if you’re lucky, I guess you get a month where people give you opportunities to be highlighted and work? As if I don’t pay my bills the other 11 months. It’s pretty dehumanizing actually, and if you point it out, you don’t get fed. White supremacy is nasty work!
So yes, Pearl Harbor was born out of an assertion against that. And through her, much of my rage transmuted into fierceness and joy and liberation. She’s always in me, Miss Harbor, my Scorpio. But, I changed my name to The Illustrious Pearl after many years in NYC meeting other Asian Americans, particularly Japanese Americans whose histories are very painfully tied to that event. If you study Asian American history, you can draw a direct line from that attack to, of course, Japanese internment / concentration camps, to very formation of Asian American identity as an idea. Because think about it–why should various Asian ethnicities in diaspora band together when the very countries they come from have colonized each other? Plundered each other? Simple: because, inspired by the African American civil rights movement, we are stronger together than against each other. We have more to gain together when we support and fight for each other.
Anyways, have you ever tried to get some sloshed girlina to spell “Illustrious” in the back of Boom Boom Pow Brooklyn bar? Impossible.
Switch n’ Play is a well-known performance troupe here in NYC that you shouted out above. They were originally a drag king troupe, but now represent a larger gender expression and multiple drag aesthetic / performance styles. They are also known for having these very structured, well-produced shows that you don’t often find in the messy bar scene! How did you become a part of them, and how might you describe what makes a SnP show so unique and special?
If I close my eyes and say three times “There’s no place like Switch n’ Play, There’s no place like Switch n’ Play…” I am transported to the most beautiful drag and burlesque in the city. It is Saturday night at Littlefield. You look onstage and you see the gamut of the cosmos represented onstage: diasporic divas, smoldering kings, burlesque baddies, concept queens, high femme dykes, Kermit and Miss Piggy, cis male straggots, billowing boylesque silks, Divine with a pocketknife, a human bagel, a kinky dentist, several monks and priests, a femme hottie who is also a tree, a six-titted Lovecraftian demon, generations of eternal vampires of all genders, an empty stage with just a cart and a silver bowl on it, a high kicking ballerina powerhouse in full fetish gear, that same ballerina pulling a french fry out of their foreskin and eating it, a rat, dueting aunties at the Christmas affair, a Chippendales audition, and dollars, eternal dollars raining down…
You’re known for incorporating multimedia into your drag numbers, and often tell stories with your costumes, song choices and movement onstage and on screen. Was that always part of your drag experience? And do you ever, or are you tempted to, just come out onstage and do a basic Britney Bitch number, lol?
When my parents and I were put under deportation proceedings, I began to make art about that experience. I’m a poet by training (whatever that means), and when you receive the legalese of deportation it really is a language attack upon your senses. You’re holding reams of paper in your hand that tells you in all supreme terms that you don’t belong. The history of your unbelonging is enumerated in bullet points, I shit you not. Language on paper then felt dangerous to me, which is a problem if you’re a poet trying to write a book. So I stared putting language into my video projections, and it just went from there honestly. I put ephemeral language into my works talking about anything and everything. My “Memory” piece really solidified it for me, and that was also at Sasha’s Nightgowns.
But yes, my first drag number ever was “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” I had a red caramel shake-n-go and my roommate’s denim jumpsuit with cotton Christmas tree skirting stuffed in the ass. I felt it that day…to be basic is to be free.
When Covid lockdown happened, it was of course devastating across the board. But while all the other girls were figuring out how to make jumping off their couch on Facebook Live interesting to stay in the game, I wonder if your multimedia background actually enabled you to thrive in that environment… maybe it even inspired or creatively elevated you?
Oh… I love the art of online performance. As much as those days were a nightmare, I love that we had drag in our hearts and homes. One of the most nervewracking feelings is doing a drag performance truly live on Instagram Live, which is weird because you are more or less alone with maybe one friend holding a camera. I would spend all day transforming my apartment into a set.There were rooftops excursions involved, bathtub dunks, burlesquey shadow art, Hans Zimmer B-roll, sentimental singalongs…
I remember doing this beautiful very early one group class drag act with Alexander Chee where like 30 people were performing Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” together. It was a moment where many possibilities opened as doors literally shut. Someone–not I, who is bad at emails–should compile an exhibit of Digital Drag. I would sit and watch that for at least 20 hours.
You’ve always fit in well perfectly with Sasha Velour’s epic Nightgowns multimedia drag revues, which exhibit peak drag and technical artistry. What’s it like to do Nightgowns and interact with Sasha?
Oh, it is a distinct pleasure and honor to perform at Nightgowns. Sasha puts in so much care curating and producing the show. It’s fierce to have a personal mirror, a table where you can lay out your jewels, steamers and hangers, ample space in the green room, and dedicated time to tech and rehearse. For Nightgowns, we had communicated what acts I would do, but it was during the tech and rehearsal process that we figured out where to set my homemade props, what would look most visually compelling where, and what is the video poetry doing in the background while I am striking a backbend.
When she asked me to perform on the lineup with Sasha Colby, Kevin Aviance, and King Molasses, I was gobsmacked (which is a Victorian way of saying gagged and gooped). I did a double-take, and I emailed back “Me??!” But Sasha, said absolutely, it is YOU, and thus I remembered that I am that multimedia rotisserie-shredding twirling poem tai-chi sword diva!!!
Do you have a particular number you did, or any experience that happened to you while performing, that makes you think today “I can’t believe that happened?”
You know, thankfully no true disaster has struck during a number, but a few before, yes. I’ll tell you one.
Very early in my drag career, I did Lynchburg Pride in Virginia, home of Jerry Falwell. It was their first Pride ever, I believe, and it was set in the basement of what looked like a bank converted into a restaurant. I might be wrong, so please correct me divas if I’m lying. But this part is FACT: our dressing room was in the back storage of the restaurant’s kitchen, and I had set my long black synthetic wig, styrofoam block and all, on top of a tall metal tank so that it would be ready for my second number.
Literally two minutes before I am called to do my second act, (a strippy draglesque number to “The Power of Love”), I am changing and I reach for the wig block and notice in horror that half of the Styrofoam face is melted off. I had set my hair on the kitchen boiler where the heat had slowly shriveled up one half the diva’s 28” midback soft wave and melted the hairs into a CRUNCHY, Brittle Orphan Annie parking lot asphalt. It looked like a rat had died and donated its body to science. It was giving Harvey Dent, it was giving unionized shower drain detritus demanding rights! (I do support unions, by the way.) So, in a stroke of baby drag divine intervention, I turned the wig sideways, FLIPPED all the remaining unburnt long hairs over the black Brillo rat’s nest glommed onto that poor hat and used the tragedy as volume for the passable amounts of hair that was left. Lynchburg lived that day, but I had merely survived…
Do you have any interest in being cast on RuPaul’s Drag Race someday?
Honest to God, I’ve completed the application process once and heard nothing. It was during Covid lockdown, and take it with a grain of salt from my unemployed ass, it was the hardest process I’ve ever had to go through. And Obama tried to deport me once, so I’m not joking, girl.
Anyways, I was very lucky that in our small pods, I still had the help of my drag family K James and Miss Malice and camera extraordinaire Mettie Owstrowski. Wild thing was though, when I was editing the footage, January 6th happened. I was gagging over myself and then I looked at Twitter and was like, “What the fuck? They are doing shaman drag at the Capitol!” You know, there’s always someone fiercer than you.
In this month before Pride, you’ve got a lot of cool gigs coming up. First up, hot off the press: you’ll be partaking in “Bottom Behavior,” described as a “Queer Reading Thing” at Oberon on Tuesday the 19th!
I’ll be reading for the Performance / Reading series at Oberon hosted by Heather Glynis and Josh Bondi. I’ll be reading with Penny Arcade, Courtney Bush, Jake Cornell, Shawn Escarcigq, and Annie Lou Martin! The reading is called “Bottom Behavior” so I think I’m being booked as an Ally.
Then it’s the return Switch n’ Play’s monthly show at Littlefield in Brooklyn on the 23rd. This edition is paying tribute to the world of film. You’ll also be performing for the afterparty at Littlefield’s Parklife bar. What can we expect from this particular show, and how have you enjoyed the Littlefield experience overall?
Our Switch n’ Play shows at Littlefield are a bright blessing in my life, and in the lives of our community who has been following our shows for over 10 years now! I am so lucky that I get to be part of a monthly that has great lighting, great sound, meaningful Covid safety precautions, and is accessible for our audiences. The dog in me is lazy, and I cannot scrap for bar gigs anymore… as much as I love performing in the circle. I am constantly in admiration of the younger generation who have such drive to get onstage and who go out there to make their own shows…
Switch n’ Press PLAY” is really important for us. Surprise, surprise, queers love film. Queers need film to affirm their vision of another world being possible. Sets and shots that are fabulous, that have beauty and color and intention; characters that are wicked and weird and not straitlace. Film is a waking dream, and most drag performers are daydreamers hoping to step into the glory or glitz or camp of any given frame they see.
You will see glamor. You will tribute and triumph. You will probably see a titty (tasseled). I will be taking on Ti West’s Pearl as Pearl. I’m a star, I’m a STARRRR!!!! (that’s all I’ll say on that).
Speaking of film, on May 28th you’ll be at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg with Nostalgia and friends, where you will be serving pre-shows and offering commentary to a screening of horror classic House of Wax! Are you a fan of this film, and classic cheesy horror in general?
I have never seen this film, but I do love horror. I love something psychological, I enjoy zombies, I LOVE J-horror. Slashers are hit and miss for me, but I am very excited to do this number. I’m busting out my latex gown for this and learning perhaps the hardest lip sync I’ve ever attempted… It’s in French and by a certain Mona Lisa…
In terms of cheesy horror I could watch anytime–throw on any dumb found footage and/or first person film and I’m in. (SPOILER for Unfriended: I still can’t believe all of that happened cuz she shat her pants. Iconic story writing.) Some of my fave horror films: Cube, REC, Lake Mungo, Ringu, Saiko! The Large Family, 28 Days Later, Pearl (if that counts). I’m sure I’m missing many, but these come to mind.
Then on the 29th, you’ll be part of a fantastic drag and burlesque cast at Talon Bar where Crystal Sword presents a geektastic launch of a “1980s Sword & Sorcery” dance party! What’s this night gonna be like?
It’s gonna be 80’s nerdy glam… It’s gonna be a party and I’m fantasizing about a cosplay… Rogue? Cheetarah? Whatever I find in my drag closet the morning of? Haha, but seriously, I am excited to perform for Crystal Sword… I love DnD. Though, I’ve only played once, my non-violent unbladed dwarf cleric (he/him) is fierce and did save the entire party from a pack of wolves in the valleys by climbing a boulder and casting his net on those dogs. If you’re looking for a noobie to join your party, let me know! I’m unemployed!
What else is coming up for you in May, Pride Month or beyond as far as gigs and special projects go, or is there anything else at all you want to mention?
As for as gigs in June, I am still solidifying them. But of course, we have our Switch n’ Play Pride show June 23 at Littlefield which will be thrilling. I believe I will also be at Brooklyn Pride June 13 or 14 on the Branded Saloon stage outside, and possible at Red Hook Pride on June 7th.
I turned down the Queer Mixer at a Museum of Chinese in America gig on June 18th because of their association with the Chinatown megajail, their board’s association with the shuttering of Jing Fong, and also the dismissive way in which they’ve addressed the years of work that community activists [have accomplished]. It was hard to say no, because I’m getting older and the gigs don’t come as often, but I could never bear to betray my community like this. As much as I love MOCA and how they fed my mind when I first moved to New York, I can’t stand to see where they stand now diametrically opposed to community dialogue.
And a reminder, PRIDE WAS A RIOT. Keep your morals, they’ll last longer. That being said, I will miss the cash. If you’re looking for someone seasoned, smart, and full of heart, hit me up!
And finally: what is the most essential item in your drag bag, cosmetic or otherwise?
Lashes: the jazz hands of the eyes.
Thanks, Pearl!
Check Thotyssey’s calendar for The Illustrious Pearl’s upcoming appearances, and follow them on Instagram and LinkTree.
Thotyssey 