Anthony Hudson first created Carla Rossi, their drag character, in 2010. Dressed outlandishly, donning clown make up and full of panache, Carla started as an art project. Over time, the persona evolved into a full body of work and career for Hudson, now recognized as Portland’s premier drag clown.
“Over the last decade, Carla has become a tool for me to talk about the edge,” Hudson, who uses they/them/their pronouns, said last Thursday at a lecture at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, “about being mixed race and queer and living between race and gender, if you like to think of it as something you can be between.”
Hudson considers Carla a drag clown rather than a drag queen because they aren’t aiming to emulate women. Rather, Carla is about mixing the characteristics we use to signal gender — like clothing, body shape or speech patterns — and revealing gender as something constructed that we all perform.
On Feb. 19, Hudson presented “Drag Workshop for Ducks” at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, where they engaged the audience with questions about what drag is and where it came from. The following evening, Carla took over and presented a lecture titled “On Art, Camp, and Human Sacrifice.” Wearing fishnet stockings, a pencil skirt and a blonde wig originally designed for a Megyn Kelly impersonation, Carla purported to be an art expert and walked the audience through a farcical PowerPoint presentation.
Inept by design, the presentation poked fun at art theory with its slew of misspellings, fabricated facts and technical blunders. Afterwards, Hudson stepped out of the Carla persona — peeling off the eyelash extensions, removing the wig and wiping off the clown make-up — and talked to the audience as Anthony, discussing their journey through the world of drag.
Hudson grew up in the small town of Keizer, Oregon. Along with some friends, they started the first Gay Straight Alliance at McNary High School, a move that wasn’t well-received by the community. Parents threatened to picket the group and Hudson became the target of house eggings and death threats. “I lived a small town life,” Hudson said, “so I understand this sense of wanting to not be seen. When I’m not in drag, I’m just kind of camouflage.”
After graduating from McNary, Hudson moved to Portland where they attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art and discovered drag parties as “a way to express a side of myself that was never otherwise activated.” Hudson named their character Carla and began performing at bars and cabarets around Portland.
In 2014, Hudson created their first full-length caberet feature of Carla, “Carla Rossi Sings the End of the World,” which drops Carla into Nazi Germany. The performance charts similarities between the United States and the fall of Weimar Republic. Accompanied by Berlin theatre standards and dancing cabaret girls, it poses the question: Could that happen to us? Hudson’s next artistic challenge was to step away from the sense of protection Carla provided and perform without the costume, opening up their own life to the audience. They produced “Looking for Tiger Lily,” a solo show about growing up half-white, half-native and queer that ushered in more recognition and opportunities to perform outside of bars and parties.
In the workshop, Hudson discussed how Native American tribes across North America have acknowledged gender variance and often honored these “people who can walk between genders and outside of genders” as medicine people or shamans. The Navajos, for example, believed in five sexes, according to Hudson. Hudson also referenced “Sexing the Body,” a book by Anne Fausto-Sterling that builds a model of gender including five sexes based on intersexuality. “That belief goes back hundreds of thousands of years and then we have modern day science that is just catching up,” Hudson said.
To Hudson, this speaks to the idea that the gender binary only exists as a construct. “I like to do drag like this because I want people walking down the street seeing me like this to be as confused as I am about myself all the time,” they said. “I still don’t know where I lie. I still don’t know which box I fit into.”
Currently, Hudson continues to host their film series Queer Horror bimonthly at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. Their new piece, “Up Her Ass: A Love Story,” is inspired by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas and will play on March 12 at Reed College in Portland. “Looking for Tiger Lily,” a play based off of Hudson’s earlier solo act by the same name, will run May 2-31 at Portland Center Stage.
