♪ [upbeat]
Come on. Come on.
♪ ♪
Hi, I'm Charli Deville.
I am a drag king here in Montreal
but I was born and raised in Winnipeg,
and I'm known as Montreal's Premier Deadbeat Daddy.
Welcome to Manspread.
[cheers and applause]
Thanks for coming.
This is the first time I've ever done Justin Bieber
at this show. I know it's wild.
So today the theme of the show is like lesbianism.
[laughter]
Do we have any lesbians in the house?
[cheers]
Raise your hand or if you're, like, attracted to women.
Raise your hand!
Now raise your hand if you're
single or in an open relationship.
So this is who you're talking to at intermission.
Look around.
So I also am a computer programmer by day.
I'm a front-end web developer, so I make web sites.
Yeah. I feel like I have kind of
my day self and my night self.
They're both -- they're still very separate but
they're starting to kind of creep into each other.
I mean I wasn't ever like super shy
but I just kind of wasn't ever like an actor on my life.
I was kind of had a very passive experience.
♪ [cabaret]
I think, well Charlie,
he's given me a lot of confidence in my day to day.
I impersonate a man so much and I really try to get
into the mind-set of somebody who is like born,
raised, but not just like any man.
He's also like rich and famous and like, you know,
he's got like fans so
I try to keep that in my head into my day to day.
Producer:What is the crappiest part about being a drag king?
Getting your period.
While you have to do drag. It's awful.
[laughs]
Yeah. My goal is to bring drag kings into the mainstream
and I feel like
right now we're living in the Golden Age of drag.
There's drag everywhere, but it's the queens.
We see the queens all over the place and I think it's amazing.
But we don't see any kings and I think
it's no different from the world where, you know,
me every time I feel like I'm on a big stage it's like
we're not sure because off the bat it's like I don't know
if you're qualified.
So I need to like show that every single time
basically that I do belong.
I don't know. It's not surprising.
I work in a male-dominated industry in my day job and
I have always, so like
I think the same roles like it applies with drag as well.
What am I wearing?
Uh, these are my Calvins.
Very iconic for Justin Bieber.
Um, OK. Next part is this. Very important.
Pretty much immediately
gives me that big dick energy that I need to --
[laughs]
You got the lace front wig.
♪ ♪
And then basically he's here. So there you go.
So this is how to be Bieber.
All right. So you want to make sure that your
posture's really loose like you really don't care.
And then you want to rub your hands together like this.
Don't ask me why. I don't know.
♪ ♪
Yeah I just... my biggest challenge is
really like making masculinity interesting.
So I try to like take these guys that have a personality
or have comedy along with them or
just a very recognizable look.
Um, Justin Bieber is a worldwide celebrity.
So he's one that, you know,
he has everything like, he has ever-- he's perfect.
I'm so happy and I thank him all the time.
Thank you for your like being such a character.
[laughs]
But he is yet to return any of my messages, so.
We're going to Manspread, which is the only
drag king monthly show in the province of Quebec.
I've been producing it now& its been& we've had 13 episodes.
You know, people like different styles of drag.
And this shows them a really alternative style of drag
and it kind of puts them up on a pedestal.
So I'm very happy.
Out of all the things that I've done,
this show like makes me the proudest by far and
it's been like amazing to be able to
feel like I kind of shaped the
drag king community here in Montreal, you know?
[cheers and applause]
♪ ["Boyfriend" by Justin Bieber]
♪ if I was your boyfriend, I'd never let you go ♪
♪ I can take you places you ain't never been before ♪
♪ baby, take a chance or you'll never ever know ♪
♪ I got money in my hands that I'd really like to blow ♪
♪ swag, swag, swag, on you ♪
♪ chillin' by the fire while we eatin' fondue ♪
♪ I dunno about me but I know about you ♪
♪ so say hello to falsetto in three, two, swag ♪
Charli: I've had girls cry at me when I do him,
which is a whole experience like
I get to live this pop star
dream without having to actually
go through all the like,
horrible stuff that comes with it.
So that's amazing.
♪♪
We're blowing the doors off of gender.
Like, gender is not a thing anymore.
Gender's cancelled.
You can do drag king if you're male bodied,
you can do queen if you're female bodied.
You can do whatever you want.
As long as you're entertaining, do whatever you want.
And that's like what I have in my show.
The most contribution that I can do is
show people that the way that they present themselves
is valuable and, like, there is space for that.
♪ is it too late now to say sorry? ♪
♪ yeah, I know that I let you down ♪
♪ is it too late to say I'm sorry now? ♪
[cheers]
♪ I'm sorry ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'm sorry ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'm sorry ♪
♪ [dance]
[cheers]
♪ ♪
♪ [ends]