- It's almost like I don't remember
who I was before I became Ana Masreya.
Because she cured and healed
so many things that I have been through,
I have experienced.
So she's definitely here to stay.
(upbeat music)
When I'm doing my makeup,
I put some incense for a nice smell and good vibes.
Ana Masreya mean I'm an Egyptian woman in Arabic.
I'm gonna give like elegant makeup today.
It's very earthy colors.
Everything is gonna be like brown, and like matte,
and I'm almost gonna give like a nude illusion.
I'm not gonna wear my pads or any like boobs,
I'm going with like my natural body.
I'm gonna give leg.
Before I started doing drag,
I was like reluctant to move my body in like certain ways.
I was always very aware of like my mannerisms and like,
if I was being too feminine or if I was looking too gay
or stuff like that.
But ever since I did drag,
I have a completely different relationship with myself
and with the way I allow myself to move.
I speak for myself,
but I also feel it's a very communal struggle
that is understood by queer Arabs and Muslims everywhere
from Egypt and beyond, okay?
I grew up very in the closet.
I didn't even wanna admit to myself that I was gay.
You know, in Egypt, there are very defined
rules of what it means to be a man
and what it means to be a woman.
And I felt like I had to prove my masculinity
to the people who doubted it.
I was captain of the wrestling team.
I was always so angry.
They don't tell you that you can be a boy
and you can play with Barbies,
or that you can be a boy and that you can put on makeup.
They don't let you think that that's okay.
Keep in mind, I'm not just a gay person or a queer person,
I'm an artist, you know what I mean?
And drag is my art and I always,
from when I was very young,
I think I had a lot of trouble with myself
because when I closed my eyes or when I was alone, you know,
in the shower or like in the bathroom,
there was this a woman in the mirror and she would perform.
I was her, or she was me, but just like an alter ego,
and I didn't understand that.
So first and foremost,
I had to understand that.
I had to understand what that meant.
(soft music)
And it's okay because your eyebrows are what?
Sisters, not twins.
These might be cousins actually, but we'll see.
We have sold a lot of tickets.
We're definitely gonna be a full house.
Queer Arab culture, you don't have very much of it.
Like this show and all my shows,
in the very beginning, it started off as like,
you know, queer Arabs who were coming,
and then it expanded beyond that.
And now there's like straight Arab men
who are coming to this drag show.
I tied the Arabness and the queerness,
and so now they're exposed to like a scene that before
they didn't know about or didn't have like any reference to.
Again, I just wish my face was already on
so I can go party, but I'm nowhere,
I need to probably start like speeding up a little bit.
Junior year of college,
I found out about a show called "RuPaul's Drag Race."
And I literally looked at it like this.
These are mostly men who are dressing up as women,
lip singing, putting on makeup,
feeling fabulous, wearing heels.
This is what I see inside,
and I've had never seen anything in the media
or anything on TV that was like that.
How come they can do it and I can't?
Queer Arabs and queer Egyptians are here too.
We are real, tangible, complex human beings
with many different aspects to our identities
and our who we are as people.
All of this was just the foundation.
Now I'm gonna start painting my face.
Are you ready?
All right.
Two big defining factors for me from 2020
where the Black Lives Matter movement
and the death of queer Egyptian activist, Sarah Hegazi.
And how me being a queer North African,
how do I speak up for my African American
or my African brothers and sisters?
How do I as a queer Arab speak up for people
like Sarah Hegazi when I, a lot of the times,
feel the same fears and the same anxieties
that she faced in her lifetime?
It's so difficult to exist as a queer Arab person
in the Arab world, even here.
It's difficult to exist as a queer person.
And I will say what I wanna say tonight
and every other night moving forward.
I had a very unique situation where I came out
in the New York Times on a very public scale.
Before that, you know,
I had started telling my friends very secretly
and like only people that I trusted that I was gay.
And, you know, I'm living in New York City now,
and I'm doing this drag show.
The amount of positivity and the positive response
that I received as a queer person,
everyone who I love has supported me, has backed me up,
has elevated me to like new levels of success.
And I really think that it has to do with the fact
that I showcased a bravery that terrified me for so long
that when I did that, it's like, oh, she did.
It's crazy, I'm like so tired
and still are gonna switch
personalities completely, you know?
- [Timmy] People in the back.
- Yeah (indistinct) just tell Leila
when people are coming in to tell her,
to tell them where the merch and the raffle tickets are.
- [Timmy] Okay, okay, I'll tell them.
- Okay?
Alrighty, bye.
My friends are amazing.
My friends have been the ones
who make all this happen really.
I started going to many more drag shows in real life
and seeing drag queens and being like this is so cool,
but I don't feel like it completes me.
I wanna see a performance by Haifa Wehbe.
I wanna see a performance by Nancy Ajram.
I wanna see a performance by Alyssa.
I wanna see the Arab women with the big curly hair
and the eyebrows and the polished and the,
I need to see the women that I saw on TV growing up.
And need to see (indistinct).
So now, I'm getting the queer aspect of things.
I'm exposed to those,
but it's still missing the Arabness
that's a huge part of my identity.
If I can't see it,
I need to make it exist here.
And that's sort of where everything
started to come together.
I'm so proud to be an Egyptian Muslim.
Ana Masreya puts together all the,
the struggles that I face as a queer person living in Egypt
and the beauty of everything that I love about Egypt
and Egyptian culture and Egyptian women
and Egyptian daunt and she puts them all together.
Seeing Ana Masreya in the mirror,
I felt like I was seeing a drag that speaks to me.
That I was giving myself permission to do all the things
that society taught me I couldn't do.
And I felt free and empowered and beautiful.
(chuckles)
I did not used to look like this, baby.
Yeah, just practice.
I used to do it a lot more in the beginning
when I was first starting drag, like it was like fun.
And I was like, oh my God, I wanna paint my face.
I used to come home from work every single day
and just like paint my face and it was so fun,
and that's how I learned how to do it.
But now it's like, now it's different
because it takes a lot of time,
and I need to look perfect.
Back then, I didn't care about looking perfect.
(upbeat music)
I made a (indistinct).
You like it?
Isn't she pretty?
And then I added all these feathers,
and they're gonna fly with this fan,
and I'm gonna put it on before the tape comes out.
Tape's coming out.
I hope she's not destroyed after tonight.
If I got her back home in one piece,
then that's great.
If not, I'll buy another one.
I want to bend the ideas of gender
that I was taught to believe we're so rigid.
I want to bend them,
I wanna break them, and I want to show
that I can express that woman that I saw inside of me
without anything being so binary and clipped and locked in.
Hey Leila. - [Leila] You look so good!
- Can I see, can I see?
I think I'm falling in love.
And then the fan and the feathers.
You see it?
(music plays)
Everything about my show,
I want it to feel like I am doing this
in the middle of the pyramids.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's authentically Egyptian.
It's produced by Egyptians.
It's worked on by Egyptians.
I miss my home and my country so much
that everything that I do is like a love owed to it.
Like, I can't believe that I left you,
but I left you so that I could be free.
And now, I'm doing everything that I'm doing
to prove my love for it
and to prove how much the country
and the culture means to me and how beautiful I find it.
It comes from such an innocent place.
All the songs that I perform in drag
are the songs that my mom would be playing in the car
while we're driving from Heliopolis to (indistinct)
or while we're driving from (indistinct).
I'm sitting next to her
and it was always the female artists.
I used to question why.
Why don't I resonate with these men artists
like I resonate with these women?
Don't get me wrong, I love the Hisham Abbases
and the Amr-Diabs of the world, I do, I really do,
but I always resonated more with the females.
And drag has allowed me to not question.
To just be.
To just allow.
'Cause this is the way it is.
This is the way I am.
I'm not bound by society's
definition of what I have to do.
Last time, my most recent show,
there was a friend of mine.
She stood up on stage.
She held the microphone in her hand and she said,
I am gay, I am Muslim, and I am Egyptian,
and I am no longer scared.
There are no words to express the beauty
of hearing something like that.
Because I know the pain
and the struggle of what it takes to say that.
And I'm the fact that I've curated a space
where people can feel free to be themselves
and to own their truths,
it's so overwhelmingly beautiful.
And I want people around the world to experience
that same beauty that we have curated here in New York.
(upbeat music)
(cheering)
(upbeat music)
Hello, everyone.
(cheering)
On a very quick note,
so I can stop holding my waist like this.
I just jumped off the stage and my corset ripped.
But it's okay, at least I can breathe now.
Guys, there are 10,000 rhinestones on my body.
(cheering)
Swarovski!
(cheering)
That I put on one by one.
(cheering)
My DJ is literally smoking shisha, that is iconic.
Ana Masreya saved my life in so many different ways.
(cheering)
I know that there are some of you out there
who may be curious or who may feel like
they want to try drag.
But you, here, in my space are allowed to be
whoever the you wanna be.
(cheering)
And I chose this.
I chose the life.
I chose,
to finally break free and just be myself
because enough was enough.
So is Ana Masreya gonna be around for five years?
Yes.
Is she gonna be around for 20 years?
Yes.
She gonna be around for 50 years?
Absolutely.
And Ana Masreya allowed me to let it all go.
(upbeat music)