AIA Dallas’ Set the Stage is aimed at engaging PRIDE with using the design of the drag-stage as a means to bring awareness of the LGBTQ+ community.
WE-DESIGNS’ Design Approach
In designing a drag stage, our team was inspired by this wonderfully unique intersection of sumptuous and shambly, eleganza and edginess, formal and informal – that informs the history, culture, campness and charm of drag and its environments. To recognise and celebrate this, we have created TetraGlam: a fully modular, reusable, transformative, flat-packed stage solution. The interlocking ‘tetra blocks’ of the stage can be pieced together in many different iterations to accommodate and enhance any venue or configuration, from the grungiest gay bar to the most magnificent performance hall.
For performers and audiences, TetraGlam offers a glamorous purpose-built drag stage that is designed to become a harmonious part of any physical built space (the more unconventional the better, in fact!), while providing all the queenly amenities, including grippy carpeted surfaces for high heels or bodily impacts, elevated podium points for striking a pose for the crowd, and wind-blowing fans worthy of a Beyonce tour.
Customisable configurations can incorporate existing spatial obstacles in any venue (such as columns, elevation and barriers) into performance features of the stage. It is also intentionally designed to immerse audiences into the performance space itself, with ‘tetra blocks’ configured to ‘wrap around’ audience seating/standing areas, enhancing the interaction between queens and viewers which forms a key aspect of many drag experiences.
At a time when dedicated drag venues in the United States become increasingly politically targeted and vilified, we also wanted to explore the ways in which architecture and design can be a political instrument in subverting this. Our collective built environment can help to shoulder a responsibility in reclaiming space for drag culture and performance, both in and beyond its existing realms. Although deeply embodying the alternative history of drag spaces in fringe basements and bars, TetraGlam is also designed to extend drag into the world at large, unlimited by the confines of existing venues. With our glamorous ‘tetra blocks’, any space can (and should!) easily and elegantly become a fully-fledged drag stage; a public park, a museum, a restaurant, a country club, a ski slope, Dallas Museum of Art, or your family’s front yard.
Ironically, the exuberant legacy of drag was born from dingy, nondescript venues. In the tradition of queer nightlife, the physical rooms and stages that housed LGBTQ expression, artistic forms, visibility, and celebration have historically existed as ‘subversive’ environments; hidden, ramshackle, and clandestine, seen as dangerous and disreputable. But it has been in these fringe pockets that safety and joy in queer life could be nurtured and celebrated. Travel to any city the world over, ask around for the best drag show in town, and you will often be directed to an unexceptional – even shabby – bar, pub, event space, or the like, where the most theatrical and extravagant performances are put on by unbelievably talented queens on unexceptionally repurposed stages and sets.
Design Team:
Design Lead: Wendy W Fok
Creative Strategist: Lillian He
Design Assistants: Jessica Marquez, Lucy C. Liu
ClientAIA Dallas - Set the StageLocationDallas, TXYear2023Status Permitting | Design Development OrganizerAIA DallasTeam CreditsStructural Engineers: Turner Engineering Group
