Breaking Glass Pictures has announced the release of “Workhorse Queen,” Professor Angela Washko‘s documentary that explores complexities of reality television’s impact on queer performance culture. The film will arrive on DVD and be available for rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Roku, and others on May 3, followed closely by the network premiere on Starz on June 1 for Pride Month.
Told from the perspective of the overlooked yet beloved Queen Mrs. Kasha Davis, “Workhorse Queen” focuses on the growing divide between members of a small town drag community – those who have been on television, and those who have not. The film world premiered at Slamdance, and went on to play numerous prestigious festivals, including ImageOut, where it won the coveted audience award, aGLIFF, Bentonville Film Festival, CinemaQ, Doc Edge, the American Film Festival where it took home Best Documentary, as well as the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and the Buffalo International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at both.
“In this cultural moment where drag queens are most visible in the competitive space of reality television, it’s important to remember that there are communities of drag queens doing meaningful, subversive, healing, and celebratory work in smaller towns – and that every drag queen who makes it to the television stage is a part of a longer lineage of queer activists and artists who paved the way for them”, said Washko. “This film celebrates generations of queer performers who have created space for drag in places that may have been otherwise unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ people. I am thankful that through distribution, the film will get to circulate widely – to the people in those small towns.”