Burmese Drag Artist Emi Grate Discusses Myanmar Military Coup — And Getting Naked At Bushwig

The Brooklyn-based drag artist and activist discusses avant-gardism, political atrocities, and family drama in this interview with Eric Shorey.

Emi Grate: God or Monster? This is precisely the question a bizarre and anonymous Instagram account has been asking since suddenly appearing online earlier this week.

Emi, a drag artist and activist with nearly a decade of experience on the scene, is about to celebrate yet another anniversary of the invention of her hyper-political alter ego. She has been terrorizing the Brooklyn drag scene (including the Mx. Nobody Pageant) with her unique brand of self-described “Chaotic Evil” for a while — and she’s snatched a few trophies along the way, including the illustrious title of Mrs. BK in 2018. As a founder of A+, The Pan Asian Drag Revue, Emi has been showcasing queer Asian talent, at first in New York City, and then around the globe when her shows went digital in the pandemic.

Emi’s drag wavers between confrontational and classical, often pushing the limits of drag itself, while simultaneously respecting the traditions of the genre. But her role as a cultural ambassador of sorts has recently become more pronounced, as her home country of Myanmar (Burma) descended into chaos amidst violent political upheavals, Emi began explaining the complexities of the situation on social media.

We caught up with Emi to chat about the political realities of Asian-Americans, the high-brow aspects of drag, and her upcoming pageant, which — in true Emi Grate fashion — is a self-indulgent competition she’s throwing in her own honor.

ES: Hey Emi, thanks for taking the time to chat with us.

You’ve been very open on social media about the situation your family and people have found themselves in with regards to the military coup in Burma. How are they doing? What is going on there right now?

EG: Honestly, if you asked me how my parents are, the answer is: I don’t know, and to a certain extent I don’t want to. I think they prefer it that way as well. The less communication there is between me and my parents — technically, I’m a fugitive and my parents are medical workers, which is a social class and profession that everyone listens to. People might not follow through with medical advice, but they do listen when the doctors speak. Medical professionals are the people who started the civil disobedience movement. The main idea was: you need us to work during the pandemic — if we walk out, the country collapses. And they did, and the country did [collapse]. But the military leaders have not relented.

So given their social status, it’s dangerous for my parents to be communicating with me and my sister in the United States. I don’t want to put them in danger. My sister is wrapping up her graduate studies and her studies are getting intense. I’m struggling, because I’m the biggest baby. We try to not update each other about what’s going on — but also we want to stay in touch. So it’s a weird dynamic.

In terms of what’s happening in Burma: yet another military coup — but it’s been compounded by the fact that there is a global pandemic going on. Everybody from every walk of life is revolting, but somehow the cult of personality within the military is extremely strong. 

ES: That is so fucking scary.

EG: It’s scary. But the change right now is that Aung San Suu Kyi — who has a cult of personality from the democracy side — she has been absent from the picture all through the revolution and the people have kept going. Which is new!

I don’t have an official status in the country. I don’t even have an adult ID from Burma. I have my ID from when I was 12. I never got my ID after I turned 18. But being a homosexual, and transsexual, and a transgender person — I am illegal in the country. I have been very public as a drag artist in the United States, which is my case for applying for asylum in the United States. I am now eligible for a green card, but I haven’t started the application yet because it’s more than $1200 just to apply. And I’m only halfway through a journey towards citizenship.

There’s a new law that the military introduced: anyone who criticizes the military can be arrested for slander, basically. A lot of local celebrities are on that list. I’m not on that list, I don’t think I’m famous enough.

ES: Were you exposed to drag when you were over there? What were your first experiences of seeing or becoming aware of drag?

EG: It happened in the cultural hub of Iowa City, Iowa. It did not happen in Southeast Asia. My first encounter with drag was a sociology class on gender diversity. I had to read about it before I saw it. There were some references to iconic drag performances. I was like, “What is this?!” I looked it up and that’s how I found [the video of] Tandi Iman Dupree dropping out of the ceiling into a split as Wonder Woman.

My first show that I saw was the Iowa City drag kings. So drag was never about female impersonation or female illusion. There was no concept of “you have to be a woman” or “you have to be a man.” I didn’t have any attachment to any of that. I came at it through books, so to me, drag is gender illusion — from the very first moment it was that.

My first drag queen was Pandora Boxx. I think she did a kind of unremarkable performance of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” I remember her not moving a lot. I thought, well, she looks gorgeous. Why isn’t she moving? I didn’t know anything about RuPaul’s Drag Race [at the time].

[Before coming to the United States] I knew of crossdressers. I knew that they were a social class that we don’t interact with. That’s all I knew about gender non-conformity.

Photo by Joey Sun

ES: Who were the first drag artists that inspired you?

EG: I saw videos of Detox, Willam, and Vicky Vox around the time of the Chik-fil-A song, when they were first getting attention for donating to anti-gay groups. I guess that song was camp? But camp wasn’t in my vocabulary yet. So I I guess I understood [drag] as something ridiculous, and something to do with gender. 

I took on the name Emi Grate way before I started performing. While taking that class, one of my classmates asked, ‘What would your stage name be?’ and since then, it would be Emi Grate. This was Fall 2012, Spring 2013-ish.

ES: Obviously your name is a pun on emigration, but do you see your drag as an expression of the experience of emigrating?

EG: This would speak to my sense of self and ego: I kind of see migration as a segment of my drag rather than my drag being a segment of migrant culture?

When I took on the name I wasn’t just thinking about migration, it just fit in with a certain narrative; it's the most prominent part of who I am. When I thought of the name, I had already moved countries, and I was thinking about switching schools. When I thought about drag, I thought of it as a move away from assigned gender. It goes back to the most basic meaning of the word emigrate: You leave your home or comfort zone in search of new and better things elsewhere. The country aspect of it disappeared with that understanding.

ES: Moving away from masculinity to femininity.

EG: Yes! I think the migration story does come into play as well. Even though I work with a lot of migrants, I can only tell my story. It’s something that comes through a lot in A+.

The main narratives of A+ are of people who migrated themselves — especially me and Sina — and everybody else, whose parents or grandparents migrated here. So for people like me and Sina, our migrant experience is very much, like, I am in this new and strange place. I don’t quite enjoy it, but also it’s comfortable. In some ways, it feels like an upgrade. But we both know that don’t belong here. And we’re kind of OK with it, but we’d rather associate more with the old country.

For second generation or third generation immigrants, their narrative is: We were born here, this is all we’ve ever know — why can’t we be of this land?

In terms of my own experience and my drag: it would mostly be about curating a space for other people to speak about their stories.

Photo by Joey Sun

ES: Do you think your drag says something about being a migrant?

EG: Yeah! There’s a number that I do where I lip sync to the poem “Invictus” [by William Ernest Henley] and then it turns into a verse from “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” — but the second track is actually from the most recent Godzilla soundtrack, because they use a version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” [in that movie]. The little speech I give before that number is: “This is how I personally define being queer and being a migrant: it means having all odds stacked against you and yet, making it work.”

ES: I wanted to talk about my favorite performance of yours, which is 4’33”. What inspired that? How did you create it? What does it mean to you? What is the symbolism behind it?

EG: The idea [for that performance] came around towards the Spring of 2017, around when RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 aired. Two very memorable moments from that season were: Charlie Hides refusing to participate during her Lip Sync For Your Life and Valentina refusing to take her mask off during hers, because she didn’t know her words. 

As we were approaching Mx. Nobody, I was thinking about what would it mean to perform but not actually lip sync or sing? And I found John Cage’s piece was written with that kind of idea, but in my understanding his was more about found sound. I was looking at it more from the perspective of a performer.

When I first performed the number, [after four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence] the closing line I flashed on the screen behind me read was “White Silence Is Violence.” I thought that was the right thing to say, but in retrospect, it does not make that much sense.

I’ve since updated it to reflect something more appropriate and something which I believe is more true to the original intent. It’s more about the expectation on artists to entertain. As a minority person in this country, there’s an expectation that I should be entertaining, and that I should educate, and that I should explain — and then still be invalidated. As an oppressed person, I don’t have to entertain or educate. 

ES: It was your way of saying, “I literally don’t have to entertain you.”

EG: I don’t have to! I literally don’t have to do anything for you.

ES: I loved that piece because it also seemed like a commentary on the John Cage piece itself. 

EG: It’s very forced! This is something I experienced in college: I sat at tables with a lot of straight white boys, and they’d come up with a lot of hypothetical art ideas, and they’d talk for hours and hours. None of it made any sense. John Cage is someone who had a thought like that and had the audacity to put it on stage instead of just talking about it. 

But John Cage is queer, so, I’ll take it.

ES: It made me think of how when a white person does something that’s thought of as avant-garde — to a lot of non-white people, it must just look fucking stupid.

In what ways does avant-gardism have a role in drag? Do you think drag can be avant-garde? Should it be avant-garde? Drag has a reputation for being a very low-brow art form, but I think you’re someone who is really pushing it towards the high-brow. Do you have thoughts about that?

EG: Yes and no. I tend to think of drag more in terms of old school and new school. I don’t necessarily think of avant-garde as a thing I aspire to, it just sometimes happens. In my mind, my definition of drag is: using gender as a medium. We live in a world where everything and everyone is aggressively gendered. And therefore, anything can be drag and anyone can do drag. But what we associate drag with is usually markers of gender: makeup, hair, body, genitalia, sexuality, fashion. 

So avant-gardism just comes in when you deviate from the things I listed, I guess. 

ES: Like instead of playing with music, you play with silence.

EG: Right.

ES: What’s your favorite performance you’ve ever done? 

EG: I would say Bushwig 2018 when I performed “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion. I stripped full-frontal, bush out.

I came up with it for an Asian sex party that I worked. But nobody was having sex. Everyone was just dancing because we’re a repressed people like that. There was a back room that nobody was using.

I was talking with Sina and she was saying, “You’re booked for a sex party, there’s an opportunity for you to explore sexuality and being sexy!”

I was kind of going through a period where I was feeling unloved and also undeserving, in terms of dating. When I try to think of what to do next or what can I do that’s new, I tend to go back to the oldest stuff I know. 

My parents took me to see Titanic when I was 6 years old. All I remember was needing to pee every five or ten minutes because the AC was so cold. But Celine Dion has been in my life — always. So I listen to “My Heart Will Go On” and it talks about people leaving and holding on to memories. I thought about it on a very literal level. It mainly has to do with myself and my body and my mind. People come and go, and I have to live with myself and be OK with it. So I just decided to strip butt-ass naked to that song. 

The thrill of it was being on the Bushwig stage in primetime: I went after Alaska and before Patti Spliff. I think the number also works on different levels. The first level: it’s a pop song that everyone knows and loves. The second level: oh my god, she’s naked! The third level: the emotional message of it. You can kind of see why I was doing it.

ES: Tell me about the upcoming show you’re doing for you 7th anniversary.

EG: The upcoming Mx. Emi Grate pageant is a pageant where my friends will impersonate, satirize, and parody me using songs from my repertoire. 

ES: What’s the artistic intent behind the event?

EG: I wanted to have fun. I wanted to hang out with friends. I didn’t want to put that much effort into it. And I wanted it to be about me! That’s the simple and honest truth. Last year during the pandemic, I did my very first solo show for my 6th anniversary. Throughout my career, I feel that my drag and who I am is unwanted and unwelcome. I’ve had to attach myself to other people who of similar or higher caliber and then try to outshine them. I still have more videos that I have not released yet. I still could do another anthology show. But I wanted to hang out with friends and not work so hard. So that’s how the show came to be!

ES: You’re definitely showing off your drag family in this show. We’ve talked about this previously, how drag families actually mirror parts of a drag performer’s biological family situation, in some ways that are fortunate and other ways less fortunate. Can you talk a little bit about how drag reflects personal or emotional struggles?

EG: Well, my anniversary show is really, like, Mommy Issues The Drag Show. My mother is a huge part of the Emi Grate lore. She is wheelchair bound from polio and post-polio scoliosis. She was severely bullied throughout grade school. She and my dad are both doctors and they run a private practice. It’s not necessarily the happiest marriage and she is very attached to both me and my sister — and we’re far away. Her country is going through a coup. Even though she is a doctor she had to jump through hoops to get vaccinated and she was able to do it, but she recently tested positive for Covid. 

I have been trying to connect with her and relate to her. She thinks very highly of herself but is unhappy most of the time, I can tell. I also think very highly of myself and am often unhappy with my life. I have been trying to connect with her but she has a wall up. Maybe she doesn’t want to open up about her life struggles because I’m not a daughter. Perhaps she opens up to my sister more. Whenever I talk to her about my struggles with nightlife, dating life, work life, her usual response is: ‘Say a little prayer! Calm yourself! Meditate! This is just how life is, we’ll get through it.’ I tried to explain to her that I smoke weed every day just to be able to fall asleep, wake up, and go back to work again. How are you raw-dogging reality? It’s a very Asian woman approach: it doesn’t matter how you feel, it matters if you get the job done. For her, she’s a mother, she’s a doctor. She gets it done. Whether or not she’s happy, it doesn’t matter. 

I had a big cry when I had the realization about why and how I want to relate to her — and seeing how she refuses to. I also realized the reason I’m producing show is because my mother refuses to open up to me, but I want so desperately to open up to my friends, people who are junior to me, people I can mother. So, yeah. Mommy Issues The Drag Show.

ES: Do you think drag helps people work through issues?

EG: I think it is a reflection of issues people are facing, but how well it reflects those issues depends on the caliber of the artist. I don’t think drag helps you work through anything.

This is a conversation I have with [unintelligible screaming] frequently: drag is not therapy! People talk about how drag is therapy, art is therapy. But are you actively examining what’s wrong in your life and trying to fix it? Or did you just move your body to a pop song while you’re drunk?

Personally, I do believe drag is a space where you can pose questions and present answers. But you still have to do your homework at home.

Self portrait by Emi Grate

ES: You had talked to me about potentially doing a podcast in Burmese. Is that in the works still?

EG: I would like to, but I can’t dedicate any time or energy to it right now.

With the journalism surrounding the Burmese coup, we get things like, “The army burned down this village, this many people died.” It’s just numbers and names now. I think we need to figure out where to go next. The Burma bill does not have enough sponsors to advance yet. It has stronger sanctions targeting the army and not people or businesses. But we need to start talking more widely about what exactly are the things we want after this — and why! Personally, I am only able to tell my migrant story about having left home and wanting to return — and how I want to see drag in Burma. I think different people from the diaspora would have different things that they want from the future. There are different ethnic groups whose languages, histories, and cultures have not been represented at all in the country. I want people working on preserving those cultures to speak on a podcast, to a specific audience, rather than just posting on social media.

Tickets for the Mx. Emi Grate Pageant are available now.

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