That
Dyke-in-a-Dress
Look
Originally
a homegrown Houstonian, openly gay comic Georgia
Ragsdale gets it on with Picasso, audiences,
tuxedos, the Old Plantation,
Maya Angelou, and more
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by
Blase DiStefano
This
interview with Georgia Ragsdale took place by phone
from Houston to Tampa, Florida, where Ragsdale was performing
her stand-up comedy. •Ragsdale has appeared on
hundreds of stages and completed hundreds of shows throughout
the world. She has appeared on Mo Gafney's Women
Aloud!, PBS's In the Life, and too many cable
shows to mention. She received Best Comic honors during
Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, and made history as
the first openly gay performer to sign a project development
deal with a major TV studio, for a sitcom with ABC in
1995. She even toured with her one-woman show Straight-up,
With a Twist! •Ragsdale will be in Houston
on Saturday, March 18 to entertain for the Human
Rights Campaign's Black-Tie Dinner, where Maya Angelou
will be the featured speaker. "I love performing
for an area in which I really know it," she says.
"There's nothing like knowing your audience."
•Ragsdale grew up in Houston and has made L.A.
her home for the past five years.
OutSmart:
I went on the Internet last night to see what I could
find out about you, and I saw that you made a film, Never
Met Picasso, which I'm sorry to say I've not seen.
Georgia Ragsdale: Well, sometimes I call it Never
Saw Picasso.
[Laughs]
I did see that it hit the festival circuit and that
it's out on video. I also saw that a critic said, "Ragsdale
is nothing less than a find."
Isn't that sweet? If only he'd been casting another
film…. I think the thing is—and this is just
an unfortunate reality of the motion picture industry—that
so much of your castiblility is based upon your type.
If you're a leading lady or an ingenue, then you can
much more easily fit into people's designs. And I am
just an odd duck. I'm just sort of in between all the
lines, but who knows, with age, things change, maybe
I'll find a niche for myself as I gain a little maturity.
So
how long have you been out?
Oh God. Well, I first came out at Kline High School,
in Houston, Texas. I'm like really going to date myself
here … in like 1979. But it was not a happy time.
I grew up in Houston, and then I went to SMU, oh my
God!, in Dallas, the only school where "I hate
you" is a compliment. "Oh my God, you look
so skinny. I hate you!" "Oh my God, I love
that shirt. I hate you!" And I escaped all of it,
and I just kept going.
Good
for you.
Yeah, really. In fact, in my show now, I talk about
coming out as a gay teenager. I say, "Well, I didn't
come out, my parents came in." And then I say that
all I could think of was I gotta get out of here. And
you think Where do the gay people live? And you don't
know when you're a kid, you just think New York City,
D.C., Atlanta, Miami, L.A., San Francisco. Pretty much
like God was looking at a map of the United States,
and God just went Gay people! Get to the sides!
[Laughs]
It's like we all just flock to the relative safety of
the big cities, from Kansas and all over.
Yeah,
I'm from Alexandria, Louisiana.
Oh, are you? Oh my God, I went to a wedding there.
No!
Yeah I did, and it was like a big event.
That
is a big event in Alexandria. If on an invitation
for a wedding, it reads "Formal Wear," what
do you wear?
I would probably wear either a very short black, groovy
kind of beaded dress, like a funky cocktail dress, or
if it had to be long, it would have to be really tight-fitting,
because I am not very tall, but I am thin, so I would
have to maximize that little attribute there.
Yes,
of course, of course. But you wouldn't consider wearing
a tuxedo?
I would not consider wearing a tuxedo under any circumstances.
Unless I was being paid to wear a tuxedo for an ad campaign
where Martina Navritalova was wearing a dress.
[Laughs]
So, you don't think you would look good in one?
I don't think.
I
bet you would.
I think men look good in them. I don't think a lot of
women look good in tuxedos. In fact, I have a whole
thing about this in my show, too. Kind of the discussion
of what do gay women do when they have to go to a black-tie
event. It just sends them into a frenzy. It's so confusing.
First of all, you have to decide if you're butch or
femme. And then if you do decide to wear a dress, then
sometimes you get that dyke-in-a-dress look, where your
shoulders are very enlarged, not considered anything
near the feminine ideal. And then what's your option
there?
I
think I sidetracked you when we were talking about you
and Houston. You said you grew up in Houston, but were
you born here?
I was actually born on a roadtrip to Houston.
[Laughs]
No you weren't.
Yes, I was born accidentally on a roadtrip south.
That
is so unbelievable.
Yeah, and I never stop moving, my mom likes to say.
She said, "Yeah, we were staying overnight at a
friend's house in Illinois and I went into labor that
night. And they never invited us back." So, I was
on a plane at three days old, cruising down to Houston.
We lived in various parts of town—I grew up in
Spring Branch in my elementary school days, and then
we moved out to the burbs where I went to Kline High
School.
So,
do you come back here often?
You know, I didn't come back for a real long time—there
were wounds. But my mom had some health problems and
started coming home to visit a lot, and then I got a
couple of shows at home. I actually recorded a video
at the Laff Stop. And it was just a great night, because
it was a real warm homecoming-type of crowd, and we
got great response for the video.
What
were some of the places you frequented when you were
living in Houston?
There are not many people living there now who will
remember this, but we used to go to this place called
the Old Plantation, the OP. I'll never forget the first
night my girlfriends took me there. The legal age was
18, but I was only 16, and I probably looked about 10.
It was all men, the most gorgeous collection of men
ever assembled. They were so friendly … now when
I look back on it, they must have been on drugs. And
then the House of Guys. I heard that place is still
going.
I
just went there last week.
They have built their business on people who did poppers.
[Laughs]
Now this is one of my favorite things to ask people‹if
you were stranded on a desert island and you could have
only one movie, do you have any idea what that might
be?
Wow, gosh. The Godfather has got to be one of
the greatest films of all time. And then I would want
something campy, that would always make me laugh, so
I would say What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Just something that would never stop amazing me; I would
always be looking for new nuances. But you could get
sick of Valley of the Dolls.
Yeah,
too much of a bad thing. Now you're still stranded on
that same desert island and you can only have one person
and this cannot be a lover, family, or friend…
Can it be a dog?
No!
I'm kidding. Wow, one person. Well, I would definitely
want it to be someone who could do a lot of hard labor.
I would want to be pampered—that would rule out
Jodie Foster; I have a feeling she's the one used to
being pampered. Gosh. Well, I know she's retired from
tennis, but that Gabriella Sabatini sure is attractive.
She's the Italian heartthrob tennis player. She's very
physically fit and all that.
So
Gabriella and you are on this island, and y'all live
happily ever after.
You can get me in trouble if this falls into the wrong
hands.
This
was what I was going to ask you next. So are you with
someone who might not appreciate what you just said?
Yeah. I've been dating someone since September.
Okay,
but to be fair, I did say it could not be a lover.
Absolutely, you ruled out lover.
I
ruled her out. I'm assuming it's a her.
Yes.
That
means all of your groupie fans are going to be disappointed.
Well, I don't know if there are any anymore.
What,
are you too old to have groupies?
I'm 38.
Do
you feel discriminated against very often?
Not certainly overtly. I think that discrimination comes
in with the audience, like a comic depends on reaching
the audience and identifying with the audience. And
sometimes the audience just doesn't really want to hear
from gay people. They don't really get it. They don't
understand why that's funny, or they feel threatened
and you have to work really hard to bring them around.
Sometimes that's not the case, people are just really
cool and they want to be there and they're very, very
into it.
But
if it's not a gay function, and you can tell it's not
a gay-friendly crowd, is it going to be one of those
nights where you just bomb?
It's not like you bomb. I mean, you can't have been
doing this for 10 years and just bomb. You can be doing
it three or four years and bomb, but after 10 years
you kind of figure out a way.
You
know how to work it.
Yeah. Sometimes your material just isn't as compelling
to some people as it is to others. People want for the
most part to have their own lives reflected in the comedy
that they go see. And that's why you get shows that
concentrate on African-American comics who draw the
black crowd, and that is how you get gay crowds.
So
you're no longer doing your one-woman show?
I'm just doing stand-up, and that's all I am performing
right now.
When
was the one-woman show?
I haven't worked on that in a while. I worked on that
in '98, and I performed it in L.A. at the Blank Theater
Company. I ran it there and got some good response and
got some things out of it. But as far as traveling and
stuff like that, it's so much easier to tour with stand-up
comedy, because you have no technical requirements,
just a light on your face and a microphone. You don't
need any sound cues, you don't need any special props
or scenery, you know, you're just ready to go.
So
you're ready to be here for the Human Rights Campaign's
black-tie dinner. And what do you plan to wear?
I'll be wearing something very blackish.
[Laughs]
Maybe even a black-beaded dress?
I might. We'll see if I can get into it. And if I can't
wear that, then I will be wearing the longer, tight,
clingy dress.
And
Maya Angelou is the featured speaker.
Maya Angelou, I am so excited. I really admire her.
In fact, I have been reading all of her books in preparation
to meeting her—even if all I do is introduce her,
I still want to have read all of her books. The life
that she's led is truly amazing, and people probably
only know the tip of the thimble of anything she's done.
If you would look more deeply she is really an incredibly
accomplished person.
You're
not exactly chopped liver. And I imagine you'll even
come up with a joke about Maya Angelou.
Oh yeah. I'll think of something.
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