“I usually describe myself as a sexy clown.” This is not so much of a personal statement as it is a job description. Ben Felag ‘18 is a drag queen. Off-stage, he works a full-time day job. But on-stage, he is a drag queen, and she goes by SemiSweet. Felag notes that he got his start while still a student in URI’s College of Arts & Sciences (A&S). When he was a junior at URI, a friend convinced him to sign up for a drag show one Friday night. He had the opportunity to meet real performers and go to open stage shows — like an open mic night — and began performing himself. He now refers to himself as “URI’s ‘go to drag queen,’” and his involvement with doing drag has been dynamic. “I’ve been the host of the annual drag ball basically since I started drag,” he says. “I perform with burlesque and belly dancing troupes, but I’ve also hosted drag brunches, bingos, virtual drag shows, and charity events. I’ve raised thousands of dollars for several different charities benefitting a variety of communities.”

Felag notes that while his high school theatre background and interest in makeup, hair, and costuming helped culminate his talents to do drag, his English major prepared him in implicit but important ways. “I think the connections here are more vague in the sense that art can be so ambiguous,” he says. “More concretely it would be utilizing symbolism and motifs. Also, musical lyric are a form of poetry and I love combining two very different songs with similar themes in my mixes.” Like many students in A&S, Felag’s pursuit of an English major was not a set nor obvious path from the beginning. Thinking he wanted to be a business owner, he spent his first two years as a business major. “I began to fall in love with my English classes, and eventually I thought I wanted to be an English teacher,” he explains. As his career goals shifted, he graduated with a major in English and a minor in Education in 2018.

Reflecting on how those in his undergraduate community reacted to his start in drag, Felag notes that although the feedback was not negative, unfamiliarity with drag performance and its vibrant cultural history limited a larger sense of appreciation for it. “Drag is something that’s so unfamiliar to a lot of people, so when I started doing it, it’s not that people didn’t get it, but they didn’t get it. It wasn’t anything negative, just more like a nonchalant ‘Oh hey that’s cool,'” he says, noting that his most enthusiastic audience was found at URI’s Gender and Sexuality Center. Nevertheless, his understanding of drag as an art form speaks for itself as he remained committed to pursuing drag performance and has ambitions to increase his presence in the field. “I want to regularly host my own shows,” he says of his goals. “I’d love to eventually be able to transition to doing drag full time. I do have a full-time day job but I love doing drag so much.”

~Written by Sabrinna Fogarty ’22, philosophy and political science double major