April 22-28, 2004

mixpicks

Flawless Performance

Anyone in the Philadelphia drag, transgender and gay community with a sense of history or a need to know the community's roots (and I don't mean hair, honey) needs to meet native queen mum Jack Doroshow. Better known to old heads as Mother Flawless Sabrina, the now 64-year-old drag persona was producing balls and pageants along the dilapidated hoteliers' row of North Broad throughout the latter '50s -- creating a model, literally and figuratively, for how younger drag wannabes could live and dress -- a matronly figure for all drag doyennes to follow. This life of style wasn't a pose: It was a revolutionary stance, as radical as that of any of life's disenfranchised, whether they marched on Selma or danced in Oakland. Perhaps best known for her hosting of one of many of Manhattan's Town Hall drag balls -- captured in 1967 for the hilarious documentary, The Queen, which also stars Philly's own Harlow -- Doroshow moved to New York City in the late 1960s. There, shows like A Reading of Beads became sermons for drag's converted. Flawless comes home this week to star in Bead and to sign video copies of The Queen -- thanks to Hattie Hathaway (Pyramid Club, Jackie 60) and Needles Jones, loser of the 2003 Miss Philadelphia Pageant and the "Mistress of Hard Liquor Theater." Be there or don't be queer.

Mother Flawless Sabrina presents A Reading of Beads, Sun., April 25, 8 p.m., $7-$10, Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475.

—A.D. Amorosi