By day, Ed Popil worked as a telemarketer in Rochester, New York for 18 years. By night, he transformed into drag queen Mrs. Kasha Davis, a 1960’s era housewife trying to liberate herself from domestic toil through performing at night in secret – an homage to Ed’s mother. After seven years of auditioning to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ed Popil was finally cast onto the tv show and thrust into a full-time entertainment career at the late age of 44. WORKHORSE QUEEN explores the complexities of reality television’s impact on queer performance culture by focusing on the growing divide between members of a small town drag community – those who have been on television, and those who have not.
As a politically-engaged feminist media artist working in a variety of forms, Angela Washko is committed to telling complex and unconventional stories about the media we consume from unusual perspectives. Washko's artistic practice spans documentary film, performance art, digital works, video art, video games, and experimental journalism. A recent recipient of the Creative Capital Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Impact Award at Indiecade and the Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Washko’s practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times and more. Her projects have been presented internationally at venues including Museum of the Moving Image, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Milan Design Triennale, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Her documentary film, Workhorse Queen, has received the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Film at San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and Buffalo International Film Festival and the Audience Award for Documentary Film at American Film Festival (Wroclaw, Poland), Indy Film Fest, and ImageOut Rochester LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Angela Washko is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
