Wig (2019)

In 1984, a group of tipsy drag queens stumbled out of the New York venue where they’d been performing and looked for a place to carry on the show. They ended up in Tompkins Square Park, singing and dancing for the people bedded down for the night on benches. A pretty unglamorous start, then, to one of the Big Apple’s most glam festivals – as every year thereafter, on Labour Day (the first Monday in September), some of the biggest names in drag put on a show in the park in an event that came to be known as Wigstock.

Wigstock’s glory days ended in 2001 when the administration of NY mayor Rudy Guiliani shifted the event across the river.

The festival was started by veteran artist Lady Bunny, but RuPaul was one of its early performers, and later stars have included the likes of Neil Patrick Harris, who was behind the festival’s revival in 2018. This documentary showcases the personalities and performances that inform the ways we understand queerness, art and identity today.