Q&A with Ms. Tang a.k.a Madam Thang on RuPaul's Drag Race

As art educators know, art comes in many different forms. The art of drag has been around for centuries but has recently become more popular due to mainstream shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, a drag queen competition reality show. Recently, a member of the art education community appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race and underwent a complete transformation—going from high-school art teacher, Ms. Tang, to drag queen, Madam Thang! SchoolArts is excited to share this Q&A with Ms. Tang about her experience.

How did you learn about this opportunity?
Ms. Tang: One of the producers actually reached out via Instagram. I have a public teacher Instagram account and they must have found my account while searching for teachers to interview. I legitimately thought it was a scam at first but the producer assured me that it wasn’t a scam. Within a few hours after that first message, I was on FaceTime call with two producers from the show. At this point I still didn’t know that the show was RuPaul’s Drag Race but by the end of the interview, I had a feeling of what was coming.

Can you share a specific moment from your time on the show that was especially meaningful to you?
MT: It’s actually the moment all of the world got to see. I don’t think I could have imagined how being paired with Mistress [Isabelle Brooks] would have affected me. Mistress and I bonded over our Latinx heritage as well as our experiences of being queer in Latinx families. Every single emotion that you see in those clips is 100% genuine.

What were your expectations compared to how it happened?
MT: My expectations did not match at all. I was half expecting to just go to set, film whatever it was that needed to be filmed, and then I would be done. I don’t think I could have imagined all the work that goes into producing and filming a show. The amount of hours that the queens dedicated to this was wild. The amount of work that the queens put into making the dresses and turning the teachers into drag queens was surreal. I’m so proud of the queens. I also couldn’t have imagined how respectful and loving the staff was towards the teachers; we were treated like literal queens!

What surprised you the most from this experience?
MT: I was most surprised by the amount of love and support that I received from around the world because of the show. Mistress was so very kind in sharing my teacher Instagram account, and for the first 48 hours, my phone would not stop buzzing. I was getting likes, follows, and messages from all around the world; even one of my tweets on Twitter went viral. I got messages from folks telling me that they loved seeing me on the show, telling me that they loved seeing an openly queer teacher in the classroom, that they wish they could have had a teacher like me when they were in school. But I think what was most surprising was the love and support that my students received through all the donations that I received because of Mistress. For nearly two weeks, my tiny little apartment was flooded with packages from Amazon filled with supplies for my students. I will forever be grateful for the opportunity that I was given.

What message would you like your students to take away after your appearance on the show?
MT: Don’t be afraid to do scary things. Don’t be afraid to live your authentic life. Don’t be afraid what others think of you. I lived too long being afraid, living unauthentically and being afraid of what the world thought of me. My mental health is so much better now that I’ve allowed myself to live my life the way that I want to.

What were some of the reactions you received from your students?
MT: They went wild. They immediately took to the internet to look me up. They found me everywhere. I was in articles, in YouTube videos, on Reddit, on Twitter. I was turned into memes, there was fan art done. My face was literally all over the internet, and they loved every minute of it.

RuPaul’s Drag Race brings self-expression and self-love to centerstage. Why are these themes also important in the art classroom, especially today?
MT: Those are two things that I teach in my classroom every single day. Art for me is that exactly, a way to express myself and to love myself. I want my students to be free to express themselves and to learn to love themselves, and we use art as a vehicle for those lessons. We are living in a world where our existence (queer or not) is being threatened. I want my students to believe that even with that threat, that they are important. That they matter. Every single student that I have had the pleasure of having in my classroom means the world to me and I want them to know that.