By Sierra Hunter
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Kristen Rudolph stood in front of her bathroom counter. Her makeup box sat to the side, containing a multitude of colors that couldn’t be contained within pans of eye shadow. The result closely resembles a child playing in paints.
But for the next three and a half hours, Rudolph’s makeup will be her war paint. She will be an entirely different person than the 5-foot-4 dirty blonde that tosses pizzas in the oven for a living.
Fans and judges alike have dubbed her “the lip-sync assassin,” because that’s how she’s sent her competitors home.
But Rudolph is “sweet” and “full of life,” said Bombalicious Eklaver, a Baltimore native and host of Drag Champion
Rudolph is a bio-queen. She is a biological female who performs in female drag. And the 23-year-old is making waves in the Maryland drag circuit. After just two years, her drag persona Alexa Thymia ranked sixth in Baltimore’s Drag Champion competition.
“She’s focused and followed critiques well,” Eklaver said. “She learned to embrace her talents more and was not afraid to use them throughout the competition.”
During drag competitions, participants are given one week to come up with a concept look, find music, and construct choreography based on the theme of the night.
“Whenever I’m thinking about something to perform, I always want to think of a character I want to recreate,” Rudolph said. “I think of songs that would relate to said character.”
Shows begin at 9:30 p.m. or 11 p.m., and can go as late as 2 a.m. This is a challenge for Rudolph, since she doesn’t have a driver’s license. Instead, she’s escorted to shows by her number one fan, her mother, Dianne Rudolph. Her daughter doesn’t talk much on these rides, she said.
“Kristen is usually focused on her songs with earbuds in, but I get excited for her,” she said. “Sometimes I talk, but I can tell she gets irritated.”
Rudolph learned about drag culture at age 15 while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race. She attended her first show at age 21. Later that year she met her first bio-queen, and learned that women can also participate in drag culture.
“At first, I was kind of hesitant because I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it,” Rudolph said. “But one thing I learned about drag is that it’s subjective.”
Rudolph decided to call herself Alexa Thymia, a derivation of the medical term Alexithymia. This is a condition in which someone has difficulty identifying and expressing emotion.
“When I was very young, I had a couple of learning disabilities and communication impairments,” Rudolph said. “So the only way I knew how to talk to people was by imitating what I saw on TV.”
Most of the shows that she watched as a child were cartoons, and she now models models many of her drag looks and performance based on favorite characters and styles.
“The thing about this impairment is that I know exactly how I feel in a moment, but there are many, many times where I can’t find how to describe it,” Rudolph said. “So with drag, it’s a lot easier to use costuming and dance to tell a story.”
Inspired by drag artists and musicians like Todrick Hall and Adore Delano, Rudolph is currently looking toward the future and seeing just how far she can push her talents.
“What I have in mind, I haven’t seen anybody else do,” Rudolph said. “I would love to become a drag musician. I want to be a figure where drag and live music can intersect.”