Long before the cameras, the mansion, and the crown, I was a kid falling in love with an art form most of the world only saw from a distance.

His name was Curtis, and his drag name was Shana Nicole. Curtis was a five foot four gay man with a hearing disability who contracted HIV during the AIDS epidemic and lived on disability and Section 8 housing. By every measure the world likes to use, he had been handed almost nothing. He became one of the most important teachers of my life.

The first time I visited his home, it sat in a mobile park that, from the outside, looked like it had been forgotten. But his house was painted a perfect white, with a beautiful yard and a fence he kept immaculate, and when you walked through the door it felt like stepping into a castle. Curtis taught me that it is not about the cards you are dealt, it is about what you do with them. Life, he said, is only ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent what you do with it.

Shana Nicole was Curtis's second chance at life, and I have come to believe that is what this art form is for so many who practice it. When you belong to a community that the world, or the political climate of the moment, is actively trying to erase, creating a character becomes a kind of second birth. It is a self you get to build on purpose, someone who is celebrated instead of hidden, someone you finally get to make right. The world had spent years making Curtis feel invisible, so when he built her, he made her a force who never took no for an answer. The moment she stepped on a stage, every eye in the room was on her. She was undeniably one of the greatest queens I have ever seen, a true cultivator and pioneer of this art form.

I grew up in a small, tight-knit, very conservative town, where people bullied me simply because I wanted to be a performer and I loved the arts. Shana Nicole taught me to stand up for myself and to never accept no as an answer. She taught me that if a door will not open, you kick it down, and that there is always a way.

That is the spirit I carried into Pageant Queens. Drag has quietly shaped the culture we all live in, the makeup techniques that go viral, the choreography on the biggest stages, the fashion and the fearlessness in mainstream pop culture. So much of it traces straight back to these performers, and the spotlight almost never turns back to where the inspiration came from. I built this show to change that, to shine a light on the queens whose artistry the world has been borrowing from for decades, and to give them the stage, the respect, and the story they have earned.