Three Things I Love: Jazz, wine and drag: Perth’s favourite drag queen reveals her go-tos
By Emma Young
Each week, WAtoday reaches out to the Perth community to discover three things people love most about our coastal capital. Today we feature Cougar Morrison, a WA Academy of Performing Arts-trained Perth cabaret performer, comedian, drag queen and Drag Storytime presenter who has been crowned Entertainer of the Year at the WA Proud Awards, played the lead role in Crown Theatre’s Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical in 2021, and is a member of Fringe World favourite the Perth Cabaret Collective. This November, as Raine Square celebrates PrideFEST with a month of diversity-celebrating events, Cougar will appear at the Camp Night screening of Burlesque and the closing night screening of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for its 30th anniversary.
Cougar Morrison performs in Perth.Credit: Josie Nolan
First, I love Perth’s live music scene. COVID-19 made me appreciate how magic live music really is; it’s something we cannot possibly replicate digitally in the comfort of our home. I’ve been fortunate enough to work at many of our best venues, but I also love being in the audience – downstairs at Lyric Lane, the Rechabite, Freo Social, Ellington Jazz Club and Rosemount Hotel are some of our finest. We have such great live music techs in Perth; they specialise in making sure we sound as good as we possibly can, can adjust the levels for 14 instrumentalists at the same time, and they understand their venue better than anyone else to make sure everyone in the audience has the best experience, no matter where they are in the room. When I get to work with the Perth Cabaret Collective I remind the audience it’s really special that this performance is getting created here and now – it will never be quite the same twice.
Sittella, Swan Valley.
Second, I love where I grew up. The Swan Valley is such a beautiful pocket of the world, and my Mum and Dad still live there. When I go there, I find myself breathing deeper. I grew up surrounded by grapevines and horses – we didn’t own any, but our neighbours did – and with all the foodies in Perth it never made sense to me why people would harp on about great food and wine being down south. I’ve got nothing against the South West, but we have it all right here. It’s 30 minutes from the city, it’s beautiful and rural and green. I’ve also worked at a handful of the wineries and breweries as a teenager going through uni and many of the wineries down south have a sister winery in or purchase grapes from the Swan Valley. Wineries like Nikola, Sandalford, Lamont’s and Sittella all have or have had arrangements like that. My personal favourite is Lamont’s – very hidden, but it’s worth the trek to sit under the gum trees with a glass of wine. If you drink it in nature it’s better for your waistline, I feel.
Third, I’d be doing Perth a disservice not to mention our drag scene. It’s flourishing and booming. And I know why. You always hear that Perth is boring and isolated and no one tours here, but I also think that’s why drag has boomed because we have created our own hype, we need to be more exciting. In big cities there can be a more definitive style of drag, but in Perth with a smaller overall number by comparison, like maybe 60 as opposed to hundreds, the result is that most have a very varied style: for example, some dragons might specialise in being a dance drag artist, they might be camp, old school, club kid or conceptual. There is no rule and no correct way. And the exciting thing is that our drag and burlesque communities are merging and overlapping which makes perfect sense. We support each other and there are similar elements in costuming and makeup styles and similar audiences so we support each other and our communities get bigger as a result. If you want to check out some drag, try starting this week is the local drag competition Crown of the Court at Court Hotel, Perth. It’s free to attend, and it’s like watching a certain drag reality TV show but in real life and better, with eliminations, challenges and live judging. That happens from about 9pm on Wednesday nights for the next month. And thereafter Drag Factory will return and it’s free to attend every Wednesday at the Court from 9.30pm.
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