We recently connected with Selena Vyle and have shared our conversation below.

Selena, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I have participated in many Fringe Festivals over the last decade and a half. But no production was as personal as the one I submitted to the Digital Fringe Festival in Toronto in 2021. We were still in lockdowns so the whole festival was moved online, which allowed us to bring video into the mix.

I wrote a visual album called Broken Hearted Girl.

The entire concept was dissecting my last three formative relationships in musical form. I wrote songs about falling deeply in love for the first time, and also about the darkness that surrounded the breakups. I sang about the panic attacks and depression that were brought on by my first big heartbreak.

Assembled a team of drag performers and over the course of one short month, I had poured my heart and soul into 9 original songs (composed by Kitty Creature), filmed 12 different one-shot videos around Toronto (filmed by Gei Ping Hohl) in locations that all held a different meaning to the each relationship, and my styling was done by Sapphire de Larreign.

It was the most honest and cathartic piece I had ever put together.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a multidisciplinary drag queen who combines her background in musical theatre and sketch and improv comedy, with her passion for hosting and political awareness. I host Canada’s longest running drag brunch in the world’s oldest queer bookstore (Glad Day Bookshop).

I am someone with a relatively new interest in politics and have chosen to take my responsibility as a community leader seriously. I take every opportunity to speak openly about what is happening around the world, and locally, and provide information as I learn it on how it affects us and how we can help.

I try to balance this with also making people laugh, feel seen, and feel good about themselves.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have pivoted several times over the years. I started out in musical theatre, but after about a decade, I fell out of love with the industry and people in it. I started taking classes at Second City and quickly met a group of people who were far more likeminded and had a wider scope of interests than those I was meeting in theatre. I also was driven by being able to use my own voice to create my own work.

A few years later, I accidentally started a whole business called Beyography, a dance class for all walks of life based on the choreography of Beyoncé. I happened to be studying her videos and friends were asking me to teach it to them, so I started running classes just for my friends when one day a blog found my facebook event and posted about it and suddenly overnight i was teaching 9 classes a week in 3 different cities. It was a whirlwind. The business caught national attention, putting my face in the Globe & Mail, CBC, Toronto Star, Global TV, you name it. I even flew to Vancouver to teach a couple of classes.

When I discovered drag, it was the beginning of the end of those classes. The fad was dying out, copycat classes were popping up everywhere, and Beyoncé’s no longer putting out new music videos. Plus, Formation had just come out and Beyoncé was pivoting into a more political and racial voice in her music, so it was clear it was time for me to end these classes.

Drag was starting to take over my life so I was able to now put all my energy into Selena Vyle.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me the most rewarding thing about my creative life is that I am having an impact on people’s lives without even realizing it. Some examples are:

A woman I know posted a whole series on instagram after coming to one of my shows, about how seeing me in drag made her really appreciate being a woman and the celebrating of femininity she felt from my performances.

During the lockdowns, I learned that me and my drag family had inadvertently helped someone quit hard drugs and go into recovery. Our drag podcast Squirrel Talk, had resonated with them and their tuning in weekly had a profoundly positive effect on them. I’ll still never know why, but I’m grateful to know we’ve had that impact on them. They are still sober today.

I recently had a father and son come to my brunch show. They are a family from Thornhill. They come from a deeply Zionist community. They loved the show, and came back the next week, where I learned that hearing me talk openly about Palestine to my audience had unlocked something in the father and he’s begun to do some unlearning. He messages me all the time on instagram now. The son had already started to do his own unlearning months prior, which was apparently unlocked from seeing my posts on instagram about the subject.

These three examples taught me that I’m making very deep impact on people’s lives, sometimes even without trying.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selenavyle/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@selenavyle292
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/selenavyle.bsky.social

Image Credits

Clap – Off Leash Studio

Puppets – Unknown

Jabot – Quinton Cruickshanks

Gown – Quinto Cruickshanks

Drag The Vote – Unknown

Red Dress – Blake Morrow