Oct 27, 20203 min read

KostaMUA will scare you pretty

KostaMUA comes to the drag world via theatre and makeup. After studying and performing music theatre professionally for far more years and he cares to admit, quite by accident he fell into the make up world. After studying and graduating from Makeup and Design school, Kosta immediately began working as a makeup artist in film & television and has been lucky enough to have worked on shows such as TITANS, UMBRELLA ACADEMY, SUITS (final episode), DARE ME, GINNY & GEORGIA, and others…

Using this new medium, Kosta is taking his drag persona, SheKosta Lott, and his love of character and design and marrying them into a make up tutorial and design brand on social media platforms. Follow and subscribe to KostaMUA on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook for Looks, clips and tutorials.

Who is your drag persona? How do they highlight or reveal parts of you in bigger and more dramatic ways?

Shekosta Lott is the one you’d see on stage. KostaMUA is for makeup related work. Both are mouthy, opinionated, brassy Broadway lovers. It’s something we have in common. Clearly. I mean, by that definition you’d have to wonder where the drag begins and I end?!

Does the idea of drag as therapeutic or being healing resonate with you? Why?

Drag has been a source of personal and professional growth. It’s given me the opportunity to embrace something beautiful, something bold, and something courageous about myself. It’s given me the voice to stand up and say, “I matter!”. I feel by allowing yourself the freedom to listen, learn, and explore the world around and within, you can only grow more rounded and happier. Shekosta Lott taught me a lot about myself and about how I interact with the world.

How important for your health and wellness is the act of playing?

I’m a structured person. Everything is planned and everything has its time. I am at my most uncomfortable when I don’t know who, what, when, why, where, and how … except my paints. I’ll sometimes come in with a full sketch or a plan… but I usually lose myself in the process and the next thing I know it’s 12 hours later and I haven’t taken a break. It’s in those hours where I’m happiest. Sometimes in the end there’s only a slight resemblance to the original sketch…but in almost every single case the paint is better than the sketch.

How can the drag community benefit from being more inclusive?

How could it hurt?! How could expanding the definition of something so definitively rooted in art, such as drag, be anything but a good thing?! I say let everyone do it. Let’s learn more about each other and bring in more art and more vision and more discussion. And to be frank, if you’re still holding onto some outdated notion that drag is only to be done by this type of person / should look like this / must be performed on a stage / etc… then you have some catching up to do.

How would you describe your make-up and fashion aesthetic in drag?

At the moment I’m really into using an element of beauty and macabre through a graphic/comic style. Skulls play a massive part in my drag at the moment…as do “creatures”. I love to combine drag, theatrical, illusion, and spfx makeups into my drag. Each look is something very personal and speaks to something in my life …and sometimes it’s just to show off (I mean, let’s get real).

What’s brought you the most joy working with the Drag Heals cast?

What a great group of people. Really. It was clear that they were genuinely invested in each other. The communication on that set was handled warmly and with respect. As a guest it made a big difference. We had open and honest conversations about some very charged terminology and it was handled in a safe and educated way. That’s true of both the cast and crew. It was one of my better guest experiences.

What do you hope the TV audience gets out of watching Drag Heals?

Drag is hard. Drag is personal. And raw… And messy…and funny and expensive and PAINFUL and loving and draining and uplifting and…

Hard. Drag is hard.