Ed Popil sashayed onto the stage at Blackfriars Theatre in a blue floral print dress  and a jet black wig styled in a flamboyant bouffant. The streaks of red blush across his cheekbones and the yellow pumps on his feet further accented his garish getup.

Then he took his seat on a giant purple throne flanked by books and dolls and toys, looking every bit the part of a queen holding court — a drag queen, that is.

“It’s Christmas,” Popil said. “It feels like everything we’ve been dreaming up as a team has come to life. It’s like a holiday.”

The dream Popil was living was the filming of four pilot episodes for a forthcoming children’s TV show called “Imagination Station with Mrs. Kasha Davis,” whose backers are looking to shop around at major streaming services such as HBO, Netflix, and Amazon.

The endeavor is a serious one. The creative team behind the project has raised $40,000 to date, money which has been used to pay for technicians, costumes, props, and builders who turned the Blackfriars stage into three set pieces for the filming in August.

Aside from the purple throne, there was the porch of a red-brick house with a white swing, and a 1960s-style kitchen, complete with blue trim to match Mrs. Kasha Davis’s blue dress.



Popil’s pitch for the show is straightforward: “Take ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse,’ and Mr. Rogers, and you’ve got ‘Imagination Station.’”

The show is the latest career move for Popil, 50, and his alter ego, Mrs. Kasha Davis, one of Rochester’s most prominent drag queens, whose appearance as a contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2015 propelled the character to international fame. Since the show, Mrs. Kasha Davis has traveled the world, released musical singles, and regularly performed in theaters and clubs and on television and in films.

One of her projects was “Children’s Storytime With Mrs. Kasha Davis,” a performance Popil developed for the 2017 Rochester Fringe Festival that was hosted by the Rochester Central Public Library. The show earned rave reviews, but also generated controversy for daring to have a drag queen read children’s stories to children.

But that was then.

The performance in part led to the development of “Drag Story Hour,” a live series of shows that ran at Blackfriars over the next few years to capacity crowds, mostly of parents and young children.
Blackfriars’ Development Manager Mary Tiballi Hoffman said the theater and Popil had long talked about turning “Drag Story Hour” into a TV show, but the logistics — specifically budget and timing — were always unclear.

Then the pandemic hit, and suddenly the Blackfriars stage was empty and available. Popil got to work with the creative team at Blackfriars, which includes Hoffman, the theater’s artistic director, Danny Hoskins, and videographer Ben Gonyo of Fish & Crown Creative.
“It’s fun and colorful and the kind of program I’d like to sit down and watch with my kids,” Hoffman said of “Imagination Station,” which she characterized as “all about spreading a message of kindness and empathy and inclusion and love.”

Popil credits the work of Fred Rogers, the thoughtful television neighbor whose songs and heartfelt stories and advice taught generations of children how to get along in the world, as having an outsized influence on his show.

“Imagination Station,” he said, draws heavily from Mr. Rogers’ concern for the emotional well-being of children, particularly when it comes to accepting differences in others.

Though the TV show asserts themes of love and acceptance broadly, Popil says these messages are important specifically for LGBTQ children and their parents to hear.

“It still is tough for a kid to come out to their parents and to express themselves,” he said. “Some families, though, it gets talked about early. And our hope is that a show like ‘Imagination Station’ will be a part of the children's television programming, where here's another example of a way to live and to treat others who are different with kindness, you know? That's the goal.”
Popil’s own experience growing up as a gay kid in a small town outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was challenging. His dad was a U.S. marshal. His mother sold cosmetics and was, in Popil’s words, “an Italian diva.”

He recalled his father reinforcing gender stereotypes and he and the other men in the family discouraging physical affection as a means of urging Popil to behave more “manly.” There was no hugging or kissing, he said, only shaking hands. Popil took it as a sign that he wasn’t loved.

“I gravitated more towards mom and my grandmother,” Popil said. “These Italian flamboyant ladies with lots of makeup.”

Popil married a woman, but when they divorced after 10 years, and Popil came out to his parents, he was effectively disowned, he said. It wasn’t until much later, after his mother’s death, that his father accepted him and his career as a drag queen.

“I think inherently, parents want to keep their children safe,” Popil said. “And for whatever reasons, speaking from my personal experience, my parents thought that if, in fact, I acted and or came across feminine, I would not be safe. What does that mean? I would get teased, I might get beat up. In the ’80s, I would die. It was the AIDS epidemic, right? And so they were doing what they thought — now I know this — what they thought was safe.”

Popil said Mrs. Kasha Davis is a way for him to connect with his mother and his family. Being Mrs. Kasha Davis, he said, is telling his family, “I love and appreciate you, and I want you to be a part of who I am.”

Popil was inspired to do drag after seeing a performance by Miss Richfield 1981. The show had a distinct message and narrative approach that was different from other drag shows, and Popil had a revelation.

“I have to be like mom and grandma,” he recalled thinking. “I have to have dark hair and have to be over-the-top — like that drunk aunt who kisses you on the cheek and hurts your ear. And, you know, you love her because she gives you candy, but she smells like powder.”
“And I was like, how do I continue to pay homage to mom and grandma and home?” he said. “And I thought, first pet, first street, and that's how I named myself. Kasha is an angry white poodle. And Davis was the street I grew up on.”

Each of the four initial episodes of “Imagination Station” run about a half hour. Mrs. Kasha Davis spends time reading a book aloud, “out and about” in the community at various locales such as Get Caked Bakery, Powers Farm Market, a gym, or a firehouse, and at home with her husband, Mr. Davis — played by Popil’s husband, Steve Levins.

“It was so important to have a television show that shows a happy, healthy drag queen, who's married,” Popil said. “You know, we're married 18 years, and we're welcoming you into our home.
“And yes, it's a drag television show for kids, but we don't explain to you how to be a drag queen,” Popil went on. “Mrs. Kasha Davis just is a drag queen. There's no lessons on how to put on makeup. There's no lessons on how to be fabulous. It’s just Mrs. Kasha Davis being Mrs. Kasha Davis.”

Levins said the show “normalizes the gay relationship.” Popil is a stepfather to Levins’s two children.

“Who are the husbands?” he asked. “There are a lot of us behind the scenes doing stuff for our queens.”
Hoffman said that Popil’s honest and nurturing personality endears him to children. That much was evident at a “Drag Story Hour” event, where Mrs. Kasha Davis read a book called “A Peacock Among Pigeons” with her signature blend of flair and kindness.

“This book is dedicated to all the peacocks who can’t fit in,” he said. “Be proud! Stand out.”

Hoffman called interactions like that “magical.”

“He’s a playful person, and it comes from this very warm, very kind place,” she said. “I think as a performer, he’s uniquely positioned to be a drag personality that can handle a kid’s show. Not all drag queens can do this. But this is where his heart is.”

Daniel J. Kushner is CITY’s arts editor. He can be reached at [email protected].