Kat Gilardi: 15 years of drag excellence and community leadership

“At this time right now, it has been scary, and I feel that we need to push love and proudness of who we are. It is even more important to be proud of the history as people have been fighting for years.”

With the Cape Town Pride Festival underway and the Pride Parade & Mardi Gras fast approaching on March 1, the importance of community has become ever-present. Drag queen extraordinaire, Kat Gilardi - also known as Carl Stroebel - is putting her best foot forward to walk the talk of being there for others, but also delighting crowds in the process.

Stroebel recently marked his 15th year of doing drag, and although he is busier than ever performing as "Kat Gilardi", he continues to show up for the community, having also now taken on the role of director for Mr & Miss Cape Town Pride.

Stroebel started in 2000 and it started out with pageants, and achieving a rare feat of the time of winning three big pageant competitions in his debut year.

Since then, she has been able to perform across the province and also starred in Showmax’s much-raved show, “Beaulah: Queens van die Kaap” alongside other beloved drag queens.

As “Kat”, Stroebel is able to entertain crowds and keep them wholly engaged, while also being extremely humorous. It is a skill that not every queen has and shows why he has been able to sustain such longevity.

“I try to make the audience comfortable, and feel like they are at a family gathering, a braai or someone’s party. I try to bring something intimate into the space, to get to know the audience so that when I come on stage later, there is a vibe…

“I remind myself every time I get into makeup that I’m not just doing this for me, and that I’m doing this for my family and to put beautiful energy into the world. Help get people out of their 24/7, and I feel like I want people to have a good time.”

When asked what has been the key to their longevity in sustaining such a career for 15 years, Stroebel said: “I don’t know, I’ve just been pushing. I don’t have an answer for you besides, I love what I do.

“I love the creativity of it, I love putting my mind to something, and focusing on it. I think it has lasted for me because I’m passionate about drag as a whole.”

Stroebel said that what made them fall in love with it at first was a combination of their love for make-up, their love for creativity, and music, and the result of looking in the mirror, and seeing a different person.

“It kinda just lifts your spirit and energy, and you like to go, ‘I’m that b*tch’. I think it still does that for me. It can take me out of my unhappy place… It becomes a whole creative process for me, the time and effort put into listening to music - music feeds my soul - it puts me on step with my foundation of where I want to go and then after choosing what I want to wear, how it is going to make me feel.”

After 15 years, Stroebel said that one of the ways they have been able to keep the love for it is the evolution of their art and performance.

“I’m continuously changing things, I’m continuously learning, and the people around me are continuously pushing me.”

It hasn’t all been easy for Stroebel as when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it forced her to adapt to doing online shows and letting people have some entertainment, but they felt despondent for a while as they went into a depressive state, and had to deal with lots of close loved ones dying.

“Five people died in one week that I knew, and it was so much for me. I just couldn’t hold on. It felt like I was having a mental breakdown. I felt like I didn't want to get into drag, but I was kinda forced because I knew that I needed to work.

“That was really the only time when I felt like I didn’t want to do it anymore as I just wasn’t happy.”

However, it was that challenging time that forced Stroebel to re-evaluate, go back to the drawing board, and find a way forward that made him happy.

“My relationship with drag is a good thing because it kinda took me out of my shell. So I always try to remind myself how drag has changed my life, and how it has kept me kinda sane also.”

Stroebel also said that his drag persona has helped him get a voice, and become a little more outspoken as Carl.

“I speak my mind now. I’m very quiet when I'm not Kat, cause people pay to see that bubbly personality, and social butterfly, and so when I'm Carl, and I’m at home. I’m very quiet.”

Carl also shared how their husband, Errol, has played a part in Kat’s success as he is a grounding force and reminds Carl constantly how amazing he is.

“I’ve been through a lot and I don’t speak about it, but when I started doing drag. People would say I'm ugly, and that I don’t deserve it after I’d win. That used to hurt me. I cried sometimes in the dressing room, thinking of how people in our community would speak to someone like that.

“I was a novice, and I didn’t understand the inner workings of the community, but having that person there pushing you, having your back and saying, ‘you are worth everything’, and that ‘I’m here, no matter what decision’, means so much.

“He still tells me to this day that I don’t need to keep pushing, and that as long as it makes me happy, he is happy. It is always the married woman who will come up to me after I perform and say, ‘Have you noticed the way your husband looks at you when you perform? He looks at you with so much warmth and so much happiness’.

“I usually am so locked into performing that I don’t really have the time to notice that, but I always feel the warmth, the support, and the love… He puts in a lot of time because he leaves at 7am, comes home around 5pm, and then comes out with me. I know he is working hard for us, and we’re also working hard together.

“Errol doesn’t just make it about Kat, he always also takes care of my full well-being,” Carl said.

“When I started there was no one there for me, besides Errol, so I had to learn everything on my own at the start, and I know how difficult it was for me.”

Stroebel is also taking over as the pageant director for Mr and Miss Cape Town Pride, from businessman Barry Reid, and it is something for which he has been involved for approximately the last seven years.

Reid said he first came into being involved around 2009. He and his pageant partner, Mark Donough, had seen success with the Mr and Miss Gay Western Cape, and the Pride organisers had kept approaching them, asking them to take over because it was struggling to see the same success.

“Eventually we said that yes we’d get involved because we also started to realise that while everybody complains about inclusivity in Pride, the only way to change it was to get involved, and start with the pageant, but slowly and surely start infiltrating all the other aspects of Pride.”

Reid said that Donough only got to be involved for a couple of years with the pageant before his untimely passing in 2021.

Reid shared that after Donough’s passing, Stroebel had stepped in as the assistant pageant director and that it had gotten to a point where after seven years of Mr and Miss Cape Town Pride, and 15 years of the Mr & Miss Sovereign pageant, it was time for someone else to take the reins.

“Kat has been with us on this journey, and is 150% capable of running it and running it even better than me, and that is what I’m excited to see. I’m excited to see how Kat betters it.”

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za