Kamal Lado and partner Jack in May’s Place fresh new vintage coming Friday June 25

Kamal Lado’s name translates to “perfect” in Arabic, and Kamal took this very seriously.

They have been performing at the Muny since the young age of nine, always in some rehearsal or performance, the tight grip of perfectionism in full effect. Only recently have the clouds of being perfect parted and have given Kamal the freedom of letting go - letting go of a fear of judgement, of gender norms, of pushing themselves until failure. In Kamal’s words, having an “offness” is more liberating than being perfect.

“It’s really just a freedom to decide day-to-day how I want to exist and not feel tied down by any sort of construct,” Kamal, who uses they/them pronouns, said. “If I want to wake up and be super masculine, I think about that to be just as radical as I think about the radicalness of waking up every day and deciding to wear a skirt or a dress. I just consider myself kind of me.”

Kamal is a performer, plain and simple. They remember the first time they performed on stage in front of 11,000 people when they were 10-years-old, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and they fell in love with it so easily. How could they not, Kamal said, when that is your first on-stage experience.

Since their Muny days, they went on to perform with the Center of Creative Arts (COCA) in University City throughout their tot and teen years, pairing it with theater through their high school in Clayton. In May, they graduated from Elon University in North Carolina

Now, at 22, performing happens both on and off the stage. On stage, Kamal said dressing up and acting as a more masculine character is just as performative as wearing heels or a wig as a female character. Off stage in their normal life, it’s really not that different.

“Both of these [types of characters] are me putting on Drag, putting on a performance, in the same way that I have to do day-to-day life sometimes,” Kamal said. “It’s a performance for myself, not really for other people.”

Kamal has noticed that in the past year the pandemic has allowed people to explore their queerness in different ways. People are reflecting on what being queer means to them, they’re making Tik Toks about it and sharing it with others, and expressing themselves in ways they want to because they don’t have to worry about what section they are shopping in, etc.. They can dance in the mirror and be who they are in the comfort of their own home.

This has brought on what Kamal calls a “try-nary” where if someone uses they/them pronouns, they automatically are supposed to be one thing or another according to the dominant, heteronormative binary culture - androgynous, nonbinary, an “other.” To Kamal, being non-binary is just another box to check, a pigeon hole that is nothing other than the same pigeon hole of the binary man or woman. They don’t identify as either or neither.

“That’s exactly what I was pushing away from,” they said. “I don’t consider myself non-binary. I don’t want to be perceived as a man, I don’t want to be perceived as a woman, I just want to be perceived as who I am.”

Fashion is one of the biggest ways that Kamal expresses this part of themselves, outside of theater. Kamal is a regular customer of May’s Place, and is one of our major local style inspos in the city - Their style is not one gender, it really is just them.

“Sometimes I just want to make people look at me,” Kamal said. “Sometimes I really want to feel the fantasy of wearing a skirt that day, or tying my hair up into little space buns, or wearing a little makeup. If that day, I am like ‘this is what feels best to me,’ that’s what I do.”

They find style inspirations everywhere, and it’s not just the clothes, it’s the energy, the aesthetic that really inspires Kamal. On the more feminine side, they love Instagram girls, the Karadashians, the makeup guru and the YouTuber, the L.A. “me-bling” aesthetic.

On their masculine side, they find inspo from celebrity men who play around with gender, like musical artists Steve Lacy and Tyler the Creator, or Chicago Bulls basketball star Dennis Rodman. Or, the nineties movie heartthrobs that are the pinnacle of masculinity like Matt Damon and Leonardo Dicaprio.

When August comes around, Kamal will be performing with the Muny until they figure out next steps. Maybe this looks like New York, or L.A., Kamal said, but they want to make a change wherever they go. They want to use their craft and their art to speak the language of queerness, gender, and social justice.

“There is an offness to how I live my life that is so freeing - outside of the box, outside of the norm, outside of the binary,” Kamal said. “There is something about an ‘outside of’ that is so fun.”