Fiona Doran, 22, is in a dingy, mostly empty workshop in Chalmette, learning how to fall.
Doran slowly crouches down, tumbling back onto a makeshift wrestling ring made of canvas, foam and wood.
After a couple of tumbles, they step to the corner of the ring, filled with seven other students and two teachers, so others can practice falling.
Some, like Doran, move cautiously. Others whip themselves back onto the lightly cushioned surface, their collisions yielding satisfying thuds and smacks.
“I want to roll around and do flips and stuff. And also, that’s really scary sometimes,” Doran said later. “Like I just get scared to hurt myself. So it’s like that mental block.”
Doran and their classmates have spent Mondays in June learning the basics of professional wrestling — the athletic theater kind — from two performers with Choke Hole, a New Orleans-based troupe that combines drag and wrestling to create campy, psychedelic performance sport. The group performs once or twice a year in the city, where it was founded in 2018, and the group also takes its show on tour to cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Berlin.
Choke Hole has taught a similar course in Germany and teaches private lessons to new performers joining its roster, but this is the first time they have taught a general audience in New Orleans. Jassy, a cofounder of the group, and Patrick Wolf, who performs as an anti-gentrification mutant bug named Raid, decided to open up the six-week course because they had so much fun teaching wrestling in Germany.
“We were like, ‘It would also be great to just get us in the ring more consistently practicing ourselves and just getting better as we continue to refine a little of the show,’” Jassy told Verite News.
When Choke Hole, which has a devoted following in New Orleans, announced the wrestling class, spots quickly filled up. Spots in a second section also ran out. The classes started on May 26 and will end on June 30. Over the course of several sessions, students learn fundamental wrestling moves such as back bumps, dodging, hitting each other in ways that look real but don’t actually hurt.
In an average class, students might practice “running the ropes,” darting from one side of the ring to the other and bouncing off of the rope, and giving and receiving “clotheslines,” when one person lightly hits another in the chest with an outstretched forearm, prompting a fall.
For Doran, who moved back to New Orleans this summer after graduating college, the Choke Hole class has given them a judgment-free space to try new and challenging athletic things.
“I really enjoy being in a setting where the peer group isn’t judging me,” they said, “because I remember playing sports as a kid, and I felt like all of the athletes were judging me for not being the best.”
Students have the option to perform in a showcase at Poor Boys later in the summer, though a date hasn’t been set.
Among the initial students are comedians, drag queens and burlesque performers —people who are used to being on stage. Several Choke Hole students said they want to perform in the showcase. Some of them have already come up with personas and gimmicks to add to the skills they’ve learned in the class.
While practicing rope running and clotheslining during one of the sessions, local comedian Jade Bronte was also developing her in-ring persona, Sweet Potato.
Every time she hit an opponent, Bronte would apologize with a shy look on her face: “Sorry!”
“They always tell you that your wrestling persona should be an accentuation of something that you already do,” she said. “And so it’s a way for me to make fun of the part of me that’s always apologizing, while also, like, kicking ass.”
PHOTOS: Fans of Choke Hole learn how to wrestle from members of the queer wrestling troupe
For some longtime wrestling fans, the class has offered a way to explore a form of self-expression rarely seen in the world of professional wrestling.
“I think that the perception of this style of wrestling is that it’s like a very straight-white-male kind of machismo world,” said Camille Roane, a comedian and communications strategist taking the class. “So to do it as a queer, Black woman feels so fun.”
Cecily Taylor enjoys watching wrestling and had been looking for ways to learn the craft for years before Choke Hole’s class. She had previously performed as a manager, a character who appears ringside with wrestlers, with regional wrestling promotions, but wants to be in the ring, and never felt like she could fully express her queer identity in professional wrestling before seeing Choke Hole.
“There’s some places that cost a lot of money to start training or a lot of time,” said Taylor, who now goes by Woooah Nelli in the ring. “And it’s hard to find people that want to allow you into that world.”
She kept pestering Choke Hole performers to train her for a while and was excited when the group finally offered classes. During one class, she often flexed toward the outside of the ring, showboating to an imaginary crowd, after performing moves on the students and teachers.
“I’ve been trying to reincorporate play into my life, and doing that with other adults seems meaningful just because you get scared of trying new things, especially high-impact, high-adrenaline stuff,” she said. “So it’s been fun just to build community around trying something new that hurts with other people. It’s cute.”