DRAG CULTURE
THE ECOLOGY OF A CULTURE
Its the morning after POPPERs - the DANCE MUSIC DRAG SHOW. It has been going for four years. Now in a life of its own, with an aestheticof performances, a style of drag and its own pumping audience. It started in corona when Id just got the job of booker and promoter at Monster Ronsons the legendary karaoke club on Warshcaer str. The pandemic they took dancing from us. The dance floors had closed. A we opened up after the shut down's - small forms of gathering could occur. One hundred people following strict guidelines, seated, masked. It was here that a show that promoted dancing whilst handing out POPPERs was born.
As the booker and promoter, I was given a chance to understand how to make a show viable. For the drag show dose not exist with out the stage. The stage dose not exist without the bar. Alcoholism is our funder. I forged a budget from pre sale tickets. Berlin nightlife was not based on presale ticket's. You built your audience and took the cash at the door, not running your money through online ticket sales taking percentages and having your money documented. But as the corona pandemic did so succinctly was pull us all online. Bringing those that had never scanned a QR code. Its was the quick swipe of the hand of technofuedlism. But from that budget of presale tickets I could book a show.
From my first show's a decade ago in basements of Stockholm sport bars, where sending money on your telephone was already common. Ive seen drag change drastically. Life is change and we are living. Here and today, on the eve of the SPAT!AWARDS - awarding the best in late night culture. I wanna talk about the ecology of this culture. For the microcosm of any culture is always a mirror onto the macro.
Drag has always under payed those that would express themselves for free. But how do we understand payment. Is it the invoice, which is tied to taxes going to governments adamant on bombs over good food. Or is it the cash in hand, directly from a thrilled audience into their panties. Or is it fuel to be reminded what a good time feel's like. Is it the applause from friends. From strangers. Is it the disgusted looks on the audience who feel like they didn't sign up for this. To have an audience is an expensive game. Politicians pay a lot to be heard. Lobbyist pay even more. To be granted the chance to be listen to, to be seen - plays on a deep tribal urge. Which we have escalated to stadiums, festival fields and the stage at the bar. A drag performer is granted this audience, for a short amount of time. To express them selves, to try something. To live out some fantasy inside of them. It's the magical place many have worked out their gender identity. But these spaces are dyeing. Our ecology is at risk. Just like the nature. If you take a piece out of the ecology, the whole system falls. It starts from the ground up. You cut the grass, the bugs don't live, the bugs don't live, the birds don't feed. You cut the grass the rabbits don't feed. The foxes won't eat.... till one of the animals is in abundance and eats all the rest and an ecology dies. Bio-diversity dies. A culture is lost.
We need to keep creating spaces where artist can make art. Over everything else. The everyone must be paid model is shackled to the hand of capitalism. When you pay everyone as best you can, you have less performers. Less performers means more work on the night from the performers. It means less people in the backstage. It means less sharing of the stage. Once there was ten people expressing them selves, now stand half as many, if that. It means less of us are meeting through the magic of the stage. Less have access to the magic of having an audience. It is in drag cultures ecology to have open stages, unpaid stages. To pay short but fuel life. To fill backstages with energy, with life. To give meaning to life. For people to meet in this furnace. This is not a call for us to be payed less, it is a call to create more spaces for us to express. For only then people will see the magic and take it into their own lives. The world deserves to see what you do in the mirror. Just like an ecology, there should be invoiced gigs, funded by governments and logo'd emails. It should exist through promoters putting up ticket links. Through bar's needing a dead day filled. It needs it all!
Last night we had an open stage where three performers, came expressed them self for tips. After wards a show booked with performers took to the stage. A bar was filled on a Wednesday night. People danced. People got off with each other. People meet. Performers learnt from each other. We were all given a good time, a reminder of what we are fighting for. This conversation in my head brews further than these words on this morning can write. For tonight, we put on the first awards, for part of our ecology is documenting what we did and celebrating it. As I watch the presale tickets so low for tonight, I will have to ask the nominee's who have been invited as our guests for a donation. For the rest will have to come from my pocket. We create a culture that fascist fear. But what is the price of a ecology. What is the price of keeping a culture alive.
Thursday 29th January 2026 - BERLIN
