Drag show lights up Etherredge main stage

With a schedule shifting like beach-sand after a hurricane, the performing arts continue to live in the USC Aiken Etherredge Center with Thursday night’s drag show by Patti O’Furniture and her kings and queens.

The event was part of the Mask for Masc Tour. This year, with sponsorship from the USCA Office of Diversity Initiatives, the third annual drag show was held on the main stage for the first time. The show was a sell-out.

Performances were put on by drag queens Koko Dove, Anaya DeVore, Lexi Sharp, Alexiya St. Martin, Verasge, Patti O’Furniture and drag king Don Javi.

Teddy Palmer, the assistant technical director, came in early to set up lights and sound and planned to go home late after the show closed at 9:00 p.m.

Before the show, Palmer said, “It’s a lot of work. They’re coming from all over the state, Charleston, Columbia, a few other places. It should be a fun show.”

Unlike many entertainment venues forced to remain closed for the season, the center has managed to remain functional with attendees wearing masks and using 50% of the main stage seating capacity—350 people.

With that limit in place, dozens of students were turned away. The students seated cheered and clapped throughout the show.

Performance breaks contained questions and answers about drag from audience members through social media.

Don Javi expressed that, “Anyone can be a drag king or queen, as long as you’ve got that creative knack and the want to be involved in the LGBTQ community. Because drag is political.”

O’Furniture reminded the crowd to vote, mentioning that October is LGBTQ+, Herstory and Latinx History month.

Throughout the show, the performers discussed ways to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and encouraged the audience to check out drag if they were interested in becoming queens or kings.

“As long as you have some fun and learn something in the process, we’re doing it right,” said O’Furniture.

 O’Furniture assigned USCA students “homework:“ “… it’s not hard. In the next 24 hours, I want each and every one of you to smile at someone you don’t know. That little act of smiling at somebody can change their attitude. It does what I call spread happiness. And the world needs a lot more of that right now.”

A fourth annual drag show is in the works for next year.