In some ways, writing about the history of drag at Purchase is impossible.

The bewigged men in stockings and frock coats who founded the idea of “America” were just men, yes, but prescient of their legacies, they meticulously preserved thousands of letters, records, and diaries for posterity. But the bewigged, stockinged, and frocked folks who established Purchase’s robust drag culture did no such thing.

Drag has theatrical, religious, and folkloric traditions that go back thousands of years. Our modern conceptions of drag in America are generally traced back to the 1800s. Annie Hindle, America’s first famous “male impersonator,” began performing in the 1860s. William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved man, is the first self-identified “queen of drag” that we know of. Their groundbreaking conventions and aesthetics have changed from “female impersonators” of vaudeville to RuPaul’s Drag Race. As with so much of queer history, the history of drag at Purchase is deeply personal and far from monolithic.

It’s a point repeated during a talk with Shaka McGlotten, professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase and Chair of the Gender Studies and Global Black Studies Programs. McGlotten recently remounted their popular “Drag Theory and Practice” course, and their 2021 book Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life is an ethnography of a diverse group of artists and activists.

“Purchase has this incredibly dynamic rich history of drag,” they say in an on-campus interview. “Like any community, it is not homogenous. It really runs the gamut from sculptural art installation to over-the-top lip-syncing to traditional glamor. I think that if you were to look at the people who do drag at Purchase and how they do drag, you would see it representing the vast diversity of what drag is historically and contemporaneously.”

McGlotten suspects there are several factors contributing to Purchase’s long history of fostering drag communities and experimentation: proximity to New York City, a major hub of American drag culture; the institution’s welcoming atmosphere for queer students; and its long-standing ability to attract a diverse array of artists and creatives across all majors. And Purchase’s founding in the late ’60s, at the height of so many social protest movements and cultural revolutions, may also have something to do with it.

“The fundamental ethos of Purchase—and the fact that it was founded in this mix of the arts and the liberal arts—meant it was always going to be this very fertile place for questioning norms and creating things that hadn’t been created before,” they say.  

But for all the diversity within various drag communities and performers on campus, one thing brings them—and pretty much everyone else—together: Fall Ball. The long-running “extravaganza eleganza drag competition” crowns an annual campus King, Queen, and in recent years Quing, for those who don’t tidily fit into other categories.

Proof could find no record of Fall Ball in student newspapers prior to 1986. But Jeffrey Putman ’96, President Emeritus of the Purchase College Alumni Association, says he recalls the event existing when he arrived on campus in 1994. Archived issues of The Load, a student-run paper, hint at the campus culture from which Fall Ball was formed.

Fall of 1981 saw more than a dozen screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with attendees often dressing up as their favorite gender-bending characters. In the spring of that same year, the Gay Union, an earlier name for what is now the LGBTQU, hosted the college’s first Pride event. References can be found as early as 1982 about Purchase’s “large gay population” in an interview with professor Esther Newton, a founder of Purchase College, who herself has written extensively on drag and queer communities.

While we haven’t yet established the precise origins of Fall Ball, the beloved event is a large, raucous affair usually held in November before Thanksgiving break. For many Purchase students who go on to perform drag beyond the campus’ brick walls, Fall Ball is not only their first time performing, but their first exposure to a live drag show.

But Fall Ball hasn’t been the sole opportunity for drag at Purchase. One-off shows in the student center, Humanities Theatre, and apartments were common in the early 2000s.

Thorgy Thor ’06 (Music), who appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2016 and 2017, first did drag in a student production of Psycho Beach Party.

Probably the best-known drag queen to come from Purchase, Thorgy (then known as “Shananigans”) “makes it a point to show up at every party and event with a brand new outfit, many of which are hand-made,” according to a 2006 issue of The Purchase Independent. She also greeted new students during freshman orientation in full “fashion clown” regalia, starting a short-lived tradition in and of itself.

“Nobody told me to do it,” she says of that now famous first Drag Welcome. I woke up at five o'clock in the morning because check-in started at 7:30 and I literally walked all the way from the dorms in drag to the [campus entrance].”

Response from the new students and their families was enthusiastic and effusive. Incoming freshmen waved, parents stopped on the way out to thank her for making their nervous child feel at home. While there was initially pushback from some members of the administration, orientation staff leaders were delighted. “They came out and said, ‘We heard what you were doing and we had to see it ourselves,’” she recalls. “‘If you want to work with us as the welcoming committee next year, we’d love you.’”

Thorgy’s drag presence on campus was not limited to orientations. Her weekly themed parties became a mainstay of queer life on campus and a touchstone for Purchase drag culture thereafter. Everyone was welcome.

“It didn't matter back then—gay or straight—everyone was just weird at Purchase,” she recalls. “And it was so fun. We would give little shows in the middle of the party. We met a lot of drag queens, like Miz Jade, who would come there and say, ‘I feel really comfortable here.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, you’re always welcome here.’ I'm still friends with some of them today.”

Sherry Poppins ’16 (Photography) would eventually take up the mantle of drag parties on campus.

By the time she graduated, she was well known not only for her skilled performances but for her “Pussy Land” drag shows held in campus apartments.

“They would be packed every month,” Sherry says. "The one time they did get shut down," she recalls fondly, "a second location was already waiting for them."

“It was the very last one before I graduated. I led this parade of queers across campus from The Olde to Alumni. It was so punk.”

Sherry had never been especially interested in drag prior to Purchase. But her orientation leader, Miz Jade ’12 (Dance),
the drag daughter of Thorgy Thor, suggested Sherry perform as a backup dancer in one of her performances.

“So I did that. We became friends and then she’s like, ‘I have this show on PTV called Hot Mess Express. I want to do a drag makeup tutorial episode. Can we do makeup on your face?’” Sherry agreed, and the transformation, it seems, was as much internal as external. “I went back to my eight-person suite and I was feeling the fantasy.”

Because she came to drag at Purchase, Poppins says, she didn’t take it too seriously.

“Everyone’s just playing with makeup, playing with silly outfits. Purchase is that perfect haven for all the high school outcasts, the weirdos and the geeks, so you can imagine that drag is going to be very much aligned with that kind of person.”

Now a full-time queen, she believes that the “bubble” of Purchase provided her with a rich training ground to prepare for her current career. “When you’re actually out doing drag in the real world, it’s competitive,” she observes.

Qhrist Almighty ’16 (Visual Arts), who performs alongside both Poppins and Maxxx Pleasure, was initially skeptical of the thriving drag scene at Purchase.

“I saw Sherry Poppins and Miz Jade doing more traditional drag at the time,” they recall. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to do what they’re doing; I want to do my own thing. I’m different. I’m making art here.’” But when they saw Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, comedian, and performance artist Macy Rodman perform at Fall Ball 2013, they were mesmerized by the artsy, unusual performance.

They were on stage at the next Fall Ball.

Qhrist says they were heavily influenced by the wide diversity of campus life. Serving on the boards of multiple student organizations, they were engaged in art and music scenes and found themselves going back and forth between various social circles. “I feel like I had a nice group of people who were supporting me,” they explain. “Hanging out all over the place all the time helped me be confident enough to do drag for the first time.”

The strong “DIY culture” of Purchase also influenced Qhrist’s growth as a performer. “It was always students throwing shows and making projects with and for each other, just making weird art,” they say.

“That’s why Sherry and I started doing our own show together after graduation—we thought instead of trying to get booked by people, let’s just throw a show ourselves. And here we are, seven years later, still doing it.”

Miz Jade ’12 (Dance/Arts Management), describes her childhood in Yonkers as “religious and naive.”

In those days, she viewed gender as binary and drag as nebulously but distinctly negative, and she certainly wasn’t the only one. “Now it's kind of like, ‘Oh my God, you’re a drag queen?!’” she says. “But before it would prevent people from making connections. It would prevent people from wanting to date you. It would make you totally ostracized even within the queer community for some people.”

But at Purchase, she was able to move beyond her early assumptions and fears. Thorgy “held space” for her to explore and play with drag and urged her to compete in (and win) Fall Ball. Ultimately, performing nurtured a strength within herself to embrace her own gender, and drag itself, as far more expansive than she’s ever considered. It wasn’t always easy, even at Purchase. Black drag queens, she explains, are often pigeon-holed (high energy, glamorous, ultra femme) and held to a different standard than their white counterparts. It’s not that Miz Jade can’t deliver—she does—but she also takes a certain pleasure in bucking expectation, as when she performed at an on-campus Drag BINGO event as a little old lady. “People really expected me to uphold that expectation of drag; instead I made people laugh,” she smiles.

“I gave myself permission, because of drag, to just be, unapologetically,” she explains. “I said, ‘Whoever you would’ve been if you didn’t have society or your family bombarding you with how you’re supposed to perform, how would you be? Do that for yourself. Give yourself permission to do that.’”

Maxxx Pleasure ’15 (New Media), a drag king who performs with Sherry and other drag artists he met at Purchase, had a similar trajectory but a somewhat different experience.

When “a friend of a friend” was looking for backup dancers for a drag king performance, he was eager to join in. “I wanna be on stage and be sexy!” he recalls brightly. It was a positive experience. After performing backup a few times, Maxxx decided in the spring of his junior year that he would take center stage as a king.

For Maxxx, drag was less about gender transformation; it was the opportunity to be on stage. He’d done musical theater with his triplet sisters as a child, but drag, he says, was the only thing he’d ever done independently from them. It would, indeed, be a very independent experience.

“I was kind of the only drag king. Who knows how much of this is projection and how much is true, but I felt very much like I had to ask to be included.”

His voice then immediately becomes more resolute, almost as if interrupting himself. “That’s a fact. I did have to ask to be included. Like, ‘Do you mind? Can I join? I want to perform at your party.’ I also had this feeling like if I didn’t knock it out of the park that I wouldn’t be invited back.”

While Maxxx (and pretty much everyone else interviewed for this piece) agrees there was “drama with everything,” many of the friendships formed within drag communities at Purchase persist to this day.

Outside the Bubble...

Qhrist Almighty, Sherry Poppins, Maxxx Pleasure, Miz Jade, and Thorgy Thor, among others not mentioned in this article, continue to perform, mostly in Brooklyn but also internationally. Str8 To DVD is a monthly Drag Party in Brooklyn that Qhrist and Sherry have been organizing since 2016. Maxxx was named Drag King of the Year by Brooklyn Nightlife Awards in 2018 and was recently profiled in Vogue. Thorgy often performs with her “Thorchestra,” combining her Purchase conservatory training with drag by joining with orchestras throughout North America as a truly unique guest performer.

Miz Jade works with Drag Story Hour, where she enjoys encouraging kids to “play more without shame,” but has unfortunately faced traumatizing anti-queer and anti-Black protest and hate speech.

“These people are not protesting story hour. They’re protesting my existence.”

Performing in drag at any point in the past 150 years has always carried risk. Today, as some state and local laws take aim at queer people—including trans folks and drag performers—there can sometimes be a sense of demoralization and fear, even in liberal cities.

“It’s scary,” Qhrist observes, “because it feels like we’re already a marginalized group doing marginalized art, just barely clawing at the edges of the mainstream. Now whatever sort of sense of progress we had feels like it’s unraveling.”

“These laws —anti-drag laws, laws denying gender-affirming care—are really an attempt to erase trans people and queerness,” McGlotten says.

They note that while Purchase remains “the bubble” that has long fostered drag culture on campus, outside forces contribute to a sense of demoralization. In recent years, the QPOC (Queer People of Color) Club has taken ownership of Fall Ball to focus on the importance of BIPOC in the history of drag balls and vogue culture.

“I’m looking forward to a resurgence,” says McGlotten. “National conversations are trying to reinscribe traditional gender roles and roll back the clock on forms of creative expression … but one of the things to think about in terms of Purchase drag culture is that it represents the wide diversity of what drag is and can be.”