Because of the coronavirus pandemic, local drag queen and theater designer Justin Schmitz is in a pinch.
Schmitz usually works six or seven days a week between his day job in theater and night job as a queen named “Mama Naytch,” juggling various gigs. But, with the sweeping cutbacks set off by the coronavirus in the D.C. area and nationwide, he says nearly all of his jobs through June have been cancelled.
For his theater jobs, “it’s almost $8,000 worth of income that is currently not happening,” says Schmitz. He estimates that he’ll lose at least $4,000 from the cancelled drag shows too. And if his audio-engineering gig at the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater, in upstate New York, is cancelled, his total loss would amount to over $16,000.
Since he’s a freelance designer, Schmitz is unsure if he’ll be eligible for unemployment benefits via federal disaster relief. In the meantime, he plans to host a cooking show on YouTube called “Taste of Naytch,” which will hopefully attract enough viewers to make it profitable.
“We’re all sort of waiting with bated breath to see if we’re going to have any sort of help or income whatsoever, both in theater but also in drag,” Schmitz says of the performing-arts world.
He’s not alone in his precarity. The District has a robust theater and drag scene which includes major venues like the Kennedy Center and Arena Stage as well as smaller restaurants and bars that host regular drag shows. Such venues are now on pause while the city enforces a shutdown of large public spaces amid a state of emergency and U.S. officials advise against big gatherings to prevent the coronavirus from proliferating.
The situation has produced mass layoffs and pay cuts in the hospitality, events, and entertainment industries as city leaders warn of spiking unemployment. But area drag queens are banding together to reach their audiences and support one another using the powers of technology. They’re considering how to bring their shows online in ways that would offer the same kind of excitement seen with typical nightlife crowds—and also allow them to pay their bills.
Locals Ryan Schlegel and Anthony Musa are assisting in the effort. The pair connected through Twitter last Sunday and came up with the idea of creating a public spreadsheet that displays the social-media and mobile-payment handles of regional drag performers who are devising virtual performances for the coming weeks.
So far, 22 drag queens are recorded on the spreadsheet, cheekily titled “Cash 4 Queens.” “Drag performers really have been leading our community for decades, for generations,” says Schlegel, who identifies as a longtime patron of D.C.’s drag scene. “I would hate for us to lose some of our great performers in our city because … they’re unable to make ends meet.”
While he says the list isn’t comprehensive, Schlegel hopes more community members will learn about and add to it. He works at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, where a steady paycheck and the ability to work remotely during the coronavirus outbreak have led him to think empathetically about those whose jobs don’t provide the same accommodations.
Musa is on the board of Capital Pride, the group that organizes the District’s yearly LGBTQ Pride festivities. On Sunday, he wrote in a Facebook post about the spreadsheet that “in times of stress it’s a good (and fun!) way to distract and relieve some anxiety, while supporting local performers hit by COVID-19.”
The initial response to the project seems positive, even though the challenges of putting on thrilling digital performances could be significant. “Believe me, this will have a huge impact across the drag community,” Goldie Grigio, a drag performer, told DCist in a Facebook message.
Meanwhile, performers are sketching out possible productions for the duration of the pandemic.
Jorge Fernandez, who goes by “Sylvanna Duvel” on stage and has performed in D.C., New York, Baltimore, and Florida for eight years, says she plans to host a talk show on Facebook Live from her home in Columbia Heights. The idea is to invite other queens as guests on the show, so they can converse and practice routines together.
“I always try to bring the Latino culture to the mainstream audience,” Fernandez says. “This whole month, I was going to do a Selina tribute across the city with four other queens. As of [Sunday], everything was cancelled.” To make up for that loss, she intends to choreograph a livestream version of the tribute on Facebook or TikTok by the end of March.
Like Schmitz (Mama Naytch), Fernandez also now faces an uncertain financial future. She worked as a barista at Greenberry’s Coffee in Foggy Bottom until last Monday, but then the location shuttered amid the broader shutdown. Management recommended that the shop’s employees apply for unemployment benefits, says Fernandez.
“If [unemployment is] affecting me while I have an extra job, of course it’s affecting people that have been doing drag full time,” she points out. “They have zero income coming in as of now.”
There are some bright spots, though. In addition to “Cash 4 Queens,” targeted community resources including mutual aid funds and neighborhood-specific hotlines have sprung up in response to the greater social distancing triggered by coronavirus concerns. LGBTQ-focused nonprofits in the city—such as Casa Ruby, HIPS, and No Justice No Pride—are continuing to champion the community’s needs, providing services from emergency housing to counseling.
And while working from home may be new for a lot of people during the pandemic, in many ways, performers and drag queens do it already: “making costumes, putting on rhinestones, creating new mixes, learning new music, figuring out new ways to do things, and figuring out how we keep our performances fresh and alive,” as Schmitz explains.
These painstaking efforts matter a lot to drag queens like him—and, ultimately, to their fans. “We’re getting creative,” he says of the current moment. “We’re taking the time necessary to continue forward, however that is.”
