Drag Performers Redefine Paris’s Historic Cabaret Scene

In a Thirteenth-century constructing on the Left Financial institution, in a basement with stone partitions and vaulted ceilings, hostess Ruby on the Nail lies like Manet’s Olympia on the small stage of Le Cavern sipping her namesake cocktail, a mixture of honey, lime juice, and Sailor Jerry spiced rum. The highlight highlights her contoured nostril and modern lob wig, rendering Ruby within the likeness of Barbra Streisand, whose picture is projected behind the performer. The viewers loses their rattling minds, screaming Ruby’s praises whereas snapping their fingers.

Over in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, a fast-gentrifying quartier simply north of the Paris Périph, the place high-rise new builds sprout up like spring tulips, a sprawling meals court docket and neighborhood house referred to as Communale is swarming with bourgeois-bohemian 30- and 40-somethings. Guests are gathered round pine wooden tables, a lot of them flanked by toddlers, having fun with Meteor draft beers, artisanal pizzas dotted with clouds of burrata, and crisped smash burgers on shiny buns. Tottering on impossibly excessive platforms, drag artists Lula Strega and HitsuBlu take turns cranking a steel bingo cage and calling out numbers to the gang’s hoots and groans.

In the meantime, inside Madame Arthur, one of many metropolis’s oldest cabarets perched within the hills among the many neon lights of Pigalle, PowerBeauTom, bearing Budo Battle boxing shorts and a heavy chain draped round their neck, belts out a French rendition of Woman Gaga’s “Unhealthy Romance” whereas pianist La Mulette smashes the ivories. They’re sensational. The group screams alongside in unison. Outdoors, in a liminal room between efficiency areas, a vendor with a dimpled smile makes piping-hot crepes for patrons, a lot of them tipsy, a lot of them straight.

King Cooks & Drag Queens

King Cooks & Drag Queens

Felix Richardot

King Cooks & Drag Queens

These vignettes, which could happen on any given evening in Paris, seize greater than a well-spent night with a few of the metropolis’s most gifted performers. They populate a map of the increasing drag scene, which has unfold all through the snail shell of arrondissements. Additionally they illustrate how queens, like Ruby, Strega, and HitsuBlu, and drag kings, like PowerBeauTom, construct upon many years of cabaret traditions within the metropolis, whereas discovering new types of self-expression starting from light-hearted to poignantly political. The result’s an more and more mainstream artwork type that facilities Paris’s distinctive LGBTQ artists.

Paris’s historical past of drag cabaret dates again to the Nineteen Forties not less than, when France’s first trans stars, like Zambella, Bambi, and Coccinelle, took the stage at Madame Arthur and Carrousel, a luxe eighth arrondissement cabaret a stone’s throw from the Champs-Élysées. In these days, seems had been decidedly female: a burlesque bejeweled bikini with feathery headdress, say, or a easy Marilyn Monroe coif paired with chandelier earrings and a form-fitting spangly mermaid gown. Make-up was bridal-party applicable. Performances had been coquettish.

Although they headlined at common golf equipment, the artists had been subversive. Submit-war Paris was celebratory — Parisians had been out for an excellent time — however it was hardly hospitable to trans girls. Police may arrest people assigned male at beginning for dressing in girls’s clothes within the streets. Bambi describes protests over the so-called immoral reveals at Carrousel. These early cabarets had been a refuge.

King Cooks & Drag Queens

Although there was a worldwide bump in curiosity in drag within the ’90s following the discharge of movies like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Paris Is Burning, gender sociologist Arnaud Alessandrin of the College of Bordeaux instructed French every day 20 Minutes that the scene largely fell out of the highlight till a couple of decade in the past. Then RuPaul’s Drag Race helped as soon as once more whet appetites for drag efficiency all through l’Hexagone, paving the best way for Drag Race France, now in its third season (starring, amongst others, Ruby and Lula Strega).

“Drag Race France utterly turned the drag scene the other way up,” says Leo Tremaine, a Paris-based producer who hosts the Oh Wow!! podcast, the place he chats with native queer and drag artists. Based on Tremaine, the present each expanded and narrowed the scene, catapulting queens onto ever-bigger platforms (just like the Cannes Movie Pageant) whereas limiting sure alternatives to “Drag Race women.” As Tremaine places it, “Magic at all times takes when it offers.”

Nonetheless, the present jump-started the up to date drag scene in Paris, together with third-wave artists who started exploring experimental performances that wouldn’t have appeared in conventional cabarets.

“We’re extra related to a more moderen wave of queer expression and never essentially what’s historically French, like feminine phantasm or impersonation,” says drag artist Oona, who started performing in Paris in 2020.

Aron Farkas/Sister Midnight

Aron Farkas/Sister Midnight

You’ll typically discover Oona internet hosting the weekly drag reveals at Sister Midnight, a craft cocktail bar and nexus of nouveau drag, tucked away on a aspect avenue descending from the stomach of Pigalle. There, close to midnight on a latest Saturday, Kahlos Éphémère, eyes framed by cerulean shadow and a Mia Wallace wig, elicited goosebumps as they learn a gap poem-prayer impressed by Mark Aguhar’s “Litanies to My Heavenly Brown Physique,” earlier than launching into an knowledgeable lip-synch of Douglas Hodge’s rendition of “I Am What I Am.” On one other evening, Éphémère used a staple gun to affix paper blood drops to their physique, wince-evoking symbols of the typically painfully isolating expertise of being queer.

In one other latest efficiency, Oona merely laughed — hysterically, maniacally — for seven minutes.

“She acquired a standing ovation,” Tremaine says. “Folks had been freaking amazed.”

Areas like Sister Midnight foster a distinct sort of relationship between audiences and performers. The pocket-sized bar has no stage, co-owner Joseph Boley illuminates performers with two skinny flashlights, and patrons are shut sufficient to scent the sweat and fragrance. When burlesque artist Vesper Quinn (who additionally performs as drag king Thomas Occhio) stripped all the way down to a thong and tassels, lay belly-up on the bar, and doused their physique in ice water, patrons felt the splash. On many nights, the road between artist and viewers disappears.

King Cooks & Drag Queens

On the similar time, drag kings are gaining prominence. Earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been only a few in Paris, and everybody knew one another, says PowerBeauTom, who appeared within the French documentary Devenir Roi (Changing into King) and has been performing in Paris since 2022. Because the pandemic slowed, curiosity in drag kings started percolating. Performers created their very own scenes. Workshops started popping up across the metropolis.

That germinating curiosity is beginning to bloom into actual alternatives. In Could, the Sorbonne hosted a drag king atelier and present in collaboration with Kings Manufacturing unit Paris. PowerBeauTom turned the primary drag king on the roster at Madame Arthur (an enviable gig given the publicity and the compensation), the place they now commonly take the stage wielding an acoustic guitar.

“The drag king scene remains to be fairly underground,” they are saying. Nonetheless, along with different artists, they’re rethinking cabaret. “It’s a broader expression of queerness. Not simply drag queens and kings.”

“Pigalle has a wealthy historical past of drag and transgender cabaret performers, from Le Chat Noir to La Nouvelle Eve, Chez Michou, Madame Arthur, and extra,” says Jen Riley, who co-owns Sister Midnight. However, other than big-ticket venues, most queer bars within the 2000s and 2010s served bottom-shelf alcohol and low-cost beers; the drinks got here second to offering a protected house.

With gentrification rising within the early aughts, Riley says, the neighborhood was shedding its explicit mixture of grit and glam, changing into a “mini north Marais,” even because it was changing into a hub for craft cocktails. When it opened in 2019, Sister Midnight was in a position to faucet into that development by providing premium drinks, whereas nonetheless honoring the neighborhood’s previous with a “’70s Bowie Berlin years” spirit.

“It felt essential to us to reinvigorate Pigalle’s historical past and supply a stage to queer performers, and to additionally present high quality,” Riley says.

Aron Farkas/Sister Midnight

Aron Farkas/Sister Midnight

As we speak, the Sister, as regulars name it, presents a unclean vodka martini that contends for the very best in Paris, completely chilled with a shot of brine and a meaty Bella di Cerignola olive. It’s only one instance throughout town of how devoted meals and beverage applications have helped generate momentum for drag performances.

Meals heads the invoice at Le Cancan too. Opened in August 2020, in a former “hostess bar” in Pigalle, the comfortable restaurant is adorned with reclaimed ’70s neon lights and Georges Seurat-esque work, which proprietor Arthur Rech says he unearthed beneath 4 layers of wall (if solely they may speak). The kitchen churns out elevated consolation meals like pulled beef, gradual cooked for 12 hours, served on a mound of hazelnutty mashed potatoes. From a stage the dimensions of a queen mattress, Marie Jo Dassin hosts a weekly selection present. A latest Wednesday featured a mashup of trivia, comedy sketches, and riotous French interpretations of American bangers like Rihanna’s “Umbrella” — para-para-pluie-pluie-pluie.

Even the divey Le Cavern presents spreads of charcuterie or fromage and cheeky home cocktails, turning a touristy stretch of the sixth arrondissement right into a drag vacation spot. There, Ruby helped create the biweekly La Boîte à Bijoux (jewellery field) present in September 2020, which proved common sufficient to face up to a nationwide pandemic lockdown and strict citywide curfew.

Eric Delage/Le Cancan

King Cooks & Drag Queens

A concentrate on meals has additionally helped drag performers fill institutions that predominantly serve straight cis crowds who’ve by no means taken in a drag present earlier than.

At Yaya Secretán, a sun-splashed Greek restaurant within the nineteenth arrondissement, Sundays are for family-style brunch and drag bingo. Prospects circle a naked picket desk, an olive tree sprouting from the middle, and pile plates with spiced moussaka with bechamel and fluffy scrambled eggs with spinach and creamy house-made tarama. Round 3 p.m., as cups fill with espresso and Balkan wine, Mademoiselle Kiss, with a creamsicle-colored wrap gown and Dolly Parton blond wig, captivates the restaurant with bingo that’s extra efficiency than sport, however nonetheless extremely interactive.

At Floor Management, one in every of Paris’s trending meals halls (which are likely to double as neighborhood facilities internet hosting numerous actions), guests can take a hatha yoga class, get a tarot card studying, tuck into Japanese okonomiyaki made by Prime Chef contestant Cesar Lewandowski, and finish the night with Tremaine’s common Blu.e Velvet drag present, hosted by HitsuBlu of their signature Dalí mustache.

Even conventional cabaret establishments have discovered success in combining drag efficiency with high-end delicacies. At La Nouvelle Eve, most nights characteristic conventional cabaret, with cancan, Édith Piaf ballads, and loads of feathers, however in 2024, the mythic Pigalle membership is internet hosting King Cooks & Drag Queens, a roving collection the place drag performances meet haute delicacies. For 155 euros ($166), clients obtain a four-course dinner from Michelin-decorated cooks like Jacques Maximin and a present that includes drag artists like La Grande Dame (Drag Race France Season 1), Mami Watta (Season 2), and Cookie Kunty (Season 2).

Because the viewers for drag grows and the areas turn into extra common, performers might face extra challenges. The Sister has had its justifiable share of latest recognition, together with being named amongst Time Out’s 15 greatest cocktail bars in Paris. Often, patrons come for the recent mixology, unaware of the drag performances.

“As soon as, I heard somebody say, it’s unhappy as a result of the present is ruining the vibe of the place,” Tremaine says. “I checked out her and stated, ‘Child, that’s the vibe of the place. If you don’t agree with that, you may depart.’”

Different instances, ignorant passersby could be downright harmful. Oona shared an incident at a membership in Bastille, a neighborhood identified extra for its scholar bars than its queer areas; crowd members attacked a drag performer after a present. “We discovered that they had been straight, drunk, and never into queer artwork,” Oona says. “In my time as a performer, I’ve solely seen that when.”

King Cooks & Drag Queens

Partly driving the battle, in Oona’s view, is France’s far proper, which has traditionally opposed LGBTQ rights and marriage equality and just lately targeted on trans rights specifically.

Dangers stay the unlucky value of mainstreaming drag, however for a lot of locally, battle makes visibility much more pressing. Performers and allies are fiercely protecting of queer areas, together with cabarets.

“There’s a large wave of drag performers coming to say, hey child, cease,” Oona provides. “We’re right here, we’re queer, we’re prepared to make use of leisure to show those who we’re free and we take care of one another, and we’re creating an area for self-expression and combating for minorities.”

There stays a stark distinction between the careers and remedy of Paris’s most well-known drag stars and different artists, the “glass ceiling between Drag Race performers and the remaining,” as Oona places it. However little by little, all types of performers — and all types of venues — are breaking by it, broadening and strengthening all the neighborhood as they show the huge variety inside the drag scene.

Caitlin Gunther is a trilingual journalist with phrases in Saveur, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, the New York Occasions, Journey + Leisure, Harper’s Bazaar, the Washington Submit, and others. She’s based mostly in Paris, and has lived and cooked in numerous elements of Spain, together with Madrid, Bilbao, and Mallorca. Caitlin is at present engaged on a memoir about leaving her lawyer job to cook dinner in eating places in Basque Nation.

King Cooks & Drag Queens