Backstage at the 2018 UW-Milwaukee Drag Show

There was an explosion of excitement backstage, in dressing room 250. Milwaukee singer-songwriter Lex Allen stared into the mirror with his hypnotic hazel eyes after a two-hour glam session with rising local makeup artist Shalisa Smith, who has worked with stars like actress Issa Rae and rapper Dej Loaf

“I don’t usually do drag makeup,” Smith admitted. “I do a lot of weddings though.”

Allen, in full hair and makeup, warmed up his vocals while lying on the floor of the dressing room. Oddly enough, he said that the nerves before the show are one of his favorite feelings.

It was a long day for Allen, with back-to-back performances at the 2018 Wisconsin LGBTQ summit and the UW-Milwaukee Drag Show. Hundreds of people poured through the doors of the Miller High Life Theater on Saturday night for the 19^th installment of the UWM Drag Show, which has been ranked as one of the best in the Midwest.

“This is my first time performing at the UW-Milwaukee Drag Show, and they’re about to turn it out!” Allen said.

“I like to think we do it bigger and better than the average school,” Executive Assistant at the UWM LGBT Resource Center Sarah DeGeorge said. “We get just over two thousand people ever year so it’s become a dramatically bigger event.”

Allen graced the stage shortly after the intermission, wearing a sparking white original 15-pound Showgirls headpiece. The building erupted with cheers when Allen invited the crowd to jump up on stage during the performance of his new song Colors In Bloom with special guest Taj Raiden. The song coincides with their radical self-love campaign through non-profit Diverse & Resilient, called Colors in Bloom, which aims to teach young people, LGBTQ+ as well as everyone else, to accept themselves.

“I’m not really a drag,” Allen said. “I mean I’m an artist; I perform, but gender roles never really were my thing anyway. I feel like anybody should be able to rock a skirt and not have it be called drag.”

Creative director for Lex Allen Productions, Briana Mercado, UWM alum from the JAMS program, spent the night updating social media and communicating with event staff in a pale pink PVC dress and black pom pom platform heels.

Allen recently launched a new album called Table 7: Sinners & Saints. He sits on the board of directors of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and has performed at local events like the Milwaukee Bucks LGBTQ night, Summer Solstice and Summerfest.

“Any day I get to be on stage, I feel alive,” Allen said.

The UW-Milwaukee Drag Show, which has been previously ranked as one of the best drag performances in the Midwest, featured sets from RuPaul’s Drag Race star Jaidynn Diore Fierce and Milwaukee singer-songwriter Lex Allen.

Although glitter canons were explicitly outlawed for the show, there was no shortage of sparkle. One queen after another graced the stage in bedazzled bodysuits and shining makeup. The queens and kings danced ferociously to songs like “Glorious” by Macklemore and “Love on Top” by Beyoncé, whipping their wigs back and forth and even dropping to the floor once or twice.

Prior to the show, the event page on Facebook was alive with RSVPs. Eight-hundred users marked that they were going and another 3,000 marked that they were interested. The show is free and open to the public, but donations were encouraged. Donations at the door fund the LBGT Resource Center and the cost of the show, while tips to the performers are generously donated to local LGBT youth programs.

The UW-Milwaukee Drag Show is one of the largest campus events of the year, but LGBT Resource Center hosts a number of other productions like the Coming Out Monologues and Lavender Graduation.

UWM has consistently ranked in the Top 25 LGBT-friendly campuses in the nation by Campus Pride, the leading national nonprofit organization for student leaders and campus groups working to create a safer college environment for LGBTQ students. According to DeGeorge, it is approximated that at least 8 percent of the UWM student body identifies as LGBTQ+ and about 3,200 students visit the LGBT Resource Center each academic year.