Spectrum’s Bad to the Bone drag show tonight:
Doors open at 7:30 p.m., show starts at 8 p.m.
Ball Gymnasium
Proceeds benefit Bikers Against Child Abuse
For more information, click here.
Ball State’s Spectrum will host its annual drag show at 8 tonight at Ball Gymnasium. From the makeup to the hair to the costumes, drag performers will go all out for the year’s final show.
Senior Jaime Whitaker, a theatre design and technology major, will perform at the event for the eighth and final time as a Cardinal.
Q: How did you come up with your stage name, Avery Leigh?
A: I actually came up with my alter ego with one of my friends back home, her name is Adriana. I was talking about, "Oh, they want me to do a drag show, and I don’t know if I’m gonna do it or not." And she’s like, "No, like you need to do it. We need to get your name down."
So, we were talking and my first name Avery is actually like a play on words because when she was asking me what kind of queen I wanted to be, I was like, "Well I want to be a very pretty drag queen. I want to be a very loud, outgoing drag queen. I want to be a very popular drag queen. I want to be a very dancing drag queen." And she goes, "well everything you just said has ‘a very’ in front of it and if you put 'a' and 'very' together, your name’s Avery, and that’s the name I just got from you saying everything." And Leigh is actually a play on my real middle name cause my real middle name is spelled “Lee.”
Q: What is Avery Leigh like?
A: If you would have asked me this two years ago, my answer for "How is Jaime?" and "How is Avery?" would have been completely different. Jaime, right now, is the exact same as Avery. We’re both very loud and outgoing. We can be the center of attention. We can also be that super quiet person in the corner depending on what’s going on and how the environment feels.
Q: How do you have the energy to perform?
A: It’s an adrenaline rush. You’re a guy in a high heels in a dress or a sequin leotard or something completely flashy that you wouldn’t normally wear, and people love it. It’s one of those things where you have energy when you go on stage. This can go either one of two ways: either the audience can hate what I’m doing and I’m going to lose energy or they’re gonna love what I’m doing so much that I’m gonna throw my energy at them and they’re gonna keep throwing it back and it’s gonna keep bouncing back and forth. I got out there and I don’t slack. I go out and I give it my all. I never hold back.
Q: What’s the process of coming up with your routine for a show?
A: Typically, I do a lot of upbeat dance songs that are sort of current. I draw a lot of inspiration from Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez and Kat Graham and just anybody who sort of is on the radio now. That’s typically the audience that I perform to, so when they love that song, it sort of builds up the energy. I am a chameleon; I adapt to anything.
When I start making a mix, I have no idea what it’s gonna sound like. I don’t have any thoughts of "I’ll do this song and then into this song with this transition." It’s literally like a little kid playing with Playdough. I’m just mashing pieces together and hoping that it works out, and after some editing, it does. It’ll just go from there and then from the mix to the costumes. I’ll go in from the song mix into whatever it is that I’m wearing.
Then it comes to makeup, and if it’s something that is a one-time big performance, I will sort of custom design my makeup to what I’m wearing. I’ll add the colors. I’ll add the glitter in the color of my dress. But for the most part, my makeup, especially for the Ball State shows, is neutral because I do change my mixes so much. I’ll do something neutral, in like drag terms. A lot of blacks and whites that’ll go with everything. I used to choreograph everything I did. But now I feel like I’ve been doing it for a while and I’m OK with my dancing abilities and I know what I can do that, I just improv a lot of my stuff when I go out there. Really, the only preparation is getting the song and the costume and the makeup together.
Q: What can people expect from your performance?
A: It’s going to be a performance that’s never been done on Ball State’s campus before. Nobody is going to know what to expect. I have already sort of went through in my mind what people would say or do. I doubt many people are going to get up and tip for it, just because it’s going to be such a big shock performance. It’s going to emotional for me. But the message that I’m gonna spread with it is something that before I wouldn’t do.
I wouldn’t think about this type of performance before, but because I united both Avery and Jaime, and because of the bond that we share together is just something that is so strong that nothing can break it anymore.
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