Carnegie Hall

Performers have been upending traditional gender roles for millennia. Long before RuPaul shifted drag into high-heel gear, men played women’s parts in Ancient Greece, Shakespeare penned cross-dressing comedies, female impersonators headlined in vaudeville, and cis male stand-ups donned dresses for laughs.

Gender identity and presentation have evolved exponentially since then, as has the concept of drag. Cross-dressing in performance was once spurred by sexism (for centuries, it was deemed indecent for women to appear onstage) and homophobia (the straight-man-in-a-dress trope fueled many clueless comedies). But ever since drag queens and transfolk helped spark the modern-day gay rights movement at the 1969 Stonewall Uprising—a pivotal event commemorated at Carnegie Hall by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus in 2019—performers defying so-called gender norms have primarily been part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Throughout its history, Carnegie Hall has played host to a panoply of gender-nonconforming artists, from the female impersonators of the 20th century who channeled famous divas like Judy Garland, to today’s drag and trans icons who are divas in their own right. Here’s a look back at several landmark moments that reflect the progression of performers playing with gender at the Hall.

Imitation as a Form of Female Flattery

The initial gender-bending performers to grace the Hall’s stage were female impersonators in the 1940s and ’50s—male artists who conjured female stars and characters. Francis Renault was likely the first in 1945. Known for his fantastic fashion and uncanny impression of American singer and actress Lillian Russell, he came to fame in vaudeville and performed in the Carnegie Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) many times, showing off an array of jaw-dropping costumes as he portrayed various celebrities, including Broadway star Anna Held, Hollywood character actress Marie Dressler, and Julian Eltinge, a fellow female-impersonation pioneer.

In 1949, Ray Bourbon, who had enjoyed a successful career as a comedic female impersonator at gay nightclubs across the country, brought his one-man show Don’t Call Me Madam to the Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) for three evenings. He counted Bob Hope and Mae West among his fans and friends, but also had a huge gay following thanks to his risqué humor and openness about his own sexual orientation. With his raunchy banter and outrageous songs like “Mr. Wong Has Got the Biggest Tong in China,” Bourbon’s act was more akin to today’s over-the-top drag queens than Renault’s sophisticated ladies, though both performers were arrested multiple times for wearing women’s clothing offstage.

The Rise of Drag

After Stonewall, the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community exploded on the streets and onstage; drag began to enter the mainstream in the late 20th century. The Rocky Horror Picture Show—the 1975 cult musical turned midnight movie—featured Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter, a self-described “sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania.” La Cage aux Folles, a Broadway musical comedy centering on a gay couple who own a drag club, won six 1984 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The drag balls in Harlem were immortalized in Jennie Livingston’s acclaimed 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, and drag groundbreaker RuPaul hosted an eponymous talk show on VH1 from 1996 to 1998.

During this period, some of the world’s most renowned drag artists took center stage at Carnegie Hall. Jim Bailey, a performer and trained opera singer, created incredible “illusions” of Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, and other famous vocalists in a series of concerts in the 1970s. His 1973 performance was even recorded live and released on United Artists Records.

Craig Russell did impressions of those same stars at the Hall along with Carol Channing, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West; as a teen growing up in Toronto, he had been president of the latter’s fan club.

Lynne Carter—whose drag career began in Cleveland when he attended a Halloween costume party dressed as singer Hildegarde and was promptly offered a nightclub gig—played the Hall once, channeling many of the aforementioned icons plus Pearl Bailey and Hermione Gingold. He often bragged that his gorgeous costumes were supplied by the stars he imitated. As he told The New York Times in 1971, “Josephine Baker once gave me three taxicabs full of gowns.”

Although all three of these performers fell under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, they were not always open about it. Performers, even those doing drag, worried about the consequences of being out in that era. Carter was often referred to as “a bachelor,” and though Russell publicly identified as gay, he ultimately married a woman. Both artists died of AIDS-related complications.

Meanwhile, Bailey refused to discuss his sexuality with the press, but was proud of playing a transgender character on the sitcom Night Court and a gay one on the dramedy Ally McBeal. He was also a special guest vocalist for a New York City Gay Men’s Chorus concert at the Hall in 1993.

Banishing the Binary in the 21st Century

The new century brought new ways of understanding and interpreting gender. Thanks to hit TV shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race and Pose, reductive labels like “female impersonator” and “cross-dresser” fell out of favor. Today’s gender-nonconforming performers are proudly LGBTQ+ and identify in a variety of ways— including drag queen, trans, and nonbinary—and many have entertained at the Hall.

Trans trailblazer Justin Vivian Bond has played the Hall four times, twice as their delightfully demented chanteuse alter ego Kiki (one half of the kooky cabaret duo Kiki and Herb) and twice as themself. In 2023, as part of the Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s concert, Bond crooned a song filled with LGBTQ+ history: Lou Reed’s “Candy Says,” inspired by real-life trans Warhol superstar Candy Darling.

RuPaul’s Drag Race champion and self-proclaimed “clown in a gown” Bianca Del Rio, slayed with her solo romp It’s Jester Joke in 2019, delivering fierce comedy and commentary about her drag adventures.

In 2023, Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee made Broadway history as the first openly nonbinary / gender-fluid performers to win Tony Awards. Both have played the Hall, Newell twice with The New York Pops, and Ghee with Jason Robert Brown in October 2024 and as a surprise guest with The New York Pops alongside Jessica Vosk in December 2024. Also on the Brown bill: Billy Porter, a Black gay man who’s known for eye-catching nonbinary fashion choices that fuse men’s and women’s evening wear.

For Pride Month in 2024, Jasmine Rice LaBeija (a Juilliard-trained singer and the International Godmother of the Royal House of LaBeija on the ballroom scene) and Le Gateau Chocolat (a self-described “opera-occasional, black-bearded drag diva”) shared their voices and vivacity at free Carnegie Hall Citywide concerts.

And in 2025, singer and comedian Jinkx Monsoon continues the Hall’s history of showcasing gender-nonconforming artists with her debut concert at Carnegie Hall on February 14. The only contestant to win RuPaul’s Drag Race twice, she became the toast of Broadway when she put her own sassy spin on Matron “Mama” Morton in the musical Chicago. She’s gone on quite the gender journey during her life and decade-long performance career, coming out as “non-gendered” in 2017 and currently identifying as trans-femme.

But as RuPaul famously said, “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.” Regardless of how these gender-nonconforming performers identify, they’re all fabulous.

Meet the Author:

Raven Snook has written about arts and culture for myriad outlets, including New York Magazine, American Theatre, The Village Voice, the New York Post, and TV Guide. She’s currently a contributing theater critic to Time Out New York and serves as a Drama Desk nominator. In her past life as a performer, she was one of the few female drag performers at Lucky Cheng’s and appeared on Maury Povich’s talk show as a drag queen.

Photography: Renault courtesy of John Sniffen, Bourbon courtesy of Randy Riddle, Newell by Richard Termine, Ghee and Vosk by Jenny Anderson, LaBeija by Stephanie Berger, all other assets courtesy of the Carnegie Hall Rose Archives.