Thursday night, PYGMALION hosted the legendary Bob the Drag Queen to a full crowd at Foellinger Great Hall.
PYGMALION is an annual music festival hosted in Urbana since 2005, hosting artists from Yo La Tengo in 2008 to CupcakKe last year.
Bob the Drag Queen won season eight of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2016 and also hosts a podcast called “Sibling Rivalry” with fellow Drag Race winner Monét X Change. She also acted as the “Master of Ceremonies” for Madonna’s Celebration Tour .
Her PYGMALION performance was the first in a short tour on which she is performing new material across the country.
The show began at 8:30 p.m. with an introduction from Urbana’s mayor, DeShawn Williams, demonstrating his support for drag.
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Following was a stand-up performance by local drag queen Herra Winn, who started the show with an audience call-and-response, “How are we doing tonight?” “Winning!”
Following her act, Winn introduced Bob the Drag Queen, who walked out in a pink and yellow dress to uproar from the audience.
“Thank you, I deserve it,” Bob the Drag Queen said, eliciting further laughter.
Bob the Drag Queen opened by having the audience sing “California Dreamin’” to “make the white people comfortable.”
Much of the opening jokes revolved around racism and her experiences as a Black queer person in the United States.
In further remarks, she referenced the tumultuous state of politics and media today and discussed Jimmy Kimmel’s show cancellation to applause.
“I don’t feel like making jokes all the time with what’s going on in the world,” Bob the Drag Queen said.
Bob the Drag Queen spent much of the set explaining ground rules for gay men to follow to “stop being the worst letter in the alphabet soup.” She did this by singling out gay men in the audience, bouncing off their answers quickly with sharp wit to laughter from the crowd.
“Bob was very funny,” said Tyler Moore, a graduate student studying creative writing. “I had a blast. It was my first time seeing Bob (the Drag Queen) perform, and it was great comedy; she was fierce.”
She then hosted a quick Q&A with two audience members, offering “spiritual and financial guidance.” The audience laughed as she suggested a teacher should sell drugs to children and a young man should physically fight his parents.
“I found out about Bob the Drag Queen about two hours ago,” said Austin Hu, freshman in LAS. “I had a great time and laughed a lot. Bob was hilarious. I wouldn’t expect a famous drag queen to come down here.”
Bob the Drag Queen closed the show by expounding on the necessity of death and the singular cultural significance of the movie “Shrek” for millennials.
“It’s a longstanding tradition that PYGMALION be able to invite drag queens to perform, and it’s important that they get to headline, especially with the tensions about drag and education,” said Zach Simon, lecturer in LAS.
