The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 upended every facet of life – communication, daily routines, leisure time, among countless other disruptions. While virtually every industry was impacted by the pandemic, nightlife and live performance were hit particularly hard. As an art form rooted in liveness, often at LGBTQ+ bars and clubs, it is unsurprising that drag performance was greatly impacted by pandemic restrictions. Drag artists in the US tend to be gig workers, often rendering them ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits. The closures of nightlife spaces and the inability to gather safely in person resulted in a sudden and total loss of income for drag artists. The effects of COVID-19 were felt by artists collectively (Buchholz et al, 2020; Warnecke, 2020; Jeannotte, 2021), but the precarity for drag performers (compared with theatre actors, for example, who often belong to actors’ unions), and lack of fallback options made the imagined future for drag during the pandemic particularly bleak. It became imperative for drag to shift, creatively, to survive pandemic closures and distancing mandates.

Drag pivoted to increasingly diverse avenues, including a foray into the digital realm beginning in late March 2020. ‘Digital drag’ started with real-time performances on Instagram Live and ticketed live events via streaming platforms. Initially, digital drag was a true ‘make it work’ moment; drag artists were in crisis with no foreseeable income, so something had to be done immediately to provide desperately needed earnings. The simplest, quickest solution was attempting to mirror the ‘analogue’ live, real-time, in-person performance. Yet a perfect one-to-one replica of the analogue-live performance using digital media was not feasible. Technical difficulties abounded, real-time interaction was largely lost, and much of the illusory magic of drag was stripped away in the harsh overhead lighting of performers’ living rooms.

When social distancing restrictions lasted longer than initially anticipated, drag had to adapt, once again, to more sustainable solutions until in-person gatherings could safely resume. Digital drag thus became less about replicating the analogue-live, and instead began to mirror music videos: highly stylized recordings using technical effects to heighten or alter embodied performance elements. In other words, digital drag became a novel performance style all its own – one which necessarily interrogates the connections and tensions between embodied art, technology, and the very premise of liveness itself.