The Double Lives of Drag Performers
On Friday nights in Newcastle, a bald, white-painted clown with a moustache and a jaunty jester’s hat performs “Primadonna Girl” by Marina and the Diamonds. Twelve hours later, the same person is in a gambling company office, building spreadsheets with men who still say “mate” instead of “they.”
This is Richard Berry’s week – a nine-to-five worker by day, and their drag persona Sweet Boy at night, each demanding something different from the same body.
That split between professional and performance isn’t unique. London performer Ethel Elizabeth Crawford also lives a double life, moving between drag stages and courtrooms. Where Berry’s days are spent in corporate offices, Crawford's days unfold in legal chambers. Still, she sees the two worlds as closer than they appear. “The courtroom and the stage are just one big performance,” she says. “The same way you rehearse a number you would study a case.” If she can stand in front of a stage doing a burlesque number and breathing fire, she confirms, she can stand in front of a judge or present an argument.
For both performers, drag has to exist alongside work, not replace it. Living costs have made full-time performance increasingly unrealistic. In October 2025, trade union Equity warned that nightlife performers were facing “unprecedented financial strain”, as unstable gig pay collided with rising rent, travel costs and the price of materials. Berry describes drag as “a very expensive industry.” Even on RuPaul’s Drag Race, contestants routinely spend tens of thousands of dollars preparing for the show.
Yvie Oddly, winner of Season 11, said she “spent the first nine months after winning paying back the debt” of competing. “From the day I won people assumed I was $100k richer,” she told me, describing the financial and social pressures that followed her victory. While Yvie describes the aftermath of winning, Berry remembers the moment before drag existed for them.
They first began doing drag during lockdown, while working shifts at a petrol station in Great Yarmouth. With little to do outside work, drag became something to fill long evenings, watching YouTube videos to learn how to do makeup and practising throughout the isolated period. “There was nothing else to do,” they say. “I needed an outlet for emotion, creativity and gender expression.” Their mother had died earlier that year. “She was my best friend,” Berry says. “I took the plunge, started doing it and realised how much better my life felt. I needed that creative outlet to process my grief, to process lockdown, to get myself out of that pit.”
Crawford’s introduction to drag came earlier, in 2013, after watching RuPaul’s Drag Race. At the time, she didn’t know any openly queer people and would rarely see them in the public eye. Coming across drag on screen offered something different. “Seeing queer people living their authentic selves and being celebrated for it was mind-blowing,” she says.
Despite working in very different professional environments, both performers describe feeling underestimated. Crawford still senses disbelief from colleagues and clients. “People act like it’s crazy to think I can be intelligent, working in law, but also do drag,” she says. “In both worlds, people underestimate you.”
Berry describes a similar tension in their office, which they call “95% straight, 99% cis.” Early experiences in Great Yarmouth, which they describe as “right-wing,” had made them cautious about being open. “It never really got a good reaction,” they say. This time, the response was unexpectedly positive. Colleagues were curious rather than hostile. “Everyone was so lovely and really supportive and wanted to know more,” Berry says. “A load of people from work are coming to our shows now.” After years of playing up to a straight version of themselves, they describe it as a really positive experience. “It does mean I can live a bit more of a peaceful life.”
Drag has also become a way of navigating gender. Berry says they spent years questioning their identity before realising they were non-binary. Sweet Boy emerged from that uncertainty. “As a non-binary person I can be a clown and not fall for either gender,” they say. The choice of their persona is deliberate. “Clowns are this genderless being whose sole purpose is to bring joy to people’s lives,” Berry explains. “Their gender doesn’t matter. No one’s looking at whether their waist is cinched or their lashes are big enough or if they’re pretty enough.”
For Crawford, drag is inseparable from politics. “Every time you step out the door in drag, you’re making a statement,” she says. “If the law isn’t right, fight to change it.” For her, both law and drag are ways of intervening in systems that often exclude queer people.
Crawford says the cost-of-living crisis has reshaped how performers think about money and labour. Drag, she argues, can no longer pretend it exists outside economics. “We physically cannot afford to not be paid for the work we do,” she says. “We have bills to pay.” She points out that free entry often hides invisible labour. “You may see a drag show for free,” she adds, “but behind the scenes every drink you buy at the bar pays the performers’ wages. Without the support there can be no drag.”
In Newcastle, Berry and friends responded by starting Fat Drag Slam, a DIY show run entirely by performers. They manage ticket sales themselves and use venues for free, relying on bar sales to keep spaces viable. “The venue makes money on the bar, we make money on the tickets,” Berry says. Even that model is fragile. “The general public are also struggling,” Berry adds. “No one can afford to buy tickets in advance or tip. It’s having a knock-down effect on all of us.”
The costs of performing accumulate quickly. Berry lists wigs at over £100, costumes at £200 to £300, alongside regular spending on makeup, taxis and drinks. “Although I do make money as a drag artist,” they say, “I’m never going to make enough money from it to not also have a full-time job.”
Despite the financial pressures, Crawford describes drag as foundational to her life. “I wouldn’t have any of the friends I have now without it,” she says. But with visibility comes comparison. “There’s pressure to be at your A-game all the time, even when you’re not feeling it.”
She traces both her careers back to the same impulse. Growing up without visible queer role models, she discovered drag through television. Law came later, driven by what she calls a “sense of justice.” “The justice system doesn’t always represent the average person,” she says. “It’s got a reputation of being an elite all-boys club. It’s important we see the same people in the courtroom as we see at the bus stop.”
As she’s become more visible, she’s stopped hiding one part of her life from the other. “I often tried to hide drag from my daily life,” she says. “But now’s not the time to be in the shadows.”
For both artists, drag exists as sustenance beyond daily survival. “Drag completely saved me,” says Crawford. “I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for drag – my mental health was so bad before; I had no confidence.” Grassroots collectives echo this: “Nightlife is not entertainment for us. It is where people find belonging, chosen family, and joy while queer and trans lives are under attack.”
Crawford points to drag artists’ resilience as something born out of necessity. “Even in the 60s, when it wasn’t as open, we’ve always adapted,” she says. “If we couldn’t have clubs, we went underground. That’s how things like the Stonewall riots happened.” For Berry, drag is bound up with loss as much as community.
The name Sweet Boy existed long before the character. As a teenager, Berry volunteered at the RSPCA, doing window displays with a group of older women who struggled to remember their name. “They’d call me Sweet Boy. The sweet boy who comes in and helps,” they say. “I really loved it.” It became something to aspire to. “That’s what my mum was like,” Berry says. “Everyone loved her.” For Richard, Sweet Boy is the part of their life that exists outside the routine of work and bills, the part shaped by grief as much as performance. It didn’t come from career ambition, but from loss, expression and the need to feel like themselves.
“One day you’ll have your name in lights, my sweet boy.” When their mother used to say she’d see their name in lights, it never made sense. She passed away during lockdown, before the Sweet Boy character was created, while Berry was training in film editing.
“You don’t really see film editors’ names in lights so I never took it seriously.” It was only years later, during their first solo show at the Newcastle Festival Fringe, that it clicked. Sweet Boy’s name appeared on the screen behind them.“That’s what she meant,” Berry says. “It was Sweet Boy’s name up in lights.” “I carry that with me in my drag,” they add. “I hope she can see the lights from where she is.”