An engineer, a biologist and a stage designer walk into Grace Ford Salvatori Hall.
They aren’t heading to class — instead, they make their way to a music-mixing workshop. Despite coming from a vast array of majors, each of the students has something in common: they’re drag queens and kings, and they’re putting together a show.
Every spring, USC’s Queer & Ally Student Assembly holds a drag show on campus with student performers. The kings and queens dance, compete in lip sync battles and walk a runway. Special guests from the wider Los Angeles drag scene come in to host.
It’s also a stepping stone for Trojans who aspire towards careers in drag. Before their big breakthroughs in West Hollywood, USC’s rising stars get their starts on the stage in Bovard Auditorium.
Cedric Bagwell is a Biomedical Engineering major whose passion for drag began during the COVID-19 shutdown. From discovering RuPaul’s Drag Race and doing “bedroom drag” from his home in rural Pennsylvania, Bagwell said it was a “rolling ball” through the years that led him to become a drag performer in West Hollywood.
“I’ve always enjoyed creating,” Bagwell said. “That’s why I’m an engineer, and drag is the medium at which I could do my more theatrical, artistic side of building.”
Bagwell describes his drag persona, Eppie Nephrine, as “young, glittery and pop adjacent.” On stage, she dons shiny costumes and voluminous, blown-out hair. Her makeup is bold and colorful, featuring thin brows and saturated blush that give a doll-like impression.
“I like to be the center of attention. So drag was just my way of connecting with the queer culture and queer landscape of the world around me,” Bagwell said.
Over the last 100 years, L.A. has become a beacon for drag culture. Underground drag balls emerged in the 1920s, growing into a unique art form in West Hollywood. By the 70s, drag culture was a pillar in LGBTQ civil rights movements, pioneered by Black and Chicano performers.
Reality television shows like Drag Race propelled drag culture into the global spotlight after the turn of the century. Now, aspiring drag kings and queens like Bagwell make their own names in L.A.
Bagwell’s drag career in West Hollywood got its footing at QuASA’s Spring 2025 drag show. There, he was mentored by Saneel Sharma — AKA Rae Oblivion — a fellow USC student and performer with years of experience doing drag in L.A.
“West Hollywood is a tough scene to break into, especially if you don’t have connections,” Bagwell said. After “starting off in the scene as Rae Oblivion’s assistant,” he quickly booked gigs of his own.
“I come from a middle-of-nowhere, rural area of the U.S. [where] doing drag is not necessarily understood,” Bagwell said. “Being in a space … where everyone understands why I like to do this and understands my reasoning for doing it is really beautiful and amazing.”
Preparations for QuASA’s 2026 drag show began in September, when the show’s co-directors Bagwell and Kole Bavoso, an East Asian Languages and Cultures major, held auditions to select 11 performers to take the stage in Bovard Auditorium this Spring.
But planning for the 2026 show hit an obstacle last Spring when the Undergraduate Student Government passed its budget for the 2026 fiscal year. The resolution cut QuASA’s budget by $14,000, dramatically reducing funds for the drag show.
“It’s hard not to notice that [the cuts are] the result of current political views on queer people, because the student assemblies that were cut were the Black Student Assembly, the Latine Student Assembly [and] the Queer Student Assembly,” Bagwell said.
Among the other assemblies most heavily affected by USG’s budget cuts were the Asian and Pacific Islander Student Assembly and the Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment.
USG declined repeated requests for comment.
“It’s hard to find the perseverance to keep going, but that’s why we do drag. That’s why we do art,” Bavoso said. “We just want to have three hours where people can forget about things that are going on outside and celebrate the joy that is drag.”
Still, the performers have no doubt their show will go on.
“Despite the politics of it all, we’re still gonna be here to show our art, and show out,” said performer Carlos Menendez, a Biological Sciences major.
“Even if there was $0, the drag show would still happen … It’s probably going to look different this year because of the budget cuts, but it’ll happen,” Bavoso said. “You can’t keep a queen down.”
During the workshop at GFS on Sunday, Bavoso and Bagwall shared their own musical mixes for their numbers and gave insightful feedback to the other performers. Bavoso — known onstage as Kolypso — described their set as “grand” and “burlesque,” with gold costumes and music by Michael Bublé and Christina Aguilera.
Lurdes Loza, a Stage Management major, described the vision for her set as a “Pan Latina Apocalyptic Carnival,” exploring carnival tradition across Latin American countries as it “slowly just descends into madness.”
“I’m specifically selecting countries that have historically unstable and corrupt governments, and I’m commenting on how a lot of Latin American governments will use passion as a way to mask insecurities from the outside world,” Loza said.
“For example, Brazil has one of the highest rates of femicide in the entire world,” Loza said. “It still has a huge travel economy, but violence against Black and indigenous women is not reported on at all.”
Loza plans to incorporate the aesthetics of Las Vegas, another large travel and tourism economy, into her performance, noting, “Las Vegas is glitz, glamour, beauty, but Las Vegas is also one of the highest sex trafficking spaces in the country.”
With the parallel between beauty and corruption in Las Vegas and Latin America in mind, Loza said her show is “gonna be pretty, but also get increasingly — pardon my French — f***ed up.”
Theatrical Design major Duck Brown, who performs as Miranda Rights, explained his concept as “half a commentary on the military industrial complex, and half ‘Duck has a fun time with sexy male dancers on stage.”
“The story is a young man joins the Navy, but he’s just such a boy failure and just so bad at it,” Brown said. “But then, through the power of love and friendship, he realizes that his homosexuality is something to embrace, and makes the rest of the Navy gay. And then everybody’s gay, and they dance.”
Featuring music by the Village People and clips from “But I’m A Cheerleader,” Brown said his “number is just to have fun, and to have a silly, goofy time and to take the seriousness out of the punching power of the US military.”
Menendez, also known as Karyotype, took inspiration for his set from his favorite artist, Ashnikko, whom he described as an “in the shadows type of girl, but then when it’s her moment, she shines.”
“She’s loud and crazy in a way, and I feel like that’s me,” Menendez said. “I really want the crowd to be engaged with my number … and make it three hours of just being free and having so much fun.”
QuASA’s 16th annual Drag Show will be held in Bovard Auditorium on February 7, 2026. Whether they’re first-time performers just entering the world of drag or rising stars of West Hollywood, the kings and queens will share the joy of drag with fellow Trojans in a fun and dazzling show.
And, for some, the show might even be a gateway into flourishing drag careers in L.A. and beyond.
“Tell baby 13-year-old me that I would have drag race finalists as contacts in my phone,” Bagwell said. “It’s like a weird thing to have experienced, especially as early in my career as I am. It’s just really cool.”