All the best ways to experience drag in Sydney

Drinking and dining gets a whole lot more fun when there’s drag queens interjecting with wicked lip-syncs and witty quips. Priscilla’s restaurant at the Imperial Hotel in Erskineville has perfected the signature Drag N Dine experience. You’ll find a dazzling variety of drag artists stomping the stage (and the restaurant floor, and on the bar) from Wednesdays to Sundays each week at the Inner West’s hallowed queer haven, as seen in the Aussie cinema classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of Desert. Sometimes it's just a couple of divas lip synching for their life and having a laugh, and somtimes it's a full themed production with up to five performers at once in sassy, comedic show that change constantly. 

“Drag N Dine is suitable for anyone,” says Impy regular and RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under star Etcetera Etcetera. “Before 9pm we allow supervised minors to dine in our Priscilla’s restaurant – so it’s a perfect place for a little diva in the making to see a big glittery show. We also have plenty of queens who love the classics and will entertain Nan with some old jazz standards and slapstick comedy. We’ve got something for everyone!” Check out the latest shows and make a booking here.

Across town, one of Oxford Street’s nightclubs was transformed into a glittering dinner theatre venue after the first lockdown by Pink Mile matriachs Charisma Belle, Carmen Geddit, and Drag Race Down Under finalist Hannah Conda. Premiere: An Immersive Dining Experience pops up upstairs at Universal. Check here for info on their next shows and food and beverage packages.

We’re not sure whether it’s the excess of balls or the colourful little dabbers, but there is something about bingo that just goes hand in hand with drag. Someone who knows a little something about calling out number-based puns in a dress is Penny Tration, who has been the queen bee of Sydney’s GenderBender Bingo (and its previous incarnations) for more than two decades. “We were the original and first drag queen bingo to leave the gay clubs and cross the bridge, go interstate and even on P&O cruises,” she told us. “We were the bingo that Dannii Minogue came to when she wanted a special birthday bingo.” You’ll find GenderBender Bingo at Coopers Hotel in Newtown on Monday nights, Potts Point Hotel in Kings Cross on Thursdays, and at the Miranda Hotel (from Nov 6, 2022). Each event features a drag queen host and assistant hand-picked by Penny and involves five rounds for you to play mixed in with two performances, silly sound effects and guaranteed laughs. 

There’s more than one kind of drag royalty waltzing the streets of Sydney. While drag queens have penetrated the mainstream, drag kings (yep, think the opposite of a drag queen) are loaded with plenty of swarthy charm and tongue-in-cheek critiques on masculinity. The drag king subculture was huge in Sydney’s lesbian bars in the early noughties, and now the boys are back in town, thanks to a couple of regular events that have cropped up over the last couple of years.

From glam rock gods to befuddled IT guys, you’ll find a mixed bag of disarmingly charming gents at The Kings. “People can expect what they know about drag to be thrown on its head!” show host Big Rod tells us. “It’s a night of variety and entertainment – from lip-syncing to live music, to comedy, storytelling, erotic dancing, and the list goes on. Every show is different, but you’re guaranteed a great night out.” This monthly night has been valiantly floating between venues since the Giant Dwarf sadly closed down. Follow @thedragkings on Instagram for updates.

On the first Thursday of the month at Newtown Hotel, Papi Chulo hosts Drag Kings Legends with handsome special guests.

For more exploits with stuffed and bound studs, look out for occasional appearances by the Sydny Kings crew from the city’s biggest queer party starters, Heaps Gay.

Drag queens and night clubs are a match made in heaven. An evening of late night boogies and Vodka Lime Sodas becomes something really special as soon as a towering goddess steps up on a podium (just don't try to get up there with her – we're looking at you, hen's parties). Australia's bigget nightclub The Ivy has become the unexpected home of gay raving since Poof Doof set up residence. Every Saturday, there's multiple levels of shennanigans and drag performances into the wee hours with lit special effects. 

Over on Oxford Street, upstairs at Universal you can get into Fame Fridays, their end-of-week upstairs dance party bonanza featuring drag queens, DJs and peformers serving camp classics and pop party anthems

For subteranian vibes, the basement at the Imperial Hotel is often hosting something alternative and grungy to offset the sparkly above-ground antics. Honcho Disko is often a monthly excuse to dress up in something wild. 

Witnessing a seasoned, professional queen work a room with a seamless lip-synch and an unclockable look is quite something. But then, watching a brand new performer push their limits can be equally fierce. Baby drag nights are awash with performance jitters and community camaraderie, and those elements could be what sees lines of people filing down Oxford Street mid-week at Universal for Slay 4 Pay and its sister event, Slay 2 Stay, hosted by Carmen Geddit and Charisma Belle from 9pm every Wednesday. “No two nights are ever the same, but what I can guarantee is a great time,” Charisma Belle told us. “The young queens are always full of surprises. Because it’s the first time some of these queens have been on stage, they try things that don’t always go to plan. From wigs falling off to costume malfunctions and terrible acrobatics, the girls really do whatever it takes to slay. Slay 4 Pay is for everyone that has a queer act, and entering is simple: just show up with a USB and good number and you can enter. The audience usually decides the winner, so bring your friends to cheer you on.” 

Regular Slay programming is sometimes interrupted for Slay 2 Stay, a continuous knockout competition that is known to get heated. Check the Universal Instagram for updates. There’s drag five nights a week at Universal, and you can also catch a lot of the baby queens at Sunday Shenanigans from 7pm, an open mic-style performance night.

Over in Erskineville, you can also see drag babies come out to play at the Imperial’s Lip Sync Heroes from 7pm, hosted by Farren Heit and Ruby Slippers.

The art of drag is much more diverse than pretty boys dressing up as even prettier girls and swanning about serving a polished interpretation of femininity (as fabulous as that category is). Queer performance artists come in a gorgoeusly diverse array of idenities, and their stage personas are a rich kaleidoscope of influences and expressions.

Over at Redfern’s artsy neighbourhood bar, the Bearded Tit, the weird and the wonderful are wholeheartedly embraced. There is a mix of punters that properly reflects the Sydney rainbow. On Wednesday nights from 7pm, Queerbourhood hosted by Jonny Seymour of Stereogamous fame puts a mixed bag of performances on the stage. The program is not strictly drag, per se, but each week two queer performance artists will leave it all on the floor. You might see a vogue dancer bend some shapes and the gender binary, or an Indigenous drag queen like Sarah Moany or Sarabi drawing on their ancestry to turn out a jaw-dropping performance.

An old fashioned round of pub trivia is always a good excuse to flex your general knowledge over some schooners and a schnitty, but throw in some drag queens and a battle of the brains starts to get a whole lot more interesting. If you land a host with a wit bigger than her wig, you might find she’ll have pretty dicey questions for you (and your outfit choice). As a huge gay-centric pub with a major drag presence, it is only natural that the Imperial Hotel has a drag trivia night to get quizzical with every week. On Wednesday nights from 7pm, your beautiful and sharp hostesses with the mostesses Fran Giapanni and Dakota Fann’ee are queering trivia at the Impy. They will have you slapping your thighs in laugher and no-doubt slapping your noggin’ in frustration as you try to get out those trivia answers. There are half price pizzas all night to fuel up your table as you try to come up with a team name less overused than ‘Let’s get Quizzical’. 

On Monday nights on Oxford Street, Charisma Belle will get you revved up with Turbo Trivia at the Stonewall Hotel from 7pm.

There is a certain level of over-the-top campery and brutal showgirl wherewithal that is true to Australian drag of a certain vintage. The kind of drag that inspired The Adventures of Priscilla and pre-dates Instagram-geared pouting. The drag of Oxford Street’s golden era still lives on. On a good night, you can plot a crawl up the Pink Mile to catch trios of seasoned queens popping up with synchronised performances.

The Stonewall Hotel is an old faithful, with entertainment seven nights a week. You can level up your weekends with late night drag performances every Friday and Saturday (at 10.30pm, 11.30pm and 12.30am), with a special hangover edition on Sundays.

If you want to pack more classic queens into your week, up the road at the Oxford Hotel and upstairs at Gingers lounge bar, you'll find camp entertainment most nights of the week. Drag Race Down Under S1 star Maxi Shield is a regular on the roster for the production shows on the weekends. 

If signing up for a set menu is too much commitment for your crew, and trivia or bingo involves a little too much thinking for you at the minute, we have a perfect alternative where you can still see some top notch drag and queer performers. Drag is back amongst the colourful mixing pot of Newtown at King Street’s Newtown Hotel. You'll often find local legend Marlyn Mootrub there, doing Friday night gigs or hosting the Sunday gaming night. Immigrant carnie drag king Marlena Dali also hosts That's Entertainment on Wednesdays with guest entertainers showing off special talents. Check out the Newtown Hotel's weekly line-up here.