Dragging the Industry Forward: NYC Nightlife Performers Unite for Fair Pay

How Kizha Carr and the Nightlife Artist Collective Are Advocating for Industry-Wide Changes in Compensation and Treatment

Earlier this month, in The Cockpit of Manhattan’s Red Eye bar, the newly formed Nightlife Artist Collective held its first-ever public meeting. The Collective, launched after a series of Instagram Stories by longtime performer Kizha Carr, represented a coming together of New York City’s 1099 nightlife employees, including drag queens, drag kings, go-go dancers, and burlesque performers, all gathering to address the many issues of equity in their industry.

“We are a group of people who love nightlife,” Julie J, a popular Brooklyn-based performer who notably stars as Jules in a long-running campaign for jewelry brand Alexis Bittar, tells Fag Rag.  “We are trying to change how things operate because we love this community so much that we want to see it be the absolute best that it can be.” Julie joins Carr as well as others like Marti Gould Cummings, Kiki Ball Change, and ShowPonii, who are a part of the collective’s organizing committee.

In her initial series of posts in August, Carr called out the $150 base rate for New York City drag performers, saying it was the same as when she arrived to New York back in 2010. Multiple performers have reported even lower numbers. 

Cummings, who has become known for their mixture of drag and politics in their career as a full-time entertainer over the past 16 years, remembers booking their first weekly at $125, which is still a common rate.

“$150 is a good day, especially for a drag king,” says ShowPonii, voted 2023 Best Drag King at the Glam Awards. “I’ve had to take $75 and, on a bad day, even $60. Most of the time, I get booked for $100, and I wish I didn't have to accept those rates, but unfortunately, I do. I’m constantly telling people to ‘stop taking the $75,’ but me, myself, I’m like fuck I have to take it.“ Ponii has previously recounted gigs where he was paid $100 while the drag queen was paid $300 and says he doesn’t know of any drag king in New York City that has a weekly night.

This lack of rate increase contrasts sharply with the prices of rent, groceries, and the overall cost of living in New York City, which has consistently risen. “Even when you ask people from before when I started, they always say that this was always the rate,” Cummings says.

“There needs to be an opportunity for growth,” they add. “Like if your show has been doing well for a year, we’re going to bump you up to $200. Or if the show has been doing well for five years, we’re going to bump you up to $500.”

During the meeting, New York City legend and RuPaul’s Drag Race competitor Peppermint related her own experience. 

“I got hired at a bar, and it’s a famous bar — that’s where you had to be,” she explained. “They courted me and said they really wanted me to have a show, and then when they brought me in before I even sat me down, they said don’t ever ask me for a raise. So he was normalizing a culture that I would never make more than the little hundred dollars they were giving me each week.” Others have reported bar management retaliation or being let go after requesting a raise.

Pay was a central issue of discussion at the meeting — though general workplace treatment from bar management and fellow performers also became a topic of conversation. Possible solutions focused on collective options but stopped short of unionizing or “the U word,” as Kizha called it. Some put forward the idea of establishing a fund to help out those in need after an attendee pointed out that, while people may want to adhere to a base rate that all performers demand, that may become difficult for those who fall on hard times and need whatever money they can get.  Establishing a “Drag Performer Bill of Rights” was another idea.

Performers also suggested sharing payout scales with one another to ensure a sort of uniformity. Others hope that New York’s so-called “Freelance Isn’t Free” law (passed in New York City in 2016 and New York state in August) will provide an initial wedge to open up the conversation. That statewide legislation says that any 1099 worker who earns more than $800 within a 120-day period has the right to a written contract, amongst other provisions. The hope is that the legally mandated contract will present the opportunity to add terms to that agreement, which may enumerate raises, bonuses, rights, and more.

“Because we’re 1099 employees, there’s no security,” Cummings says. “The issue is you’ll show up and do your show, and at the end, they’ll say, ‘By the way, that was your last show.’ The next day, they post the flyer for a new show they were already planning. Now, maybe we can put it in the contract that they will give you a two-week notice.”

This is all to develop something once seen as a hobby into a legitimate full-time career for more than the globetrotting queens flying across the world after appearing on Drag Race but for local drag artists as well. 

“I’m somebody that is very interested in drag futurity,” Julie says. “I am the Entertainer of the Year in New York City, and I am Miss Bushwig — I don’t say that from a place of like I deserve [it], but if I’ve obtained all these things and I’m still only being paid $100 for performing, hosting, marketing, communications, and all the things drag queens have to do — it becomes discouraging.”