“I just felt like, these are dark times now, and we need something fun to do.”When it returned this fall, a dearth of sponsors and trouble finding a site until late forced organizers to “People always want to say, ‘The spirit of Wigstock is spinning in its grave because you’re charging admission,’” Bunny said. She jokingly references the case of Florida drag queen Anahi Santos, who earned thousands in tips for her Facebook Live stream that went While the pandemic will limit in-person gatherings for the foreseeable future, Bunny has hope for the future of queer performance. Three decades after landing in New York with RuPaul, Lady Bunny rules as New York’s reigning drag queen, even as a younger generation nips at her heels.
As most of the crowd already knew, it was Lady Bunny, Wigstock’s buxom, potty-mouthed founder and ringmaster, wearing a kimono-sleeved metallic-gold minidress and a towering blond bouffant.She was flanked by three other drag veterans in gold, who traded unprintable barbs (mostly about who was the oldest or most promiscuous). “It was the best year of my life,” she said, recalling banana trees in the backyard and an anaconda that slithered across the street. But there’s that little lull in the music right before the end, and somehow I got up, got my wig back on and finished the number with one shoe.”One night after the club closed, Bunny and some fellow revelers sauntered into nearby Tompkins Square Park. “It was the height of new wave, disco and punk, and I was super into music. Lady Bunny. But that doesn’t mean that I like everything that he does, and I do like what I do. She commends the millennial and Gen Z drag performers who’ve been able to seamlessly make the transition to platforms like Instagram Live and Twitch—and more importantly, monetize their performances. “I can be silly. She gave fans a look last month at what they can expect with a preview of “Sissy That Cough,” a pandemic-themed take on RuPaul’s hit “Sissy That Walk.” Bunny also duets with self-described “drag terrorist” Still, the hectic nature of putting together a production such as this without leaving the house did more to comfort Bunny during this time rather than stress her out even further, and brought her a sense of normalcy at a moment when things are anything but normal. Lady Bunny has been lighting TV screens in HBO’s Wig documentary, ... while also making time to roast her good friend Bianca Del Rio. “I’m a worker bee; I love to work,” she says, “so it made me feel like I was working again.” Part of her stand-up routine in the show pokes fun at the fact that she’s performing without an audience laughing and reacting to her jokes. humor” and other risqué acts. “I majored in drinking, which the English are good at,” she said. Lady Bunny is following suit: her new one-woman digital drag special “C*ntagious” is available today via , the producers behind many of the successful tours employing , “so I’m not going to shy away from coronavirus humor.” She describes a refrigerated truck parked around the corner from her apartment that has been turned into a “makeshift morgue,” surrounded by white plastic tents that are usually seen at rainy movie premieres; the difference, she laughs, is that “This is not a party that you want to get into!” with a coronavirus cover of Peggy Lee’s 1969 single “Is That All There Is?” “Working with her is a treat,” Bunny smiles. In her black punk-rock T-shirt and sneakers, she looked more like a part-time guitar teacher than an undercover queen.“Very few people recognize me out of drag,” she said. I can make people enjoy themselves and maybe lighten the burden of a blight.”Wigstock grew with the years, eventually moving to the piers along the West Side Highway. The Ingles were vocal opponents of discriminatory housing and the Vietnam War, and they lobbied the City Council to end Chattanooga’s Armed Forces Day parade.When Bunny was 11, her father got a Fulbright Scholarship and temporarily moved the family to Ghana, where her parents converted to Quakerism from Congregationalism.
Career. “I prefer to workshop my material in front of a live audience, but that ain't going to happen, except for maybe the mice and the roaches in my apartment!” she jokes. “You’re going to see nudity today. At 6:42 they're talk about the influence of French words in drag culture and lexicon (sashay, shante, etc. Parodies of popular songs are an integral part of Bunny’s live act, and they form a portion of the “C*ntagious” special as well. I can be a clown. His good friend Lady Bunny wanted the same thing for herself. Restless, she transferred to Georgia State University, where she was less interested in class than in the burgeoning drag scene in Atlanta, which she called “the mecca of the gay South.”There, she met RuPaul Charles, an ambitious glamour puss two years her senior. “And I like that, because if you’re lugging your laundry to the laundromat, you’re not always in the mood to stop.”Even offstage, however, her friends call her Bunny, rather than her birth name, Jon Ingle. They became go-go dancers for a local new wave band, “We were frequently evicted, occasionally working at Popeyes chicken — you know, street kids, essentially,” Bunny said.