A luminous stage lined with white flowers and colorful baby’s breath accents awaits an audience giddy with anticipation for the first performer to appear.

Hosted by the Pride Resource Center, Colorado State University’s annual drag show drew in over 1,000 audience members to the Lory Student Center Grand Ballroom. Over a dozen performances were featured by both local professionals and students alike, all of which were centered on the theme of the night.

“Our theme is Mother Earth (because) next week is Earth Day,” said Josh Mack, Pride Resource Center assistant director. “We really wanted to connect to Earth Day and uplift our planet and really kind of speak to how much our planet and nature provides to us.”

The emcees of the evening were local drag queens Krisa Gonna and Chocolat, who steered the cheering and enthusiastic crowd through each unique performance and even worked in some scripted banter for added drama.

“I’m just myself on stage but just unfiltered. Like, it’s the real me. That’s what you’re going to get.” -Vegina Quartz Agna De Amantes, drag queen

“It is always an amazing time,” Chocolat said. “The students, the community — just everything is always on point. And it is so wonderful to see everyone come together.”

Considered to be one of the largest drag shows in Colorado, the event this year was also headlined by Mirage, a recent contestant on season 16 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

The crowd members were on their feet a majority of the night, whether they were experienced drag show attendees or first-timers like CSU student-athlete Malaya Jones.

“It’s my first-ever drag show,” Jones said. “It’s just really fun to be able to come with my friends who are also (in the) LGBTQ community and then my friends who are not and that we can all equally enjoy it, and it was just some of the most fun I’ve ever had.”

The energy in the room was palpable as each performance moved into the next with the crowd leaping to their feet, hopping and hollering with excitement while music blared from the speakers on stage.

“The atmosphere is electric — it’s so positive,” event stage manager Ryan Wagner said. “It’s like a party, but it’s like a safe party. It’s so fun.”

While each performer’s act was unique in its own right, some of the standouts of the evening included Vegina Quartz Agna De Amantes, who captivated audiences with a glittery green dress covered in pastel pink roses and iridescent fairy wings she used throughout her performance.

Vegina Quartz recounted her experience in the evening’s performance and the platform the stage offers.

“I’m just myself on stage but just unfiltered,” Vegina Quartz said. “Like, it’s the real me. That’s what you’re going to get.” 

Darker and more destructive sides of nature were also explored through renditions by performers like Ambrose, who donned trash bags as a cape accented by white lights, or King Kase, who embodied a phoenix’s spirit through his use of glowing orange and red light ropes.

While the show’s first mission is to promote drag as an art form and give students a platform to perform, as Mack explained, the annual event also acts as a fundraiser for scholarships.

“The second purpose (of the show) is to raise money for both our LGBTQ scholarship and then our Leah Memorial Fund,” Mack said. “All of the tips that we raised today at the drag show go directly to those funds.”

The emergency fund is in place for covering any costs a student might not be able to cover themself, including groceries and rent, Mack said.

This year, the show was able to raise $5,000, with over $4,100 coming from in-person donations during the performance, PRC Director Maggie Hendrickson said.

As the show began to wind down, the message of acceptance never wavered.

“Drag is something to be celebrated,” Wagner said. “Queerness and LGBTQIA+ community is here — we’re celebrating, we’re happy and it’s not anything to be afraid of.”

It is this acceptance that the performers hope the audience holds onto after the performance.

“Drag sometimes can make people think about stuff, and they will take home either something to think about or just the joy that we shared,” Krisa Gonna said. “I love that it is passed on. And I love to be a part of that, to be a channel for that joy to be distributed.”