‘Die 4 U’ Takes on Redline DTLA

Dressed in a matching long sleeve top and full-length pinstripe pajama bottoms, drag performer Die Anna personified stardom Thursday night at Redline DTLA. The outfit affirmed their nuanced thoughtfulness when it comes to their performances, as they opened their show as the first performer of the night to Bruno Mars’ 2010 track “The Lazy Song.”

It all made sense.

Die Anna — who is nonbinary trans femme — focuses their show, “Die 4 U,” on the lack of inclusion of transgender and nonbinary people in the drag community. This lack is a subject that many inside and out of the LGBTQIA+ community grapple with in the advent of mass media content like “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

“​​Since I grew up in the downtown [Los Angeles] drag community, it was always [my] first idea to have kings, queens, everyone in between, brown people, white people, Black people and just go from there — treat a drag show like how it should be treated, like everyone gets a slice of the pie,” Anna said.

These performances sometimes have the benefit of tips, in addition to general performance fees paid to performers by venues who book them. In this context, the act of drag has a monetary incentive that many performers have come to rely on to earn a living. 

However, with the coronavirus pandemic hindering many facets of the entertainment industry, including live shows, performing artists such as Die Anna, whose show initially began online, were able to flourish.

“If I could do it on the internet, I can do it in person,” said Die Anna referring to their remote drag events over the pandemic. “[But] it’ll be even bigger and better, because I get to invite my friends from all over the country who [also participated] in the show online.”

Initially, their idea was simply to find a space to express their creativity, and after a time of searching in vain for what felt like the right place for them, they decided, “if you don’t see yourself reflected in the spaces that you’re in, just get up and do it.”

“It’s way beyond ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’” said Die Anna’s event partner, Roxy Johnathan Valle, who goes by Johnny Sin Gentleman or simply “Johnny” for short. “It’s something I had to open my eyes to.” 

Johnny, who identifies as trans masculine nonbinary, recalled his journey to self discovery in the drag community. 

“I [had not heard of] a ‘drag king’ until a friend brought it up [as a phenomenon] in Long Beach at places like Hamburger Mary’s,” Johnny said.

Hamburger Mary’s is a popular chain of restaurants across the United States that revolves around traditional drag performances by cisgender males and, at times, functions as a focal point of visibility for the LGBTQIA+ universe. Many members of the LGBTQIA+ community use such places to introduce their often cisgender heterosexual friends and families to the physical world of drag, Mary’s performer Coco Sho-Nell told them magazine  in 2020.

According to Johnny, for mainstream places like Hamburger Mary’s to feature drag kings as a performance identity, it felt like he found a new route for self-expression as a queer artist. 

“I thought, ‘Holy shit! This is a thing,’” Johnny said. “I started exploring myself and the downtown L.A. scene — there were nonbinary artists, trans feminine people, and gendering bending, just [performers] just doing their own thing, and there wasn’t really a gender identified. It was alternative and artistic.”

Redline DTLA bar owner and founder of Downtown L.A. Pride Festival Oliver Alpuche said ‘alternative and artistic’ forms of creativity are lost when we settle on the complacency of ideals and notions about the LGBTQIA+ community.

“There is so much out there that I don’t know and don’t understand, and [I] have the ability to give people a platform to showcase different genders, different expressions … the amount of performers and people you meet open your eyes up to what gender truly means,” said Alpuche about his bar, which has regularly hosted “Die 4 U” for the past six months.

Alpuche said he wants to continue creating inclusive programming and a space for all members of the drag community at Redline, a show of support he feels, as a cisgender gay man and bar owner, is his responsibility.

“Now we need to elevate that and start bringing in different kind of performances, different aspects [of the LGBTQIA+ community].”

“Die 4 U” runs regularly for the foreseeable future every first Thursday of the month at Redline DTLA. If any of our readers are interested in joining Die Anna’s show, feel free to reach out via their Instagram @yourdeadsister, or simply show up to the next performance of “Die 4 U.”

Correction: In a previous version of this article, we incorrectly identified “Die 4 U” as beginning online. Though Die Anna had hosted events on Zoom, Instagram and Twitch during the pandemic, “Die 4 U” premiered in person. This article was updated to properly reflect the gender identity of Die Anna. The Daily Trojan regrets these errors.