The Showbags Phenomenon
Showbags was a unique moment in Melbourne’s Drag Scene, when a number of factors came together to make Showbags and their venue, the Greyhound Hotel in St Kilda the centre of drag in Melbourne. Showbags tenure at the Greyhound even attracted an article in The Age newspaper, and its Anniversary Birthday night was noted in Victorian Parliament, such was its reputation as a gathering of alternative communities in Melbourne, many of whom had adopted the Greyhound as their own.
Showbags was born in 2000, when Jessica James moved to Melbourne from Sydney and took two total amateurs, Linda Lamont, and I, (we were in the various drag competitions at the time), taught us choreography, made costumes for us and so set us out on our path. (We never quite got the choreography part right, but that became part of the Showbags charm as a review in SX National showed.
I had been running the Saturday night Greyhound shows for about three months and so our newly formed troupe had the holy grail; being a good stage, with a fabulous sound system, and on a Saturday Night.
Showbags debuted on the roof of the Xchange Hotel during a Commercial Road fair, after a ‘dress rehearsal’ at the Glasshouse Hotel the night before. I cheekily promoted our show at the Greyhound to the Xchange roof show audience, (“We’re the Showbags. We’re on stage at 11 at the Greyhound Hotel”) and enough people heard me, that we managed a great crowd for our opening night.
From that night, word spread and within 3 months our audience had grown from a hundred or so, to 300, and continued to grow, regularly bringing in 600 plus patrons. The energy of the audience was inspirational and by the time of our third show the formula was solid. Songs the audience knows, with comedy, with an anthem, all costumed and choreographed with costume changes accommodated by30-60 second sound collages usually introducing the theme of the next song.
Linda left to travel the world after Show 3, and Vivienne St James joined the cast for the next 4 shows at the Greyhound. Show 8 lasted 3 weeks on stage before Jessica and I quit the Greyhound. Vivien chose to remain at the Greyhound and we were joined with a very talented drag queen we’d got to know through the Early Shows at the Greyhound, Miss Bunny.
We had a few short seasons at the Xchange. Most notably presenting our ‘Red Curtain’ show from our Wednesday nights at the Greyhound. I found the Xchange seasons difficult after being in control of shows and sound, working with good friends and enjoying a giant dressing room. The Xchange was a well oiled commercial machine and Drag was part of the machine. Our ‘chasers’ weren’t encouraged but luckily we had the immense talents of Skye Brooks putting together video interludes to replace our sound only light shows from the Greyhound. (See Skye’s video for Red Curtain here…)
Eventually we found the Newmarket Hotel in St Kilda had a Saturday night free, and we named our night ‘PINK’. The formula was the same: Jessica’s amazing costumes, GuyDJ music, Drag shows for baby drags and for icons. (Legend of Les Girls, Stan Munro did his final Victorian performance on our PINK stage for example.
Over in Collingwood, we presented a weekly night called ‘Spag and Drag’.
PINK struggled to find an audience and despite the hard work of everyone involved the day came when we were trying ‘one last show’ to see if we could keep the doors open. The one last show was an idea Jess had had been thinking about for a long time. It combined all the elements that we had been working on; narrative, comedy core and, for want of a better word, authenticity. This was ‘The Sound of Music Drag Show’ and it needed a larger cast
I tried to make PINK inclusive and open, with the same philosophy that had made the Greyhound a community in the early days and so a few of our regular drag queens put together their own very clever show and cleverly called themselves ‘The Manly Sisters. And so Showbags became Drags Aloud when Jillette, Steve and Kris Del Vayze joined our cast and Drags Aloud was born.
In many ways Showbags opened the final chapter on the drag industry that had opened in Melbourne with Les Girls. A similar media fascination with Showbags and the Greyhound occurred, giving us mainstream press coverage and reviews, including a two page spread on the ‘Greyhound phenomenon’. This revitalised drag scene that started with Showbags, lasted until the Greyhound was renovated and became a nightclub. Success was elusive and in 2017 developers had demolished the building. The Xchange closed in 2011 and drag had established itself in every gay club and venue, but it was mostly what we refer to as ‘drag on a box’.
The dedicated drag talent, audience and fans have found their options dwindling and the drag centre of Melbourne has moved to Mollies and the ’86’ in Fitzroy. The ‘Les Girls’ audience, looking for dinner theatre now have the option of Vau’dvile Drag Cabaret run by Bumpa Love who you may have seen on RuPaul Downunder.
RuPaul has revolutionised the drag world and the old ‘homegrown’ versions of drag have been internationalised. The distinctive Melbourne drag scene is now built upon and based upon the RuPaul drag industry. Drag has entered the mainstream.
We called the musical interludes between numbers as ‘chasers’. These were 30-60 second edits of sound clips mixed to create a theme, which then led into the next song. For example, the chaser for Kylie’s “Step Back in Time” included the Dr Who theme.
Chasers gave us the time needed to change costumes and get back on stage before the audience got bored. Our lighting man, Armen enjoyed it though, giving the audience all the available lights whilst we were frantically changing backstage.
Our DJ was Trent E and he was joined later by GuyDJ. Trent had a slightly more aggressive sound which took you to the dance floor to spend energy. In contrast Guy seemed to draw you to the dance floor to celebrate movement. I found Guy’s music was bright and uplifting, exactly the sound that suited the night. Our shows used ‘the classics’ from the 80’s and 90’s mainly, and Guy didn’t play our set list but would prepare the audience for the show with similar sounds.
Both Trent and Guy kept an eye on the charts and audiences heard the latest hits, but Showbags avoided “latest hits”. Doing a latest hit meant performing it perhaps 10 weeks later in the new season. By then most hits are forgotten, so we used proven hits that we knew the audience would remember and like.
Similarly we tried to relate our chasers to our memories, hopefully good memories. For example we loved The Muppets!
Here are some of the Showbags chasers.