A drag show scheduled for July 9 in Bedford, Pa., has drawn objections from some area residents. But organizers said the show will go on, with added security precautions.
“The New BROADway Divine” will be staged at downtown Bedford’s Off Pitt Street Theater. The show, featuring several drag queens, is being presented by the Bedford Arts Cooperative. It was organized by the Cooperative's program manager, Dawn Ziviello, who also runs Off Pitt Street.
Within days of announcing the show — which is being staged in Off Pitt Street's small basement venue — Ziviello said she began receiving text messages and voicemails from about two dozen area residents, most of whom objected to it on religious grounds.
“It’s constant. They are just constantly messaging me,” she said. The back-and-forth messages, she said, now number in the hundreds.
Ziviello said she expected some pushback for hosting a drag show in the rural county seat, which has a population of just under 3,000.
“I know this town. I’ve been here 20 years. It’s very fearful of anything different," she said. "I knew this was going to happen. I just didn’t think it was going to get maybe so big.”
Several area churches or their pastors posted their opposition to the event on their Facebook pages. Some posts simply asked people to pray about the show.
Other messages encouraged a more proactive response. In a post on his personal Facebook page, Clifford Swankler, pastor of Liberty Independent Baptist Church in nearby Everett, wrote, “Christians need to stand up against this kind of perversion.” He asked people to contact the Cooperative to demand the show be canceled.
“I mean, from the very beginning of the Bible, God made them male and female, and there is to be a distinction between male and female, so we’re not supposed to blur the lines,” Swankler said in an interview.
Much of the opposition has come from smaller, evangelical Christian churches like Swankler's. He said his church has under 100 members. Recent church activities listed on his Facebook page included a Bible study titled, “Overcoming Persecution.”
Swankler said he does not plan a protest at the drag show itself. But, he added, “That could change.”
Drag, he said, is “something that sets a very bad precedent for our community, our town. I think you can see it’s a decline in morality.”
The show will go on, now with security
Ziviello said some messages she's received about the drag show have felt threatening.
One Facebook post from a local resident read, “Come on Bedford County Patriots! LIFT YOUR VOICES AGAINST THIS DRAG SHOW!!!!!”
Posts like that, she said, make her think back to August 2020, when dozens of armed white vigilantes congregated in Bedford's town square after a local white resident shot at a group of Black Lives Matter protesters marching through the area. The incidents made national news; the most serious charges against the local resident were later dropped.
The show is the Bedford Arts Cooperative's first drag production. It is produced in collaboration with Ziviello's Off Pitt Street Theater, whose shows have included everything from Shakespeare to Christmas plays.
Among the drag queens participating in the show is Wade Bowers, 64, of Cumberland, Md., who performs as Christian Diane — lip-syncing to “oldies,” he said, by the likes of Whitney Houston, Stevie Nicks and Bette Midler.
Bowers has argued with critics of the July 9 show on social media and via text message.
“Why risk your lives trying something like that in a small town like Bedford?” read one text. “Don’t u remember what happened when BLM came thru?” The message ended with emojis of two sets of praying hands.
“It’s like they didn’t expect us to fight back," Bowers said. "I found out — I've been through enough stuff in the past — you don’t back down.”
Bowers said he has been doing drag shows for 40 years, and he is slightly surprised there are still people who object to them.
“I thought people were a little more, you know, with it nowadays,” he said.
Bowers thinks the opposition will draw more supporters to the show than would have found it otherwise.
Other featured performers include Alesha Dickson, of Johnstown, and Mary Jane LeFae and Tyred Banks, both of Cumberland, Md.
In Pittsburgh, nightclubs and other venues host drag performances year-round, with seemingly little pushback. But as in other cities, there have been threats against Drag Queen Story Hours. In 2019, one such threat on social media led the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh to cancel all such events.
Ziviello has no plans to cancel. "The New BROADway Divine," she said, serves a social purpose in a rural place like Bedford.
“There is a need because there are seriously marginalized populations in this community, and that’s why I’m here,” she said. “They need a place where they can be themselves and where they can feel respected and loved, and that’s what I’m about.”
She plans to hire security for the July 9 event — and to notify police about some of the messages she's received.
And she emphasized that most of the messages she's gotten about the show have been positive.
“Brave move bringing this to Bedford,” wrote one supporter on the Arts Cooperative's Facebook page. “Not exactly a progressive community as I'm sure you know. Very admirable and I hope everyone is safe.”
Ziviello said she's gotten calls from around the country because of the show, and even a few donations.
"I got a phone call from a lady. There was a voicemail, and she said, 'I just need to know where to send the check,'" said Ziviello, with a laugh. "It was really cute. It was really nice.”
