Iowa City's Studio 13 is known for its drag shows. On Fridays and Saturdays, the bar fills with performers lip-syncing to iconic songs as cheering college students and community regulars wave cash tips in their direction.
But on Sundays, at least for the next few weeks, tips won’t be allowed. Instead, performers are competing for a panel of judges in a weekly competition the bar has deemed “Star Search.”
It’s been going on for five “seasons,” started by two queens, Beep Beep and Lil Kimmy Blaque, both fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race. This year, past contestants were invited back to compete in its first "All Stars" season.
“We started it as a way for newer performers to come and get engaged with the community,” Beep Beep said ahead of the week four competition. “In later seasons it started to be more seasoned queens wanting to come try it out and do it themselves, so it’s kind of grown into something that’s fun for everybody.”
The Sunday night crowd is significantly smaller than at the weekend’s peak, and is primarily made up of other performers, staff and a few regulars and students — but that’s perfectly alright. Beep Beep says the competition is, at its core, for the performers.
“I’ve been told it gets some people back in their creative space if they’ve lost what they want to do in drag,” she said. “It gets them back to, ‘Oh, I’m having fun again.’”
This season’s competition is about halfway done. On Sunday, Sept. 22, the bar held a “Lip-Sync Roulette,” in which the remaining seven performers had to randomly choose a song from a hat to perform on the spot.
The wide variety of pop hits and ballads on the 22nd included Rick James’ “Super Freak,” Jessie J’s cover of Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” — and, notably, a show-stopping performance of the internet’s love-to-hate song “Karma” by JoJo Siwa, which landed queen Erotica Divine a spot in the top two for the week.
The latter half of each week of the competition includes a runway theme, where artists create and show off one of their drag looks. This week’s theme was “Battle Ready,” and brought looks from video games like Kingdom Hearts and The Legend of Zelda, as well as iconic warrior looks.
“My thing that I do when I’m not here, at work, I’m playing Fortnite 24/7,” queen Virgo Frost-Belle said ahead of the competition. She dressed as her favorite artist, Ariana Grande, who has a special outfit players can buy in Fortnite.
Virgo began doing drag three years ago. She had to drop out for scheduling reasons after Star Search’s very first show in its first season, but was asked back for All Stars.
“From being the first out ever and being top seven right now, I’m very proud of myself,” she said.
Star Search: All Stars continues for four more weeks. You can catch it every Sunday at 9 p.m. at Studio 13 in Iowa City. The finale is Oct. 27.
