October 2025
“We’re like watching your favorite divas, but with better politics!”
So came the proclamation onstage from Sasha Velour eliciting a rowdy response from the audience at the Grand Sierra Resort’s Grand Theatre who had been up in their seats and yelling throughout the two hour show. Velour, along with five other performers, might be most popularly known for their participation on the show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The six, which also included drag queens Jimbo the Drag Clown, Derrick Berry, Roxxxy Andrews, Jaida Essence Hall and Morphine Love Dion are currently in the midst of a world tour, taking some of the segments from the popular drag reality show and mixing it with lip sync performances and lots of improv humor and shit talking under the guise of an awards show format. And their humor pulled no punches.
Mariah Carey, Gwen Stefani, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Joan Rivers, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Beyonce are just a few of the artists whose songs were ‘performed’ by the six queens complimented by a cast of male dancers in varying degrees of undress. Between songs, the performers would stand at a side stage podium and alternate between announcing the next performer and engaging in banter which often included sarcastically witty exchanges with the audience.
As is typical with drag shows, audience energy and participation played an essential role in the Werq The World show. At one point, performers Jaida Essence Hall and Roxxxy Andrews asked for three of the most turnt up audience members to come onstage before giving them 60 seconds to get into quick drag from a portable makeup bar and a bag of wigs, then perform a Lip Sync For Your Life dance to let the crowd vote for a winner. All manner of exposed underwear, twerking, somersaults and writhing across the ground followed, and granted the theater audience had been in a frenzy from the beginning of the show, their energetic applause and screaming determined the winner chosen by applause which only encouraged that crowd’s frenzy to reach a fever pitch.
In all of the performing and general sass, heartfelt moments emerged, such as Morphine Love Dion mentioning the importance of accepting others and fighting for rights for trans people and calling out those who enact barriers to other people’s situations and happiness, loudly punctuating her monologue with an enthuasiastically received “Fuck I.C.E. and fuck Donald Trump!” Derrick Berry took to the podium and described how his mother drove him to his early drag performances over two decades ago, and was in attendance on this night as she usually is at shows near his childhood hometown of Modesto, California.
While Werq The World has been a well established show in Las Vegas, the Live Tour which visited Reno’s Grand Sierra Resort followed a different format. Using a faux awards show format, it offered each performer a chance for showing off their humor with monologues in addition to solo and group dancing and lip synching acts. Overall, the show cast were able to enrapture the packed house in an energetic show and keep that pace over the course of 2+ hours, showing how this really is the elite of drag performers.
More information about Werq The World Live Tour shows can be found at the group’s Instagram or Facebook pages.
