Veranda L’Ni is hard to miss. Dubbed as Cleveland’s tallest drag queen, she stands over 7 feet tall in her stunningly high heels. She ducks to enter the room, her vibrant rainbow wig grazing the doorway and all the children’s eyes are on her.
But it’s not just her stature that makes her stand out. It’s her unabashed assuredness in herself, in her art form and the way it makes people feel.
“We all want to enjoy something and go home feeling good,” said Veranda, who did not want to give her real name out of fear of threats of violence toward her and other drag performers. “And that's what drag does."
Out of drag, Veranda identifies as a man — one that’s remarkably tall at 6 foot 7 — but when he becomes Veranda, a character who uses she/her pronouns, something magical happens.
And she’s determined not to let that magic be dulled by the recent spike in protesters and hatred.
“Drag is the ability to change your body and your face and your appearance into something totally different,” Veranda said. “It's not about what gender you may be underneath those costumes, it's about the character you've created to step out on stage with. It's a chance to just have fun and express yourself.”
Veranda, who has been doing drag for more than 15 years, is perhaps best known in the community for her Drag Story Hours, which primarily take place at Near West Theatre in Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District. The Cleveland chapter of the national group, first founded in 2015 by author and activist Michelle Tea in San Francisco, offers Northeast Ohio families free entertainment, as well as a book to take home to continue reading.
It’s an event that’s drawn the ire of conservatives and far-right extremists, many of whom frequent her show to protest outside, shouting at families as they enter and holding signs equating drag to pedophilia and grooming.
Even at a recent family-friendly Pride event at the youth LGBTQ support center Colors+, a sole protester objected outside, citing scripture into a bullhorn.
“Protesters that I was once just really scared about — now I'm just angry,” Veranda said. “I just see this lack of knowledge. I see this lack of humanity.
She said that vitriol has always existed, but it has grown significantly in recent years. A study by GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, documented at least 161 incidents of protests and threats targeting drag events since early 2022, with a sharp uptick during Pride Month last June. Those attacks have persisted: including a drag brunch in Columbus interrupted by a group of ski-mask-clad extremists shouting neo-Nazi chants and holding up flags with Swastikas.
And as drag bans in states like Tennessee and Texas are considered or even adopted as law, that puts Veranda’s profession — and her personhood — at risk.
“Before it was just the protesters on the sidelines just, you know, yelling in the megaphones and standing there back in the day. And we just kind of brushed them off and walked past and kept going and thought, ‘OK, well good for you.’ You have the ability to. That's your freedom of speech,” Veranda said. “And now I feel myself like, scanning the crowd, looking for that anomaly.”
Despite what the protesters outside might have you believe, she said what happens inside is quite innocent: colorful, larger-than-life characters telling stories of girls becoming knights, two male bunnies falling in love regardless of what a stink bug may say or think, unicorns accepting themselves in a world dominated by horses.
“All I want to do is read to the kids,” Veranda said. “All I want to do is perform for the kids. I want to be that Sesame Street character come to life.”
That’s what drag is, said Cleveland-based drag king Rhett Corvette: the embodiment of a character beyond yourself, typically exploring gender and gender performance. Historians say it’s an art form that’s been around for centuries: take William Shakespeare’s productions in 1500s London, where female roles were performed by men.
“As a cisgender, pretty much gender conforming woman in the workplace, I'm having to do straight woman drag every day,” Rhett said. “All that is a decision: what you wear on your face, what you do with your hair, what you do with your body, what you wear on your feet like, that's all saying something about gender."
Out of drag, Rhett is comfortable identifying with the gender she was born as, but in drag, her character, a man, tests the boundaries of what traditional masculinity is and can be.
Drawing inspiration from Prince and David Bowie, Rhett was clad in a purple overcoat and white powdered wig with eccentric makeup reminiscent of Renaissance royalty as he reads a book to the children gathered at Colors+.
Growing up as a queer woman, Rhett said having representation at a young age is important.
“If you're saying that LGBT issues are an adult issue, you are having youth going through their life like I was: feeling strange, feeling different, feeling othered, feeling wrong,” Rhett said.
Rhett said he’s not scared of the recent threats and chalks them up to just that: threats.
“Here at the event, I don't feel fearful that someone is going to make anything bad happen because we've already shown by having the event that their threats don't have any power,” he said.
But intimidation can quickly cross the threshold into violence, as demonstrated by a man arrested in Northeast Ohio in March for allegedly trying to use a Molotov cocktail to burn down a church that was set to host a drag story hour.
Regardless, drag artists like Sassy Sascha, a cisgender woman who performs as a drag queen, are not backing down. Her real name is Sascha, but she called that version of herself quiet and reserved. She said drag is her armor, something that’s empowering.
“Anybody can do it regardless of their gender or sexual orientation,” Sascha said. “It is simply just artistic expression. I know straight people that do it. I know gay people who do it, nonbinary. Everybody, it's really just an art form. It's show business.”
In a rainbow dress, blue and purple wig and sparkly makeup, Sassy Sascha is bubbly and outspoken as she read to the kids. But she’s worried about the future of these sorts of events. A Texas native, she thinks Ohio will soon follow the lead of other red states that have cracked down on the art form.
“I really am scared that that's going to happen here too,” Sascha said. “But at the end of the day, we're going to keep coming out in the masses, we're going to keep fighting.
Veranda L’Ni also hasn’t let the protesters and online trolls take away what she loves most about performing drag. She said now more than ever, the world needs drag performers’ art in their lives.
“Having the ability to stand up and be visible for those people who are afraid to maybe walk out their door or feel like they can't come to an event or festival or pride festival because they fear for their safety.
“I'm not going to back down,” Veranda continued. “I'm going to continue to keep doing this because there's a need for it.”
And it’s clear from the smiling faces of the kids in the crowd, huddled into their parents laps, they aren’t going anywhere either.
