Survivor, one of the longest-running drag competitions in the city, ends Thursday, June 26, after nearly a decade.
More than seven years, 25 seasons, two venues and hundreds of drag performances later, organizer and producer Alexandria Diamond said it’s time to move onto other ventures.
“The Chicago drag scene is very oversaturated right now with drag, especially with so many people moving here to do drag; it’s just not the same,” Diamond said.
Many drag performers got their start at Survivor. Previous champions have regular spots at bars and clubs across the city, and many have full-time drag related careers. The show made a lasting impression on drag in Chicago and created opportunities for newer drag performers.
“It’s leaving a huge legacy here in the community,” Diamond said. “It has formed so many families, drag families, friendships, drag houses. Survivor’s one of those competitions where it takes a village to win.”
The first season began in January 2018. It took a year for Diamond to convince her manager at the time to run the show, because he wasn’t convinced it would bring in enough of a crowd. But it quickly became a success.
Diamond wanted to do something different with Survivor than the other competition shows in the city. Many other competitions relied on audience votes.
“Although that’s fun, and I understand the business aspect of that – the bars are trying to make money, so they’re trying to bring people in,” Diamond said. “Bring your friends to scream for you, and you’re the winner.”
So, she designed Survivor to be a judge-based competition specifically so that performers could grow and learn from the competition. She carefully picked widely-known and well-established judges—including Drag Race’s Dida Ritz and previous Survivor champions—for that reason.
“Survivor gave a platform for entertainers to come and compete, get critiqued, get judged fairly,” Diamond said. “We try not to just tear you down but instead uplift in the score sheets. We try to give advice that can help you be a better entertainer. It polishes you up.”
She said it made a difference in a lot of competitors’ drag; that they weren’t the same performers by the end of their season.
The show also left a lasting impression on its final home at Fantasy Nightclub, 3641 N. Halsted St. General Manager Mike Solis, who has worked at Fantasy on and off for more than a decade, said he doesn’t have a hands-on role in running the show beyond helping to prepare the club and coordinating with Diamond.
“She tells me what she wants to do, and I tell her if we can rent the helicopter or not,” Solis said.
He said that Survivor completely changed how Thursday nights used to look at the club.
“We’ve seen a huge shift in the crowd, and so many more people were showing up that really just led to all around great things for the business and the energy at the club as a whole,” Solis said.
He’s devastated that the show will be over this week. He said the end of Survivor is not leaving a hole in the community, but a crater.
“She’s really put a lot of thought into what she’s decided, and … this is a really calculated decision, and I think that she really believes that it’s for the benefit,” Solis said. “I believe that it’s for the benefit, and I think she’s doing a great thing, not just for Survivor the competition, but also for the community.”
Survivor was also unique because it highlighted a wide diversity of drag beyond the traditional pageant genre. Winners have included drag kings, an alternative-horror performer and a professionally trained bachata dancer. Audience members—and performers themselves—got to expand their own understanding of what drag looks like.
“People in the audience might have only seen one type of drag,” Diamond said. “For them to be able to open up and see so many different kinds of artists and what they do, it’s eye opening, and it helps expand people’s brains. It helps people accept more than what they’re used to.”
Yuiza Beach was the Survivor Lip Sync Battle champion this spring and competed in Survivor Season 8. She is a bearded drag performer from Chicago, and has been doing drag for about four years. One of her very first performances was at Survivor.
She said the critiques she got from the judges are still helpful to this day.
“I was so new at it, I didn’t know what I was really doing. So, those challenges and those runway critiques and everything, I still think about things like that to this day,” Beach said. “[They were] little things here and there that make me think about what would make my drag look better, what would make it look more cohesive and clean? That’s something that I use all the time.”
“It launched a lot of divas to where they are now,” Beach said. “They got their start on Survivor.”
Each week had different challenges and themes, and performers had about two months to prepare. Ultimately, it was about developing each person’s craft, no matter how they presented their particular form of drag.
“You have to make sure that you figure out who your drag persona is,” Beach said. “Figure out where your unique perspective and drag comes from, and how to fit it into that mold of the theme. And it really helps, especially if someone is not very well-versed in what their drag is and who they are. It forces you to think about that.”
Much of the show was also filmed and posted to the Survivor Instagram stories. Diamond said it allowed Survivor to gain an even bigger online following.
Diamond will be hosting a new venture called The Chicago Drag Show. It will feature seven entertainers weekly from across the drag scene. She also hinted at a big surprise coming in 2026.
“As many contestants come and go, a lot of them say, ‘This show saved me,’ or, ‘This show means so much to me,’ or, ‘This show has changed my life,’” Diamond said. “I feel the same way, but for different reasons. This show also has saved me and changed my life.”