RuPaul’s Drag Race champ Yvie Oddly returned to her home of Denver to perform at several events during their Denver Pride celebration. She was greeted with thunderous applause from hometown fans, and she thanked the crowd for helping her develop her career in the nightclubs and bars of the city.

Backstage at her show at Tracks (photo above), Yvie spoke to GayCities about the challenges that nightlife performers encounter when they try to find work in smaller cities.

Do you feel that you were supported by the Denver community, before you went on the show (Drag Race) as a drag performer? Yvie Oddly: I feel like I was, to the extent that you can be as a local queen. The issue is, that we need to change the culture of local drag, and shift it to appreciate the performers who are putting in work. I did the same stuff that I did on the show, here, locally. Not literally the same, but I’ve always been of that caliber, and it was really difficult for me to get a career off the ground, or to get people out to my shows, or to get compensated. So I feel like we really just need to shift the culture, and that’s not a Denver thing. That’s a drag thing.

Yvie then gave a bit of advice for how performers can use social media to develop careers in drag. Watch the clip below:

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