On Saturday night, the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub was awash with booze, boas, and bared backs as cross-dressed students and spectators gathered to celebrate Drag Night, an annual event hosted by the Harvard Queer Students and Allies.

The event featured drag musical artists as varied as mermaid “Fishy Snatch” and farm-boy “Oliver Heart,” both of whose stage names have been used in lieu of their real names for this article to protect their privacy. Consistent with the drag tradition, their performances offered a departure from gender normativity perhaps unfamiliar to the average Harvard undergraduate.

But as Johnny Blazes, the night’s iridescently-clad MC, noted afterward, many attendees seemed uncomfortable with the hands-on nature of drag, or at least unsure of what to expect.

“At bars I work for tips, but at college shows, there isn’t that code,” Blazes explained.

Blazes, a professional drag performer from Jamaica Plain, nonetheless praised the event as an important opportunity to disseminate information on the practice of ‘gender bend’—a blurring of gender constructs, of which drag is a prominent element—and to encourage greater acceptance in the community.

Still, Blazes added, “Surprised reactions surprised me.”

Blazes, confidently straddling the line between male and female, opened the set with an original presentation before handing the stage over to student performances. The enraptured crowd, meanwhile, maintained its quiet during most of the night’s acts, often breaking into nervous laughter when one the audience was pulled into the fray.

Queens “Miss Patience” (James P. Alexander ’10) and “Mariza” solicited the rowdiest laughter with their performance of R&B hit “The Boy is Mine,” pantomimed with the help of a drag-king aide. Similarly, “Fishy Snatch” channelled Mariah Carey for her moving rendition of “Always Be My Baby,” overcoming the shortcomings of spotty microphone coverage with the help of a crowd whose voices undulated in unison with the chorus.

Despite an initially tepid audience, the event’s organizers were quick to call Drag Night a success, especially for the student performers, who enjoyed the positive support of many their fellow classmates.

Marco Chan ’11, one of QSA’s co-chairs, noted that the performance night brought diversity to the QSA’s programming, to the benefit of members and outsiders alike.

“Pushing those boundaries of gender perception and conformity is really interesting, and again it’s an exercise that rarely happens at Harvard,” Chan said.

—Staff writer Edward-Michael Dussom can be reached at emdussom@fas.harvard.edu.