For Michael Balderas, it began last year, right after the drag show ended. That’s when he decided he wanted to do the Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Transsexual Coalition (GBLTC) drag show again this year, but he wanted to compete instead of perform.

“I’m a brother of Delta Lambda Phi National Social Fraternity,” Balderas said, “and we have a history of performing in the drag show. Last year, DLP didn’t officially compete, but we did ‘There, Right There,’ from Legally Blond: The Musical. I was Elle Woods.”

If you’re having a little trouble seeing Balderas — a medium-height, medium-weight sophomore with short brown hair and a yarmulke — as the Reese Witherspoon type, don’t worry. It’s only natural not to be able to relate the drag and the reality. Building the drag persona is a long process that takes pain and practice, all to ensure that whatever comes out in the end is wholly separate from what went in.

Balderas learned this from professionals three weeks ago at Drag 101, a one-time class put on by the organizers of the annual drag competition. There, Balderas learned that the most important part of a drag performance comes in the preparation: the assumption.

“It’s like being a male illusionist,” Tinker Pink, a member of Seattle’s Royal Knights, said at the beginning of his Drag 101 lesson. “Looking at it a different way, you’re taking yourself out of who you really are.”

The Royal Knights are a group of drag kings, which, converse to drag queens, are females who dress as males. The Knights are unique in the sense that they, at Drag 101, stayed in that male persona, referring to themselves constantly with male pronouns like “he” and “him.”

“For me personally, I don’t stay in male persona all the time,” Royal Knights co-founder Charlie Menace said. “But I stay in Charlie all the time. When I am Charlie, I’m more confident but not as masculine as Charlie Menace.”

This 100-percent dedication differs slightly from the perspective of Drag 101’s resident drag queen, Gim Shadowbear (pronounced “Jim”), who is only in character right before and after shows, when the makeup is on and the giant fake breasts are firmly in place.

While Balderas was here, feverishly taking notes in the HUB two weeks before the show, Wade Caves was locking himself in a room with his three backup dancers and a boom box, feverishly practicing choreography.

Having learned and practiced the basics of drag at Drag 101, the participants came back together three weeks later to take part in the drag show and competition May 21.

Backstage at the drag show, the air is slightly stale, smelling of hairspray and makeup. At least it doesn’t smell like sweat, too; that part comes in a couple of hours, after the performance is done.

“It’s fun to see all the little baby queens get ready,” Shadowbear said, now in full drag and something to behold as the glorious D’Manda Lott. The “Community Queen,” as her business card says, isn’t competing tonight, just performing as a favor to the GBLTC.

And, it’s important to remember that Lott is doing this for the same reason everyone else backstage is: for fun. The nervous tension in the caves behind Kane 130 is palpable, but the sheer daring spectacle of it is more than enough to push all the performers out on stage anyway and bring them back year after year.

One of the non-competing acts, along with Lott, is the returning, twice-victorious alumni group called PMS, which performed the song “Nasty Naughty Boy” by Christina Aguilera.

“I like the theatrical aspects of it,” Miguel (Ashley Mog, the “M”) said after the show. “We usually try to come up with something that’s a story, in a song, and—”

Piper, (Patrick Lennon, the “P”) immediately butted in: “With lots of sex. I like the adoration from loving fans, who tell me I’m really hot. That’s all I want.”

Miguel went on to say it’s the concept of “bending people’s expectations” of gender, or “gender f---ing” as it’s called, that is a big draw for him.

For Caves, who, as Loucura Vox, won the drag show performing a Lady Gaga song called “LoveGame,” the spectacle of breaking gender roles almost doesn’t go far enough.

“You can push limits in every manner imaginable and get away with wearing clothing that no self-respecting woman should ever wear,” Caves wrote in an e-mail. “I think people expect drag queens to be met with disgust and disapproval, but all I’ve ever seen is excitement and awe from an audience.”

And the audience lapped it up. Vox’s scandalous performance received a standing ovation from the crowd, which packed Kane 130.

On Monday, after the makeup is off and the dresses and loose pants are back from the cleaners, Caves is an resident adviser in Lander Hall with a part-time job in University Village.

Shadowbear is the food service worker lead on south campus, and Balderas is involved with the Q Center and will teach a class called Queer 101 this fall.

Mog is going to London next year for graduate school, effectively ending the group PMS as it is now.

The people who perform at the drag show each year, and at other shows in between, might feel at home on the stage, but that’s not where they live. They put their heart into it, but it’s not where the heart is. They all have families, jobs, friends and lives outside of their personas and keep a separation between their night life and their day one.

“This is make-believe,” Shadowbear said after the show, wheeling a suitcase full of clothes into Red Square and still wearing D’Manda Lott’s clothes, “that is real life. The two will not interfere with each other. I’ve told people who get angry when I can’t do this show or that show, ‘I kind of have to work.’”

Performance is simply a part of who they are as people, and drag is, for at least one night a year, how they express that theatrical part of themselves.

Shadowbear’s personal rule is that he’d quit doing drag when it stopped being fun; he’s been doing it for eight years now and has future shows lined up already through early June. But he’ll keep performing regardless, whether in a tuxedo or a sequined black dress with matching high heels.

Others said they need to have that outlet for themselves.

“I love dancing, performing and the ridiculous aspects of women’s fashion,” Caves said. “But I can’t live my everyday life parading about with these attitudes. … Drag, though, offers people like me this perfect outlet for expressing all these facets of our personalities without risking friendships. We keep our diva in a box, somewhere in between our wigs and perfect makeup.”

Reach reporter Morgan Gard at features@dailyuw.com.