It’s often the case that great things grow spontaneously from humble beginnings – and such was the case with Wigstock.

One night, in the Spring of 1984, a group of bored drag ‘aficionados’ left New York’s Pyramid Club and ended up giving impromptu performances on the open air stage in Tompkins Square Park.

It wasn’t intended to be anything more than a night of fun: a change from the more formal club drag scene. But after a lot of fun – and quite a lot of alcohol – someone suggested the idea of a one-day drag festival.

From there the idea grew: it wouldn’t be just any old drag show but an ‘alternative’ to the limitations of a club-based, nocturnal drag scene. Then someone suggested ‘a drag-oriented parody of Woodstock’ – and Wigstock was born.

In the words of Lady Bunny, one of the prime movers for the event, “I wanted to organise some kind of performance because I think the combination of drag and daylight is so outrageous and freaky.”

Bringing drag out into the daylight brought in new audiences – often unsuspecting passers-by – as well as creating more of a festive atmosphere. The audience was often dressed as outlandishly as the ‘performers’ . And the definition of ‘drag’ was stretched and re-defined to get away from the idea that it was simply ‘men dressing as women’: for example, one of the Wigstock’s regular performers was ‘Deee Lite’ – a woman in woman’s clothing.

The Woodstock parody was strongest in the early years, terms like “wig-in”, “hair peace” and “sick-a-delic” were coined and thrown around. A traditional finale was “Dagmar Onassis” singing ‘her’ own version of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock:

“By the time we got to Woodstock we were several thousand falls…

And I dreamed I saw the drag queens spraying hairspray in the sky and it made all the yuppies die.”

But as the event grew it inevitably became more mainstream. As revellers attended in their tens of thousands, celebrities like Boy George, Debbie Harry and RuPaul also shared the stage with the more regular performers.

And yet, despite its high profile and increased popularity, Wigstock finally succumbed to financial pressures: the last one being held in 2005.

And just like Woodstock, it still lives on in the movie of the same name. In fact, it lives on it two movies – both called Wigstock the Movie. One is a big budget production number from 1995. The other is a much cheaper version, produced in 1987 and available on YouTube. It may not have the high production values of the 1995 version but, as can be seen in the following clip, it does capture the essence of Wigstock in its early days.