Hometown drag queen Biddy Bee goes virtual to practice her art — and winds up raising money for good causes

“M’wah! Oh, hellllOOOOOO, bergers! Oh, yAAAAAhh!!!”

Philly drag diva Biddy Bee blows a big kiss across the room, introduces her cohost and pianist, Allie Bee, and primes fans for the fabulosity that is to come.

“Really excited to welcome you to our Best Of!” belts out Biddy. In her skintight gown with plunging neckline and saucy train, her face a riot of sparkly color, her head a mass of Medusa-like aqua curls, she’s all towering grandeur of Divine-meets-opalescent-mermaid with bodacious curves and a disarming smile.

The audience is in for quite a night of Biddy belting out tunes from shows like Les Miserables, Wicked, A Chorus Line, and — of course — that musical-theater classic, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Her voice is a dream, and — especially when paired with Allie Bee’s own rich vocals on duets — creates a kind of magic that both celebrates and transcends the show’s hilarity. And it’s all going down on this February night in an unusual Rittenhouse-area venue: the dignified living room of the Delancey Street home of Allie Bee‘s (a.k.a. Allie Beik’s) parents, Patti and Dave Beik, who are physically here for the show. So is Allie’s brother, Peter, and the family dog, Leo (who naps under the grand piano, next to the staid grandfather clock).

Ah, but more are watching this monthly musical extravaganza via the live-streaming Twitch platform, which allows Biddy to both perform her art and raise funds from viewers for worthy causes. Tonight’s show is supporting The Attic Youth Center, an organization that aids LGBTQ Philly youth, and eventually nets $1,000.

“One of the reasons I came home to Philly is to try to give back” to his home city and its people “using the things I learned along the way,” said Nick Biddle, who is Biddy Bee.

Still, this is not how Biddle, 28, imagined his career in drag unfolding.

“I kind of didn’t have a choice” but to pivot from onstage to virtual performing when the pandemic shut down the city’s live drag scene, said Biddle, a Philly native and 2010 graduate of Julia R. Masterman High School. The first glimmers of his passion for drag started at the school, he said, where he performed in lip-synch competitions and talent shows.

“Those were some of my earliest times throwing on a wig and a dress and heels in front of a large crowd,” he said. “And if that ain’t drag, I don’t know what is.”

Biddle kept performing while a student at Stanford University, where he studied engineering and materials science, and afterward while working for a tech firm in the San Francisco Bay area. That was when Biddy Bee was born, her name hearkening from Biddle’s teen years.

Growing up a Nick among many other Nicks in Philly, he was often called by his last name.

“That kind of transformed as I grew into a more flamboyant and expressive person, so people started calling me Biddy and ultimately Biddy Bee,” Biddle said. “When I was looking to figure out who this drag persona was, I realized it was just me at my most flamboyant, fully realized queer self. I took on the name that had come to embody that growth.”

Biddle moved back to Philly in late 2019 to pursue his dream of a drag career, planning to perform at venues like Bob and Barbara’s Lounge on South Street with its storied weekly drag shows, the bars of the Gayborhood, and beyond. He was able to keep his tech job remotely, working part-time.

He had barely begun performing as Biddy Bee when the pandemic hit. He then connected with fellow Masterman grad and musical-theater aficionado Beik, 29, one of his best friends. They soon decided to merge their talents — she as Allie Bee, Biddy’s cohost/singer and accompanist.

The duo began streaming online cabarets via Twitch, a forum that allows chat interaction with audience members, and quickly realized the cabarets had the potential to do more than just entertain audiences.

Early on, one viewer, a male-presenting teen from Arkansas, talked about being isolated. The teen attended a subsequent show, but this time with a female name, and said she was transitioning and felt suicidal. Right in the middle of the show, Biddle reached out on the teen’s behalf to the Trevor Project, a suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth, while other audience members stayed online, offering support.

“This was a member of our community. No one left the stream,” Biddle said. “There were probably two dozen people being affirmative, sharing their stories dealing with mental crises, and saying that they were there.”

The cabarets opened the door to other ways of helping, too. Namely, fund-raising.

“The cool thing is, people who go to drag shows are used to tipping,” said Beik, 29, a wedding planner by day. “When you’re watching a drag show online, you can’t throw a dollar bill, but Twitch allows you to tip through your screen. For anybody who isn’t technologically savvy, they can Venmo.”

When calls for racial justice resounded across America, Biddy and Beik used their platform to raise funds for Black Lives Matter and the Bail Project, a national fund to help fight racial and economic disparities in the bail system.

And in November, when Philadelphia ordered another shutdown of indoor dining and drinking establishments, some drag performers and LGBTQ nightlife community members found themselves in danger of not being able to make their next month’s rent.

So Biddle and Beik launched a “Pay the Rent Fund,” using two online cabarets and other fund-raising activities to pull in nearly $4,000, which helped pay the rent of seven people.

Their next cabaret, on March 15, will be a Moulin Rouge-themed extravaganza in support of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium.

Biddle is quick to note that the shows are by no means the entertainment world’s first or only online drag performances. He gives big props to VinChelle, a Philly drag queen who started online Black Girl Magic, a platform for Black performing artists, and the Black Diaries, an online forum for topics important to the Black LGBTQ community.

Meanwhile, the two Bees have learned a lot in their online time together — about performing, technology, and partnerships. That opens up a lot of possibilities.

“I’m definitely eager to get back into live performances,” said Biddle, who has applied to get into Ru Paul’s Drag Race, which would be a dream come true.

Meantime, he and Beik would love to perform their cabarets in live venues while also live-streaming them to further the fund-raising that online performances allow.

“Maybe I can move ahead in a hybrid world I never would have thought of before the pandemic,” Biddle said. “I imagine I’ll always have some aspect of digital drag going forward.”