My drag persona gave me a way to exist in the world – and a route back to the family I’d lost

For years, Ginger Johnson imagined life as a tragedy playing out – until she decided to reframe it as a comedy

There was a hula-hooper, a juggler, a mime and a comic on our 2015 Christmas cabaret tour, and a striptease, too. Mine was known as the “hotdog act”. Each night, in full drag, I’d totter on to a stage in a room full of total strangers with a jar of 10-inch hotdogs, and shove them up my nose, down my throat, into the air, to music. I was apeing the burlesque style, turning what could seem sensual into something totally grotesque. You’ll struggle to believe me, but during this period of my life I took myself – and my work – debilitatingly seriously.

There was a lot of baggage on that tour bus: cases full of costumes, yes, but also the emotional variety. Each of us was going through the wringer – breakups, breakdowns, crises galore. I know, how festive. My mental health was in the pits and it had been six or seven months since I’d spoken to my family. I was in self-destruct mode. Through our collective pain, we bonded as a cast. When you live and work together on the road, there’s no escaping. Pre-show, our dressing room became a group therapy space. And, after a gig, high on adrenaline, we’d sit around sharing problems and too much merlot. One of the other artists was reading a book that argued that being born is traumatic and to heal you must re-enact it. We talked logistics, but I never quite got round to reliving my own delivery.