If you’ve been to any drag or art event in Huntington this past year, you know that Indigo Richwood and Nyshyne are the names on everyone’s lips. Their fresh and sometimes out there take on drag has flipped the scene on its side and back again all over the tri-state area. Whether it’s the mainstage at the Stonewall nightclub or a DIY house show, you are guaranteed to see a performance that will blow your mind.
The couple, who met years ago at a theater makeup competition, found each other, lost each other, found each other, lost each other, and then finally found each other again as if it was a prophecy foretold in the stars to form a beautiful relationship that would also catapult them into two of the most-watched drag artists in West Virginia. In the short time they’ve performed they have cultivated an impressive fan base who cannot get enough of the pair and have secured regular spots performing at the Stonewall with their drag family and other local favorites, Apara Lashes and Heather Hex.
I sat down with Indigo and Nyshyne at my home to talk to them about the people behind the wigs and makeup and their thoughts on drag, art, politics, and what they hope to see in the future. Their demeanor is almost the opposite of their drag personas. Indigo is soft spoken and reserved whereas her drag is an in-your-face walking art installation, and Nyshyne is a ball of chatty energy but onstage she slinks and struts with an aloofness that lets you know that she is indeed that girl. It’s a balance that clearly works well for them. As they spoke about their lives and art, I could sense an overwhelming amount of gratitude and joy from them. Creativity flows between them like an electrical current. That is their gift to the world and their mission is to share it.
Justin Murphy, HNN: Hello, it’s nice to see y’all again! First, I kind of want to talk about what it was like for you all to grow up. Are you both from West Virginia?
Nyshyne: I kind of am but I’m kind of not originally from Illinois, but I moved here when I was four.
Indigo: I grew up in Ripley.
HNN: So, can you tell me a little bit about growing up as queer kids living in West Virginia?
Indigo: I spent most of my summers at my grandparents’ house and they lived in a holler. I hunted with my dad and I trapped with my uncle, so there was a lot of outdoor stuff, like hunting and fishing. I didn’t come out to myself or anyone else until I was a senior in high school. So, my entire childhood was closeted. I always gravitated towards feminine things, though. When I was five, I wanted the Barbie makeup hair so badly for Christmas and then my cousin got it. My favorite color was purple and my grandma wouldn’t let me have anything purple because she thought it was a girl color and it would turn me gay. But here we are.
Nyshyne: Growing up was odd because going through it always felt like it was the worst thing that was happening at the time and I even knew at the time I wasn’t having, like, the worst childhood that I could have, but it always felt like you just want to grow up so bad. You just want to be an adult. Growing up, I always acted older than everybody else. I just feel like my queerness wasn’t like an issue for me until I came to terms with it because I didn’t realize that I was gay until I was in middle school. After talking with all my family and everything and being free with them, they were all like, ‘we all knew and we thought that you knew and were just like waiting on you.’ So, I was just living freely, but the minute that I was like, ‘oh, there’s a word that I could put with it, which is like gay or queer or whatever’ then people at school were like, ‘oh, you’re gay, okay, now we hate you.’ So, that was interesting because growing up I wasn’t like the smartest one or the most athletic one but I was the funniest one and that’s how I was always cool with everybody else. So, then once I became like, gay, it was like, ‘okay, you just went down the ladder.’ I was like, ‘how does this even work?’ Like I said, I’m from Illinois, but I moved here and back a million times just because of family stuff and once I settled here, I was in middle school and I went to Wayne Middle School. It was so difficult at first because I moved away in fifth grade as straight and when I came out I sent every single person I was friends with on Facebook a mass text that I was gay, just kind of off the wall. I feel like it was the easiest way because I was in Illinois at the time. I never thought I would see any of these Wayne people again. I never thought I would have to deal with it. Three months later, I’m starting back school there. Everyone now knows that I’m gay. So, I kind of just had this moment with myself where I was just like ‘accept it and don’t care what anyone thinks about it.’ So, I was just like, you know, I’m gonna be gay and then people are gonna like me or not.
HNN: Yeah, if you’re gonna be hassled for it you might as well werk, right?
Nyshyne: Literally! I’ll be slay! 100%
HNN: I know growing up in Wayne County as a young queer kid, myself, I always felt like my life would truly begin once I graduated high school and frequently imagined what my life would be like once I was past all that. What did you imagine for yourselves as young rural Applachians and has that informed what we see with Indigo and Nyshyne?
Indigo: Absolutely. Before I even came out as gay in high school, I found RuPaul’s Drag Race and I watched Paris is Burning. I just knew that was for me because I’ve always been a visual artist. I’ve always painted and drawn stuff. So, it just really spoke to me. When you’re a little gay kid, you want to be like Lady Gaga or something. You want to be a pop star, but I can’t sing so… It’s kind of like the perfect blend of performance and visual art. I’m just saying I can be a pop star without singing essentially, yeah. Then I just started playing with makeup. I came out as gay my senior year of high school to my friends and moved to Huntington for college shortly after. The first semester of my freshman year the pandemic happened so I had to go back home. That’s when I came out to my family. After the lockdown was over, I moved back to Huntington to finish college. That’s essentially when I started taking drag seriously because then I was able to go to the gay bars and make queer friends and stuff.
Nyshyne: When I was younger, I always knew that I wanted to be a star. I didn’t want to sing. I didn’t want to act. I didn’t want to dance. I didn’t want to. I just knew that I just wanted to be one of those girls, like, you know, up in all of it. And I didn’t know what way to go because I didn’t know what drag was as a kid and then, slowly over time, I realized, like, my queerness. And then like, how your queerness is then translated into like showing off yourself in a way that you typically wouldn’t in mainstream media. I think it really just goes back to queer people in general doing things in bars or at balls, like when they’re doing executive realness, or doing haute couture. They can’t afford those things. They’re not doing executive roles because Black and brown people or queer people weren’t able to get those jobs. So, I don’t know, I just knew that I wanted to be that girl. I was like, I’m gonna make it for myself. When it really took over was June of last year whenever I met you (Justin) for the first time and we took those pictures. Yeah, that was like, the height of us, you know starting everything and realizing this is serious.
HNN: Almost like that was the launch?
Indigo: Yeah, like I started drag like a month before that. I think it was like the last week of April. So we had been doing it maybe like a month and a week. At that point.
HNN: That’s wild!
Nyshyne: When I found drag, it was very much like ‘okay, this is what I want to do. Boom, boom, boom, boom, pop.’ It also kind of ties into I’ve always resented, and I’m not even from here originally, but I’ve been here like my entire life in West Virginia and Appalachia, hearing people say ‘I can’t wait to get out of West Virginia. I can’t wait to leave. I gotta go.’ It’s almost been affirming because I did stay here. I did make a place for myself. People in Huntington were like, ‘we’re so thankful to see people like you here. We don’t ever see people doing what you do, or having a mustache or having a beard or having hairy legs.’ It’s just like, you know, we’re just having fun.
HNN: Indigo, I feel like you are like a walking canvas. Your looks are always really conceptual and tell a story, and Nyshyne you’re giving gender bending disco, like Studio 54 meets the runway. You’re both just really cool and exciting. So, I’m wondering, where does all that come from? Where do you draw inspiration?
Indigo: I grew up drawing and painting and stuff and I’m going to Marshall right now. I’m in my senior year, just one semester left, going for visual art with an emphasis in painting. In terms of people who inspire me, that’s a really tough one. I mean, I don’t know, I hate to be that girl who’s saying RuPaul’s Drag Race queens, but Sasha Velour is amazing. I love her so much. Just any drag artist that’s taking it to a more conceptual place. Sometimes when I put myself in drag I feel like, ‘oh, I’m like a woman today’ or like a rich, eccentric woman, and then other days I’m just like, a creature that crawled out of somewhere, you know? I like Lady Gaga and just, I guess, anyone who is violently feminine and weird and campy and shit. I am really drawn to and love that.
Nyshyne: I kind of always knew what drag was but I didn’t see it as something of importance to me for some reason until season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It was the first season that I watched as it was airing and it was Sasha Velour and Shea Coulee’s season. The main reason I wanted to watch season 9 was because of a promo with Shea Coulee. I was like, ‘oh my gosh, she is gay and fierce’ and that’s what got me watching the show and now I’ve watched every episode since. Before then I always felt like my inspiration for drag were people like Trina and Khia and really abrasive women. Women who weren’t scared to be given the angry Black woman titles. They were like, ‘I’m not an angry black woman, I just do what I want.’
HNN: Let’s talk about those early days of discovering drag. What was it like experimenting with that? How did it make you feel?
Indigo: I can’t really pinpoint when I started playing with makeup. It was some time in high school. I was probably still dating my girlfriend that I had in high school. I was just trying to put some sort of heterosexual spin on it where I’m just like, ‘I’m an artist.’ I just started playing around with it in my bedroom and it was empowering. I think the ability to transform yourself is an empowering thing. Before we started actually going out in drag when we we moved in together, we would just have nights where we would just like sit at the dinner table just like, ‘okay, this is the pace we’re gonna do tonight and try different things or like we could paint each other and just just run around and try on different dresses and like take pictures.’
Nyshyne: Way before we even started, we actually met each other at a makeup competition where she was doing makeup and I was like getting makeup put on me. So, we’ve been doing makeup before we knew each other, but when it came to drag, it happened pretty fast. We were like bedroom Queens for a good half a year, maybe a few months.
HNN: There’s obviously been a lot of harmful rhetoric against the drag community with drag bans and other anti-LGBTQIA+ laws being passed across the country. What are your feelings on that as drag performers and members of the queer community? Do you feel like performing drag and queer joy are acts of resistance?
Indigo: I mean, the drag bans, they’re attacking drag but I think now we know at the end of the day they’re trying to make it just illegal for trans people to exist in public life. Trans people are the most vulnerable and visibly queer people that we have in our community. So,
I don’t know. I think it’s all just rooted in hatred. They’re just afraid of what they don’t know. I do think drag is an act of resistance. The first time I ever went to a pride parade or pride event, I remember seeing drag queens and it was just it. It felt empowering and that was before I even knew I really wanted to do drag or anything like that. Honestly, ever since these laws have been passed I’m going out to get groceries in the most violently queer outfit. I think it’s really important right now just to be this visible. I think it absolutely is.
Nyshyne: I know that for the season 15 finale of Drag Race, Sasha Colby was, like, ‘the reason why I wanted to be completely naked was because I wanted to show the lawmakers the body that they’re trying to erase.’ That, like, I don’t say, hit home with me because like I’m not a trans woman, but when I do like naked numbers on stage, I’ll always think about that before I go on. I’m not tucked. I have balls out on stage but I’m very fem. I have a mustache. I have a hairy chest. So, I know that I’m a lot for people, but I think that it’s very important for people like me to be out here because I’m like, we’re not crazy. We are literally just people who just want to be. We just want to feel a sense of community. I don’t understand why it’s so frustrating for other people, for us to just be happy and let us just have that queer joy. My queerness brings me happiness. I’m so thankful to be queer.
HNN: We’ve talked a lot today about your past and what you’re doing now. Tell us what you see in the future for Indigo, Nyshyne, and the Huntington drag scene.
Indigo: Anytime someone asks me, like, about what I want for the future, it’s always just like, I want to do what I’m doing right now, just like on a larger scale in terms of my, like, visual art outside of drag and my drag. For both, I just want to keep making the art that I want to see, you know? I want to travel more and get our names out there. Hopefully I’ll have more money and more resources to do what I want. I mean, she’s (Nyshyne) organizing an event with the Foundry, hopefully. I want to do more DIY shows, more house parties, and more events. Yeah, just more.
Nyshyne: I want to do what I’m doing right now, but bigger and taken more seriously. I want to be directing shows and booking queens and being able to employ queer people and just be the person that I want to see in the world. That’s one thing I don’t like about the older generation of the drag scene, it’s very gatekept. I want to give back to the community that gave to me. I want to book queer people that don’t have a lot of experience that want to show me what they got who want the chance, the chance that someone took on me. I want to create a space that is for queer people of color, queer weirdos, or comedians and things like that. I just want my life to be just full of variety. I don’t want to ever be sick of the same thing or be known for the same thing or be expected to see the same thing every weekend and I’m excited for my future at Stonewall. I want to keep it going.
For information about upcoming performances follow Indigo Richwood @indigo.richwood and Nyshyne @nyshine_ on Instagram.
