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#2It was 96 degrees, and Quesa was melting.
The late July heat was stifling, the air quality was terrible, and the midday set at Portland’s new Darcelle XV Plaza was long. Despite her handheld fan’s best efforts, Quesa D’Mondays’ lip liner started dripping down her chin.
“It’s a little toasty outside,” she told WW while doing a quick lipstick check offstage during intermission. “Oh God, she is melting! Ah!” Quesa then turned around to blot and kept fanning. She still had the second half of her performance to get through.
Quesa D’Mondays is the drag persona of Alec Lugo, a local actor and theater marketing manager turned full-time drag artist. Over the past two years, they’ve been putting their theater and marketing backgrounds to work. Theaterwise, Quesa can sing sing. Her repertoire includes the famously demanding “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, along with original songs and outlandish mash-ups. A Quesa live show is more like going to a cabaret than watching lipsynced pop hits at brunch.
There is plenty of lipsyncing, though, on Quesa’s Instagram, which has ballooned to 55,000 followers. That’s where the marketing background comes in. Quesa has had viral success on the app with reels of her lipsyncing to bird noises, and of her lipsyncing Family Guy dialogue to her cat. Lugo says they made Quesa their client and they were off, punny tagline and all: “Cheesy. Briezy. Bleutiful.” Quesa was crowned Miss Gay Pride Portland 2026 and now, of course, she’s one of WW’s Finest Drag Artists.
“I have no problem with things being a little cringy, a little weird, and a little something you’ve never seen before,” she says.
That’s partly where her drag name comes from—“I’m a cheesy queen”—plus, the Spanish is a nod to Lugo’s mixed-race, Mexican heritage.
Lugo is a gamer (or gaymer, as they prefer), which has had a huge influence on the Quesa persona. One of her most iconic looks is inspired by the Pokémon character Mega Starmie. She painted herself purple and re-created the character’s gemlike star proportions to walk around the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in stiletto boots—all within 48 hours of Mega Starmie’s official launch last October.
At the July 22 show, Quesa performed a mash-up of “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne and “Mamma Mia” by Abba: “Stacy’s Mamma Mia.” Her piano accompanist, Matt Katz, kept up note for note, laughing all the while. The two met via the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus (Katz as a chorus member, Lugo as the marketing manager and occasional singer) and connected first through humor. Katz says they made each other belly laugh.
“She had this idea to do awful mash-ups, to play the saddest Sondheim songs as a polka or a disco,” Katz says. “And I was like, you’ve come to the right place.”
Katz and Quesa created “Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Goodbye,” an ambitious and absurd four-way mash-up of “Hello” by Adele, “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie, “Hello” from The Book of Mormon, and “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles.
Onstage, Quesa closed with Modern English’s New Wave classic “I Melt With You.” She had originally prepared it for an immigration fundraiser, but it also worked well on such a hot day. The lip was melting and the crowd was sparse, but Quesa kept singing in her short red prom dress and high heels, with gold bangles upon bangles on her wrists.
“Drag isn’t that hard,” she told the crowd, taking a sip from her water bottle. “I mean, it is when you do it as well as I do.”
SEE: Quesa D’Mondays in Musical Mondays at Badlands, 110 NW Broadway, 503-972-7572, badlandsportland.com. 8 pm Mondays. Free. 21+. | Quesa D’Mondays in Ghosts of Summer Festival at The Redd, 831 SE Salmon St., ghostsofsummerpdx.com. 6–11:30 pm Friday and Saturday, Aug. 7 and 8. $13–$23. All ages. | Quesa D’Mondays in Drag Bingo at Living Room Wines, 4818 N Lombard St., livingroomwinespdx.com. 6:30 pm Thursday, Aug. 20. $5 per bingo card. 21+.
