For the Lady Gaga impersonator Nick Gaga, Sundays get increasingly intense toward the end of the month, when preparations start ramping up for a new installment of Gaga Ball, the drag performer’s signature event.
This month’s Gaga Ball happens Feb. 22 at Balcon Salon in Midtown Manhattan. Adding to the usual buildup is the release of a new Lady Gaga album, “Mayhem,” in March. Nick Gaga, who uses he/him pronouns when out of costume and she/her pronouns in costume, expects to see throngs of “little monsters” — Lady Gaga’s nickname for her fans — in addition to the usual crowd. “It lets them enjoy a Gaga show while they’re waiting for something new,” he said.
Gaga, 29, lives alone in a loft in Hell’s Kitchen. “It’s basically a mini Lady Gaga museum, with outfits and headpieces and wigs and posters all over the walls,” the performer said. “I’m obsessed.”
MORNING JOLT Because I work in nightlife, Sunday is never me waking up at 8 or 9 in the morning. It’s very delayed. I’m trying to have a long morning in bed, especially in the middle of winter, when I want to stay home and start doing prep for the week instead of getting myself looking presentable and ready to see the world. I’ll have a Red Bull in bed and try to kick off the day by 12.
SEWING, STONING By prep work, I mean preparations for my next shows or anything I have coming up in the next few weeks. The most important prep happens at the end of the month, when I’m doing the last checks on any missing props for Gaga Ball or maybe finishing up sewing a costume or stoning. “Stoning” is applying rhinestones, if you’re not familiar. I’m also doing wig prep. Depending on what I have planned for the show, it might be one wig for the whole show or it might be multiple wigs that are going to change, and that requires more preparation. I don’t physically create the wigs. But I do style, color and cut them.
TUBE DRESS I can be working at home several hours before I leave the apartment. Earlier in the month, I’m doing research that goes very deep. It’s not just me looking at Lady Gaga wearing an outfit and trying to recreate it. I’m finding out what materials the original designer used, how it was produced. It could be a head piece, it could be a mask or just a prop onstage.
I make everything myself. I had to learn how to use a 3D printer and study some programming to design some stuff and print it. Some outfits require even that. And when it comes to constructing, gluing or sewing outfits, it’s not just fabric I’m using. Some are made out of tubing, like the kinds of tubes we all have under our sinks in our apartments. There’s a lot of different materials. Everything’s hard to make in different ways.
JUST DANCE At 4 or 5, I have my little lunch break. I’ll grab a Starbucks sandwich or something from a deli in Midtown, and then I go straight to rehearsal with my dancers. My show has four dancers at the moment, three boys and one girl.
If we’re meeting at a rehearsal studio, it could be any studio in Midtown, but we like Ripley-Grier on 38th Street. Most of the time, though, we choose to go straight to our stage at Balcon Salon, because it’s during the day and it’s not open so there’s no customers. Rehearsing on the stage you’re performing on is always better.
The lightest, most minimal rehearsals are two or three hours. Right before a show, the closer we get to the actual ball, we extend that to four to five hours. That’s not just on Sunday — that’s every day leading up to the show. We all take it very seriously.
AFTERNOON JOLT During rehearsals, I drink lots of water. I’m always hydrating. And it helps that my diet is very light. I love food and I love to eat, but it’s not as hard for me to keep myself in shape if I stay hydrated. I also pop another Red Bull during rehearsal.
KEEP THEM GUESSING I change the show every month. Sometimes it can be very aggressive and highly packed with choreography and dancing and costume changes. Some of the shows I’m directly replicating from Gaga what she was doing onstage on one of her tours or during her residency in Las Vegas. Because she’s putting out a new album, this is a great time for me. I have a lot of new material to work with.
MEAT, NO DRESS If I’m performing drag on a Sunday, which I usually am, either in the West Village or in Hell’s Kitchen, we’ll wrap up rehearsal at 7 or 8 so I can get ready. If I’m not performing, I might have dinner with a friend. I am in love with steakhouses. One of my favorites is STK in Midtown. I’ll get a nice filet.
SILENT FOCUS After that, I’m working late into the night in my apartment, sewing and wig-prepping and creating at my big, spacious worktable in the middle of the room. I work alone, because friends are distracting when it comes to creating things like the things I create. And I’m single at the moment, so even if I didn’t want to work by myself I’d have to. I also work in silence, which I know is weird, or I’ll put on one of my favorite TV shows. I’m forever a fan of “Charmed.” I know the whole show, so it just becomes background noise. The majority of the time it’s just me concentrating.
THE LIFESTYLE I go to bed around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. I do a little unstoppable scrolling on TikTok before then. It’s cats, a lot of cats, and some comedy and a lot of Gaga stuff. But the majority of it is cats. I’m obsessed. I’ve always wanted one, but I can’t. It’s the lifestyle. It’s just too much.
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