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Why Drag Queens are Theatre's new stars | From RuPaul's Drag Race to Broadway and West End stages
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- [02:21]
Mickey Jo
It has been clear for some years now that the theatre industry has been facing a handful of challenges. Ticket prices are rising as a result of spiralling costs. Shows are closing, theaters are sitting dark and producers are scrambling for a solution, one that they have found stunt casting, star casting, celebrity casting, whatever you want to call it. They are taking well known names and faces and putting them on stage in the hopes that they will draw more audience members, perhaps even new audience members into the theatre. And over the last few years, and particularly in the Last week, I have begun to notice that some of those stars are starting to look a little different. And that's what we're going to be talking about today are drag queens. The heroes who are going to save Broadway and the West End from destruction. Oh, this one's gonna be fun. Oh, my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening to this on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am a full time critic and content creator here on social media where I spend literally all of my time talking about theatre. Sometimes I share reviews of the productions that I've been to see, sometimes I share vlogs, and occasionally I share wider thoughts about the theatre industry, which is exactly what I'm going to be doing today as we discuss the possibility that drag queens are the new rising stars of the theatre world. And this is a trend that I think has been noticeable for a few years now, very much in correlation with the mainstream appreciation of the TV show RuPaul's Drag Race, which has now expanded to this global franchise, taking talented drag performers from queer venues around the world and catapulting them into major fame, and in doing so, creating popular, commercially viable stars with enormous talent. And the reason I'm having this conversation right now is because over the last couple of weeks, multiple productions have been announced with Drag Queen Center Stage, Specifically alumni of RuPaul's Drag Race on either side of the Atlantic. And it's a curious thing that seems to be happening more and more. Not just because there are more and more RuPaul's Drag Race alumni, but because it seems to be bringing a lot of these venues, a lot of these shows, more and more success. So we're going to have a think about just how many shows have begun to cast drag queens among their companies, whether or not it's working, which among them are emerging as the biggest stars, and why it might be that this seems to be happening more frequently. Now, if you have seen any of the performances that I'm going to be talking about today, please share your thoughts on them in the comment section down below. Let us all know what they were like. And if you have seen any other drag performers on stage in plays or musicals, which I don't mention, please let me know about those as well. And as always, if you enjoy listening to what I have to say and would like to hear more of my thoughts about the theatre industry as well as more reviews, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on. So that you don't miss any upcoming videos or go follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let us talk about the RuPaul's Drag Race to Broadway, Pipel or more broadly, why so many drag performers are taking to the stage. Now I say drag performers taking to the stage. What I really mean is returning to the stage because I can already hear somebody typing in the comments section down below about the rich history of drag on stage, not just with pantomime dames around the country here in the United Kingdom, which I will talk about in just a moment because I think it makes us inherently predisposed to seeing drag performers as part of, you know, any kind of storytelling, but also going all the way back to Elizabethan times with Shakespearean plays where women were not permitted to act on the stage. So the female roles would be played by teenage boys, boys through, I think, maybe even their early 20s, with their smaller statures, their unbroken voices, their slender wrists. I don't know. The times were different, the dresses were long, I don't know what the beauty standards were. And it is believed and alleged that the term drag itself actually comes from a Shakespearean stage direction, with it being an acronym for dress Resembling a Girl. The drag queens of today, of course, look very different. But in other theatrical cultures around the world, there remain styles of performance where all the roles are played by men, some of them in something resembling drag. And like I said, British audiences are entirely accustomed to this because for a lot of people in the uk, among their first theatrical experiences as a young child might be going to see a pantomime. They are so culturally ingrained over here. I have to convey to you, I know not everyone from the US or from outside the UK understands what a pantomime is conceptually. But understand this. There are so many families around the country who will attend one of the dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of pantomime productions that are scheduled at their local theaters during the festive period for most of those theaters, their most lucrative time of the year, regardless of whether or not they actually go to the theatre. Traditionally, the pantomime isn't something which is attended by strong theatre going families. It's attended by entire school trips, it's attended as an annual tradition for all sorts of families. It's just something that we do. And in almost all of those pantomimes some version of a drag performance will be seen on stage. Except most people here wouldn't really refer to it as a drag performance. There's an awful lot that separates the pantomime dame conceptually from the idea of a drag queen, though, those lines are becoming increasingly blurred, both because more drag performers are participating in pantomime, because of the drag race impact, and we'll talk about all of it in just a moment, but also, I think, because more conversations are happening, for better and worse, in society about gender identity and gender expression and gender roles and sexuality and the inherent queer characteristics of pantomime that have always been there, but have been kept perhaps the length of a pantomime cow away from family audiences. And it isn't just the dame. It's worth pointing out, even though the most common understanding, perhaps, of what a drag queen looks like is a man who identifies as male outside of drag dressing as a woman. Drag has come to mean all sorts of different things. And there are drag kings, there is drag as a conceptual form of artistic expression that isn't necessarily tethered to a traditional and specific idea of gender. And in many more traditional, more classic pantomimes going back in the day, certainly there were male characters within the narrative that were played by young women. The dame, though, is the thing really worth focusing on here, because if the lavish, flamboyant costumes they occasionally wear there might make you think this really helps people to understand what a drag queen is, where the separation comes into it is in the personality and the identity. And a pantomime dame will, like many drag performers, engage with the audience and perhaps taunt and tease them just a little bit. But while so much of drag, and not all of it is connected to queer culture and a queer identity, pantomime dames aren't necessarily. You will get an awful lot of funny local blokes playing the pantomime dame. Sometimes the personality feels like a drag queen, sometimes it feels like your dad in a ridiculous wig dressed as a teapot, which I think is a big part of the reason why shows like Mrs. Doubtfire play a little differently among British audiences, because the notion of a man on stage wearing a dress doesn't have any inherent queer connotation, because we were raised on pantomime. And also, not for nothing, look at what our kings used to wear. And so, to some extent, drag on stage is nothing new. And certainly there have been shows, particularly musicals, which over the last few decades have brought more and more drag characters onto the stage, many of which have been cast authentically with actual drag performers in the company, some of whom are thereby making their stage debuts, others of whom were trained stage performers beforehand who then turned to drag. There's a big old overlap in that venn diagram. Let me tell you, the most recent mainstream big commercial examples of this have been shows like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, of course, one of the most famous examples of drag on screen. That show started in Australia, transferred to London, went to Broadway a few years. It would be followed on Broadway by Kinky Boots, once again, a stage adaptation of a drag centering film. Meanwhile, back in London, everybody's talking about Jamie. This being one of the shows that brought a lot of real drag queens into its ensemble to play those roles, but none of them were the first. And there's every possibility that you are screaming at your device right now or taking to the comments section to remind me about the likes of Tabuu and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. But we have to give enormous props to Liaux Foll. And when you look at how long it subsequently took, get more sort of open and honest queer narratives in musical theater. You have to really appreciate how groundbreaking Le Cage was at the time, during a decade, during an era, socially, politically, with everything that was happening in the queer community, when a song like I Am what I Am, when that kind of message of personal insistence was so necessary. So it's very important that it's acknowledged and remembered. And the rise of more drag queen characters on stage is one explanation for why more drag performers are making their way into the theater industry. But just as many of these roles cast talented actors who don't have a background in drag, so there has to be some other explanation. And this is the one which I suggest, and invariably, I think it does have a lot to do with RuPaul's Drag Race. These drag artists are given a sizable platform and become media personalities, become celebrities, become social media stars. They develop these huge followings as audiences fall in love with them. This because RuPaul's Drag Race, for those of you who aren't familiar, and I, for several years, was a dedicated super fan, I even won a RuPaul's Drag Race themed pub quiz once. I have a tiara somewhere. But for those of you who don't know, it is a reality TV competition show which depicts not only the artistry of its contestants, but also their personalities and their stories. And in doing that, it provides us, the audience, the opportunity to really connect to and fall in love with them. In most seasons, it acquaints one winner with a substantial cash prize. It can, however, acquaint the others with stardom and huge numbers of fans. Within many instances, the queen who doesn't win the series going on to become the most successful Just look at Trixie Mattel. And when we look at the drag stars who have made their way onto the theatrical stage, many of them, the majority of them, have been alumni of RuPaul's Drag Race. Many of them have been its winners. And while there are Broadway shows like Chicago and, well, Chicago that do pull talent from other areas of reality television, like the Real Housewives and Vanderpump Rules and the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the reason why you see so many more Drag Race contestants on stage than alumni of perhaps any other reality TV show like Survivor or the Kardashians is because the entire concept of Drag Race is based around them having some degree of talent to begin with. And for most of them, talent that was honed on some kind of a stage. Many of them have an entire background in musical theater training. Many of them become drag queens with a BFA already. But almost all of them have some degree of performance experience, are inherently portraying a character when they are in drag. And, you know, combine that with the personalities that are so winning with the following that they attain after going on television, and what you have is an entire array of talented performers who also create demand at the box office, which is perhaps why it's happening more and more. And if you don't believe that, let me give you some examples. Now, there are so many drag performers over the last few years who have taken to the stage. And the best way to give you an overview of the scale of this, I think, is to separate it into three, not entirely distinct categories. This is also an inexhaustive list. I know I am going to miss out some examples. I would love if you could share any that I don't mention in the comments down below. But let's start with the performances that feel like a drag queen going into a musical in drag, as a drag queen. And the one I want to talk about first is Peppermint in Head Over Heels, because from what I recall, she was really the first RuPaul's Drag Race alumna to go into a Broadway show and certainly to be among the original cast of a Broadway musical. There's some other statistic with this as well, because I think Peppermint was also the first open. I just googled Peppermint in the hope that the drag queen would come up, because I forgot that Peppermint Mint is also its own thing. That's how gay I am. Yes, here we go. Broadway's first out trans woman to originate a lead role, which is amazing. Groundbreaking, as Peppermint always has been. And as you can expect, the New York Times and its then critic, Ben Brantley was super normal about that. Oh, it's good to laugh. Of course, there is another drag role that I haven't mentioned because in all of the examples that I gave when we talked about Priscilla and Kinky Boots and La Cage, those were all characters who were drag queens. In this next show, the character is a woman woman, but the role is almost always a drag one. And that is Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, of course, played originally on screen by drag queen Divine in the original John Waters film when it was adapted for the stage in the early 2000s. Harvey Fierstein originated the role of Edna, making it perfect for the right kind of drag queen tonally to go into it. I know that Nina west not too long ago starred as Edna in, I think, the US national tour of Hairspray. I believe Ginger Minj may have played the role as well as of yet, I don't believe that's casting we've necessarily seen here in the uk, but Hairspray does recur quite frequently on the touring circuit and I would imagine it would only be a matter of time. And speaking of drag queens touring around the uk, one of the most recently announced and the reason why I'm having this conversation today is RuPaul's Drag Race contestant, Strictly Come Dancing contestant, and I think. Was it Queen of the Universe, the singing competition that they did as well? I am talking about about lavoir. She has been capturing the nation's hearts over the last few Saturday nights on Strictly Come Dancing before sadly having to pull out of the competition. But don't cry for her margin, Tina, because it was quickly announced that Lavoie would be starring in a new UK tour of Annie. And I say new UK tour. It's the same touring production that has traveled around the country a few times. And she will be playing the role of Ms. Hannigan. It won't be the first time that this role has been portrayed in drag, with previous stars having included Strictly Come Dancing's own judge, Craig R.E. horwood, as well as the late, truly great Paul O', Grady, who has played Ms. Hannigan both as himself and as his legitimately iconic drag character, Lily Savage. And I will say kudos to the casting team for Annie because it's a great moment to capitalize on the love for Lavoir. And she's such a winning personality. She's such a bona fide talent with a fantastic voice. She's gonna be great in this. She's gonna be larger than life. And it's made me really excited to hopefully get to see see the UK tour of Annie again. Invariably, I think I see it every time it comes round and then say, I don't need to go and see it next. You're like, I've seen Annie, I don't need to go again. And then I will. If they keep casting it like this, I will. Now, the fact that Ms. Hannigan has, with this production, become something more of a drag role is interesting. And there is another part that has seen a similar metamorphosis, but that hasn't been linked to just one production. I am talking about the all singing, all carnivorous talking plant Audrey 2 from Shop of Horrors. I don't know if the Regent's park revival from around a decade ago was the first to ever have a drag queen sort of take to the stage and represent not only the voice of Audrey 2, which is usually sung from off stage, while puppeteers manipulate a plant puppet that is growing larger over the course of the show. In this production, Vicky Vox, who is not a Drag Race alumna, it is worth pointing out, but who was part of a trio girl group with two other popular Drag Race stars, stars Willem and Detox, I remember. Anyway, Vicky played the physical manifestation of Audrey 2 in Little Shop of Horrors at Regents Park. It was a choice that worked really well. There's one line in the show when the plant says, does this look inanimate to you? And in that moment, she stepped out onto the stage wearing what could only be described as carnivorous plant eleganza. But curiously, and I don't know if this was a trend that originated with that production specifically, this has now happened in other productions around the world, including one I think it was Ogunquip Playhouse in Maine. Thank you to the individuals who watch this, who taught me how to say that a theater I would still very much like to visit, but I'm pretty sure they had Latrice Royale from Drag Race Season 4 Playing the Plant in that production, which I can only imagine was sensational casting because in my head, sounds great. Now, while we're over on the other side of the Atlantic, no conversation about drag queens on stage as an impact of RuPaul's Drag Race could be complete without talking about. About Drag the musical. Written by season 5 and All Stars 2 contestant Alaska. This show featured a whole handful of drag performers, some of them from Drag Race, some of them not. Some musical theater stars performing in drag, none of them playing themselves, all of Them playing new made up drag characters with their own new camp drag names who worked at rival drag bars across the street from each other and had to come together in spite of their rivalries during a moment of crisis. And I think really capitalized on the mainstream success of RuPaul's Drag Race by really participating in the brand of what drag is understood to be and looks like in the most sort of traditional sense. But there were a bunch of Drag Race queens in that, and I'm probably going to forget some of them. Jujubee was in that. Jan was in that. Alaska, of course, starred in it. And when she had to step away from the show at one point, Jimbo, the drag clown from Canada's Drag Race, replaced her. And it was a charming and campy show. And I wondered for a time if it was going to be able to sustain a long run by cycling through a bunch of different queens people would be excited to see on stage. But there does seem to be, interestingly, this quality, perhaps of diminishing returns. And it's a fascinating marketing phenomenon, part of a broader conversation, for sure, whereby when you have one exciting Drag Race star in something, people will buy tickets, but if you put five of them in it together, sometimes, weirdly, it becomes a harder sell, as though the prospect of seeing that individual and their artistry and personality on stage gets lost behind a cloud of pink glittery smoke. This being something I've noticed in a handful of other shows that have combined different Drag Race queens, or just different drag queens in what remain essentially drag roles. There was a rather inspired recent show over here called the Diana Mixtape, in which Courtney act and and Priyanka and Davina De Campo and Kitty Scott Claus all simultaneously portrayed the late lady Diana Spencer at various emotionally tragic but visually iconic moments of her life, scored to pop hits of today that you just know she'd love. Finally, and I think this is a drag performance, Bianca Del Rio, winner of season six, one of the strongest winners ever to emerge from RuPaul's Drag Race, appeared on stage in London in the musical. Everybody's Talking About Jamie playing a sort of retired drag queen character who then got back into drag, something she had to do very quickly backstage during the show, but also, I think is in drag right now. I mean, not right now necessarily on the New York stage in one of two productions of Tattoo Roof. One of them has Andre de Shields in Like a Library. It's not that one, it's the Matthew Broderick one. This has just started performances, but I'm pretty sure that the role that Bianca is playing does have her costumed in drag for it. Over the next couple of months, there are going to be, I think, three different winners of RuPaul's Drag Race on the New York stage at the same time. But to talk about the others, we need to move.
- [22:37]
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- [23:07]
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- [24:17]
Mickey Jo
Vaughn. So here is an interesting part of this conversation because I said, you know, you see a drag queen on tv, you fall in love with that drag queen. You want to go see that drag queen on stage. Stage. It's surprising then to see a handful of instances of those performers performing on stage but not in drag. Why might that be and does it still sell tickets? Well, let us discuss each example individually. The first is the one I just alluded to, another one that you can catch in the coming weeks in New York. This is Bob the Drag Queen who is going to be playing Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge at the Al Hirschfeld on Broadway. I think this is great casting. I think it's inspired. One of the things I like about this show is the way that they very meaningfully acknowledge Ziddler's queer identity. And I think bringing in a uncomplicated queer artist in order to tell that story is a great idea. One who doesn't have all sorts of previous pseudo criminal allegations. In fact, I say allegations, what I really mean is convictions. But that's not what we're talking about right now. We're talking about Bob the Drag Queen. And I don't believe believe that the gender identity or costuming of this role is going to be particularly reworked. I don't think Bob is playing Ziddler in drag any more so than he usually is, as he is referred to by the Duke de Monroth as an old panda for the excessive amount of eye makeup that he has on. And when it comes to Bob, I think this is going to sell just as many tickets as if Bob was performing in drag. Not just because Bob's thing has always been their humor and personality, rather than any kind of strong aesthetic. Like, I enjoy Bob performing in drag, but I don't know that Bob necessarily has a signature look. Like, Bianca Del Rio isn't a queen who is known for her looks and outfits and aesthetic, but she does definitely have a style Bob doesn't so much. And to see Bob, this is going to sound like a read. It's not meant to be. To see Bob as a man or dressed as Ziddler in something still quite theatrical and sort of glam, but more male, I don't think it's going to feel like that big a difference. Also, Bob made a name for themselves to a more mainstream audience on a recent series of the US version of the Traitors. And for that, I believe they were predominantly, if not entirely, out of drag. So a lot of audience members will already recognize them in that capacity. It's not like Violet Chachki out of drag. That would be a very different kind of vibe. Now, most of the other examples in this category of queens performing on stage but not in drag happen to be individuals who already had some kind of a theater background, perhaps before becoming drag queens, certainly before going on RuPaul's Drag Race. One of those is Milan, again from season four. Something was in the water during season four, I'm telling you, who I think had already been in Hairspray, or perhaps that was shortly after going on the show, but certainly certainly has been working on Broadway over the last few years. I believe Milan, who is best known as the actor Duane Cooper, who I don't believe performs in drag anymore, was in Floyd Collins and the recent revival of Sweeney Todd. Similarly, Marty Lauter was appearing in the recent Broadway revival of Cabaret for the duration of its run at the Kit Kat Club, AKA the August Wilson Theatre. They were also known for their drag performer, Marcia. Marcia Marshall. But in the context of Cabaret, even though wigs, lots of makeup, lots of campery going on, it wasn't a drag performance as Marcia or anything resembling Marcia. There was, however, quite different to the work that Milan has done, I guess, more of a connotation to queer artistry and identity. It still exists within the same kind of brand world now. One of the most controversial but also beloved queens to have emerged from RuPaul's Drag Race. And is Willam, yet again from season four, who has appeared in a couple of stage productions, none of them particularly major, but who was seen on the New York stage as, I believe, Victor Garber Luigi in Titanique. That was the track, right? A role that has also been played by another drag performer. Out of Drag now is a really interesting one and a favorite of mine I've always been a big fan of. And their singing, well, voice is one who absolutely had the training before Drag Race and who subsequently has been bouncing between drag roles and non drag roles. Because Titanique was not in drag. But it was still so inherently camp and silly that it made little difference. Like when you're singing Celine Dion's I Drove All Night and thwacking a Rainbow fan as a campy Victor Garber inspired version of the Captain Slash Luigi of the Super Mario Brothers, it doesn't feel entirely disconnected from the queer world. Then pops on a Princess Diana wig and sings the Pink Pony Club, sounding fantastic for what it's worth. But next comes something entirely different, because has been appearing, I think this has already happened in an American regional production of the musical Finding Neverland, playing the role of J.M. barrie, a show that discernibly has very little to do with queer culture. A role which is certainly not in drag, making her, I think, one of Only a few RuPaul's Drag Race alumni to have played sort of a legitimate stage role entirely out of drag, entirely in a male Persona and in a starring role, though that does not guarantee the title of the biggest stage star to have come out of RuPaul's Drag Race. That one's coming.
- [29:54]
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- [31:45]
Mickey Jo
Next. So this is a little bit of a dubious category. I'm calling this beyond Drac, and I don't want to separate this by the needless binary of gender, but I think this encompasses a handful of performers whose work on stage and whose role roles sort of move beyond the confines of in or out of drag to a certain extent. And the first one I want to talk about, undeniably, I think the biggest stage star to have come out of RuPaul's Drag Race is Jinx Monsoon. Two time winner of the series. First seen on season five, where she became this extraordinary breakout star with clear theatrical chops, Jinx has a few years later began to perpetrate a legitimate career on the Broadway and off Broadway stage with multiple hot ticket runs as Matron Mama Morton in the Broadway production of Chicago. I was lucky enough to get the chance to go and see Jinkx do that. Jinkx is another queen who has been in Little Shop of Horrors, but not as Audrey 2. Jinkx played Audrey Wan. Afterwards she had the chance to open a show with a Broadway company playing the role of Ruth, I think in the Pirates of Penzance or in fact I should say, in Pirates, the Penzance musical, the last few weeks of which she spent rehearsing for O Mary on Broadway. Jinx had this tremendous, acclaimed, sold out run, as Mary told Lincoln, and is set to return to the show in the new year, making her the third Drag Race winner. You can see simultaneously, I think, in New York, if the timing lines up. And all of this was well foreshadowed back when she was on Drag Race. In her final sit down conversation with RuPaul where they shared a Tic Tac, RuPaul said to her, and I've always remembered this, I think you could play Blanche dubois. And that struck me because it's so apart from the drag roles that you saw in musical theatre at the time, the other idea of a RuPaul's Drag Race winner playing Blanche Dubois in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire would have been and would still be, I think, a huge, huge deal. And it's something that Jinx feels very much in proximity to now because in so many of the roles that she has played on stage, something really interesting has been happening because Jinx did Hairspray. But while the drag role is Edna, Jinx played Velma, a role that she is obviously better suited to in Little Little Shop. A lot of the drag queens have played Audrey, too. Jinkx played Audrey. And between O Mary and her most recently announced stage role, which I'm about to tell you about, there has been this real quality of prestige to the work that she has been doing. She has been truly embraced as a legitimate stage star, one that continues to be able to sell tickets beyond their first run. You know, it's not that everyone got it out of their system seeing Jinx when she was in Chicago Cargo. She sold out O Mary as well. Jinx is a real draw on stage, a huge part of which is the fact that she really delivers the goods. She is incredibly talented, as well as being charming and hilarious and lovable. But perhaps her biggest stage role is yet to come because it has just been announced. Again, motivating me having this conversation, that Jinkx is going to star in a new production of the play End of the Rainbow. This is a play about the final chapters of the life life of the beloved entertainer and queer icon Judy Garland. It's the play which was adapted to make the film Judy the Biopic starring Renee Zellweger. So even though there's some degree of camp to it and it involves Judy Garland musical performances, it is for the most part an emotionally hard hitting introspective gritty play. Tracy Bennett earned considerable acclaim for playing the role the last time it was seen in London. And Jinkx is fascinating casting because her star has been very much on the rise, particularly when it comes to stage shows. But also she already has this connection to the Judy Garland brand because during her second Drag Race appearance, she portrayed Judy Garland on Snatch Game in what was an over the top, campy performance, but one which was also just a deeply good impression and very entertaining. Entertaining. It is, however, tonally several miles apart from End of the Rainbow. So I am so intrigued not only about what this production is going to be like, it's being directed by the brilliant and capable Rupert Hands, who has been an associate to Jamie Lloyd on his last few smash hit shows, but I'm also so intrigued by what the audiences are going to expect upon arrival and how that is going to correspond to what it is that they actually, actually get. And while I could talk at length about how much I love Jinkx Monsoon, there are others who deserve to be ranked in this category as well, who have been delivering sort of increasingly prestigious stage performances. I'm a big fan of the British drag queen Davina de Campo, who was a runner up in the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race UK and like Jinx, has been playing roles on stage that sort of move beyond the confines of traditional drag performers performance. And she played Hedwig in a brilliant regional revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. She has also played Mary Sunshine in Chicago, which very much traditionally a drag role for somebody capable of navigating that very challenging sing. But she also went on to play plankton in the UK tour of SpongeBob SquarePants. And you know, it's not, it's not, not a drag role with the amount of costuming and this kind of cartoonish personality, but it's not a female role. It doesn't really feel like a drag character. In the same way this was casting that surprised me when it was first announced, but also I thought really worked. And a big part of that was just how talented Davina is. I am impatient to see her back on stage in more theatrical roles. I think she's fantastic. Now, I do want to take a moment to talk about another member of the Drag Race UK season one cast who in fact went on to win that season and sadly passed away at the beginning of this year. Who was the Vivienne? The Vivienne was a larger than life personality who I had the pleasure of running into on a couple of occasions at gala openings of musicals, who made the point of coming up to me to say how much she loved watching some of the videos that I had made online, which was an incredibly kind and generous thing that she didn't have to take the time to tell me, and which I was and will be forever grateful for. She was really eager for me to come and see her as the Wicked Witch of the west in the wizard of Oz when it was at the Gillian Lynn Theatre in London. And I couldn't find the time to make it work during what was a really busy summer, which will now be a huge regret because I'm sure that she was absolutely terrific in the role. She was also cast as the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So in the same kind of of way as Divina. With both of those roles really starting to move beyond the traditional expectation of drag performers, or perhaps with these being British productions, there is something to be said for the casting, probably because of the pantomime dame connection just looking a little bit different here because in all of those shows it was never sort of reframed that like, oh, the witch is now a drag queen. That same production production had Diane Pilkington play the role, had other actresses play the role without it being particularly acknowledged that there was any difference in that characterization of it versus when the Vivienne did it, which I think is a really interesting thing. I am certain that the Vivienne would have gone on to achieve extraordinary stage success. I'm very glad to be able to say her name in a video here, knowing that she appreciates them. And I know that I would have been able to many more times. Finally, I have a couple more American queens whose work I want to talk about. Ginger Minj has been on a few seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race, including recently. I have been a little disengaged from the franchise for some time just because there were suddenly so many and I struggled to keep up, which I found a little bit alienating. But there's no reason I can't go and re watch them at any given time. I know that Ginger is having something of a relationship resurgence at the moment and I believe is performing in a little more musical theater. I think there was a production of Le Cage au Fall in which Ginger presumably played Alban. I would have to assume that that would be the role. If you're going to see La Cage and Ginger's in it and she isn't singing. I am what I am. What are we even doing there? And Ginger has played, I think, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd and has worked mostly regionally. I think on the heels of Jinkx Monsoon, Ginger Minj could be the next next one to really conquer a Broadway or Off Broadway stage. It would not surprise me whatsoever if we began to see Ginger Minj on some larger stages. And here's one that you can argue with me about in the comments because you can say that this should have gotten the last category with roles out of drag, but Jan Sport, who now I think is called JanSport again, who for a time was called Jan after getting on Drag Race and having to drop the sport from her Jan Sport name because of copyright reasons. I think we're back to JanSport. She's another one who had musical theater training before beforehand, has an exceptional voice, has impressive vocal range, and until very, very recently, has been starring as Oscar Wilde in the London run of Oscar at the Crown. She has personal connection to Andrew Barrett Cox, who is one of the show's co creators. So it wasn't a huge surprise when she joined the show injecting a little bit of star power. And for those of you who have seen Oscar at the Crown or even just seen production images or pictures of how Jan is costumed with the green hair and the makeup, would you call this a drag performance because it feels like a version of drag that doesn't stretch all the way to female impersonation? I can't bring myself to call this an out of drag performance because that does not feel like what this is. It also doesn't feel like an entire drag performance. And Jan is another one who I think has the real talent and credibility to be able to play an interesting variety of roles. I'm curious about where her stage career will continue to go to, because she was great in Drag the Musical, but she was almost too great in Drag the Musical. Jan is very, very talented. And yeah, I'm excited to see her on stage more. So in conclusion, we're seeing a lot more drag performers on stage. We are seeing more Drag Race alumni, but just more drag performers. Performers in general. I would love for that to expand pursuant to the world's expanded understanding of what drag artistry and performance can look like beyond the traditional gender binary of a man dressing as a woman. As a drag queen, I would love to see just more queer artistry in general on stage. And shows like Cats, the Jellicle Ball have this inherent relationship to drag and ballroom culture. Culture. I'm delighted that even in spite of all of the politicization of their community and their identities. We are seeing more and more trans and non binary performers on stage, and I think that's inherently linked to the acceptance of drag into mainstream entertainment culture as well. I think RuPaul's Drag Race as well is doing a lot for drag queens and we can talk about the impact that it's had on like local drag culture, because I know it hasn't all been entirely beneficial, but I think it has inherited apparently done quite a lot for queer acceptance as well. Even as drag queens are being legislated against in some parts of the United States and demonized as a threat to young people when for the most part all they really want to do is withstand a 30 minute meet and greet in very uncomfortable shoes. But you know, save the children from what exactly? Lash glue? Anyway, I'm dangerously close to pirouetting into an entirely different conversation. For now, those have been my thoughts about drag performers on on stage. Why it's been so joyous, so successful, why it has been happening more and more long. May it all continue. As I mentioned before, if you've seen any of those performances or any others which I didn't mention, feel free to let us all know in the comments section down below. And as always, if you enjoyed listening to my thoughts about theatre and would like to hear more of them, make sure to click subscribe. If you haven't done so already, click the little button that looks like a bell that will turn on notifications. So YouTube gives you a little reminder every time I post a new video, which at the moment is every single day. Or go follow me on podcast platforms. It's just like this. But you don't have to look at my flailing limbs and you don't get to look at my excellent hair. As always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
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