by kevin perry
History is written in the footnotes. War divides us, but peace defines us. While petty politicians grab headlines, the rest of us grasp at the shreds of a civilization in despair. They tear us apart; we stitch society back together. Repeat daily and exhaustively.
Right-wing media has cast our LGBTQ+ community as the villain in a mindless culture war with no end. We must constantly remind our neighbors that we are not enemies, we are not monsters, and we are not “less than.”
We’re your fellow humans, and we’re not going anywhere.
It’s up to the greater gay collective to preserve our legacy in the face of extinction; to flourish in the fringes . . . and a queen shall lead the way.
“Drag has never been bigger or more vocally opposed,” said Sasha Velour, a superstar, sociologist and scholar rolled into one amazingly amiable mélange. “It has gone through these pendulum swings of acceptance into mainstream culture and then conservative pushback, along with culture at large. As women, as people of color, as anything labeled ‘different’ gets pushed to the margin, queer people, trans people and our art form are part of that.”
Beneath her goth-punk suit of chic armor, the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 winner flexes a thoughtful blend of bruised hope and brazen justice.
“We’ve reached great heights before, and through the process of pushing us to the margins, the history gets obliterated, and that’s why we don’t necessarily know the stories of our trailblazers who came before us in drag,” she said.
The topic turns, as it does all too frequently these days, to the rise of fascism, whose specter engulfed the thriving gay landscape of 1920s Berlin.
“It’s so tempting to romanticize those moments of queer explosion, like the cabaret scene in Germany. And it was actually my mom, before she passed, who was researching Magnus Hirschfeld who founded The Institute [the first known trans clinic in the world], and that ended up being burned to the ground by the Nazis, but that identified words and international connections between queer people for the first time. But you can’t get too excited about those time periods because they end in these horrible backlashes. And so many of my drag heroes: Barbette, Divine, Sylvia Rivera, they had unhappy endings. Some of them ended their own lives. Others were not remembered at the time or celebrated or seen in the way they wished to be when they passed. And I guess there’s something redemptive about being able to call them heroes today,” she said.
Velour stands on the shoulder-pads of giants, celebrating her queer foremothers in a legacy that blends the past with a dazzlingly defiant future.
“I always want to bring those heroes with me into my work and share them with people, introduce new people to them,” she said. “People have only scratched the surface, in terms of what they know about drag through pop culture, and there’s so much more gender variety in drag and artistic variation. Whenever I do a show, I want to embody all the range of what drag can be and then push myself to try something I’ve never even done before. So I think we’re living up to that in this show.”
The show is Velour: A Drag Spectacular, a dizzying deep dive into herstory, artistry and activism.
“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever gotten to do and be a part of,” Velour said. “There is space for all the different sides of my drag in this show, and that’s a credit to the amazing team that’s helped me make this. So Moisés Kaufman, who is one of the genius theatre makers of all time, creator of The Laramie Project, which made me fall in love with theatre. So it feels like a very full circle, pinching myself moment to be working on a show about my life and my family and about my extended family of drag. And he was really insistent, like, ‘Your artwork has to be a part of it,’ and so my drawings will appear on the stage. I feel like theatre is giving me permission to be even more dramatic and abstract than in drag. I feel like, in drag, you explain things to the audience a little bit. Here, we’re making them step into our world, and I think it’ll be a full multimedia fantasy production. I cannot wait for people to see it.”
Velour savors her role as creator, emcee and hostess, inviting patrons to identify open-heartedly and open-mindedly with the shimmering tapestry she weaves on stage.
“A really personal story allows people an entrance point to understand. And with so much fear and misinformation about queer and trans people, about drag, to really boil it down to a human story is what can change people’s minds and make people comfortable around queer life. And I think that one of the bigger roles of this show is to just normalize this thing that is already normal and should be more culturally normal, and invite everyone in to enjoy it and all of its beauty,” she said.
A Drag Spectacular whips up a whirlwind of multimedia mayhem, telling intimate tales in epic ways. Expect video animation, expect projection mapping and expect an unexpectedly vulnerable, candid leading performance.
“Left to my own devices, maybe I don’t like to share as much, personally,” Velour said. When asked how it feels to her raw nerves to the crowd, she added, “Both horrifying and really emotional.”
The show is as much a journey through queer history as it is a trek from Velour’s early days to her fierce present tense.
“I never saw myself working in theatre because I felt like I could never pass as a normal man or anything else that was available to me to be cast as. So to get to step into theatre literally as myself and to make room for some other performers to share this stage as themselves feels like a sea change in this art form that I love, and I credit the great culture of drag.”
Queen Velour is an ambassador and innovator of drag culture, a responsibility she relishes.
“There’s this line in the show where I say that Sasha Velour, for me, came together as this unique combination of everything that I had seen and fallen in love with, and I think that’s what drag gets to be for everyone who does it. No two people do this art the same way. In fact, you’re discouraged from doing it the same way as someone else. And I love that because so little in this world really charts out a place for people to be completely true to themselves. And difference is celebrated, and I feel so grateful,” Velour said.
As she navigates the tragedies befallen by her idols and charts a course to a brighter beyond, Velour grows contemplative.
“What I hope I can give: I’m striving to have a happy life. Hopefully, my ending is nowhere near, but I would love to give queer people of the future a vision of becoming a happy old person. So I guess my goal is just to live and to have joy and queer joy and a life that doesn’t depress people. I’m trying. I’m trying. If we have to use our drag fantasies to make it happen, then we’ll certainly do that.”
Fantasy over fascism. Wonderment over war. Drag over devastation. These are the priorities of a loving, healthy society, and they’re on full, fabulous display in Velour: A Drag Spectacular. Experience it for yourself at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego from Tuesday, August 13 through Sunday, September 8.
Tickets and more information are available at lajollaplayhouse.org
Hailing from the icy depths of rural Maine, Kevin Perry developed a love of horror movies at a frighteningly early age. He translated his cinema obsession into a Film Studies degree from Wesleyan University and then set sail for California. After years of writing for various television projects on FX, MTV and VH1, Kevin moved to Palm Springs. He currently works full time as a senior copywriter at UNFOLD, a creative agency with clients like Disney, Warner Bros and Netflix. As a proud member of the LGBTQ+ family, Kevin writes for publications such as Metrosource, GED Magazine, Visit Palm Springs and The RAGE Monthly. He is wildly social, so follow him on any/all of the following platforms (and prepare for dog content galore): Instagram/X: @KevinPerryRules TikTok: @KevinPerry35
