Reality Tea News Editor Daniel Falconer sat down with Sasha Velour for an exclusive interview to discuss everything the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 winner has going on. With The Big Reveal Live Show headed to Europe across October and November, and drag facing an unprecedented wave of both support and hate, there was a lot to talk about.
Sasha reveals the process of adapting her book for the stage
Daniel Falconer: The Big Reveal Live Show is a celebration of your book that you released earlier this year. What was the process like adapting that for the stage?
Sasha Velour: To be honest, I had to think of it as a show in order to write it! I’m so used to structuring a drag show, that I thought maybe a book could follow the same logic. So, I kind of sketched out the book at one point as if I were putting together a show, and organizing the little drag acts in a good order, so it felt very natural to put it up into a theater space. The best part is that I just love to show rather than tell.
It was excruciating, I have so much respect for writers like yourself. It’s very hard to express things in words, I find it so joyful to be able to do it with a gesture or to be able to show an image or create a little video moment. It’s kind of a book, but with even more humor, more metaphor, and more artistry, hopefully.
The pressure of creating a new show when the bar is set so high
Daniel Falconer: You’ve got such a history of live performance, with NightGowns and the Smoke and Mirrors tour, so is there pressure when you create a new show, because you’ve set the bar so high?
Sasha Velour: That’s funny! I guess there is, yeah. I need to outdo myself every time, but without getting gaudy and overstuffed and expensive. I think that’s the drag trap: we just wanna add more, bigger, more rhinestones, more feathers. I really tried to push myself to come up with clever ideas that can outdo what I’ve done before. I think this show does have some gags that I’m particularly proud of, so hopefully it’s successful.
Does Sasha still get nervous?
Daniel Falconer: You look so confident on stage, but do you still get nervous before a show?
Sasha Velour: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think there would be something wrong if I weren’t nervous. It does feel like diving off a diving board sometimes because once I step out onto stage and it starts, it goes away immediately. But in those moments right before, hearing the crowd backstage, it’s a kind of trust fall to step out in front of people. It’s exciting in its own way; it does damage to my nerves over time, but I’m grateful for it.
Sasha discusses the current climate around drag
Daniel Falconer: The art of drag feels both as though it’s never been more celebrated, but also that it’s never been more under attack, at least for our generation. How have you found that climate personally?
Sasha Velour: It’s bizarre, because there’s a growing audience in person. We’re able to perform for bigger audiences, go to these amazing theatrical spaces, and bring people who don’t usually go to the theater into these historic, gorgeous rooms to enjoy drag together. But then, it’s really online, on the internet that this growing anti-drag, anti-queer, anti-trans logic seems to be seeping in, and now it’s impossible to make any gesture publicly without being greeted with really homophobic slurs, being called a “groomer,” people putting vomit emojis, and it’s literally been a night and day change in the last five years. Suddenly people are paying attention and purposely spewing hate who didn’t care before.
I think [support and hate] go together. I think the backlash is because so many new people are coming out that they’re comfortable with drag, that they love drag. So the people that are stuck behind the times are feeling like they need to raise their voice. Hopefully it’s a sign that we are moving forward, but it’s hard to face, so we’re trying to figure out how to keep going, how to keep working, how to keep putting on shows with this incredible, horrifying backlash around us.
Misinformation spreads via social media
Daniel Falconer: Do you feel as though it’s still a minority, albeit a very vocal one who is being given a platform by social media owners?
Sasha Velour: I do. I think they’re spreading misinformation. The misinformation around drag is very similar to the misinformation around trans people, but I think the effect is kinda similar in that people who don’t know anything about it are just taking other people’s word for the kind of damage the queer community is supposedly doing, when in fact we’re really like, the steps we’re taking to normalize drag, to normalize gender transition, and allow people to live lives at all, to feel comfortable with themselves, to find others like them. It literally saves lives rather than endangering them. But there’s this fearmongering. The scariest thing is the idea that this fearmongering could convince someone of that misinformation is true, that we really are hurting people, so I hope that that isn’t really happening, but it’s a little hard to tell from just online.
Visibility and representation in drag
Daniel Falconer: The lighter side as we’ve said is that drag is more accepted by many other people. Representation in drag has heightened and you’ve been a real champion of that. What do you think is the next logical step for representation in drag?
Sasha Velour: I think we still don’t have a lot of visibility on what the working drag community really looks like. With all the steps taken with Drag Race, that still is drag within a studio setting, and only a small group of the artists who do drag. My world of drag is full of drag kings, full of drag things, or people who wanna have a more non-binary approach to their drag, which to me really illuminates the fact that it’s not about parody, or transformation as much as it is about exaggeration and artistry, and turning gender into a tool for art.
I love the grittier side of drag that exists behind the scenes. The way that we collage and hot glue ourselves together; the way our spaces are always so much more glamorous on the outside than they are backstage. I feel like that’s worth celebrating because so much of art is done with so much money and with such elite institutions backing it. The magical thing about drag is it’s quite scrappy. So I think the more that that gets represented, the more people are gonna understand what it’s really about.
Sasha’s appreciation for UK drag
Daniel Falconer: UK drag feels very different to drag around the world, and I suppose that’s the same with every different culture. What do you like about UK drag?
Sasha Velour: I love the cheeky sense of humor that UK drag has. I’ve been watching a lot of old clips of Danny La Rue recently, performing in the West End and Hello Dolly. I think Danny La Rue was the first drag queen in Vogue Magazine – something really shockingly groundbreaking – and so there’s this really long tradition of this cheeky sense of humor, paired with gorgeous costumes, paired with amazing stage presence.
There’s a kind of punk quality to humor like that that I feel like is a great part of UK drag, and UK drag is really diverse and inclusive. Every time I’ve gone to see a show there have been people of all genders performing as drag queens, and there have been drag kings as part of it. There are amazing, really political drag kings in the UK right now.
Aiming for Broadway in 2024
Daniel Falconer: What can you tell us about the theatrical work that you’re working on for summer next year?
Sasha Velour: Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I’m working with Moisés Kaufman who wrote The Laramie Project and Gross Indecency; and the Tectonic Theater Project that he founded.
It’s a further adaptation of the book into an even newer realm, spending a little bit more time with my personal story and figuring out ways to dramatize that alongside the history of drag in a theater piece. I think, given what I love about drag, I love these vignettes that flow together, and that’s very much The Big Reveal. It’s like a full drag show with different performances; it’s just I’m doing most of them myself, and changing costumes and doing different styles.
There’s a disconnected quality to doing drag numbers, so I really wanted to work with people who make theater to help advise, how do we take all the things we love about drag and make it into a full theater piece, like a hybrid. Then also, there’s some budget for truly amazing, gag-worthy reveals. I’m gonna be flying; there’s gonna be massive projections everywhere, bigger costumes. You know I just said I wasn’t gonna put money on things? Well, that’s not true!
Sasha Velour tours Europe with The Big Reveal Live Show October 21 – November 22, with dates in the UK from October 29 – November 8. Tickets are available now via www.sashavelour.com.
