New York City
The drag duo embarks on their annual holiday tour, with a stop in New York City slated for December 5.
My holiday season doesn’t truly begin until I’ve seen the Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show, the annual spectacular starring drag superstars BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon, which will be crisscrossing the country starting November 7 at Charlotte’s Blumenthal Arts Center.
Now in its seventh year, the show offers a delectable mix of good old-fashioned yuletide sparkle and unexpectedly intelligent social commentary. Past shows have tackled career burnout and the derivative nature of the music industry. It’s all delivered with distinctive wit and a rebel sensibility that could have only been cultivated in the Pacific Northwest.
Last year, they relocated the New York leg of the tour to the giant Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, which they will be returning to on December 5.
I spoke with Jinkx and DeLa about the ever-expanding show and attempted to get some hints about what’s under the tree this year.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Were you nervous last year to move the show from Times Square to Brooklyn?
BenDeLaCreme: Yeah, it was a big conversation. We’d had to start doing two shows to accommodate the audiences at the Town Hall. But this tour has gotten so big, and we want to go to as many cities as humanly possible. The Kings is obviously such a beautiful theater and so many incredible acts come through there. The theater itself was a no-brainer, but we were sort of like, are the people who come see our show every year gonna come if it’s not in Manhattan? But man, oh man, did they turn out in spades. We packed that place. It was awesome.
Certain ticket levels at your show involve a meet-and-greet. What’s the wildest thing that an audience member has ever said to you at one of those?
Jinkx Monsoon: So many wild things have been said to us… People are candid with drag queens, I think because we tend to be candid about ourselves. People will come up and be like, “So listen, I got my lung removed today.” And I’m like, what are you doing here?
DeLa: You do get a lot of traumatic stories, which can be a lot. But I think the reason people feel driven to share those stories with us is that this show makes them feel safe. They’re in a place where they have community and support. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Does it make you feel a bit like a priest?
Jinkx: God, no.
DeLa: I’ll say it. I do feel like being a drag queen is like being a preacher. We get to go onstage in front of a whole bunch of people, and we get to present our word through song and dance and sparkle and camp and wall-to-wall comedy. At the end of the day, we’re bringing together a room full of people in a sense of hope and community. If we can do that while not being Christian, I can’t think of anything better.
Jinkx: I would use the term high priestesses. That’s all…
I’m always impressed by how your shows use the form of a Christmas spectacular to address big, important, and often highly intellectual topics like predictive algorithms in consumer capitalism. Can you give me a hint about this year’s show?
DeLa: Every single year the conversation is, how can things get worse? And every single year current events show us exactly how. We are opening this show right after the election and obviously that is going to be a complicated time. We don’t know where we’ll be, but what we do know is what the common experience has been up to this point—with so much division and fear. We are going to find our own irreverent way to both address that and create a sense of relief. Having seen past shows, you know that we always take a classic Christmas tale and turn it on its ear, and this year is no different. We’re turning it upside down to really talk about how much stronger we are when we are in conversation and addressing each other face to face.
Jinkx: And we chose comedy because there is something special when you make people laugh. It is a way to nonthreateningly introduce an idea and tackle those heavy topics you mentioned. This year is a cuckoo bananas year, but that gives us a lot that we have to talk about. And luckily there’s also been a lot of wonderful pop music. So, you take the two things and you got the Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show.
The gays this (Brat) summer were all Chappell Roan and Charlie XCX. What kind of pressure do you feel to give them a shout-out in the songs you parody?
DeLa: No pressure at all, because it’s a gift. Let me tell you, as two aging millennials, it has become harder and harder each year to find the song that resonates with us. This year is an embarrassment of riches. There are so many incredibly talented, passionate, uplifting female vocalists and songwriters this year.
In 2019 you both visited TheaterMania’s office in Times Square and I asked you about performing in New York. Jinkx opined that it was just a little too much city for her. But since then, you’ve appeared in Chicago on Broadway twice and off-Broadway as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. What changed that allowed you to work in the city more harmoniously?
Jinkx: I now know that the trick is staying close enough to the theater that I can just, like, walk there at will. There’s no other way to survive New York. If I have to walk more than 10 blocks, I’m like, How am I gonna do this?
But there’s a reason why Broadway is Broadway and off-Broadway is… basically Broadway, right? When you get there, you are working with people who care as much as you do about putting on a damn good show. It was the thing that always was so special about DeLa and I working together: I always know that this person is putting their ego aside so that we can put on the best show. And you don’t get that with drag queens often. To get to work in that environment is so amazing that I’ll endure any amount of city.