Our satire/parody/homage to The Sound of Music was our ticket to the world.
Our experiment of trying a long form narrative drag show at our venue PINK had paid off and we had a hit on our hands. We ran the show for 34 weeks, establishing a new longest running production show record for Melbourne. I saw the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, (MICF), call for registrations, and so I contacted them to ask if we could enter a ‘drag show’ in the Festival.
They didn’t say yes and they didn’t say no and so I asked for them to come along to PINK, see the show and tell us if we had a chance of going in the Festival.
That Saturday a large table of MICF staff, including Creative Director Edwina Lunn came and watched our performance. I had no idea that the MICF sponsors and promotes new talent, and good fortune smiled and Edwina Lunn took us under her wing and offered us a 10 night run at the MICF’s Bosco venue. Edwina asked if we’d thought further than PINK on a Saturday night. Edwina explained the Festival circuit and suggested we’d do well at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A giant door had opened.
The following Saturday was the debut of our Grease Lightnin’ Drag Show. Fate had brought Edwina, in the nick of time, to the closing night of Sound of Music Drag Show, and the following Saturday she brought along Karen Koren, Director of the Gilded Balloon who was scouting for Australian comedy acts, like Tim Minchin whom she’d made famous the previous year.
Karen loved Grease Lightnin’ and on the recommendation of Edwina, she invited us to bring The Sound of Music Drag Show to the Gilded Balloon, AND if things went well, to bring Grease Lightnin’ the following year.
It was decision time for our cast. Roxy, our ‘Baroness’ was at the start of a promising career in fashion and so reluctantly but understandably, Roxy declined to put all that on hold to tour a drag show. So with a bit of re-editing and costuming Jackie Stephens became our ‘Baroness’ and our troupe was:
- Jessica James as Maria.
- Kris Del Vayze as The Captain, one of the children, a Nazi and Mother Superior.
- Amanda Monroe as Liesl, a Nazi and a Nun.
- Jillette Jones as the youngest child, Adolf Hitler and a nun.
- Jackie Stephens as the gender confused child, the Baroness, a Nazi and a nun.
- Miss Bunny as Rolf, an ADD child, a Nazi and a nun.
Christina Andrews joined us as Understudy/Backup. Jillette had collapsed on stage with a pinched back nerve at a show in Daylesford, and we were concerned that Jill’s back problem might interrupt our run in Edinburgh. Christina Andrews kindly agreed to Understudy so that our run would go smoothly. Christina was exemplary and showed such talent that she became Rizzo in our Grease Lightnin’ show for our second year in Edinburgh.
The Gilded Balloon Press Office was led by Fraser Smith, a somewhat genius promotions man whom we liked immediately and Fraser organised some wonderful promotions for us. We did open air Fringe openings in front of thousands of festival goers. We were taken on Rickshaws to Edinburgh Castle to witness the firing of the cannon, a rare honour for Australian drag queens indeed! The Press Office kept track of all the reviews and press we were getting and soon we were papering over our posters with 4 and 5 star reviews.
Closing the show.
Drag is sometimes called ‘the bastard art form’. It relies on recording artists to create the sound and fashion to costume. (Fortunately the RuPaul phenomenon has opened drag doors wide, and now drag queens are appearing in their own stories, parodies and celebrations on theatre stages everywhere.)
Drag Queens miming recording artists is the essence of drag performance. Copyright laws are a minefield for drag queens. Provided you stay hidden inside clubs where your performance is covered under the venue licences you don’t need to deal with copyright on the songs you use.
We abided by the rules for artists from APRA, the organisation that collects royalties and distributes them to the artists. To our immense surprise, we were denied permission to use the soundtrack for Sound of Music. The copyright owners didn’t seem to understand that what we were presenting was a unique show, using parody and satire to critique the modern family, the ‘fun’ Nazi musicals and the realities of children’s views of the world.
Despite presenting our case to the lawyers in New York, and attempting to assure the owners that we weren’t presenting ‘the sound of music IN DRAG, versus using drag as an element in a satire on modern life.
Our producer Edwina Lunn, took our arguments as far as she could, however we were unable to secure performance rights for the music and that was what closed so many doors.
I think anyone who saw the show would agree we were hardly done by. In this new and diverse social climate I think we’d have little problem securing the rights, such is the recognition of drag as an artform.
Part of our problem was the low regard in which drag had been held, and our version of a ‘drag show’ as an hour of narrative satire as a drag spectacle had not been seen before. Drag Queens were generally regarded as crude and rude and limited to miming popular songs.
Edinburgh is a showcase to the world, and the next largest and iconic is considered to be the Montreal Comedy Festival. We were invited to bring our show to Montreal and touring in USA was there in the distance, however without the music we had no show.
When we approached Melbourne Comedy it was with the hope they may allow a drag show on one of their stages. We were blessed with Edwina and Charlie for opening the door to us, welcoming us into the world of theatre, and supporting our attempts to have a career in front of the footlights.
I believe we were a fraction before ‘drag’s time’, and I confess I’d be happy to still be doing Liesl at festivals and theatres around the world.
