NPR: ‘Drag: The Musical’ takes audiences behind the scenes of drag culture

Ayesha Rascoe, interviewing Justin Andrew Honard for NPR:

RASCOE: Sitting in the front row, I was amazed by the blend of smells and the confetti and all the sparkly outfits and the awesome dance numbers. What was most striking was how the musical spotlights the lived experience, with all its joy and struggle, of drag queens.

HONARD: I feel like the perception is, oh, it’s rhinestones, and it’s feathers, and it’s fabulous. And it is that, but there’s also a gritty, grimy side to drag.

RASCOE: “Drag: The Musical” – you know, it really gets us behind the scenes of drag culture because the show is about kind of this rivalry between two drag houses, the Fish Tank and the Cathouse. How true to life is that sort of rivalry?

HONARD: It does exist because there are different types of drag. When I was first starting in Pittsburgh, we were kind of the freaky wacko drag queens who didn’t really fit in with the elegant, like, pageant drag queens.

RASCOE: What do you think makes drag so entertaining for people?

HONARD: Well, on the surface, drag is really fun to look at. But then if you go deeper – I mean, I hear from people that they feel empowered because you’re seeing people who are being really exuberant about who they are, unafraid. So that power of, like, transformation and, like, becoming something that you imagine you can be – I feel like that can speak to literally anybody.

HEAR THE FULL INTERVIEW.

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