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Yes, there are the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, but actors, writers, comedians and drag queens Jinkx Monsoon and BenDelaCreme are back to slay with one of the greatest and funniest winter shows — The Jinkx and Dela Holiday
Show! This year, Monsoon and Dela celebrate their ninth year of taking the show on the road, and with last week’s blue tsunami, there’s plenty of festive cheer to go around as both are feeling a renewed sense of holiday spirit.
“It is a nice contrast to when we did this show two years ago. We had our first preview the night that [Trump] won for a second time, and it felt hard to get on stage then because we knew that there was a lot of BS in store. It’s been a very sordid time to be a queer and trans person,” Monsoon says as the pair get ready to play at The Eastern Theater in Atlanta, Ga.
This year, the tour will take them around the country to Cincinnati, New York, Cleveland, Detroit and San Francisco. And as is tradition, the show will play in Seattle from Dec. 21 through Dec. 24 — the city where their friendship first began. Tickets are already in high demand.
Here the pair spoke with Variety about the new show and the secret to their collaboration.
How does it feel to be taking this show on the road and being in Atlanta amid this blue tsunami?
JINKX MONSOON: I have been continually bolstered and fortified by the fact that when we take this show around the country, and we pack our houses, things might be the way they are, but I know there’s a room full of people who feel and think the same way that I do — and that’s everywhere. Our community exists everywhere. The queer community is a global community, and it’s wonderful to remember that. Even at the darkest times, we have a community to turn to. I can’t take any responsibility, but it feels like a Christmas miracle to not have to be fighting as hard to get people to listen to something that should be basic information.
BENDELACRÈME: Every year, we try to create a show that speaks to where we’re at collectively. But this year’s show is about how the future is always unknown. It’s always scary, and it’s always true that nothing is inevitable. We’ve been fed a lot of rhetoric about inevitable futures, and the next thing can be anything. And so, to write a show with that content and then get to open it riding this wave of hope — but also remembering that the conversations don’t happen by themselves — is very special. We’ve got to keep up with it. We’ve got to stay behind it. It’s very exciting — things coinciding in a way that’s just celebratory and hopeful.
I love the theme that a billionaire, aka Ebenezer Scrooge, buys out the holiday show. How did you come up with that theme, and how did Ebenezer become a part of it?
MONSOON: We like to have the serious conversations in the stupidest way possible. With the Christmas/Winter holiday lens, we try to keep it in the world of commonly recognizable fictional Christmas characters, and luckily, there’s a large repertoire to pull from. Scrooge really fits the build this year.
What I love about the show is that we’re having conversations that every artist out there is having: How do I make a living being an artist while staying true to creating art? I also have to feed myself, and this all doesn’t just happen magically for free. It’s the dilemma a lot of artists are facing. Do you want to be an artist or do you want to eat? And for a long time, you haven’t had to decide one or the other. But art has been attacked and left out to fend for itself recently, and everything’s about what’s going to make money, not what’s the best possible art. So I think, as a performer, I’m very excited to be a live entertainer because, for whatever reason, art is surviving and thriving in live entertainment — even though a lot of filmed media feels like it’s being pushed through the same sausage maker of capitalism.
DELA: Fortunately, for now, live entertainment — seeing a performer in front of you — is one of the few things we can still really trust is real and happening, right? It’s very scary, but I think we’re also all really learning to be skeptical in a way that’s really important. It’s also really hard to approach everything with a sense of, “Can I believe this?” But when you’re in a room with someone, you know it’s real. It’s in front of your eyes, but you can also feel it, right? You don’t exchange energy with people over a screen in the same way. You don’t. People can feel each other’s presence, and they can feel what it means. I think that’s part of why live performance continues to thrive and will continue to thrive.
The show has a tribute to Tim Curry and Dolly Parton. How did you weave those icons in?
MONSOON: Every year we come to our first writing session like a completely blank slate. Usually, Dela has a couple of assignments — maybe there’s a top 40 song, or there’s a cultural moment or there was a movie — and she says, “We are doing a disservice to our audience if we don’t get a bit in about this thing.” This year, we lost two huge multigenerational queer icons who are very much alive in the zeitgeist and still are.
Dela just came to the table saying, “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we got to get a Dolly song, and we got to get a Tim Curry song, and I think I know which Tim Curry song. We’ve just got to find the right way.” And the way she found to incorporate it is so perfectly suited to the taste of “The Jinkx and Dela Holiday Show.” It’s so perfect. It’s nothing you would have imagined outside of the context of “The Jinkx and Dela Holiday Show,” but within the show, it’s a seat of honor.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
