As Republican legislatures nationwide, including Arizona, move to ban and restrict drag shows, Arizona Theatre Company is jumping into the thick of the issue with its season-closing production of “The Legend of Georgia McBride.”
The musical comedy, which ATC originally had on its 2019-20 season that was postponed courtesy the COVID-19 pandemic, is about Casey, an aspiring Elvis impersonator who loses his gig and is forced to take a role as a drag queen to support his pregnant wife. The show is filled with hilarious, if not predictable, twists and turns as Casey goes from playing the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll to a Queen.
The show opened June 3 and is on stage at the Temple of Music and Art through June 24.
Until recently, the play’s central drag theme had been a footnote to the play’s larger theme “that family comes in all different forms and the path to prosperity and fulfillment may sometimes take an unexpected turn,” ATC Artistic Director Matt August said.
But the ongoing Republican backlash against drag shows has shifted the attention, prompting some theater companies and their creatives to get out in front of the issue.
“As a performing arts institution, we are here to tell stories that create empathy and joy and foster civil communications beyond our theatre’s walls,” August said in a late May email interview. “Our work as artists impacts the greater community and supports our mission, which is to create world-class theatre about what it means to be alive today — inspiring curiosity and creativity, sparking empathy and joy — bringing ALL Arizonans together.”
“It’s obviously a distraction by the far right: Let’s pick a moral issue to distract people with, and drag seems to be an easy target,” said the show’s costume designer Patrick Holt, who teaches costume design at the University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film & Television. “It just makes no sense. Anyone who knows drag and knows what the culture and the art is about is laughing this off. But with laws changing in some states, it’s become personal again.”
Since January, several Republican-led states, including Arizona, have proposed legislation to ban or restrict drag shows. The moves follow Florida’s decision last spring to outlaw public schools from teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in a bill that many dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”
“We are watching anti-drag legislation closely and will not change the work we do on our stages or in our gathering spaces,” August said. “We understand that this proposed legislation is not just threatening marginalized groups of people and their livelihoods — it threatens all of us.”
August and Holt both point to the rich theatrical tradition of men playing female roles, including Antigone, Helen of Troy, Rosalind and Ophelia, because women were not allowed to perform in public until 1660.
August cited more recent examples of “great and important characters” created and played by men, including Dustin Hoffman’s “Tootsie,” Tyler Perry’s “Madea,” and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in the 1959 comedy “Some Like It Hot.”
“These characters and these performances became legendary and are indelible on the fabric of American culture,” he said.
“It’s OK to play a wife beater or a child molester and win an Oscar, but God forbid you put a dress on and make people laugh,” added Holt, the longtime Tucson drag artist Tempest DuJour.
What draws White nationalists, Christian fundamentalists and social conservatives to coalesce on a Dallas Street? For the last year the answer is drag queens.
