Drag the Halls with BenDeLaCreme

Move over, Santa! Drag Race superstars BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon are coming to town. On December 17, the Seattle sisters will perform their new holiday extravaganza All I Want for Christmas is Attention at the Paramount Theatre. After the success of last year’s show, To Jesus, Thanks for Everything, DeLa and Jinkx have joined forces once again to bring audiences holiday cheer with song, dance, and a whole lot of eggnog. DeLa brings the nice while Jinkx brings the spice.

OUT FRONT had the pleasure of chatting more with DeLa who is best known as Miss Congeniality from Rupaul’s Drag Race, season six, and as a powerhouse contender on All Stars 3. Sweet as pie and terminally delightful, DeLa has written, directed and produced a myriad of shows for audiences across the world. All I Want for Christmas is Attention marks her first producer credit for an international tour under her production company, BenDeLaCreme Presents. 

Hi DeLa! Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Let’s begin by talking more about your new holiday extravaganza, All I Want for Christmas is Attention. What can audiences expect?
This is my second year producing this Christmas tour with Jinkx, and it really has everything that somebody could want from a drag holiday extravaganza. It’s like two queens at the top of their game doing all live singing and production numbers with all the glittery visuals and costumes you could want, but at the heart of it, it’s two queens with a great rapport doing exactly what you want to see two queens do. It’s also a show that’s got a lot of heart and it’s about Jinkx and I exploring not just the fun and fantasy of the holidays, but also what are the hard parts of the holidays and how to deal with that. 

That’s awesome. Now, you have known and work with Jinkx Monsoon for several years. What is it like working together?
We have a blast. We’ve known each other since before Drag Race and have a long history of working together in different capacities. The show last year was really the first we time we have co-written and co-created something. It just kind of comes naturally to us because we have had so many years to develop our rapport, so we have a great time. We get together in a dark room and lock ourselves away to focus and we just laugh and come up with crazy idea and then we both have the work ethic to develop them. 

And this show also marks your first producer credit for an international tour under your production company. That must be quite exciting for you.
Yes, it’s really exciting! I started producing work locally in Seattle a bit over a decade ago, so it’s kind of beyond my wildest dream that I am now producing an international tour. It’s so exciting. I would love to see more drag artist kind of take the reins of their own productions. I think it’s also important for queer artists to seize control of the entirety of their careers in this way. 

I see that you are only touring the U.K. Do you have a place on your bucket list you would like to perform at?
I would love to go further throughout Europe. Jinkx and I have individually performed a little bit outside the U.K. and Europe, but I would love to bring these larger tours there. I have never been to anywhere in Asia, and I would love to see any of those countries. Eventually, who knows, maybe we will be able to bring this Christmas production to Australia. We both have done a lot of work down there. I’d love to just conquer the world with it.

You are a gender queer person and Jinkx identifies as gender fluid. Is it challenging to perform in an art that is still primarily geared towards gay cis-men dressing up like women?
I do think that as drag becomes more popular, it has given a lot of artists kind of more permission to live outside of the larger, more traditional gender norms, even within the gay community. I think that certainly, even though I identify as male, I live outside a lot of those stereotypes still and I think we see more and more performers feeling comfortable with that because before drag’s popularity, there was a lot of pressure to perform masculinity all the time. I think one great thing that drag is doing outside its artistic scope is kind of normalizing that gender can be performed in the world in a lot of different ways and that all those ways deserve love and respect.

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I totally agree, DeLa. I also read that the reason you do holiday shows is because you actually dislike the holidays. Is this true?
[Laughs] Yes. I started doing holiday shows largely so that I would be able to kind of stop celebrating the holidays in the normal way I had. Growing up, I always dreaded Christmas. It was, you know, in a way that I think a lot of people do traditions, sort of inferior comforting but can be very oppressive, and that’s a lot of what we talk about in this show. The ways that things we sometimes love about the holidays, all these traditions, all these images we grew up with, can be fun but can also be difficult. So, that’s a lot of what we bring into the storytelling of our show. I think most people kind of struggle with that push and pull, but for me, now I can do exactly the thing I love most on this holiday. So, it has become a way for me to reclaim it personally as well.   

What advice can you give to those who do struggle during the holidays, especially the kind of people you mentioned?
I think it’s really about what you want it to mean to you. I mean, the hardest part of course is kind of realizing the pressures that have been put on you. To be a certain way, to have a certain set of relationships, to have a certain place to go. Those are sort of cultural event inventions that feel very oppressive to a lot of people. We as queer people, one of the beautiful things about the queer community is that we get to invent our own lives. We are almost forced to, but it becomes a beautiful thing, so I say celebrate the fact that Christmas feels different to us. Make your own traditions. Part of that is spaces like this show creates and coming out to see different kinds of celebrations, but it’s all sorts of things. Celebrate having your own type of chosen family and your own types of tradition that feels right to you.

Now, I cannot do this interview without asking DeLa a couple Drag Race related questions. How would you say the show has changed your life and what would you like to do more with your platform?
Oh, yeah! Just in terms of talking about my history of production, it really altered the scale of what I get to do. I mean, I’m still doing the same things, but now I get to bring them to the world every year a little bit more. Being able to devote my life to the art that I love, Drag Race has helped me elevate that ability. Thinking about what I want to bring to the world, it’s just escalating what I strive to already do which is creating communal spaces and spaces that are full of love and celebration of clearness and what makes us unique and that can bring people together and really shine a light on. You know, what’s so special about our world, what can be challenging about it and how we can face those challenges. 

I know you have been asked this question a billion time, and I promise this will be my only question related to this subject. For our readers, can you please give a little tidbit as to why you chose to leave All Stars?
You know, I think it’s all very tied up in the values that I’m pretty solid on and I try to bring with me everywhere I go, which are the ideas of self-invention and taking control of how you define success for yourself. The tradition of drag is steeped in self-definition, that’s where it comes from. It’s us saying the world around me doesn’t get to tell me what makes me a person of value. I define that for myself. When drag was underground and when the world around us didn’t love it as much, we had to decide that we were going to break the rules because it meant happiness for us. So, for me, as much as I love that Drag Race has given me a platform to do what I love even more, the reality is that the true nature of that competition is not something that’s important to me nor do I agree with it. I went on Drag Race because of my love of drag, not because of my desire to cut anyone else down. So, really, that was just about me saying to myself and the world, I can do this, I’ve shown the world that I can do this, I’ve shown myself that I can do this, but I don’t have to agree to these terms if they don’t align with my personal sensibility. 

Since your time on the show, a lot has been happening in Ru’s world. What are your thoughts on Drag Race UK and the new celebrity spin off that will air next year?
I haven’t had the chance to watch Drag Race UK yet, but I know a few of those queens who I’ve worked with in the past and I think they’re fantastic. I can’t wait to watch the whole thing. I think it’s wonderful that this is expanding to more places. The U.S. queens’ sort of have an iron grip on this and I think that the celebration and elevation of drag is something that should be fair to the world. I believe in drag queens, I love drag queens and I want them to be elevated, so I think it’s wonderful that U.K queens are getting the opportunity. As far as the celebrity Drag Race thing goes, personally, I think drag is something that chooses you. I think that drag is not just a fun dress up, in some ways drag is sacred. There’s those of us where it’s a mode of expression that we need and that really means something to us. So, my feeling in general, I prefer to see high profile drag be about drag queens. The people who are driven to do it and not just a game of dress up. 

If you could create a mini or maxi challenge, what would it be?
Let’s see. I would love for there to be a challenge where queens research and bring to life in some performative way a legendary queen or some gender non-conforming folks from queer history. I think Drag Race has done some of that, bringing those performers to light, but I’d love to see a challenge where all of the queens who are currently on the show really have to draw attention back to a lot of the queens that some of the audience might or might not know about. Coco Peru, Varla Jean Merman, Dina Martina, Jackie Beat, some of these queens out here now, but also folks like Marsha P. Johnson. People who are really part of the queer rights movement. I think that they’re who makes this community special and we’re all part of world links in that chain. 

Outside of drag and performing, what is a typical day like for you? Hobbies and pleasures that have nothing to do with DeLa.
Hobbies, what kind of free time do you think I have? [Laughs]. You know, especially this time of year, there’s been so many productions. I wrote and toured my first solo show and that tour will probably continue in the spring. We’re finalizing details for that now. I just closed my Halloween show here in Seattle and networking the Christmas show. So, there’s been very little downtime this year. I go, go, go so much and out of the house, so when I do get some time to myself, I like to be sort of a homebody. I like to spend time with my fiancé and indulge in the simpler things. Good food, good movies, I love to see performances, but I also just like to kick it at home. It’s a rare occurrence and one I value.

Besides the Christmas and your solo show, what other upcoming projects should we be on the lookout for?
There’s a lot of things in the works. I’m interested in some of the larger productions that have been too big of a scale to leave Seattle so far, in terms of cast, set, things like that. As the production company becomes bigger and as I take on more things like international tours, my next step is to figure out how to bring these larger casts, kind of narrative cabarets that I make which are really like plays mixed with elements of drag and burlesque and that’s something I would like for the world to see. So, that I was I’m setting my sights on these days.