I took way more video clips than I expected to at the event Shobhit and I went to last night: "
Revelry! A Night of Drag and Other Shenanigans." The above clip is by a wide margin the longest of the
nine videos I took last night—it's eight seconds shy of five minutes long. But, I really enjoy it for multiple reasons: it's a drag
king rather than drag queen performance (by the name of
Chance Hazard), and the number as public transit, and specifically advocating universal access to it, as its theme. It's camp, it's suggestive, it's activism, it's intersectional across many of my interests.
It's still worth noting why I took so many other video clips, because so many of the performances were so fun: three of them are of drag performer
Patience Waning, the last and best of which was a lip sync of
a song from Kpop Demon Hunters; there was a pretty delightful "
Spice Girls" performance; and my second-longest clip, at 3 minutes and 11 seconds, was
lip-sync of Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet" while slowly stripping down to barely-covered breasts. I loved that the women (or in some cases, nonbinary) performers were just as campy as any of the others, which for all I know is totally normal for this annual event, but historically has not been broadly common in the queer community.
And that was what I ultimately loved about "Revelry!" This is a show that leans
hard into what drag really was for its first many decades—not the high polish and glamor of
RuPaul's Drag Race, but gritty, messy
camp, with comic exaggeration and tongue-in-cheek (in more ways than one) salaciousness. This was what I always appreciated about
Dina Martina (who is actually too big a regional celebrity to have appeared at this show; she's been doing her own Christmas show for over 20 years), her deliberately messy presentation, right down to gowns that never quite fit right, often with an incredibly hairy back visible. Which is to say, I very much clocked
Patience Waning's hairy chest as well.
I suppose that's one difference between now and the early days of drag, because in the early days, even the queer community thought in terms of binaries: man/woman, top/bottom, butch/femme, etc. A drag queen would far more typically lean into exaggerated femininity, but these days there's a lot more blurring of these lines. Sometimes it's clearly for comic effect, but sometimes it's just a matter of simple ninbinary gender expression.
Anyway. I walked home from work yesterday, and then had about an hour to eat dinner before Shobhit and I actually walked down to Theatre Off Jackson in the International District—a one-and-a-half-mile walk. We walked most of the way down 12th Avenue E, drinking "
Chambord Royale" cocktails after Shobhit asked me to look up good drinks to make with Chambord. We went with this because it was simplest and easiest to make with what we had on hand: champaigne and Chambord. We used the small, 200 ml champagne bottle
Gabby gave me on Wednesday. It didn't fill our cups too much, but that was okay. Also it was very tasty.
Doors opened at 6:45, and we got there about five minutes before that; the show's listed time was 7:00 but they really didn't get started until 7:15. I had fully expected this show to be in the actual theatre space at Theatre Off Jackson, but instead it was in a smaller event space I had never seen there before—the entrance off to the left when first going in the door.
They had an interesting system for "tipping" the performers: instead of giving them cash, you bought 10-packs of "tip bucks," made of printed red paper, for $10 each. Shobhit bought one of them. I kept wondering what the point of this was, if the tips would be pooled for all the performers, which was what I thought I heard. I later learned that all of the funds for "tip bucks" sales went to the beneficiary of the event, Lambert House, and when it came the performers, the one way any of them benefitted was by counting up which one of them got the most "tip bucks" for a prize. That went to a
tap dancing duo of women who really were quite fabulous. They got a prize basket, at the sight of which the drag hostesss (I forget this one's name) said, "You're getting a bunch of cellophane! This show is sponsored by Glad." After a couple of beats she also quipped, "The basket is full of Dr. Scholl's." Because they were tap dancers.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्ताईस —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्ताईस —
I have to admit, through the first half of the show, I had moderately mixed feelings about it. I didn't especially know what to expect, but was slightly disappointed to find it was in a smaller event space with arranged single chairs rather than a show on the main stage, which was what I thought it was. If we go again next year, it will be easier to enjoy from the start, because I'll have a much clearer picture of what to expect. As it was, it felt very much like a local fundraiser event, with quasi-professional performers at best—and of course, that's exactly what it was. That said, I kind of expected to laugh a lot more than I did in the first half, but now I know this is much more like a variety show, with different people and groups merely sharing their talents for a good cause. And I can always support that. And it's worth noting that, by the second half, I was indeed laughing a lot more—or, as in the case of the drag performer above, more impressed.
Shobhit has an acquaintance-level familiarity with the representative there from Lambert House, I forget his name; I think it started with a B. Brandon? Anyway, I think maybe they know each other from Shobhit's 2023 City Council campaigning days. He probably would not even know that much about Lambert House otherwise, but he felt very compelled this year—while we have already gone to two plays for which he got free tickets through TPS, this was one he said he wanted to go to even though we had to pay for tickets to it. He even went out of his way to have me take a selfie of us standing in front of the stage, with both the rainbow Christmas Trees and the little LAMBERT HOUSE box visible. He's always making me raise the camera and move it to the side so he's more satisfied with how the background is visible; the shot he liked better is what
he shared to Facebook right before the show even started. I like my shot much better; I think it's far better centered, particularly in regards to the trees.
There was another, older gay couple sitting right next to us; one of them was wearing
a T-shirt that cracked me up so much I asked to take a picture:
I'm so good, Santa came twice. I texted that photo to Laney and, because there was a Lambert House banner on the wall behind him that I did not clock when taking the photo, she naturally assumed we were
at Lambert House and wondered if that was appropriate around youth. I clarified that we were at a 21+ fundraiser at Theatre Off Jackson. But then I edited the photo so the banner is whited out, because anyone else would probably have made the same assumption.
That guy, and his presumed partner, had been to "Revelry!" before, and said nothing but good things about it. People were going around selling ring pops that would be used for a game, and not knowing what it would entail, I resisted participating. Shobhit kept jumping at chances to buy things to support the cause, though, and these types of things were cheaper than getting drinks at the bar (well, sort of: the ring pops were $5 each, totalling $10 for the two of us; you could get a cocktail for that price). The guy next to me had said this would be part of "an elimination game." I finally relented and let Shobhit buy one for both of us.
And then, this was the game: everyone who bought a ring pop—the ring pops did not factor in any further than this—was asked to stand, and at the count of three make a dramatic pose as "naughty" (one hand on butt) or "nice" (two hands over breasts). As simple as this was, was happy to get eliminated early. People really got into it, and I'm just not a physically demonstrative person in this way. I didn't want to wind up on the stage looking like a stick in the mud. Anyway, they flipped a coin and, each round, if it came up "naughty" or "nice," the people posing as the one it landed on got to keep standing. They brought the three finalists—all women—onto the stage, and the last one standing got another gift basket. There were several gift baskets, presumably all donated from event sponsors.
They later told us that $10,000 was raised for Lambert House last night alone. At one point they auctioned off four tickets to the new Seattle women's hockey team, the
Seattle Torrent, a single game at any chosen date. I have no idea what the value was, but the
opening bid was $1,000, and the closing bid, a guy sitting at one of the VIP tables in the front, was $1,400.
I just checked the website. Ticket prices range from $39 to $125. So, at the most expensive, the four tickets would have had a face value of $500. I kind of doubt the tickets were highest-tier, but who knows.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention
Cheer Seattle, several members of which also donated their time at the event, both doing some cheers and walking around after every number with little baskets on the end of sticks for people to put their "tip bucks" in. I was a little enamored with
one of them, a cute young man who had his hair pushed back with one of those barely-visible wire hair bands. They all smiled and said thank you a lot when going around collecting tips, but I watched this guy the most. He reminded me of a young version of Mike, the guy I used to work with at the
Seattle Gay Standard, only much cuter. (For all I know, Mike was also that cute when he was young.) In any case, they both have similar shapes of their face and particularly their mouth.
Shobhit and I took the streetcar home from there. This has a station right by Theatre Off Jackson, and another six blocks from home. We'd have had just as far to walk from the light rail station but whatever; the streetcar was coming right when we got out there. There was a guy half-hiding against the wall of the station in the middle of the street who I'm pretty sure was doing drugs.
I came home, processed and
uploaded my photos and videos from the evening, and went to bed a bit late.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ सत्ताईस —
[posted 12:33pm]
