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US drag queen Willam, fresh off a stage in West Hollywood, is resting in her dressing room and clearing the air about the manner in which drag queens roast each other. “I don’t know if Australians are familiar with the art but, if you’re thinking it’s done with love, it’s not necessarily done with love,” she says, adjusting a spectacularly large platinum blonde wig. “This is not a sisterhood.”
Willam, co-host of the Race Chaser podcast and a former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant (famously the first to be disqualified from the series) is warming her comically vicious lambasting skills for a drag queen roast, or read, on the other side of the world. She is part of Drag Roast, a live show hosted by singer, writer and comedian Reuben Kaye, in which eight local and international drag queens engage in a no-holds-barred verbal clash.
“I’ve been roasted before,” Willam says. “People make jokes about me but I’m wildly successful, so I don’t really get bothered by many of them. I have this delusion where if it doesn’t exist in my head, it’s not real. They can definitely try to roast me, but they’d fail. That’s why everyone should get tickets to the show, to see if I actually am unbothered or if I snap.”
What happens when Willam, author of a self-help book called Suck Less: Where There’s a Willam, There’s a Way, snaps? “Well, I did a roast tour and this girl said something about me chortling too loudly,” Willam says. “She was up at the podium and turned around and screamed ‘You had your turn’. So I took her drink and poured it on her chair and, when she sat down, it took about a couple of seconds to register. But she registered and then she mollywopped me across the stage. I deserved it and it was hilarious.”
Drag Roast’s local line-up includes Australian drag queen, author, actor and podcaster Art Simone; New Zealand-born drag queen and dancer Kween Kong; and US drag queens Raja, Darlene Mitchell, Jane Don’t, Nicole Paige Brooks, Thorgy Thor and Willam. All are alumni of RuPaul’s Drag Race shows, from Drag Race Down Under to Drag Race All Winners and Drag Race Global All Stars.
The host is one of Australia’s star drag artists, Reuben Kaye, who believes audiences will flock to hear their favourite drag queens say horrible things about each other. “That is the transgressive joy of drag,” he says. “It is part of the history of the queer community. And the truest sign of love, professional respect and familial respect is being able to destroy your nearest and dearest in a public setting.”
Is a public setting key to that? “Look, what you can do in a dressing room can be brutal but put it on stage and it is joyous,” Kaye says. “The key to all of this is that, to the outside eye, it might seem vicious. But for the audiences who are in the room, and for the girls or the performance on stage, we’re all not just in on the joke, we’re in on the dream.
“We know what it takes to be visibly queer. We know what it takes to succeed in the entertainment industry. We all know what it takes to exist in this world. So what we say to each other can’t hurt us half as much as the rest of the world.”
Samoan-Tongan interdisciplinary artist and producer Thomas Fonua, whose drag queen persona is Kween Kong, believes the beauty of drag shows, and roasts specifically, is how performers and audiences are given permission to have fun. “For example, when you’re seeing myself, a big, six-foot-five (196 centimetres) Samoan man in glamorous drag, there’s something about feeling safe and being able to laugh that’s important,” he says. “We have a lot of crazy things happening in the world to any kind of intersection of identity. Everybody’s feeling it. Cost of living, politics around gender, all of this bullshit.
“We want to acknowledge what’s happening, but also we want people, from whatever walk of life, to come and give yourself permission to laugh. And the best way we can do that is by taking the shit out of each other and saying the most aggressively hilarious thing.”
A roast, he says, should be 30 per cent mean but 70 per cent funny. “You have to make sure there’s a little bit of truth,” Fonua says. “But what we’re hitting home is the comedy. Then the person that’s being roasted laughs rather than feels offended.”
It seems probable that nine drag artists gathered in the dressing room will inspire acid-tongued fireworks. This is surely each performer’s favourite place? Willam, who has toured Australia 12 times previously, is not so sure.
“Girls are late pigs,” he says. “Drag queens can’t stay on time, and I’m usually on time, so that kind of bothers me. You’re going to a new venue every day, then you’re trying to figure out where the best scrap of lighting is so that hopefully it’ll stay that way in the hour that you’re doing your makeup.
“It’s not usually my favourite spot. I’d rather be out in the crowd with the audience and taking pictures and doing that stuff.”
Fonua, who has worked with Willam previously, looks forward to challenging that. “I’ve never toured with Willam in this capacity, so I feel like we’ll be able to change her mind,” he says. “We definitely won’t be giving her that experience, although we will be giving her a run for her money.”
Kaye, who compares his host role to Graham Kennedy on Blankety Blanks, is particularly excited that Drag Roast is happening in the town halls of Sydney and Melbourne. “This is the centre of town, the heart of the city, a very public place,” he says. “It’s the mayor’s home, the place where the people can make their grievances heard, and there’s something beautiful about that as a roast.
“What’s intrinsic about drag is that it’s not only about the audience and the performer and the direct dialogue between them. It’s also about the community. The community sees drag as a symbol of freedom of expression. It sees drag as a symbol of revolution and as a very punk middle finger to the constraints of society, especially in a right-leaning society, as is happening now. There’s something beautifully transgressive and open about drag.”
The only restriction Kaye feels is whether it’s safe to bring one of his beloved horsehair microphones, soaked and combed with cult horse-human crossover hair product Mane ’n Tail.
“I don’t trust any of these queens not to take it. Someone’s gonna put it in their wig at some point, for sure.”
Drag Roast is at Brisbane City Hall, Brisbane, July 16, Sydney Town Hall, July 18, Newcastle Civic Theatre, July 19, Odeon Theatre, Hobart, July 22, Melbourne Town Hall, July 24, Norwood Concert Hall, July 25 and Astor Theatre, Perth, July 28.
