Alaska Thunderfuck Does It All in 'DRAG: The Musical'
By Joan Summers
Oct 17, 2024Alaska Thunderfuck can act, she can sing, she can do drag. In fact, she can do “a whole bunch of shit,” even bring an entire musical she wrote with her collaborators from Los Angeles to New York.
The multi-hyphenate drag powerhouse is deep in previews for her brand new starring role in DRAG: The Musical, at New World Stages. With book, music and lyrics written by herself and collaborators Tomas Costanza and Ashley Gordan, the musical romp tells the story of two rival drag houses, torn apart by their respective matriarchs, once lovers, now mortal enemies. Against the backdrop of financial woes, familial drama and a nasty new real estate developer in town, the dueling drag dens fight to survive each other, and themselves. Of course, there’s plenty of wigs and costumes and dramatic reveals and big musical numbers throughout (for good measure.)Besides Alaska herself as The Cathouse’s head glamourpuss, Kitty Galloway, DRAG: The Musical also stars some familiar drag faces: Drag Race legends Jujubee, Jan Sport and Luxx Noir London, and Stephanie’s Child vocal powerhouse Lagoona Bloo. Opposite Alaska is Nick Adams as Alexis Gilmore, The Fish Tank’s matriarch, who recently starred in Fire Island and originated the role of Adam/Felicia in the musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
As previews chug along through October, PAPER sat down with Alaska to talk about wig weight, the politics of drag, writing a role for herself, her early career in Pittsburgh, and so much more.
Jumping right in: how are you feeling with the play in previews right now?
This is the hardest part of the hardest part. We’re rehearsing every day, and then we do shows at night, but you know, theater people are unhinged and out of their minds, so that’s what we like to do, I guess.
How has it felt bringing the show from LA to New York?
It’s sort of like the show on steroids, you know? We always sort of had in our minds, “Oh, when it goes to New York, this will be different.” It was always this idea and this dream and then, all right, here it’s happening.
So for people who are just finding out about the show, can you talk about how the book and music came about?
Seven years ago, Tomas [Costanza] and Ash [Gordon] were making music like they do. They make a lot of music, and they make a lot of drag music as well. That’s how I know them. Tomas was like, “Hey, do you want to write a musical with us?” I was like sure, that’ll be easy. It was not easy, but I’m glad we did it. I mean, it just started from this idea — the idea of two drag houses that hate each other. Sort of like Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
I absolutely got that vibe from the setup.
That was the idea, and then we started from what we knew. We had never written a musical before, but we had written a lot of music together. So we started with the music, and we were like, “Okay, what do we want this to overall sound like? Let’s start with: ‘Welcome to the Fish Tank’ and go from there.”
The themes of the musical are pretty relevant right now, about wanting to be accepted and understood, or with Brendan, the kid, especially with the climate around drag in politics. It’s interesting to hear that it started and formed before any of the current maelstrom sprang up.
It was the literal pre-pandemic world, when we started writing this. We couldn’t have predicted that it would become such a larger conversation about young people in relation to drag, and what is appropriate. We just wrote it from our experiences, so I guess you know, it was...
Prophetic? In a way.
I guess so!
The show deals a lot with the interpersonal dynamics in drag houses. How much of that was shaped by your early drag career in Pittsburgh, or even like, Fubar, in LA?
A lot! Starting drag in Pittsburgh, we were sort of wacko drag queens, and we couldn’t really get hired anywhere, because we were doing weird shit, and we weren’t really that good at drag. We just liked doing it, and we made a mess, and we wanted to, you know, do that kind of drag. And then there were the girls who took drag super seriously, who were gorgeous and polished and beautiful, and who would win every pageant when they would go to the fucking pageant. It wasn’t quite like an acrimonious thing, but it was just like, we don’t really tread in the same waters. You have your bar, you have the Blue Moon, and then we have everywhere else. It was kind of like that when we were first starting at the Blue Moon. I mean, that comes from a real place, but then over time, the more we did drag, the more we just started to be like, “Oh, wait, we actually are doing the same ass thing. We actually all really like each other.”
It does feel like the lines have been a little blurred from when it was more rigid. You get the weird girls books at Princess on the same night as a continental winner!
I mean, it’s all drag!
Were there any queens from your life that shaped any of the characters in the show? There are such larger-than-life personalities in the mix, and I’m wondering if you pulled any inspiration from those experiences you mentioned?
For Kitty, I highly recommend writing a role for yourself if you’re going to be in a show. I was like, first of all, she has to enter really late in the show, because that’s just fierce, to do that. It’s like Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror. But as far as the character, I wanted to be the drag queen I kind of always wish I was. She’s very eloquent, her language is very flowery and over-the-top, and she’s very rigid. She knows exactly what she’s doing and knows exactly what everybody should be wearing and runs her fucking drag club like the navy. This is not how I am as a drag queen at all. It was such a fantasy to play someone like her.
Then Alexis, I mean, we drew upon a lot of my own life. Having a brother who’s super straight, and we were close in age, and we didn’t get along because he wanted to throw a football around, and I wanted to pretend the tree in the front yard was a crystal ball. We just had different priorities, and it caused a lot of tension in our lives that took us years to get over. That was a lot of the basis for her.
You’re credited on the bill as Alaska Thunderfuck, and you have such a recognizable mug and persona in the drag world, internationally even. I’m wondering, did it feel difficult to layer a new drag persona, or a new character, on top of Alaska, or was it quite natural?
It’s definitely what I wanted to do. I didn’t want it to just be like, Alaska in a musical. I was like, she’s going to talk differently than I do, and her hair is totally going to be different. Alaska has long blonde hair, and so I wanted to have short, cropped, black hair. Severe. I mean, you can’t help it, there’s going to be Alaska in there, just because I’m still me, but we intentionally made her a different person.
There’s a few notable roles to do drag in musicals, or parts where a female character is played by a man. But there hasn’t ever quite been a musical like this, where it’s by drag queens, starring a bunch of drag queens. Did you feel pressure at all, knowing you were doing something that nobody else has ever really done before?
I don’t feel like we felt pressure. But I did feel like we wanted to get it right, and we wanted it to be authentic. We wanted it to be the picture of drag that is real, and like what drag queens always see. I feel like, when you get a role on TV, or in a movie, or whatever, if it’s a drag queen, you see the marabou feathers, and the rhinestone costume jewelry, and you think that’s what it is. But it’s actually smelly, and there’s fucking cockroaches, and there’s glue sticks, and all those gross things that go along with the super glamorous. We wanted to capture that. We had a lot of smell lines in the show, like in “Welcome to the Fish Tank.” One of the first lines is, “It’s a real good time/ If you can handle the smell.” Because that’s just something I think of, a drag queen dressing room is full of some smells, and some of them are good, and some of them are not. I think we did a good job of capturing that. It’s the gross and the real with the fabulous and flamboyant.
I profiled Delta Work earlier this year, and she told me with MOM Podcasts, that you really champion and root for the underdog. She also said you have a huge heart, working with you, and that you push for people. What is it you think about your life or career that instilled that in you?
I recognize that luck and being in the right place at the right time has played a huge part in the fact that I have a job doing drag. It’s not just hard work, and it’s not just like, if you dream it and if you want it. No, someone has to take a chance on you, and give you opportunities. Luckily, RuPaul, or the casting people at Drag Race, gave me an opportunity when they did, and that gave me a career doing drag, which boggles my mind every single day. If there’s ever a chance where I can see that this person is sickening, and if I can give somebody an opportunity, or help in some way, of course I’m going to do that. Because it’s fierce.
You’ve become quite outspoken politically throughout the latter half of your career, through the podcast and your art and platform. What lessons have you learned in that process, using your platforms to speak your mind?
It’s weird, because when I started drag, it was not because I wanted to be an activist or I wanted to make the world a better place. It was just because it was fun, and I could drink while I was doing it. That was where it all started from. Then, once you go on and are doing something, and people are paying attention, then you do start to feel like, “Oh, I have a responsibility. I want to be a role model.” I never thought that would be the case, being a drag queen named Alaska Thunderfuck, but here we are in the upside down, and that’s the case. I’m like, if there’s any time that my speaking out about something can maybe inspire... I think of my niece, who’s 14 years old and living in Pennsylvania. I’m like, if she sees me speaking out about something going on, then maybe that will sort of open her eyes or open her mind, and that’s how larger change can happen.
Going back to the show, I’m wondering if there’s a favorite number, or favorite costume you have?
I love singing “It’s a Drag,” and the music was composed by my best friend Jeremy. We’ve been making music together for almost 20 years at this point. The musical is such a freight train, and there’s so much happening, and it’s loud and it’s in your face, and it’s hilarious, and then during “It’s a Drag,” it all kind of chills out. It’s just a piano, and it’s a plot light and a martini glass and a cigarette, and I get to sing a song about everything being fucked. I love that moment.
There’s another note I wrote down during the show, and if you don’t know the answer to this, please feel free to guess. But how heavy is Jan’s wig exactly? That’s all I keep thinking about. That wig she wears is the size of a child.
So much hair! I don’t know how heavy it is... I haven’t... wait, maybe I have tried it on in LA. She wears it like, effortlessly. But yeah, that’s a lot of fucking hair.
If you could play any character in the show besides Kitty, who would you want to play?
I’d like to play Puss Puss Dubois, or Tigress. One of these drag queens who gets to talk shit.
Speaking of Tigress, Jujubee must just be that funny all the time, even backstage, out of drag, right?
It’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role, because a lot of the lines aren’t funny. There’s not much there on the page, but she takes every word and makes it into a punchline, because she’s a hilarious, wonderful person.
Your rapport in Dungeons and Drag Queens also cracked me up. Talk about another unexpected role for drag queens to get to play. Has it been fun expanding your acting repertoire?
Acting is hard! I have so much respect for actors. It’s why I became a drag queen instead of an actor, because I realized that being an actor requires a lot of discipline and hard work, and I didn’t want to do that. But doing drag has now taken me the back route like, Oh! I get to do acting sometimes. Yeah, it’s hard, and I prefer theater acting, because you get to do something active. If you’re on TV, you kind of sit and stare at a wall for five hours, and then go act for 20 minutes, and then go stare at the wall again, that’s fucking hard. Drag lets me do a whole bunch of shit, I can write, I can sing, I can do all the things.
I’m going to ask you the dreaded holding up a childhood photo of you question, but if you could go back to the weirdo drag queen in Pittsburgh and tell her anything in that moment, knowing now where your career has taken you, is there anything you’d say? Or would you leave it alone, let her find out for herself?
I don’t believe in disrupting the timeline, because then you never know what could happen! I wouldn’t want to interfere. But oh my god, I would just go. I would watch a show at the Blue Moon, and I would get hammered, and I would smoke indoors, because you were allowed to do that back then. I would just watch and observe.
Is there anything you hope that audiences, as it moves out of previews, take away from the musical?
Well, what I keep hearing from people is that they have no idea what to expect, and they kind of think they're just going to be seeing a drag show. And in some ways they are. But I also love that we get the like, sneak attack of, “Oh, fuck.” You might actually feel something, and you might actually cry. I hope that people are crying, because I cry a lot hearing some of the moments in the show. I love that you can be laughing one second, and then you can be crying. And that's what we want. I just want people to come and you can bring the whole family, you can bring kids, you can bring your grandparents, and I think they would all enjoy it and get something out of it.
Photography: Matthew Murphy
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