AMERICAN THEATRE | Offscript: Pride Month Party

Offscript, American Theatre’s flagship podcast for a number of years, is back as a Facebook Live chat with the magazine’s editors and special guests as well as an audio podcast.

This month managing editor Kelundra Smith and Chicago associate editor Gabriela Furtado Coutinho kiki with drag performers and LGBTQ+ advocates BenDeLaCreme, Ginger Minj, Paul Conroy, and Sushi. They discuss finding joy in a time of legislative persecution, the value of drag as theatre, the importance of community support, and the future of drag as an art form. Later in this episode, the editors chat with journalist Naveen Kumar about covering queer theatre and mentoring emerging critics (this was recorded just a week before he was announced as the Washington Post‘s next theatre critic).

BenDeLaCreme is performer, director, writer, producer, and RuPaul’s Drag Race alumna known for her own production company BenDeLaCreme Presents, which produced the The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special, as well as the solo shows Terminally Delightful, Cosmos, Inferno A-Go-Go, and Ready To Be Committed. Ginger Minj is an actor, singer-songwriter, reality television personality, and Drag Race finalist. She presents the monthly Big Gay Cabaret in Chicago, recently toured with Gidget Galore in The Broads’ Way, a cabaret featuring musical theatre classics, wrote a book called Southern Fried Sass, and stared in The Golden Girls at Outfront Theatre Company. Paul Conroy is the founder and producing artistic director of Outfront Theatre Company in Atlanta. They’re known for their recent standout production At The Wake of a Dead Drag Queen by Terry Guest, as well as a variety of musical comedies, drag extravaganzas, and the Lavender Performing Arts Festival. Sushi is known for her 25 years of being dropped in a giant heel at midnight for the New Year’s Eve Key West Drag Queen Shoe Drop. She supports many people in the LGBTQIA+ community in Florida providing emergency housing and mothering budding queens. She has also hosted frequent performances of the 801 Cabaret.

Naveen Kumar is a journalist and theatre critic whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Variety, The Daily Beast, Vox, Refinery 29, Town and Country, and more. He’s the associate director of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Connecticut, and was recently named staff theatre critic of The Washington Post.