Queer comedy is a instrument for survival. Particularly through the holidays.
“Comedy helps folks entry our proper to pleasure,” BenDeLaCreme (DeLa for brief) says. She believes laughing breaks down the partitions folks construct to guard their hearts from a hostile world from which “The Jinkx & DeLa Vacation Present,” her annual extravaganza with finest buddy Jinkx Monsoon, supplies a reprieve for performers and followers alike. Laughter was what DeLa desperately wanted as a younger school scholar who needed to create a gig to keep away from going dwelling for the vacations, a conundrum many queer followers can relate to.
“I disliked the vacations a lot,” DeLa says, explaining the difficult household dynamics she’d escaped by transferring to Seattle from Litchfield, Conn., to check effective artwork within the late aughts. Impressed by “Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Particular,” she discovered she may join along with her neighborhood and chosen household by performing outrageous drag numbers that revered and ridiculed the season. Her outdated present, “Homo for the Holidays,” ran for almost a decade at West Corridor in Seattle, changing into a vacation custom for the Capitol Hill neighborhood of artists and queer youngsters who wanted an area for pleasure and connection.
Now drag superstars of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” fame, DeLa and Jinkx are a selected household who cultivated their “cosmic” friendship years earlier than breaking by. They met at a free afternoon drag present in a Seattle Starbucks when Jinkx carried out along with her musical companions the Vaudevillians to a room of pals seated on steel folding chairs, the place she had to make use of a code-protected public rest room as a dressing room. DeLa remembers this as “probably the greatest drag performances” she’s ever seen, however admits she was initially intimidated by Jinkx. “I used to be fearful of myself. While you’re a queer child who’s bizarre, and a few folks see you as particular for these bizarre causes, despite the fact that most individuals don’t, what will get you thru feeling like a freak is the thought that you’re particular and distinctive. To satisfy anyone such as you is a little bit threatening. You then notice, ‘Oh! I’m not alone.’”
DeLa and Jinkx are a selected household who cultivated their “cosmic” friendship years earlier than breaking by.
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“I wish to say it’s like if Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had determined to be pals reasonably than enemies,” Jinkx jokes. “We may have had the Joan Crawford and Bette Davis vacation blissful hour, however we needed to wait till Jinkx and DeLa took it on.”
In 2018, Gus Lanza (now co-producer at BenDeLaCreme Presents who performs Hunky the Elf) inspired DeLa to ask Jinkx to co-create a brand new vacation revue since their co-hosted “RuPaul’s Drag Race” viewing events have been so profitable; the present did assist launch each of their careers. “It began with the thought of simply sticking DeLa and I on stage with two microphones and the subject of Christmas and letting us go wild,” Jinkx laughs. The plan for an improvisational, conversational, simple, breezy vacation cabaret lasted about two weeks earlier than morphing into what Jinkx describes as a “two-act selection present, musicale, theatrical spectacular.” The primary “Jinkx & DeLa Vacation Present” offered out Seattle’s historic Neptune Theatre and has steadily grown, changing into a serious tour, a tv particular, and Jinkx and DeLa’s child.
Over the past eight years, Jinkx and DeLa have made followers giggle at the very best and worst issues the yuletide brings. They’ve been seduced by Krampus in a model of “Santa Child” match for the Folsom Avenue Truthful, shimmied and line danced with attractive elves to muscle up sufficient Christmas spirit to revive cowboy Santa, and gossiped with the sentient Egg Nog earlier than breaking into their authentic tune, “A Passive Aggressive Christmas.” “The Jinkx & DeLa Vacation Present” guarantees to fight the world’s devastation with campy magic and mirth that solely a queer interpretation of Christmas can present.
“I’ve by no means believed extra in comedy and its divine goal than I do now,” Jinkx says as her small orange kitten fights for her consideration, shielded by the sculptural ruffle neck of her emerald high. For Jinkx and DeLa, comedy — from Ren and Stimpy to Sonny and Cher to Shakespeare — is a sacred artwork to be taken simply as significantly as drama.
Jinkx and DeLa have been unstoppable forces in comedy and drag this yr. Jinkx’s clapback to J.Ok. Rowling (“Who is he?”) in her interview with Ziwe Fumudoh went viral for calling out the hypocrisy of the TERF motion within the shortest punchline identified to YouTube. She’s damaged field workplace information with roles in Broadway exhibits like “Chicago,” “Little Store of Horrors,” “Pirates! The Penzance Musical” and, most just lately, Cole Escola’s absurdist historic comedy “Oh, Mary,” the place for 2 sold-out months she twirled and stomped throughout the Lyceum stage, taking part in a model of Mary Todd Lincoln that may solely be described as Lucille Ball meets the Tasmanian Satan, two of her largest inspirations.
After her success, Jinkx introduced a restricted return to her function as Mary, beginning Jan. 8. This yr, DeLa has directed Monét X Change’s one-woman present “Life Be Lifin’” and Jinkx’s sold-out Valentine’s Day present at Carnegie Corridor, and has stepped up as head author and director for “The Jinkx & DeLa Vacation Present.” She simply introduced a European tour with Dita Von Teese set to begin instantly after the vacation season. As in-demand solo artists, Jinkx and DeLa love to return dwelling to “The Jinkx & Dela Vacation Present” annually; it was what helped them each forge the careers they’ve in the present day.
“I do suppose it’s an indication of progress that youthful drag queens don’t all must crawl on their fingers and knees by the dive bar expertise. Nevertheless, DeLa and I discovered a lot of what we use in the present day with giant audiences by honing these abilities,” Jinkx Monsoon says.
(Dutch Doscher / For The Instances)
DeLa and Jinkx credit score their DIY roots to the success of their present. The queens minimize their tooth performing in bars, burlesque theaters, punk venues and even a circus, the place they discovered to entertain by pulling collectively subversive and mainstream references. “We come from the underground. However so did any drag queen sufficiently old to have began earlier than there was a TV present devoted to it,” Jinkx says, emphasizing how within the early 2000s drag queens have been nearly all the time underdogs and infrequently financially profitable. Embracing her genuine freakiness and outsider qualities made her blissful and a profitable performer many relate to due to her honesty.
“I do suppose it’s an indication of progress that youthful drag queens don’t all must crawl on their fingers and knees by the dive bar expertise. Nevertheless, DeLa and I discovered a lot of what we use in the present day with giant audiences by honing these abilities with itty-bitty audiences domestically. We’ve simply educated ourselves to show the dial up.”
On Dec. 14, the pair will flip the dial approach up on the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, a 2,000-seat venue well-known for internet hosting the Oscars. They’re amping up the laughs, incorporating sci-fi, horror and even a Freaky Friday act the place Jinkx and DeLa discover themselves body-swapped, one thing Jinkx has begged to do for years. The pair will incorporate references from “The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror,” “Twilight Zone” and “Tales From the Crypt,” together with new over-the-top drag vacation content material that followers love and have come to count on. Produced and directed by DeLa and co-written by DeLa and Jinkx, the present could make them really feel they “must go wild with loopy concepts,” as a result of “how do you proceed to have a brand new tackle Santa Claus?” As Jinkx says, “Drag is simply taking all the things you’re keen on and placing it into human type.”
Jinkx jokes that DeLa “writes like a scientist,” working scripts right down to particular person phrase selections like equations. They meticulously plan, however generally issues change. Like final yr, when their most historically structured present needed to pivot on election evening. “We thought lengthy and arduous about whether or not we needed to deal with what was occurring on the earth or if we needed to simply give folks a break,” DeLa advised me, pleased with how the workforce discovered a option to do each by creating “the stupidest allegory potential.” To reflect the true world, the Land of Sweets was not spared from an evil nutcracker tyrant. The crew wrote a brand new scene on the spot to supply a approach ahead for followers. “We all the time knew that it doesn’t matter what, the sentiment needed to be the identical,” DeLa says. “It’s in regards to the battle, and the truth that the battle is rarely over. We’re all right here, we’re doing this and we’re not going anyplace. As a neighborhood, we preserve transferring ahead with the facility of one another.”
“We all the time knew that it doesn’t matter what, the sentiment needed to be the identical,” DeLa says of the vacation present. “It’s in regards to the battle, and the truth that the battle is rarely over.”
(Dutch Doscher / For The Instances)
Regardless of the up to date mass attraction of queer artists and the immense success of exhibits like “The Jinkx & DeLa Vacation Present” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” there are nonetheless few roles for avant-garde transgender and gender transgressive performers in main productions, with alternatives dwindling. Final week, Deadline and GLAAD reported that 41% of LGBTQ+ characters won’t return to tv exhibits in 2026, a devastating blow that researchers argue is because of hateful and largely unchecked rhetoric from politicians and the media. This has severe repercussions for queer and trans actors, in addition to the general public. GLAAD’s analysis means that audiences have turn into extra accepting over the past 20 years as a consequence of watching various casts and tales.
“The Jinkx and DeLa Vacation Present” has been a option to write queer and trans characters and actors onto phases that they in any other case wouldn’t have been on, as DeLa mentioned, “as a result of no one else goes to do that for us.” Stay exhibits are an necessary a part of queer efficiency historical past, and one of the crucial necessary methods drag queens have traditionally fought again towards oppressive circumstances and helped queer communities make sense of their lives by humor. “The Jinkx and DeLa Vacation Present” builds on this historical past and refuses to be pushed into the shadows.
“We don’t must attempt to drive ourselves into issues that don’t really feel blissful or good for us,” DeLa says. “I nonetheless get to have a vacation with my household and a way of homecoming, however we get to outline household. We get to outline dwelling, we get to create our personal traditions and so they get to be as legitimate as a practice that was handed on to us.”
Regardless of 2025’s challenges, Jinkx and DeLa keep pleasure and hope, a number of the most necessary classes the vacation season can educate everybody. If you happen to’re questioning what’s included of their letters to Santa this yr, Jinkx is asking for the dismantling of the patriarchy, the rise of female rule and unabashed freedom for androgynous folks. DeLa needs a sweet cane.
