Drag queen shoots from the lips

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This article was published 25/11/2019 (2457 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before taking the stage for her stand-up comedy drag-clown show, Bianca Del Rio likes to spend some quality time with the Queen of Pop.

“I usually put on Madonna’s Blonde Ambition concert and by the time she gets to Vogue my eyelashes should be on,” Del Rio says over the phone during a recent stop on her It’s Jester Joke world tour. “I skip over the same parts, whenever she’s talking about some random bullshit that I don’t want to hear, but this is a concert that I’ve watched since I was 15.”

The American drag queen, known offstage as Roy Haylock, is the winner of the sixth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and has been touring almost non-stop since earning the crown in 2014. This year, Del Rio has been selling out venues around the world since February with her irreverent insult-comedy show that begs the audience to loosen up and have a laugh.

“People have lost their sense of humour, so (they think) ‘Oh I can’t laugh at that because someone says it’s offensive,’” she says. “I’m laughing at myself. I’m a 44-year-old man in a wig… I’m not a public official, I’m not gonna be the president, I’m not your mother for Christ sake, so it’s not that serious.

“You’re gonna die anyway, you’ve got to find the humour in it.”

Most of her comedy is observational and a lot of it is inspired by people-watching in airports, where ridiculous humans and situations are plentiful.

For Del Rio, jokes are a way to give audiences a chance to see the world through the eyes of a drag queen.

“A lot of people think they can’t relate to me,” she says. “I have the same problems everyone else has except I’m shaving and putting on 40 pounds of makeup.”

No one is safe from ridicule at a Bianca Del Rio show, especially audience members. Part of the performance is dedicated to answering audience-submitted questions onstage, usually with a lot of sass and sarcasm.

“In that moment, I get to see the person that asked the question — they get to stand up and everyone else can look at them while we’re laughing at them and the ridiculousness of the question,” she says. “It’s holding people accountable and that, I love.”

When confronting things like the political climate in the United States and anonymous trolls on the internet, Del Rio often thinks about what her comedy idols, Don Rickles and Joan Rivers, would do.

“They were just hysterical, in my opinion, and also they were both in their 80s when they passed and still out there working and hustling, so I respected them on many levels,” she says. “I would hope to be that age and still working and doing what I love and giving zero f—-.”

Del Rio is closing in on the end of her 2019 tour with three dates left after her performance Wednesday at the Burton Cummings Theatre.

Days after the tour wraps she’ll be on a plane to London for a return run with the hit musical, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.

Del Rio took a break from touring last spring to play Hugo/Loco Chanelle in the show based on the real-life story of Jamie Campbell, who grew up in a small English village and followed his dream of becoming a drag queen in the face of adversity.

“I play an elderly drag queen who’s kind to others, which is a bit of a stretch for me,” Del Rio says, adding that the role has made her think about some of the queens who served as mentors when she was starting out in drag.

“There’s been many people that were there to nurture me and guide me. How lucky that now I get to relive it and give it back to someone else.”

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney