A Drag Christmas Spectacular Is Back for a Third Year

Get ready for the ultimate festive extravaganza with A Drag Christmas Spectacular, where magical queers will slay their way to Bethlehem. But this year, they are not alone! Sean Neil-Barron and Krisa Gonna are bringing back A Drag Christmas Spectacular for three shows on December 19 and 20! This is an OFM fan favorite, and we hope you get to watch this incredible show in Northern Colorado.

OFM had the opportunity to chat with both Sean and Krisa about A Drag Christmas Spectacular.

The Drag Christmas Spectacular is back for its third year! How does it feel to bring this holiday favorite to the stage again?

Sean: It feels amazing to bring this back because the first year the question was, is this even going to work? The second year, we had a little bit more confidence in it. I feel like this year, we’re hitting our stride, and it’s become a real ritual and a tradition in the community, and people are looking forward to it. We’re more comfortable in it. What Krisa has done with the script and what the performers are bringing to it this year, I feel like it’s more mature this year and more deep. It is going to be refreshing but also empowering and also real.

Krisa:  It’s weird that this is coming out of my mouth, but it feels like tradition. That’s a feeling that I never really had during this time of the year. Christmas traditions were never, like, a happy moment in my family. This show has evolved.  The story is the same; the characters are the same, but because we changed the script, it feels like we have added a lot more layers to the story and to the characters as well. It feels great to come back and to call this a tradition.

For those who haven’t been before, how would you describe the show in your own words?

Sean: So when we were trying to figure out a name for this show, we really struggled because what exactly do we call a drag show theater production that has real-life storytelling and poetry (and) PFLAG parents in a church that are kind of telling this epiphany and nativity story.

Krisa: Without a single Christmas song.

Sean: Without a single Christmas song. We were just like, what do we call this thing? And we went back around and around then we’re like, why don’t we just call it A Drag Christmas Spectacular because it’s going to be spectacular. I feel like that’s what I like to describe people. It’s this amazing experience that is half theater, half drag, half storytelling, half beautiful, queer, trans joy. You really have to experience it to get it.

How did the idea for a Drag Christmas Spectacular first come about?

Krisa: I had worked a drag story hour with Sean at the Unitarian Church in early 2022. Later that year, people were saying awful things about drag. And then Sean invited me to give a talk at the church about all the things that drag is and just explain to people the multiple parts of this art. Early the next year, 2023, Sean invited me to do something for Christmas, and I was like, OK, let’s do something. Then I was like, why don’t we do a play? I have no idea why I said that; I had never written a play. I don’t think too much about the things that I do. I just do them. I think that if I think too much about things I don’t do them. I think that’s basically the very first spark, and then we worked together on it.

Sean: I’ve always found this divide in my life being a queer religious person. I have queer friends in the world who are mostly non-religious, and then I have my work, which is pretty queer- and trans-friendly but also not. I’ve always found this kind of divide. I was hearing from our folks as they were encountering this political moment in which queer and trans people were being demonized, devalued, and there was this kind of an understanding about our communities, especially trans and nonbinary people. We invited Krisa to come to church as a part of a service in which we wanted to specifically call out the misinformation that’s happening right now on gender and drag. Drag is being weaponized as being this grooming tool against children. We wanted to give people an experience of, what this thing is that people are demonizing? What is so scary about Krisa? Of course she comes in with a hood on and walks up the aisle, like, covered.

Krisa: That’s true. That number before my my speech, there was a number, and the number started really dark.

Sean: What’s scary other than the parts you should be scared about. People need an experience of crossing into another person’s story and life encountering something that is different from them for that transformation to happen. And I think that’s what we’ve been trying to do with Drag Christmas is, how do we invite queer people to maybe step back into an understanding that their lives are sacred and holy. How do we help people who don’t understand queer and trans lives, not because they’re bigoted, but because they just don’t get it? They don’t have experience or any queer friends. They see it in pop culture, but that’s not the same. How do we invite them in to see more and experience a little bit more and to feel a part of something together? I think it has always been the impetus for us.

Can you give us a sneak peek into what kind of performances audiences can expect this year?

Krisa:  Well, you can expect an amazing cast.  As usual, we have so many talented performers. I think I’m really excited about that. And I think the biggest difference will be the addition of a new character to the story which I think this character had been there.

Sean: Yeah. I said to Krisa, I think we need a villain. I think we need to add a villain because, like, we’re in a moment where there’s so many villains. Krisa said to me, “Don’t you dare make me do more work.”

Krisa:  Yeah. Because there’s a lot of work involved in a production like this. But I agree that the times were were already difficult last year, and there were before, but I think it’s becoming more and more challenging and and just scary.  I agree that it was a good idea to add another element to the story to make people reflect on not only the times because I feel that people do already. We don’t mention any politicians in the script per say, but I think this character represents what has been surrounding us, but especially what’s been inside of us, which is the true enemy.

Are there any fun or wild behind-the-scenes moments from past years you can share?

Krisa: The joy is in the process of anything that you do, and I am having a lot more fun this year. The cast is just super fun. It’s just fun to watch their relationships grow. It’s just beautiful. This show has a longer production, and we have many rehearsals, and it just allows us to build relationships. We always get very silly backstage during the show when we’re waiting for our scenes, and we can’t say anything because most of us are miked and they might be on.  When other people are performing their numbers on stage, people backstage, they do, like, little performances. It’s just so funny to watch that happen, and then you can’t laugh.

Sean: I think that the cast going from strangers to really connecting is always something that’s so powerful. I love moments where I was greeting people at the show and then, like, three people from three random parts of my life, like one of my neighbors, someone I go to the gym with, another person, are all at this show, and they’re like, wait, you’re here, and there’s just a way of, like, we just encounter each other; it’s this like big invitation together.  One performer in the first year, her dress kept turning off her mic, and so she thought the battery was dying, and then I was like, “No, it’s just off.”

And finally—When and where can people grab tickets before they sell out?

Krisa: Tickets are live. We opened tickets almost two days ago, and it’s been going really fast as usual, which feels great to see that.

Sean: A few things about the show. We have pay what you can for tickets. This year, we got grant funding from the city of Fort Collins Fort Fund from the Bohemian Foundation and other amazing donors and businesses that allow us to subsidize. We want to make parts of the show accessible no matter what people are able to pay. We also will have ASL interpretation opening night, the 19th, which is something we’ve done every year, but we’ve struggled to make sure that everyone knows about that. We’d love to have our deaf and heard-of-hearing community there.

Every show will also have captions. We have some tablets, or you can connect to an app on your phone and be able to have captioning. This year has some merch, which is pretty exciting. One of my tasks today is making some  trading cards for all of the characters. You will get to collect your own deck of Drag Christmas Spectacular trading cards. There’s a benefactor ticket price, and if you pay that, you get some free trading cards as a little thank you.

Make sure you get your tickets at adragchristmas.com, and stop by the OFM booth to grab your free magazine at any of the show times.