‘Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show’ Returns to Denver to Spread Drag Sisterhood

“The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show” isn’t your grandmother’s Christmas special. Or maybe it kind of is, depending on your grandma. Sitting on my couch surrounded by bio-family, who, in a bizarre turn of events, ended up watching the “2020 Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special” with me, I wondered whether my mom knew what a trick was. I barely knew what a trick was. This is the warm holiday spirit of a Jinkx and DeLa show.

But let me back up: Did you know Rupaul superstars and Broadway breakout stars, DeLa and Jinx Monsoon tour with a live, two-act Christmas musical? Produced and directed by DeLa, the seventh tour of the “Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show” is the largest yet, spanning 33 cities, touring the South for the first time, and playing huge venues like the Dolby Theatre in LA. Each year sees a brand-new production, co-written by and starring Jinkx and DeLa, full of elaborate outfit changes, libations, and sisterhood. Don’t miss your chance to see them at the Paramount Theatre, in Denver, on December 13 (you can buy your tickets here). BUT, before you do, read on to hear my conversation with the two of them about the way their sisterhood shows up on and off the stage.

What can you all tell me about the show that’s coming up this year?

DeLa: You know, we are always parodying classic songs that people would know, songs that are in the pop zeitgeist. We also do a lot of original music; it’s all live singing; there’s incredible costumes, we have wonderful dancers. It’s a real spectacle; we are storytellers; we’re essentially writing a two-act musical every year. But each year we come at it with a totally different approach … And this year, we don’t like to give away too much, but we are coming with another classic Christmas story that everyone knows and maybe does or doesn’t love, but they’re gonna love it when we’re done with it because we are putting it through the Jinkx and DeLa treatment.

Jinkx Monsoon: Yeah, and let’s say you’ve never seen either of us or a drag show or one of our shows before. Let’s say you’re listening to this or reading this or whatever, and you’re like, “Well, I’ve never heard of these two broads.” Even if you’re not familiar with us, at the end of the day, the show is being written and directed by an acclaimed director in film and theater and an acclaimed writer in TV and film, as well as performed by a recent Broadway breakout star.

Yeah, that was going to be my next question, not that RuPaul’s doesn’t stir up enough excitement, but how has Broadway changed the energy as both of your careers have really escalated?

Jinkx: Well, one thing I can say for myself is that I trust myself in a new way because, in our own respective careers, both DeLa and I have been tested by the professional world, by the mainstream industry that until previously has not been inviting us in, and in doing that, we both realized, yeah, this is what we do; this is our job. I always wanted to be a performer, and drag is how I chose to do it, and now Broadway’s letting me act and be a drag queen and be a trans woman all at once.

What it provides us is an affirmation; we created this show to give ourselves that affirmation, but then this show landed us the work that furthered that affirmation, that furthered saying to us, it’s not just when you create your own work; it’s when you create something magical and when we come together and pool our resources and our talents and our individual strengths and put them together to create the best possible show we can that year, magical things happen.

EH:I was watching the holiday special recently, and I was kind of surprised by how much of you all is showing up in the writing, like the element of it that feels autobiographical. What is writing these surreal, campy, autobiographical Christmas specials like for you two?

Jinkx: It’s a lot of things. It’s a lot of catharsis because we both have strong feelings towards being queer at the time of the winter holidays. We both have distinct childhood memories. I loved Christmas, DeLa hated Christmas, and then here we are playing two distinctly different characters who have distinctly different feelings about the holiday, and yet we want to create something that unifies our community.

And so, through the years, we’ve just leaned into writing a show that is essentially Jinks and DeLa versus a big problem that is interfering with our holiday joy, you know? Getting to see two strong-minded, very different personalities come together in harmony because, like, what you see on stage is a reflection of who we are off stage. We are good friends; we have complimentary, but sometimes conflicting, ideas, but at the heart of who we are, we have the same goal in mind; we have the same mission statement as artists, and we just try to make sure that that reads clearly in our writing and in our performance, so that you leave feeling more powerful being a member of a community.

The press release said something about the writing having changed direction in recent years from more of an adversarial relationship on screen to something cooperative. Do you all agree with that for one? And then also I would be really interested to hear why, if that’s the case.

DeLa: When we first started doing this, much of the comedy was derived from the very different characters of Jinkx and DeLa and their different feelings about Christmas and their inability to agree upon how to approach the holidays. But so much of the humor came from the dispute. We started to notice that there was a way that folks would sort of respond to us and interact with us as if we were in competition with each other. And when we realized that was the message that some people were interpreting, we realized that that was really not the message we wanted to send.

Not only because that’s not our real relationship, but because there is so much division within the queer community, and at a time when we have common enemies. I think it’s really important to not promote getting distracted by arguing with each other. And we do live in a pop culture moment where drag is largely known through a competitive series, that viewers sometimes can interpret that as meaning that drag is inherently based in competition.

For, I think, us, drag has largely been about sisterhood. It’s been about family building. And those are the really beautiful aspects of drag and of queer culture and queer art that we want to make sure that we’re giving people access to and that we’re sharing because it’s given us so much.

And we want to give that to everybody else.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo credit Jacob Ritts