For drag and pop culture icon Lady Bunny, summer brings more sun, more filth and a return to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. On July 8, she is returning to Blue Moon with her devilishly dirty new show “Don’t Bring The Kids.” As she prepared for her trip to the Delaware shore town, she sat down for a chat with PGN and dished about politics, the fascination with drag queen story hours and what her trans sisters mean to her.
Your show “Don’t Bring The Kids” is hitting Blue Moon in Rehoboth Beach on Monday, July 8. What is it like to return to Rehoboth Beach for another summer?
I am so excited! The general gist of the show is what Rehoboth Beach loves from me every summer, a couple times of year at the Blue Moon: Some X-rated comedy, songs, parody and a little bit of political humor.
As someone who has seen the gay community go through so many political and social iterations, is it hard to constantly find the laughter?
You know, when I have done this show in New York, there is one serious part of it where I sing a part about hypocritical Republicans taking their kids to get guns and taking their kids to Hooters for their birthday parties, but they call us groomers! Groom? I can barely groom myself [laughs]! While I don’t believe that drag queens are groomers, as someone who grew up in the ’80s with ACT UP and AIDS activism, we had a very clear-cut goal: Stop us from dying and approve those medicines. I look at the gay agenda now and I don’t really know what it is fully.
It’s definitely puzzling that children and drag performers have become such a political weapon for ultra conservatives to yield, don’t you think?
I don’t know any drag queens waking up and thinking that they want to read to younger and younger kids. I mean, you have drag queens like Trixie Mattel and Coco Peru saying “I hate kids!” Someone like myself is not geared toward children. That does not mean that every drag queen that wants to read a story to a kid is a groomer by any means at all. One thing left out of the discussion is that none of these story hours are mandatory. If you want your kids to see them, you go to the library and if you don’t, then you don’t go to that room in the library.
At the same time, I don’t know where this movement is coming from. I don’t know of gay people talking about the importance of reading to children. I think “average” gay people, not celebrities or board members, need to get together and ask what our goals are and how we can achieve them. For example, support for gay marriage is down for the first time in many years. I think that it’s because the gay community is going on about drag queen story hours which is not very important in the grand scheme of things. I say that as a drag queen that probably would have enjoyed a drag queen story hour myself! It probably would have told me that I am getting messages that are negative from church, family and schoolmates and now the school has hired a drag queen? Maybe I’m not so twisted and wrong, maybe there is a place for me in society that doesn’t involve being second fiddle or something to be ashamed of.
What is an issue our community is facing right now that you are finding yourself truly passionate about?
For years, we have been told that there is an epidemic of violence against trans women of color. Every year, we say the names of trans women of color that have been murdered and that is part of the grieving process. I am not, though, giving politicians any more brownie points for just saying their names. Put your money where your mouth is and put some resources into finding out what circumstances these girls are being killed under and who is killing them.
Looking back, are trans people truly a large part of your own nightlife story?
Trans people are some of the people that guided, befriended and taught me and who I formed friendships with. So you aren’t going to tell me we have an epidemic of murder against trans women and all we are going to do is say their names.
Have you always been a politically minded person even prior to our volatile political climate?
My father was very political. I got along better with my mom, although I loved my dad. We couldn’t watch “The Brady Bunch” because we had to watch the Watergate hearings! I was cursing politics from the time I was young. After 09/11, I started to think that it’s not just what is done to us that is horrible. What have we done in the world that has created so many enemies?
You recently had a podcast with Monét X Change and you’re a fan of other New York City performers like Kiki Ball-Change. When you look at performers like that, does it harken back to the days of the Pyramid Club when New York City was starting to go through a true night life renaissance?
I am going to say that the performers are “wild and crazy” like the Pyramid performers that I grew up with in New York when they stop doing death drops, reveals, and wearing the breast plates; it’s all copycat and they’ve seen it on TV. It should be. We saw this or that on TV so we are going to do something different. Bushwig is an alternative drag festival in Brooklyn and they even started a Miss Bushwig competition; haven’t you drag queens had enough competition [laughs]?
You mentioned Bushwig and it is the closest thing to Wigstock that we have seen in ages. Do you see a space where we could see one more massive Wigstock festival in New York City?
Well, we’ll see. COVID hasn’t made me want to get together with large groups so I don’t want to feel responsible to bring large groups together although outdoors would be safer. I think people are over COVID, although I don’t think COVID is over them.
Coming to see you in Rehoboth Beach is truly a treat because you manage to merge the world around us with your typical filthy and beloved parodies. Is it sometimes hard to balance it?
Well, my show is not terribly political. It’s more raunchy than anything. LGBTQ rights are very important to me and always have been and should be to the community, but we are not just that; we are people who value peace and the planet. I can’t wait to see everyone in Rehoboth Beach at the Blue Moon — and there will be fried clams on my breath [laughs]!
Lady Bunny will perform at 9:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. on July 8 at Blue Moon, 35 Baltimore Avenue, Rehoboth Beach, DE. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit bluemoonrehoboth.com.