When the music stops and the lights dim, what's a drag queen to do? Diva Diaries lets us join three performers as they ponder that next step.
By ROBERT HICKS
Published June 26, 2003
[Publicity photo ]
From left, Josh Echevarria, David Rossetti and Kenney Green play the divas in their younger years. “I think people are really going to attach to these characters,” co-author Jem Jender says. “We want people to go away and remember them.”
It's closing night at Pandora's Box, and three aging drag queen stars are preening backstage before their last performance after a 30-year run.
"It's really their last night as performers and as friends to have one last swing of the bat and clear the glitter off the stage, which makes for some great laughs, some great conflict and some great growth for the three of them," says Jem Jender, co-author of Diva Diaries, a musical that premieres this week at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
The leader of the pack is Cleareen, a WASPy New Englander who is an established diva and mother hen, played in flashbacks to younger days by David Rossetti and in later years by George Clawson. Randee Jean, played by Kenney Green and Trent Kendall, got into the drag business solely to pay the bills and keep his room at the YMCA. But his fascination with becoming a woman for a night - well, for many, many nights - has turned the job into a career. Finally, there's Damsel in Distress, a fast-talking Southerner, played by Josh Echevarria and Christopher Vettel; he idolizes Cleareen and comes to New York expressly to become a superstar drag queen.
Conceived by Andrew Kato, who also directed and co-produced, and written by Jender and composer/lyricist John Mercurio, Diva Diaries' Tampa opening follows a couple of readings in New York last year. Although the three men are New York-based, they had heard about TBPAC's interest in new theater and proposed bringing Diaries to Florida. After a month in Tampa, the show moves to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale.
"Together, we all just made this all come alive, but it really came from a concept that Kato had in his mind," said Jender, who learned about drag in his work with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. "He had a visual of how he wanted the set to look. He had a visual and flavor of the story and the kind of messages that we wanted to get out there. That's a really new concept of putting together a show that's coming out of Broadway now."
None of the actors has background performing in drag, so Jender, who rates the show PG-13, has taught makeup and style. But Mercurio's music and lyrics bring the characters to life and drive the story, he said. The music features original songs by Mercurio, who also wrote Switch! and Academy with Kato, as well as hits from the '70s, '80s and '90s.
"What John has done, which is also very new for a musical, he has counter-composed pre-existing music with new music that he has written," Jender said. "You'll be hearing a song from the past in a kind of Sondheimish way and a new song that John has written will be playing simultaneously. The two blending is something that's very unique and new to musical theater."
For instance, the trio meets for the first time at the Miss After Dark Contest, accompanied by several versions of the disco hit Turn the Beat Around. But amid the glitter and disco, the goal of the show is to create characters that are more than just eccentric.
"I think people are really going to attach to these characters," Jender said. "We want people to go away and remember them. Our goal is to have people leaving the theater thinking, "Wow, these characters have the same wants and needs that I do.' Their jobs working as drag queens may be a little leftfield, but they're no different from a doctor, a lawyer or an Indian chief."
PREVIEW: Diva Diaries, through July 20, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N MacInnes Place, Tampa. Preview performance 7 p.m. today, $17.50. Regular performances begin Fri.; 8 p.m. Thur. and Fri., 7 and 9:30 p.m. Sat., and 3 p.m. Sun. $27-$29. 813 229-7827, toll-free 1-800-955-1045 or www.tbpac.org
