Opportunities to experience drag in Seattle are many. You can go out for drag bingo. Attend a drag story time. Meet up with friends for drag brunch. And you could have a really good night out at Dungeons & Drag Queens.
This feature is from an episode of “Meet Me Here,” KUOW’s arts and culture podcast. Listen to the full episode about Seattle’s modern drag queen scene below.
“It is a show that combines the worlds of D&D as well as drag queens and the nihilism and debauchery that comes with drag,” Kylie Mooncakes said as she prepared to take the stage at The Crocodile in Seattle.
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Kylie is the main cast member with Seattle-based Dungeons & Drag Queens, a live touring show with a comedian dungeon master crafting a tale, and a cast of drag queens playing the game. The show is part improv, as dungeon master Paul Curry takes suggestions from the crowd, gathering ideas to incorporate into the story. He notes that while the show is a live game of Dungeons & Dragons, it mixes in elements people would expect from a drag show.
“We have drag queens playing, they have a sound board on their table they hit when they want to do a number (lip sync performance) and a number has an effect in the world (of the game),” he said.
At the recent show at The Crocodile, Kylie was joined by drag queens Miss Ma’amShe and Irene the Alien, who fans will recognize from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Paul takes the stage without a shirt. Instead, he’s wearing a cape with black feathers. He explains how Dungeons & Dragons is played — as the dungeon master, he will tell a story, which will send the drag queens on a quest, but they will decide what actions to take, often by rolling dice to determine their fate.
The Crocodile can hold hundreds, and despite seating across the floor, there is only standing room left in the back.
Throughout the night, the drag queens decide how to rescue a kidnapped prince and fend of evil manatees (a suggestion from the crowd). They deliver witty comments, bawdy banter, and lip syncing interludes. A lot of the content is mature, like when you take a Mad Libs book and make it really dirty.
While the show is on the stage, the crowd is engaged in this game. They are invested in every roll of the dice. The audience laughs, cheers, and jeers at each turn. They are also on this journey.
There are times when a concert, theater, or comedy can move an audience, evolving a ticketed event into a shared moment. Dungeons & Drag Queens is all of the above — theater, comedy, music, and in a way, even a spectator sport. Having the audience folded into the performance is part of its winning formula.
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“I can see that twinkle in their eye,” Kylie said. “I can see that that they’re like, ‘I don’t get to have this anywhere else.’ We have people from cities we’ve been to, ‘Come back to Spokane,’ ‘Come back to New York,’ ‘Come back to Texas.’ It feels like a blessing that we tapped into something so special.”
Dungeons & Drag Queens
It’s no surprise Dungeons & Drag Queens popped up in Seattle. Wizards of the Coast, the company that produces the game Dungeons and Dragons, is headquartered in neighboring Renton.
Performances like this are an extension of the city’s thriving drag scene, which has been generations in the making, longer than other arts that Seattle may be known for.
“Drag has been around way longer than grunge has been around,” journalist Adam Willems said on “Meet Me Here.”
“Drag has been in the city since the late 1800s in all sorts of forms,” he said. “The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in the 1920s, was telling readers, ‘Don’t worry. This vaudeville act with a female impersonator is actually delightful. You won’t be clutching your pearls.’ Seattle drag has been around almost as long as the settler city of Seattle has been here, and maybe what’s changed has been the commercialization.”
Adam’s previous reporting on the modern Seattle drag scene has covered its success, concerns over homogenization, and its relationship with local clubs.
Today, finding a drag show in Seattle is no challenge — Queer/Bar, Neighbors, Unicorn, to just name a few regular locations. There is a thriving industry supporting it.
Still, with nightlife struggles in Seattle, Kylie said that local show producers have been getting creative to draw a crowd. It’s one reason why D&D and drag queens made such a good match.
“Trying to really home in on what can make a show special, what can make a show draw out a niche crowd,” she said. “I feel like D&D is something very special. It taps into an audience that I don’t normally get to see at our regular shows. It brings out a lot of nerds. It brings out a lot of people who might be queer, but have never had a chance to see a drag show.”
“I also love that we get to bring drag performers into a space that is more specifically comedy,” Kylie added. “I feel like we usually take our space within specific queer nightlife, club spaces, party spaces. But comedy always feels like spaces that are never centered around queerness, unless you have an all-queer show. So it feels great to merge these worlds.”