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The Origin & transformation

How the musical came to (un)life and its creative journey.

Fall 2009
press clippings
Fall 2009

How It All Began

I was searching for inspiration to create fun projects on YouTube. Thanks to True Blood, vampires were once again hugely popular as they cyclically are, and RuPaul's Drag Race had just begun, making drag queens more popular and visible than ever before. I thought a mash up of the two could be a blast. Thus I began writing a campy dance song and making a music video for it on a budget of only $600 plus a behind the scenes video.
Months later, the essence of the character lingered with me. I felt some kind of story world brewing in me. I wasn't certain what that would be, but I knew that despite all odds, I wanted to create a serious piece of theatre--not campy as would be expected and despite the song. Furthermore, I wanted it to be a musical. After Dance of the Vampires, Frank Wildhorn's Dracula, and Lestat, I'm sure most have thought I must be bonkers. I probably am.
October 30, 2014
Halloween show at the Stonewall Inn October 2011
October 30, 2014

Pop Cabaret at a Historical Landmark

In September of 2011, I was given the chance to start performing at the historic Stonewall Inn. And that October, I put together 30 minutes of music to form Vampire Drag Queen - the pop cabaret. I got dolled up and vamped up that stage performing Halloween friendly songs with a loose plot that allowed me to explore. But, most notably, it was the first time I ever performed “Vampire Drag Queen” live. I would go on to perform the song at Stonewall every Halloween and sometimes other parts of the year for the next few years.
October 14, 2012
Under St. Marks cabaret poster
October 14, 2012

UNDER St. MARKS

In this cabaret that I put together having won Cabaret Showdown, the encore was “Vampire Drag Queen”. I don’t recall if this is the first time I performed it this way, but I started realizing that I didn’t have to get into full drag to perform this and a couple of other songs in my Stonewall act. Costume pieces, wigs, and lipstick could suffice. So, this performance was done with the street clothes I wore for the cabaret, the cape, blond wig, lipstick, and possibly the vampire teeth--though after one the fangs flew out of my mouth at a Stonewall performance, I tended to skip them unless in full regalia.
October 25, 2013
Divas at the Stonewall Inn October 2013
October 25, 2013

October 27, 2013
Halloween show at the Stonewall Inn October 2013
October 27, 2013

October 3, 2014
Divas at the Stonewall Inn October 2014
October 3, 2014

October 23, 2015
Divas at the Stonewall Inn October 2015
October 23, 2015

Debuting a song at Stonewall

For Halloween, I decided to debut a song from the show in our Stonewall show. I chose “Into the Darkness”which concludes the first act. I realized that none of the other songs would easily work out of context or were hot enough to impress that audience. This was not a good revelation at all. But this song gave me the chance to workshop a dramatic moment with wonderfully dark dance music.

Promo video for that night:
January 10, 2016
Live at the Kraine cabaret poster
January 10, 2016

live at the kraine

Having won Cabaret Showdown a second time, I created this show with one whole section dedicated to debuting/workshopping songs from the musical. I performed the title song and “Better Be Afraid of Me” and two of the songs that come from the love story in the show: “Take a Chance on Love” and “I Don’t Want to Love You (But I Do)”. Hard to say what the response is as we had a tiny house what with it being a late afternoon on a cold Sunday in January. But, to be honest, I could tell there were some flat moments. And, if I didn't get much feedback, it's likely it didn't go over great. I always say, "It's not the criticism. It's the silence that tells you the truth". More would be needed to make these songs soar on the stage.
June 2016
First Group Reading
June 2016

THIRD read through

At this time, I felt ready to hear the show read aloud with actors and then hear some feed back. I got a ton of feed back that I’m still working with as revisions happen. Development did slow down greatly at this point. I know I needed time to process the next phase of revisions and allow ideas to marinate. I wanted to work on other projects as well knowing that when you work on something, it can often unlock things for other projects.
June 3, 2018
When the Shenanigans Begin Again online cabaret poster
June 3, 2018

When the Shenanigans Begin Again on Facebook Live

In June 2018, I attempted something very bold and innovative. I performed the world's first? online cabaret live from my living room in Harlem, NYC and broadcast via Facebook Live. And, it was an absolute fiasco. Instead of starting small, I reached for the stars. And while all elements to create the audio and video for the show were things I've been doing for years, broadcasting itself was something I took for granted. I knew there was latency--that I would be ahead of the audience--thus communication via chat would be delayed. We fought to remove the echo that was traumatizing me in our studio and won that battle. But we had no idea that the sound and audio were completely off. Either the computer or software couldn't handle greenscreen, overlay, two cameras, music tracks, and a microphone all at once. (At least the effect of duplicating the camera to create my own back up dancers worked). I was and may always be mortified. But I performed the title song, "Better Be Afraid of Me", and the opening of the musical, "It's a Dangerous World". With the latter, I came up with my own way of doing a workshop performance, so the audience could visualize things. I included visuals of text from the script and made paper dolls for each character.

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