ONSTAGE Creamy voices, sharp tongues, bright dresses, and a whole lot of hairspray have been the calling cards of “dragapella” performance quartet the Kinsey Sicks for 25 years now. And their acerbic wit and welcoming humor is as much a staple of the San Francisco scene as cable cars and Karl the Fog.
Through four presidents, countless venues (including legendary ’90s talent incubator Josie’s Cabaret in the Castro), and a travel trunk-worth of tours through the hinterland, the Sicks—Rachel, Trixie, Trampolina, and Winnie—have staged their sharpened schtick and hammy harmonies, hilariously holding power power to account while sometimes breaking your heart.
That’s certainly the case when they bring their “Things You Shouldn’t Say” 25th anniversary show to Marines Memorial Theatre, Fri/5 and Sat/6. What began in 1993 as “a group of friends who went to a Bette Midler concert in San Francisco dressed as the Andrews Sisters” (and was named after the most homosexual setting on the famous Kinsey sexual-orientation scale), became a life of performing to adoring audiences. And now, founding member Benjamin Schatz, aka the big-bowed Rachel, is retiring from performing to his home in Puerto Vallarta. (He’ll still be a writer for the group, which will carry on with a new member.)
As befits the times, this show skews a little darker and reaches a little deeper—including a brilliant, 10-minute monologue delivered by Schatz that somehow wraps all the history of the queer struggle of the past two and a half decades up into a cathartic tale of empowerment, and recovery from what can seem like endless setback and loss.
I spoke to the very funny and gracious Schatz via phone from humid Mexico, where he was enjoying an afternoon before leaping back on the Kinsey train.
48 HILLS This is going to be our final performance with the Kinsey Sicks in San Francisco, what are some of your thoughts, coming back to round off this stage persona here?
BENJAMIN SCHATZ I still love the performing, I love it as much as I ever have. I’m still learning, and I’m still growing. Unfortunately, I’m still getting older. The physical price I pay for a non-glamorous life of touring, with 3am wake-ups and driving to airports and taking two planes … It’s not pretty. But since I announced my retiring from touring, I have been so much enjoying everything, and really taking the time to stop and breathe when I’m on stage, how much I love it and the people who come see us. I definitely plan to spend my retirement regretting my decision.
48H But you’ll be regretting it in Puerto Vallarta. And you’ll still be writing for the group, yes?
BS Yes, I’ll still be inflicting myself on the world from the comfort of my own home.
48H I figure, unfortunately, that you’ll probably still have a lot of material to work with now that we’re in Trumpland—or at least I am. How do the other girls feel about living in this political era. Has the awfulness re-energized you at all?
BS The show that we’re performing “Things You Shouldn’t Say” was a direct response to the Trump phenomenon, and I think we go places both comedically and seriously that we haven’t before because it forced us to re-explore out boundaries. i think this show is probably our best; it’s deeper, and richer, and more complicated.
I think Trump requires of artists and other sentient beings a rethinking of life as normal. In our own way we’ve risen to that challenge. On the other hand, I would much rather have a better president and suffer for lack of material. I’d be happy to make that noble sacrifice.
We’ve long been very political our approach. There was an extended period where we got a common critique, “You’re so funny, and you sound good, and you sure look like crap. But do you have to be so political, so one-sided?” We’ve always taken a strong stance, when it was not fashionable. Well, it seems the times have caught up with us, so that suddenly our approach seems relevant again. You know, there are always horrible things happening that can and should be addressed.
48H You did this through Clinton, and Bush, and Obama, and now it’s Trump. You’ve held all sorts of political players to account. What are some of the differences doing this, say, in the Bush era, or the Clinton era, and now?
BS I have a little tangent. My view of drag has always been that it’s a defiant political act. The drag that I embrace is a big “Fuck you.” That’s the drag that fought back at Stonewall. So it’s been interesting to me to see that, now, doing political drag is viewed as this divergent, unusual approach. Like, I don’t know when drag became Disneyland, but it’s not the ride that I want to be on.
To go back to your question, I think now there’s more of an acceptance of our critique than there once was, surprisingly, on our own political side. It was frustrating—we did some very hard-hitting and hilarious shows at the beginning of this century, and some people hated it who you thought would love it, and others loved it who were surprising. In fact, we used to have a lot more people come up to us and tell us, I loved your show and I’m a Republican. That doesn’t happen so much anymore.
It’s interesting when you’re both a writer and performer. As a writer, you want to provoke people, you want to make them uncomfortable. As a performer, you’re more like a puppy or a whore: You just want to please. So when people would say, I’m a Republican and I love you, the writer in me would say, “Were you even listening? At what point did you fail to take this personally.” But as a performer I’d be like, “Why, thank you!” I’d be Sally Field, “They like me! They like me!”
48H Let’s talk about your monologue that’s the centerpiece of the show. It’s incredibly moving; you manage to completely relate all of the struggles of the past 25 years into a kind of healing meditation, or valedictorian catharsis, that goes beyond just a list of familiar grievances or a mere pep talk. It’s some serious theater. What came up while you were writing it, and how did you prepare to perform it?
BS The answer to both is terror. It’s the probably the most emotionally naked thing I’ve done in my life. I felt utterly, completely compelled to write it. The others were invaluable as tough editors, and also very supportive. I could tell that as I was writing it, what I was in the process of trying to say was really reaching them. I just hoped that the whole thing didn’t turn out to be an unsuccessful and humiliating experience.
And it wasn’t! The reaction has been everything I could possibly hope for. That never happens. You know those secret, grandiose hopes we all have for something we do? One of those happened. It reaches all kinds of audiences, people I would never would have thought. We did a show in an American retirement community in Mexico, the average age was mid-70s, it was 95 percent heterosexual. And those people were as moved as the young gay men and lesbians who saw us in Kansas City.
We’ve had a lot of intense reactions after the show, which as a writer is very flattering, and as a performer, exhausting. Just on an emotional, empathetic level. I remember we were doing a show in Eugene, Oregon, and a big, burly guy came up to me, he looked like he should be on a Harley. He had tears in his eyes, and he was talking about the two guys who had been his babysitters when he was a kid. They had both died, and he never had a chance to talk about it. Some guy who was nearly 80 started talking about his son.
These people had never had a chance to talk about it. Doing it in Scotland, where there’s a completely different culture around these issues, we got a huge reaction. Even somewhere like a gay men’s spiritual retreat, where people are certainly familiar with what we’re talking about, we got a four-minute standing ovation that we had to interrupt. What monologue gets a standing ovation? It’s a very rare show that we aren’t directly connecting to audiences with this. It’s a collective recognition of shared trauma.
Nothing makes you want to see a show better than that, huh? [Laughs.] Come out and let’s relive some trauma! Sign me up!
48H People in San Francisco, who’ve experienced almost exactly your timeline, may be touched in the same way …
We hope that people leave thinking and feeling more deeply. There are some moments where we break peoples’ hearts, and then on a dime we have them rolling with laughter. Now I know what works. I’ll just say, if you go to see the show, that there’s a moment where I do something so unforgivably outrageous right when people’s hearts are broken. And people are so relived, and so joyous. I’m proud that we can do that. We’ve never taken the safe route. And that’s my favorite thing about doing this.
THE KINSEY SICKS 25TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW: THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T SAY
Fri/5, 8pm
Sat/6, 3pm and 8pm
$40-$75
Marines Memorial Theatre, SF.
More info here.
