The RuPaul’s Drag Race alum on queer visibility, politics and starring in Cole Escola’s smash comedy
Alaska may be starring in the most subversive comedy in American theater today, but she carries herself with the poise of a 40s movie star. On a brisk September afternoon, the actor, comedian and RuPaul’s Drag Race alumnus is in a small rehearsal room in New York’s midtown, sipping hot tea from a flask while perched on a hard-shell travel case. She sits bolt upright, as if she has spent her life balancing books on her head.
It has been a madcap time for the actor as she prepares to play Mary Todd Lincoln in a new touring production of Cole Escola’s Tony award-winning comedy Oh, Mary!. She is amid a few weeks of rehearsals in the city before the show’s four-month sprint across the US. When I ask how she is handling the upheaval from her Los Angeles home, she smiles indulgently. “I mean, I would go to the planet Remulak for this show,” she says, referencing the home planet of the Coneheads. “I didn’t even think about it. I was just like, ‘Let’s make this happen.’”
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