If you were allowed the opportunity to write your own obituary, what would you say? In “At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen,” Courtney Berringers gets that opportunity.
“At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen” was written by Georgia playwright Terry Guest, and will play at Out Front Theatre from Feb. 1-17. The story takes place in rural Georgia, where drag star Courtney has recently died from complications due to AIDS and waits to welcome you to her funeral. But while the two person show, starring Trajan Clayton and Ben Cole, might be about a funeral, don’t expect any solemn black dresses here. This is a celebration of life.
Guest, who grew up in Albany, wrote the play to honor his uncle Anthony, who also died from complications due to AIDS and was the only openly queer person Guest knew growing up. This production is directed by Damian Lockhart, who also directed a staged reading of the show at Out Front in 2018 and a production at Urbanite Theater in Sarasota, Florida in 2021.
Rough Draft Atlanta recently got to speak with Lockhart about returning to the show and directing the new production. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You first directed a production of this play in 2021, and did a staged reading with Out Front before that. How did you come to this piece?
Damian Lockhart: Terry [Guest] and I have known each other since college, so we kind of had that relationship going into the professional world. He did a reading of this piece … I want to say that was 2015, 2016, somewhere around there. After the great feedback that he got … he was interested in seeing the show done in the south. He showed it to me. I read it and just fell in love with it, and had to figure out how to get it down here in the south.
Out Front had a new works and ideas kind of festival that they were doing at the time, and we submitted for it and just did a staged reading of the show. It was very light props, stands were used, but it felt like you were actually seeing a full production, if you will.
Where did y’all go to college together?
Lockhart: Kennesaw State University.
How is it working with someone that you know so well? Did you ever run into any trouble, or obstacles?
Lockhart: No, we didn’t really run into any drama or trouble or anything like that. It’s very collaborative. We actually have a group text message. We kind of talk to each other every single day, so that’s how close we are. If I have any questions about the script, I can just text Terry and he’ll respond. He checks in to see how we’re doing and the rehearsal process, things like that. He also played the lead role when we did the reading in Atlanta. It was kind of a way for him to workshop it, but also understand how that character lives off of the page. It’s not an easy role to play at all, because the actor has to do so much. There’s drag, there’s storytelling, there’s real scene work, there’s dancing and lip synching. There’s just a lot going on for the show. They have to deal with their costumes and wigs and makeup, and just so much. It was a good way for us to know, this is how prepared you need to be going into a production like this.
How do you approach returning to direct something when you’ve done it before? Obviously, there’s a new cast and new elements to deal with, but how do you approach returning to a project?
Lockhart: I definitely looked at a lot of the material that I already used in 2021, but I really tried to dive into the areas that I wasn’t able to focus on in 2021. For instance, really setting up these two separate spaces on the stage. Urbanite [Theatre in Sarasota] was more of a black box, so it was kind of one set, and then we had to suspend disbelief for the audience to travel to different locations.
But with what we’re doing at Out Front, we have these two locations that are very clear and crystal for the audience, one being the stage that kind of acts as heaven, and the other being the backstage area that also will double as Courtney’s apartment when we go back there. So it was just really trying to figure out how to bring more of those elements of the show alive, and taking away things that may not necessarily have worked the way that I wanted them to work in 2021. We had a projector in 2021, and we kind of nixed that after seeing that the acting and all of that, it did the work for us, and we didn’t need [the projector]. Little things like that.
This is a very small cast. Do you like working with a small cast when you’re directing?
Lockhart: I do, yeah. I have done larger casts, but for the most part, everything that I do is under 10 people. I find that you can get very intimate with your actors and really understand their process and how you can help support them to get to where they need to go for the production. We get opportunities to really ask deep questions and those types of things that you probably wouldn’t get to do if you had a cast of 30 or 50 people. It’s those things that the actors would be able to do backstage, but because it’s just us in the room, we all get to share pieces of ourselves, anecdotes that the text reminds us from our past lives, all that kind of stuff. I think it’s a really tight knit group that you create when it’s a smaller cast.
Speaking of those personal stories, I know that this is a very personal story for Terry. Could you talk about some of the underlying themes and motifs that run through this work, particularly in relation to the south?
Lockhart: Terry wrote this play as an homage to his uncle, who was a drag queen who also passed away from AIDS. During my research for the play, I discovered that southern Black men are actually a high demographic for new HIV and AIDS cases … There are so many [sources] that talk about, one in two of African American men who sleep with men will contract the disease based on the way that things are currently going. So I think it’s very important for us to have a conversation to let people know that AIDS is still out there. AIDS is still something that is hurting our community. It’s still something that based on your privilege and your demographic, you may have one turnout versus the other. I love that Terry sets that up for us by having one queen have died from the disease and one queen have access to medication – and she just happens to also be white. It’s really that conversation of, where is the access and where is the lack of knowledge and support for the community?
I also think it’s very important for us to do this in the south because we don’t get stories like this often. We don’t get AIDS plays that have anything to do with modern times. When we think of AIDS plays we typically think of “The Normal Heart,” or “Angels in America,” these things that are period pieces that happened in the 80s and 90s and whatnot. But this is stuff that is still affecting our community today. We are going to have testing on site for people. We’ll have pamphlets and we’re connecting with partners and organizations around Atlanta to really talk about the disease and access to medication and care, and really helping get people knowledge and support for everything that they need.
There are also just a lot of juicy references in this play about divas and movies and songs, and all those things that I think a lot of southern queer people cling onto to dream. Courtney’s a huge dreamer, so you get to see the end of her life through her eyes. Kind of that thing of, if you died and you were able to tell your story, how would you craft that story? Where would you add a little sprinkle, add a little razzle dazzle? And where would you forget to tell the truth? That’s what Courtney is really grappling with throughout the whole thing, is trying to get to actually telling the truth about what happened to her. She uses drag as a mask or a shield in a way, to navigate through the world and explain what happened to her.
Could you talk a little bit about the casting process? What do these actors bring to these roles?
Lockhart: We did an open casting for video submissions first round. From there, we pulled the people that we liked, had callbacks, and from the callbacks we chose these folks. Trajan Clayton is also from Buena Vista, Georgia, where I’m from – happened coincidentally – and it’s also near Albany. So to me, that small town southern lifestyle [is something] he was able to really drop into and connect with. Ben Cole is also southern and from a small town, Macon, Georgia, which is near Albany. So they kind of had a real big connection to the material just from their own backgrounds. They all have training. They’re going to give you some drag numbers, they’re going to give you some amazing acting as well. There are lots of costume changes that are going to be happening. That’s one of my favorite lines in the show – there will be an unnecessary number of costume changes.
Tickets for “At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen” can be purchased online.
