BenDeLaCreme, who was crowned "Miss Congeniality" on RuPaul's Drag Race season 6, is preparing to embark on the biggest solo tour of her career. Entitled BenDeLaCreme is...READY TO BE COMMITTED, it features comedy, original music and a cake topper with an attitude, as DeLa attempts to plan her entire wedding (and find a life partner) within 70 minutes. Written, produced and directed by DeLa, READY TO BE COMMITTED is chock-full of her signature hilarity and ridiculousness, all tied to more serious, underlying themes.
This show, which is scheduled to travel across the U.S., U.K. and Canada beginning April 13, comes a few months after her and drag bestie Jinkx Monsoon's annual holiday tour was cut short due to the Omicron variant. Now, with COVID-19 cases declining, DeLa is thrilled to hit the road again and do what she loves most. Ahead of her departure, Screen Rant chatted with DeLa about READY TO BE COMMITTED, her ever-growing BenDeLaCreme Presents production company (which dropped The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special on Hulu in the midst of the pandemic), the struggles of navigating TikTok, and more.
I understand that READY TO BE COMMITTED debuted in 2019. How many performances did you get through before COVID happened?
I premiered it in New York in 2019. I'll usually do a run of any new solo material in New York because it's a great place to try out new stuff. The audiences in the cabaret scene are very supportive, but also don't pull any punches. So, you get an honest opinion. I did it in New York and then I did a summer residency in Provincetown with it, and then it was supposed to go on this bigger tour in spring of 2020. Fast forward and here we are.
This show is essentially two years in the making. How does it feel to finally bring it to audiences?
I'm so happy and excited to put this thing back up. It's a show that I'm really proud of and had a fun summer performing and was excited to share with more people. It's just been crazy to be offstage and not getting to connect with live audiences in this way. I'm so excited to be going on such a long solo tour. It's the longest one that I've done solo. And it's a show that I really believe in. Two years later, going back and revisiting some of the material, it's like, "OK, how is this gonna hold up?' And I'm like, Oh, it really holds up!" It feels good to go away from something and come back and be like, "Yeah, I still really believe in this show."
So there weren't any aspects you felt needed to be changed or improved two years after writing it?
I thought there might be. When Jinkx and I did the holiday show this year, we really did feel a strong need to address what had been going on in the last couple years. But this show is really about love and relationships and these themes that artists have been exploring for many centuries. There's been multiple plays that have not made that any less relevant. If anything, this kind of topic feels in some ways more immediate because we've all been through an experience collectively where the themes that I'm talking about in this show, which are the ideas of aloneness, togetherness, yearning, these are things that we've been feeling pretty hard. We've learned a lot about how difficult it can be to either be alone or in confined spaces with others or just really missing our connection with others. I think a lot of these emotions are running hot right now, which is why this show feels extra poignant, at least for me.
Talk to me about the title. I feel "committed" can refer to marriage or feeling crazy after these past two years.
Yes, exactly. It's very that. Titling shows is always very difficult because you want to find the thing that gives the premise, but also gives the vibe. When I discovered that particular double entendre, it was definitely the right choice.
Tell me about DeLa's race to the altar.
It's my fourth solo show and it's the first time I've really let her explore these topics because she's such a cartoon character that it's got to happen in a very particular way. She's not quite a person. She's a little less, a little more. At the top of the show, she comes out and lets the audience know that they thought they were gonna see a show tonight, but she's actually decided tonight's gonna be her wedding. But then she very quickly realizes that means she has to find a dress, a cake, a ring and a groom, and she hadn't thought about any of that. She's got about 70 minutes to work it all out.
Anybody who has seen my past solo shows, it's a lot of original music and comedy and interactive video and puppetry and burlesque, but it's also this journey where she meets a lot of fanciful characters who help her discover all these different ways of looking at love and the institution of marriage, all through very goofy means. For instance, she goes to a bachelorette party that's being thrown by her plastic, 2-inch bride cake topper who's a super b***** bridezilla, and a bunch of other cake toppers and they're just awful. DeLa has to grapple with all of these very complex, dark things, but it's all told through these very goofy means. That's my favorite way to do it.
I'm having flashbacks to the talking eggnog in your Hulu holiday special.
I love a talking beverage. This will be my third. I had a talking martini glass in my show 'Cosmos.'
You wrote, directed and produced READY TO BE COMMITTED. What's your creative process like?
Whenever I'm going in to write a new show, whether it be solo or a larger cast thing, it's usually generated by something that I'm thinking about in my immediate life, something that's going on with me. But I want to not just share personal narratives, I want to talk about things in ways that anyone can relate to in whatever place they're at. I felt very aware with this show that there would be people who were single in the audience, some who are happy about it and some who are not, there would be people who are coupled in the audience, some who are happy about it and some who are not, and I wanted to say something that was relevant to all of them.
I usually start with a topic and I think of silly, fun imagery that would just be cool to look at and explore. I also do a lot of research. I read a lot of academic books about love or really boring books about how to plan your wedding, just stuff that triggers more ideas. Then I usually put up a bunch of notecards on the wall. It looks sort of like a forensics show. And then I mush them all together, write it into a script and there you go. It's a kind of weird process, but it's very informed by my schooling as a fine artist. It's not very linear, but it adds up to a story.
How did the previews of READY TO BE COMMITTED go?
Amazing. The reception was so good. I am very proud of the past shows that I've done, but a lot of people were saying that this is the one they responded to the most. Audiences really found it funny and it just went over really well in terms of audience response and laughter. But I also had people come up to me after and say that the show really meant something to them and that it impacted them in some way. I had a couple write to me and say that they've been going through some difficult times and after the show, they held each others' hands a little tighter.
That was very sweet and I had other people say that they were single and hadn't been feeling great about it, but they were feeling happier about where they were and they could see the good things about it. That's the most rewarding thing. That's the most you could hope for as a creator. I always like to say, "90 percent laughter, 10 percent thought." If you can really make people laugh and entertain them for the majority of a night, you really open them up to a more vulnerable experience.
This will be your longest solo tour. How does that feel? How do you prepare?
It feels very exciting. I am so hungry for live audiences and I do love touring even though it's very grueling. Jinkx and I got to do most of our holiday tour before Omicron shut it down this year. Being back onstage with a live audience, I was like, "I knew I missed this, but holy c*** this makes me happy." So, I'm really excited to feel that night after night. It's just a very special connection. It's a little intimidating that I'm gonna be on the road for four months straight. I think the hunger that I have for it and just the adrenaline and the rush and the joy, it gets you through however hard touring can be.
Getting into drag has to be rough in the summer.
That's actually the least of it. It's the airports, the three hours of sleep in the hotel, the all-day tech before the thing, that's where it really gets rough.
Tell me a little about DeLa's costumes...does she have a wedding dress?
Oh, of course! She would have to. In fact, she goes through a pretty arduous process of finding her wedding gown. She knows she has to find a dress and she meets a group of five gay men. They're these five guys whose sole purpose on earth is to fall over themselves to make one straight woman look beautiful on her wedding day. It's the most crazy reality TV show. It's a short video segment, but I really just pulled in every trope. It's really just such a phenomenon, these shows, where it's queer peoples' jobs to fix everyone's lives. It's a very madcap thing that turns into a very big wedding dress trying-on montage where we get to see DeLa in a whole variety of dresses before she settles on the most glamorous one.
Does DeLa have an ideal partner in mind?
She's not quite sure because the groom is a little bit of an afterthought. At the top of it, she thinks, "Well, I've just got to find a person to plug into this situation." Her first go-to is to get Grindr and to start feeling it out through the apps thing. But of course, she's very naïve and does not understand most of the sexual things that are being said to her through Grindr. So, she kind of misinterprets all of it as being much more romantic than it is.
She picks a suitor early on and is communicating with him throughout the show, but realizes more and more as she goes that this really is something bigger and this really does mean something to commit to somebody in this way. I don't want to give away too much, but it does lead down some wild, surrealist paths that really get into the existential crises that love and relationships can bring up, her having to confront her own mortality within all of this.
Does DeLa feel pressure to get married by a certain age?
She's already being told that she's of "that age." I think for me in exploring it as a writer, we all have this messaging we're fed, in addition to what the perfect marriage or love thing looks like. We also are fed this fear of what it means to die alone and it's kind of this big phrase that hangs over all of us. I dive pretty deeply into exploring that, as well. There's some really wild ways that it manifests in the show, but I think that's something people resonate with very strongly.
Are any of these trials that DeLa experiences inspired by your personal life?
It's based on just I think a lifetime of, "What does all this mean?" Throughout my dating life and my single life, as those things have ebbed and flowed, it raises a lot of questions. My current partner, I've been with for seven years and we really started building a life together in a much bigger way. He's also my business partner, and so our lives are very intertwined and we kind of have this big, long future that was beginning to reveal itself to us. That was a new way of thinking. I'd never reached that stage with somebody before, so that really started me down this path of exploring all of these subjects. It is scary when you start thinking about what the rest of your life looks like. All of my shows have been, in some form or another, a way for me to explore all the topics that I'm like, "I have some stuff to figure out." For me, it's a great way to do it.
Circling back for a moment, the holiday tour with Jinkx was cut short. How did that feel?
Devastating. But I will say that the tour itself while it was happening was so fun. The audiences were amazing and I think people had been really hungry for live theater. It was great to be back on the road with my collaborators and friends. It's like a tight-knit familial group that I work with and we were just having a blast. Of course, we were very nervous about COVID to begin with and we took a lot of precautions. We were very tightly bubbled. We were almost to the end and we were like, "Oh my God, it's happening, we did it!" And then Omicron came around and smacked us down for the last week and a half. It was a bummer because those last dates were when we were gonna come back to all of our hometowns, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland.
It was a hard hit when it ended and all of us were very devastated, but the fact that we got through as much of it as we did after such a hard couple years feels miraculous. It was just a great reminder, after a couple years of not being able to be live, you start to be like, "What even is my job? Do I even like it? What is this?" And it was great to be back and just be like, "Oh, yes, this is my life's work. I'm very passionate about it, I'm so glad this is what I chose to do with my life."
You and Jinkx have performed a holiday tour for several years now, right?
2018 was our first time being on tour together. That was our first live tour and then we took a year off to make a movie along with the rest of the world.
Is it a hard transition going from a tour with your friend to a solo one?
It's very different and it's been a while since I've done a solo tour and certainly never of this magnitude. But I do have a really great team that I travel with. There's four of us. I'm the only one on stage, but there's a lot going on behind-the-scenes. I travel with an amazing tech person who does all the lighting and sound everywhere because it's so specific, there's no way to dial it in at every venue as you roll in. And then my partner Gus travels with me, he does the backstage managing. We have a tour manager. It's fun. It's a bunch of friends going on the road and making stuff happen.
That's part of the beauty of running your own production company. It's your people and you're not just assigned to somebody who is usually traveling with rock bands and just got saddled with this weird drag queen, which does happen. This is really just a bunch of buddies making art together, which is really fun.
How has everything been going with your production company?
It's been really cool. The first time that it became official, the first time we created something under the umbrella BenDeLaCreme Presents, was the first Christmas show Jinkx and I did in 2018. I've been producing work for a long time, I just never quite formalized it in that way. I had all these shows, I had all these things going on and just could not get people to understand the weird thing I was doing enough to put it on tour under a different producer. I was just like, "You know what? We know how to do this, let's do it."
It's expanded so much. It's really crazy how much it's grown in four years. It's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding to have full artistic control. And being forced to move into the world of film during the pandemic was weird and hard, but very exciting. I've always been such a lover of live theater and I've always been a film buff, but I really discovered how much I love making it and I know there's more down the pike. I have a lot of things bubbling, a lot of half-written screenplays. But there's something coming soon and I'm sure multiple somethings in that world.
People can also expect to see Jinkx and I on tour until either our hips give out or there's another wave of the pandemic. I think it's only growing. It's really rewarding and the audience just keeps growing and getting more excited. It's just very special.
I saw that you and Jinkx have joined TikTok!
Oh my God. I am trying to keep up with these children so much. Fortunately, BenDeLaCreme is such a ridiculous character that it's totally fine for her to just not understand TikTok and still do it. But I am scrolling through and I'm like, "What are people into?' It's so weird!" Six seconds of lip syncing to a different TikTok somebody else made. It's very bizarre. It's like a whole different universe, but you've gotta do it. You've gotta do it to keep up with the times.
Visit bendelacreme.com for more information on BenDeLaCreme is...READY TO BE COMMITTED.
