Miz Cracker became one of the most popular contestants during her time on RuPaul’s Drag Race last year. She fell into that category of queens who place in 4thor 5th in their initial season that go on to become universally beloved after the show is over (Katya, Latrice Royale, etc).
I’m always fascinated to see what the queens do when the reality television lights go down and their career ultimately benefits from being on the Emmy Award-winning program. A lot of them go on tour with their fellow Drag Race brethren, some fade into back into obscurity, and others find their way of going at it alone by putting on an amazing show that showcases what talent they really have as an individual. And by talent, I don’t mean how well they perform in a poorly-written movie parody like the ones Drag Race shoves down our throats every season.
The Harlem native’s show American Woman does just that. It made its debut at The Laurie Beechman Theatre earlier this week, a place that I have never been to even though I’ve lived in New York my entire life. It only lasted for an hour and some change, but Cracker was able to get her point across the entire time about the state of being a woman in the world we live in today and ultimately what we can do to change that for the better.
I was privy to some exclusive details about American Woman prior to sitting down at the tiny yet charming theatre on Friday, March 22. Cracker did an exclusive with me two weeks beforehand, where she spilled some details about what fans could expect when attending her show.
“American Woman is two things,” she said. “First of all, the condition that women are living in in America, but all over the world right now. So many people have been crying out for women to have basic rights and I needed to respond to that I think as a person with a platform. But then also, when I look out in the audience, on a very real level, 90 percent of the people that I see are women… especially young women. And I was like, “How can I go on doing shows that don’t acknowledge who my audience is?” And its time with this show to do that.”
She wasn’t wrong about what types of fans were in the audience. It was a healthy mix of men and women splashed with an elderly straight couple or two. Cracker excels in doing something that many can’t: mixing education with reality and humor all at once. We laugh at what she’s saying but also applaud the hypocrisy with women that’s going on in all types of communities today… including the gay ones. She’ll bring up stories about how she would tease her girlfriends as a kid and call them fat, thinking that was cool because girls were her only friends at the time, then gaining a ton of weight after going to camp and having them mock her as a result.
She’ll also discuss how gay men don’t have the rights to talk to women however they want, even though society has sort of made it acceptable to do so. At one point she’ll wear an Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silversone) inspired getup from Clueless as it relates to Tomi Lahren’s vicious bile that she spews. The scene where Cher and Amber (Elisa Donovan) have that epic classroom scene that finishes with “And let me remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty” is playing in the background amid several lines uttered by Tomi over the years. This was the only example that Cracker gave where sometimes it’s OK to criticize a woman, or human, if what they are saying is complete bulls**t.
Cracker repeatedly illustrated several stories and truths on why women are still being treated unfairly in the world today. She also had two special guests appear on stage, one of which was a female burlesque dancer who put on an unbelievably sexy yet confidence performance. Her other guest, local queen Izzy Uncut, did a play on doing a forced smile amid several audio cuts of men demanding that type of facial move from a woman.
There was some fabulous lip syncing to that correlated with the theme of the show. Cracker did some fantastic renditions of Ariana Grande’s “God is a Woman”,Cher’s “Woman’s World” and Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman,” the latter of which she finished the evening off with.
Overall, Cracker puts on one heck of a show that really gets to the meat and bones about the treatment of women in today’s society. It’s definitely a show worth seeing if she happens to be in your town performing it over the next couple of weeks. More information here.
This is the opinion of one contributing writer and not that of Instinct Magazine or other Contributing Writers.