“Ms. Blakk for President,” Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau’s play about drag queen Joan Jett Blakk’s 1992 run for the White House, opens Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre on Sunday, Nov. 8, five days after the midterms. The Vineyard calls it “a joyous stampede through urgent and unfinished business.”
“Unfortunately, due to vocal strain and a polyp on my vocal cords, I need to step away from the production immediately,” Wayne Brady said in September, when he left the lead role, Deadline reported. Ato Blankson-Wood, a Tony nominee who starred as Clifford Bradshaw in Broadway’s most recent “Cabaret” revival, according to TheaterMania, took over as Terence Alan Smith, the Chicago performer and activist who created Joan.
Brady called the show “this beautiful, joyful, defiant story of Black Queerness.” Gideon Glick, Kelvin Moon Loh, Nic Ashe, Sawyer Smith and Adina Verson round out the cast, which started previews Oct. 22.
Vineyard artistic director Sarah Stern promised “a singular, immersive environment for a show that joyfully defies convention” when the theater announced the play in May, Playbill reported.
(Drag’s having a busy season Off-Broadway: the Princess Diana parody “Diana” returns to SoHo Playhouse Dec. 2.)
Joan Jett Blakk’s ‘Lick Bush in ’92’ Campaign
“A presidential campaign is like a drag show,” Joan Jett Blakk said, in a line the Media Burn Archive pulls from its footage of her campaign. Joan, Smith’s drag persona, helped found Queer Nation’s Chicago chapter, critic Hedy Weiss wrote for WTTW in 2019.
Her campaign slogan was “Lick Bush in ’92!” Joan had already challenged Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1991, and Smith launched the White House bid on his 35th birthday, The Root reported.
She called it a “camp-pain,” as in “Putting in the camp, taking out the pain,” American Theatre reported in 2019. “It was meant to garner attention and visibility for the queer community and for issues around AIDS,” Landau told the magazine.
Joan wasn’t allowed into the 1992 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in drag, so Smith entered out of drag and changed in a bathroom into an American flag minidress, PBS’s American Masters recounted in 2021. “That’s right, we’re gonna put a drag queen in the White House,” Blakk says in a clip in the PBS short, according to its transcript.
She ran again in 1996 on her own Black Pantsuit Party ticket, PBS reported. “If a bad actor can be elected president, why not a good drag queen?” Blakk asked, according to a University of Illinois library history of the campaign.
The Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame inducted Smith in 2023. Before the 2019 premiere, Smith told Steppenwolf’s cameras that “the gay people that went before me made it easier for me to come out,” The Root reported.
From Steppenwolf’s 2019 Premiere to the Vineyard’s Union Square Stage
McCraney, the Oscar winner behind “Moonlight,” played Joan himself at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 2019, with Landau directing, according to Playbill. “I never heard of Queer Nation,” McCraney told American Theatre that year. “This story is necessary,” he said.
Smith consulted on that production, and Landau recalled his reaction when a newer candidate, possibly Pete Buttigieg, was billed as the first gay presidential hopeful. “Terence was like, ‘What is he talking about? I ran in ’92,'” Landau told the magazine.
The Vineyard, where McCraney and Landau made “Wig Out!” in 2008, had planned to produce “Ms. Blakk” in 2020, Stern said in May. “With Ms. Blakk For President, Tina and Tarell are conjuring a lesser-known piece of American and LGBTQ+ history,” Stern said.
‘Ms. Blakk for President’ Now Plays Through Nov. 29
Opening night slid from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8 after the cast change, TheaterMania reported. “I believe in this show, I love these people, and I’ll be cheering them on with my whole heart,” Brady said.
The run, first set to end Nov. 22, now plays through Nov. 29, Playbill reported, and the Vineyard lists the show at 105 minutes with no intermission.
