Drag Icon Peaches Christ Continues Her Love Affair for Movies with Upcoming Mash-Up

Peaches Christ has been a showgirl, a mean girl and the queerest of Mommies.

Over the years, her flock of Children of the Popcorn fans have followed her from screening cult films all summer long in her Midnight Mass film series to live parodies before a movie screening for such classic films as “Showgirls,” “Silence of the Lambs,” “Death Becomes Her” and even “Purple Rain.”

Things have changed over the past few years. The love of cinema is still evident in the work Christ does, but the movie screenings have pretty much subsided.  ” Unfortunately, over the years the audiences really stopped staying for the movie screenings and towards the end we’d have these packed houses for the live shows and then almost nobody would stay to watch the movie,” she says reluctantly.

As a fan of Christ’s work, this is truly evident. I would LOVE to watch her drag-up these famous movies and tweak their names accordingly such as “Silence of the Trans,” “Mommie Queerest” and even “Peaches & Heklina’s High School Reunion.” And like Christ, I love the movies so I would stay to watch the film after her full, complete production. If we were late, we’d likely be in the rear balcony of the sold-out shows. But after the live shows, it would be easy to move to the orchestra as her flock of fans would leave the theatre after the live segment was over.

It would be amazing to see all of the work Christ puts into these shows, considering at the beginning they were just done for one performance. She’d write a script, get the sets built and the choreography done for one show. But then, it happened. Her popularity and various talents have off and she’s been asked to play at theatres across the show. So, then we ended up with Peaches Christ road shows, often playing Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and Canada.

Christ, who is great comedic writer, collaborated with another riotous queen, Varla Jean Merman, and their kinship spawned “The Whining,” a dragged-up version of the classic film “The Shining.” Since then, Christ says, “Varla Jean Merman and I knew we wanted to co-write another show together and we’ve been talking about hilarious mash-up ideas that could work and when we stumbled into this one, it really just occurred to us that it could work really well- in a completely absurd sort of way. I think the audience will enjoy the way we’ve fused the narratives.” And, thus, “First Wives Fight Club” was born.

To get the stellar cast that she has, Christ actually doesn’t write shows until she knows her cast is available. Her characters highlight the strong suit of actors that perform in her shows from the family of actors she has taken under her wing. She often, too, enlists personalities from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” many of which not only prove to be excellent actors (like Alaska Thunderfuck) but the also are retained for future shows.

This show Christ is extremely current, getting Brook Lynn Hytes, who is on the current season of RuPaul’s show. “When we were thinking of who to cast in the show, it occurred to me we’d never had a performer from ‘Drag Race ‘appear in a show while she was still appearing on the TV show/  I’d been a fan of Brooke Lynn’s and so we reached out to see if she was available and it all worked out! I’m thrilled she’s going to be part of the show,” says Christ.

Christ is also confident that the singing in the show will be well received. Not only is April Kidwell an amazing singer, actress and dancer but the audience will be amazed by Ginger Minj…”Just wait,” Christ teases.

Christ’s love of movies is evident in every production. She painstakingly retains her love of the movies she parodies with respect and still makes them snort-laugh funny.

One would think her house of full of wigs, costumes and set pieces, just in case anyone says let’s do “Grey Gardens” again or bring back “Showgirls.” But don’t worry – there’s no hoardering in her home.  These shows “outgrew my tiny SF apartment years ago! We’ve had a couple storage units for years now that holds all the costumes and sets and are ready to remount if there’s was an interest.”

To keep up with Peaches Christ’s and to buy tickets for either of “First Wives” Sunday, April 7 performances, go to www.peacheschrist.com