Daphne Always will begin a monthly residency on Thursday, March 16 at 7pm at The Laurie Beechman Theatre (407 West 42 Street) with her newest show, By a Thread. The show, a hot mess spectacle, follows Daphne’s recent appearance at the Beechman following her delightful and zany December show, Muddle Through Somehow.
They’re barely hanging on and they’re letting it all hang out! In By a Thread, Daphne Always and James Sheppard attempt to compile, organize, and address a comprehensive map of all the things they think they should be doing if they want to be good people. Can Daphne embody an authentic, sustainable model of trans womanhood that is both hot and non-threatening to an increasingly hostile populace? Can James find fulfillment as a musician in New York and still answer all of The Emails™? Is this all self-indulgent nonsense borne of the social disease Whiteness that renders their efforts at redemption doomed from the start? We’ll find out!
Musically and otherwise, the duo employs dual swords of compassion and logic to negotiate their most punishing perspectives on personal improvement with the understanding that nothing is to be taken personally.
Tickets for her new show start at $22, now on sale at www.SpinCycleNYC.com. There is also a $25 food/drink minimum at all performances at this venue, with a full dinner menu, waiter service, and a full bar available.
Daphne Always is a trans cabaret artist based in New York. Starting as a drag queen (by the name Daphne Sumtimez), her explorations of nightlife and gender have landed her on the stages of the Met, Joe’s Pub, Club Cumming, and The Green Room 42, among others. She met her musical director, James Sheppard, in their performance in Sasha Velour’s NIGHTGOWNS in 2017, and the duo has been creating ridiculous-but-insightful cabarets ever since.
“For me, [drag] was the beginning of learning to navigate spaces as someone who isn’t read as ‘boy,'” said the then-Daphne Sumtimez, a Brooklyn-based transgender drag performer. “It’s taught me how much agency we all have in forging our identities.”
“I’d say that the number of definitions is increasing,” Sumtimez adds. “I’m sure drag still means the same thing it always has to a lot of people, but there are as many definitions of drag as there are people thinking about drag, and that number is certainly on the rise… Drag is just dressing up as someone or something other than what you are currently dressed up as.”
