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Meet Your Idols

Peaches Christ and Mink Stole onstage for Idol Worship. Photo: Mettie Ostrowski

Underground drag queen Peaches Christ has met her heroes many, many times.

“I met John Waters in college, but we didn’t become friends until years later,” she remembers. “At that time, I hadn’t met anyone I got to share the stage with who I really, truly grew up idolizing.”

That all changed in 2001 when a member of Waters’s “Dreamlanders” acting ensemble received a letter from Christ asking to appear at Midnight Mass, the San Francisco midnight movie event Christ produced for years. That actress was cult film legend Mink Stole, and this letter began a close friendship between the two. Idol Worship — which lands in Calgary at Dickens on August 1 — is a tribute to this bond.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” says Stole as she remembers her first Midnight Mass appearance. “I walked into the theatre, and there was this huge banner across the stage that said, “Hail Mink!” I got this big bouquet, and an animatronic was on the stage stirring a vat of rabies potion. The reception I got in San Francisco that night was so overwhelming that I cried. It was really amazing, and we have been friends since then.”

“I have built a career out of being a fan of people who changed my life, and Mink is one of those pivotal people because she’s the first who said yes,” says Christ. That career has encompassed decades and continents, including over ten star-studded years of Midnight Mass showings (which lives on today as a podcast), a memorable role in the film Milk, and an annual holiday show at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Her influence on the drag world is palpable: Bob the Drag Queen and Jinkx Monsoon are her drag daughters, and she’s a regular guest judge on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula.

Stole, meanwhile, is known for her work with cult film director John Waters: she appeared in all 12 of his feature films over three decades, after all. Outside of this collaboration, she’s performed off-Broadway, recorded an album of music, and appeared in movies like But I’m a Cheerleader and All About Evil — the latter of which was written and directed by Peaches Christ.  “I feel very connected to Taffy Davenport,” she says, referring to her role in the Waters film Female Trouble. “I was a lonely, unhappy kid. I related to Taffy; she was more personal. But I love all the characters that I’ve played.”

Calgary audiences can look forward to hearing all about Taffy and more at Idol Worship. “I describe [the show] as an intimate evening of song and storytelling between two good friends, one of whom grew up worshiping the other,” says Christ. “It’s a real celebration of both fandom and friendship and a celebration of Mink and the world of cult movies she inhabits.” Stole, meanwhile, describes it as “like having dinner with me and [Peaches], only you have to pay to be there, and you don’t get to talk.”

It’s the perfect kind of party for Calgary, with its thriving 2SLGBTQ+ and film communities. “What I love about pulp movies is that it’s so queer,” says Christ. “‘Queer’ in the truest sense of the word. You don’t have to be gay to feel like you fit into The Rocky Horror Picture Show audience or to be a John Waters fan: you identify with the otherness that we’re all experiencing together, and I think that’s why there’s this symbiosis between true queer culture and cult movies.”

Who knows, dear reader: you might even get hitched at Dickens. “We have a moment where we re-enact our weddings because both of us got married last year,” recounts Stole of an earlier show in the tour. “We toss bouquets into the audience, and we tossed it to somebody who was actually there with his sweetheart. So he turned around and proposed to him.”

Don’t miss Idol Worship: An Evening with Mink Stole & Peaches Christ with support from local drag queen Lilith Fair at Dickens on August 1. Grab tickets at dickensyyc.com.

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