‘Slaying a Drag-a-thon’ tells the story of Portland’s 48-hour, Guinness-setting drag show

RuPaul might be the country’s most famous drag queen, but in the Pacific Northwest, the LGTBQ+ community is still feeling the loss of Darcelle, who passed away earlier this year. The icon, also known as Walter Cole, was arguably the best known and loved drag queen in the region. Darcelle XV Showplace, the drag bar institution she created, lives on where she and others have performed for decades. So when Portland writer and podcast host Eden Dawn was pitched the idea of beating the world record for the longest continuous drag show by her friend Emma Mcilroy, co-founder and CEO of Wildfang, she knew it couldn’t happen in any other place, with locals in the audience participating and cheering them on.

What Dawn ended up producing was a 48-hour extravaganza created with a cast of dozens of performers — 60 drag queens, and an assortment of MCs and stand-up comedians, as well as a large and dedicated crew behind the scenes. At the end of the two days, a representative of the Guinness World Records pronounced the record set, and presented performers with the official certificate. Still, that outcome was anything but certain. Any one of a series of mishaps and near misses could have shuttered the whole project.

Dawn and Fiona McCann produced a five-part podcast telling the story of the triumphs and the tribulations, called “Slaying a Drag-a-thon,” which is a “sidecast” of their regular show, “We Can’t Print This.” The whole event was also a fundraiser with $309,000 donated to the Trevor Project, which helps LGBTQ+ youth in crisis. Joining us in studio to talk about the highlights and lowlights are Dawn and BinKyee Bellflower, one of the drag queens that helped break the record.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Over the summer, a group of Portlanders attempted to do something no one had ever done before: put on a continuous drag show for 48 hours in a row. The previous record set in Australia, something like five years ago, was about 36 hours. But when Portland writer and podcast host, Eden Dawn, a lifelong fan of drag, was pitched the idea of bettering that by 12 hours, she said, “Yes.” As you’ve probably heard by now, she and a huge team of passionate people were ultimately successful, but any one of a number of mishaps could have jeopardized the whole project.

Eden Dawn and the writer Fiona McCann produced a recent five-part podcast telling the story of how it all happened. It’s called “Slaying a Drag-a-thon.” They call it a “sidecast” of their regular podcast, “We Can’t Print This.” Eden Dawn joins us now to talk about it along with BinKyee Bellflower, one of the drag queens who helped break the record. Welcome to both of you.

Eden Dawn: Hi. Thanks, Dave.

BinKyee Bellflower: Hello.

Miller: So Eden, can you tell us what the pitch was, who it came from?

Dawn: Yes. So my friend Emma Mcilroy, who is the CEO of Wildfang - a gender non-conforming clothing company in town that I have long been a super fan - called me up and was like, I think that these drag ban are going to have a negative impact on the world. We know that they are and what can we do to draw attention to this? But not only that - how do we fight the hate with joy? That was our internal mantra for the show, which if you’re ever trying to persuade a friend to do something, that’s a great persuasion tactic.

Miller: And you say this in the podcast. What was it about that framing, fighting hate with joy, that just made you say yes?

Dawn: I mean, I think for me, drag has always given me joy. I’m not a drag queen officially, but I think BinKyee would back up. I have the spirit of a drag queen. I dress a little bit like a drag queen. My whole life, it has influenced me. I’ve learned so much from queens for being on stage, how to hold a microphone, how to have a smokey eye. And I wanted to give back to the same level of joy that drag has given me. And this felt like something we could do and we knew we could get a lot of attention on it for breaking the world record. And also we wanted people to see Portland in a positive light again and we knew that Darcelle’s was the only place this show could happen and that we could do it with our community here and we somehow pulled it off.

Miller: BinKyee, do you remember when you first heard this idea?

Bellflower: Yes, I did. I was really amazed with the idea. The first thing was that when people make you feel less so of a person, you show them how much more extra you can be. And that’s what drag is all about basically. Like what Eden just mentioned just now, drag is putting on makeup, putting on a persona and entertaining people and bringing joy or some form of entertainment to the world and just to prove and hold space for yourself. And that’s what we did. And we did that not just with what we know we did that with the unknown as well.

When we heard about “Drag-a-thon,” we thought, like our heads are going to explode, our beards are going to grow and…

Miller: Oh right, that’s actually one of the things, that 24 hours in you get a beard you don’t want.

Bellflower: You start shaving over your makeup, you start patching over your makeup. At the end of the show, some of us, because we have sweat so hard and the space was so hot, we continued to touch up our makeup. I looked at the photos when we finally broke the record, my face was so beat. My shading was so dark, my blush was so red, my eyes were so dark, but there was joy oozing out of our faces. Basically sweat of joy.

Dawn: We were a happy mess!

Miller: Well, this is less happy. You started to plan the show in March of this year at that point. What role did you think Darcelle was going to play in everything you were doing?

Dawn: Obviously, we knew at that point, Darcelle was 92 and might not be able to be fully engaged for the 48 hours. But our hearts had hoped that she would be there and even to just have her blessing of it being in that space. I’m a long-time fashion editor in town and Darcelle has always spent so much time with me and been so gracious with me that we knew it had to be there. And of course, we’d hoped she would have seen in person when we broke the record. And unfortunately, that was not the case.

Miller: Within weeks of your starting work on this show, after she died, there was a packed event at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland. And at one point, Sharon Knorr, the co-author of the book “Just Call Me Darcelle,” spoke. And you include part of what she said in the first podcast episode. Let’s have a listen.

Sharon Knorr [recording]: So if you want to know how much Darcelle gave to his family, his friends, his community, to the world, just look around you. And I’d like to say one more thing. It’s kind of a war cry that we performers use. When Roxy died, as you heard, Darcelle went and did a show. When Darcelle died, the club didn’t close. They did the shows. No matter what happens, no matter how bad it is. The show must go on. Let’s say it together! The show must go on! The show must go on, and Walter and Roxy, you better believe it still is. Thank you. [Applause]

Miller: Eden, what went through your mind when you heard that?

Dawn: It was such an overwhelming moment, to be in this theater with thousands of people all there because Darcelle had impacted our lives in some way, whether that was helping you be your best self or just feel loved. And it felt we had to consider the idea briefly. How do we go on with our matriarch gone? And I’m not sure that I considered it for too long, but I’m watching Poison Waters cry who is also helping us with the show and everyone around me were all so overwhelmed. The idea of moving forward with like essentially planning the party of a century felt a little bit strange. And then you think about it and it’s like, no, that’s what Darcelle always would want. That’s what Sharon said is both the theater cry that lives in our hearts, but also exactly what Darcelle would want.

And we know that Darcelle was a Guinness World Record holder for being the oldest working drag queen in the world. And of course, when she passed, that title went to someone else and she was so proud of having that Guinness record attached to the club. And so then it became even more important. We’re like, we can bring this back. We need to make sure Darcelle’s gets a world record back. And that was just additional motivation.

Miller: BinKyee, what difference did Darcelle make in your life?

Bellflower: I was the last hired cast member at Darcelle XV Showplace. She hired me once I got my green card here in America. And she said, “Would you like to join our cast?” And I said, without thinking twice, “Yes, I would love to be part of this.” She took care of me. She created space for me and also created this platform for me. Somebody who’s actually an immigrant very new to America, coming out to myself all over again and learning the art of drag [and] she created this platform for me to express myself.

One of the numbers that caught her eye the most was my very frequent and very famous number that I do, “Roar.” Not the Katy Perry version. I did a musical version from “& Juliet” musical and it literally says that “You’re going to hear me roar because people can’t shut me down.” And she saw that and she loved how I brought my cultural expression to drag and the stage and she said you can be part of this. She wanted me to be part of that. And also I was also her last crown winner of La Femme Magnifique International, which was in search of the most glamorous drag queens in the world that Darcelle hosts every single year.

Miller: So Eden, when you decided the show was going to go forward, then you still had to actually do it…

Dawn: It turns out that was the easier part. [Laughing]

Miller: …including following the rules of the Guinness Book of World Records. I mean, a world record is in some ways all about rules.

Dawn: It’s nothing but rules.

Miller: I want to play another excerpt from one of the episodes. This is where you are reading the Guinness Book’s definition of drag. Let’s have a listen.

Dawn [recording]: Dresses up and portrays an exaggerated theatrical interpretation of femininity or masculinity playing on cultural stereotypes and subverting expectations. All participants must wear full body attire. Example: wig, dress and heels for a drag queen. Suit, slicked hair and facial hair for drag king and makeup. All performers must be of a professional standard and all acts must be planned and rehearsed in advance.

Miller: What were the other rules that you had to follow that made this challenging just from a production standpoint?

Dawn: They are numerous, but I would say the timing was incredibly strict. So no drag queen could perform under two minutes or over 10 minutes. If we went 10 minutes [and] 10 seconds, we lose. No MC could be over five minutes.

Miller: Do you understand the over 10? I understand the under two because it’s maybe not enough of a performance, but it just seems like at a certain point making rules for the sake of rules.

Dawn: Very much so. So that was an incredibly difficult one because also the queens were easier to keep on time and kings because they would submit songs in advance. But the MC’s, we had a host of people coming in from “Saturday Night Live” and folks that are very good on stage who aren’t used to having to get off in five minutes…

Miller: Fred Armisen is the one you say he was too good a time.

Dawn: Fred Armisen, John Cameron Mitchell…both Emma and I had to walk out and pull people mid-sentence more than once. Those little rascals. So yank them off stage.

Miller: So the Guinness Book wouldn’t say “No, you’re disqualified”?

Dawn: Yeah, we would lose if they went over. What was very hard for a 48-hour drag show midweek is that we had to have 25 audience members’ butts in seats at every moment.

Miller: You said that, going in, you thought that was going to be an issue - who’s going to be there? Will there be 25 butts in seats at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday. But in the end, that wasn’t a problem, right?

Dawn: No. We sold out every hour. We had lines around the block and we had a standby line. So if there was ever an opportunity to squish somebody in, we would get more in.

Miller: Can you describe the official witnesses?

Dawn: Guinness requires both everything to be filmed at once with a clock ticking in the background and then two independent witnesses have to sit in the seats and record in a logbook every single person that goes on stage, every single minute they’re on, what they performed to.

Miller: It’s all these rules. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it just seems like they go against part of the rule breaking sort of society flouting beauty of drag. I mean, you have to have a ticking clock in the background of the video and somebody with a stopwatch, with a notebook writing things down. It doesn’t seem very draggy to me.

Bellflower: And it’s all about drag time too, right? Drag queens have drag time. We’re late. We do things at our own timing. But the thing is, if you’re given a box to play in, you play flawlessly within the box and that’s what all the performers were doing. And that’s what all the MCs were doing their best to do. I think there were certain parts that I wasn’t performing and I was sitting at the back and I was literally nervously looking at the clock, but these MC’s would hit the mark and the music would kick in and the next performer would come out and the audience would roar. It was wonderful.

Miller: Can you describe the backstage area and the trap door going to the basement dressing room? What [were] those spaces like over the course of 48 hours?

Dawn: I watched BinKyee fall down that trapdoor and break two heels. So the backstage at Darcelle’s is about the size of a walk-in closet, which literally has a hole in the ground with one kind of banister around it, but you very easily can fall in. No airflow, no window. 48 hours of everyone in sequins and wigs, sweating, breathing carbon dioxide. It was the smelliest best after party ever. And because the timing was so short in between and you could not go one second over without losing, people were running up and down to the basement dressing rooms.

And I remember right before we won, BinKyee ran to change something and went down, and both your heels snapped off your shoes.

Bellflower: Yes, because those steps are not ergonomic. They are made in such a way that it’s extremely steep and narrow and sometimes two or three drag queens would be going up and down at the same time. So we try to avoid each other.

I remember the reason why I rushed down because I had three minutes to change for the finale and I wanted to deck myself up in the best Wildfang outfit and make sure that I wipe my sweat off. So I rushed downstairs without knowing that I’ve actually gotten one of my heel trapped on it and then the other heel got trapped in one of the step as well. And so I broke both my heels.

Bellflower: Our whole goal was to stay alive back there on a lot of levels.

Miller: It’s a good goal, in general, in life.

A Guinness judge that you quote said this, “I’m always very clear that marathon attempts are not the ones you want to do.” Meaning, of the things in the book, don’t go for the marathon versions. He says, “There’s always a switch that happens in every marathon attempt where you say, ‘Oh no, this was not a good idea.’” What was the moment for you when you first said that?

Dawn: I mean, it was earlier than I thought because the thing is, of course people are like, “Oh, you stayed awake 48 hours.” We’d been awake for days because of all of the madness of the last-minute things of one of our headlining queens got in a hailstorm. People got COVID and had to drop out last minute. There were so many things. I hadn’t slept in so long.

Miller: And sleep deprivation, it’s somewhere between a drug and a torture.

Dawn: t’s a little bit of both, but there was a ladder backstage that fell on me, nearly knocked me out. So I briefly went into the back room to have a quick cry, keep a professional away from everybody. And then somebody walked in and goes, the news is outside and wants to get you live on camera right now and I was like, suck it up, [and] went out for the camera. And that’s when I was like, this is mayhem. There’s literally not moment to cry from getting hit with a ladder, but you just keep going because you know it’s live theater [and] failure is not an option.

Miller: As you note at the very beginning, one of the big reasons to put on the show…and I should say that this was in the end, a fundraiser, a very effective one. You raised more than $300,000 for the Trevor Project, which tries to prevent suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. But the big reason to put this on was because of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and attacks on trans people in particular around the country. How much did you have to think about security as you were planning this?

Dawn: We definitely considered it because of things happening in the world. We took a lot of advisement from Poison Waters and the Darcelle crew, who obviously have been operating since 1967. So they’re quite astute at knowing how to handle it. But we did actually bring in a team of MMA fighters that are trained in deescalation because we did not think that the solution was to bring in a bunch of people with guns to stand outside. We wanted people to feel safe.

So we had some lovely security folks who said “our arms are our security” and I think that people in the end felt really safe and that room was such a loving…there were so many happy tears and crying and hugs. I wish I could go back and experience it just as a viewer.

Miller: One of the more powerful aspects of the podcast series is that we get to hear directly from many of the performers about what drag means or has meant to them. I want to play one of them. This is Isaiah Esquire:

Isaiah Esquire [recording]: “Drag is meaningful for me because it gives me a medium to be able to express myself, my identity. And the vastness of that, the complexities of that. And it’s also a lovely avenue to be able to kind of confront some of my own internalized homophobia and things about body image and self-worth and all those things that happen from growing up in a society like ours.”

Miller: BinKyee, what difference has drag meant in your life?

Bellflower: I didn’t realize that I had a voice and sometimes when you think about voice, you think about the loudest or the most intelligent, but actually voice simply means presence. I realized that a lot of previous drag queens such as Poison Waters or even Darcelle herself, have created this pathway ahead for us. Their voices might be heard and seen through different ways. And I wanted to mimic that. I wanted to also create that voice, enable myself to have that voice and also write the future for the rest to come behind me. And that’s why I decided to do drag. That’s why I decided to look up to people who actually gave me this path and create this positive change in drag.

Miller: Eden, can you describe the moment that you officially got word? This was 12 hours past the Australian record. But until you heard from the Guinness judge that he had reviewed the video and he could say “yes,” you didn’t know if you’d done it or not. So when you got that word, finally, what was it like for you?

Dawn: It is honestly unlike anything I’ve ever had in my life and I think I ever will because I’m a very goal-oriented person and we all have had goals we’ve set in our life. But this level of something was such an overwhelming thing. We had 783 stage changes in that run of show. [That’s] 783 times that we could mess up and for something to go wrong. And to come through at the end and have him say that and know that this all came from just literally friends working together to have a world record for Darcelle’s, for everything, for joy, I felt essentially like a unicorn popped up and licked me on the face or something. I don’t even know, except for I broke down crying and Poison and Emma and I hugged in an eternal hug and yeah, I felt high.

Miller: Let’s have a listen to your co-organizer Emma Mcilroy after the Guinness judge made it official.

Emma Mcilroy [recording]: I gotta tell you honestly, there were times even on Monday night, Tuesday morning, where I was like, I don’t know if we can do this. There was one person who from the start said, you guys are gonna do this. There was one person who believed in us and if I could encourage you to turn your attention to the screen on the left and ask my AB team to hit play. You’ll find out who that person was.

[RuPaul] “Congratulations, Darcelle’s. You did it. You just won the Guinness World Record for the longest drag-a-thon in history. My goodness. Thank you for spreading love and the joy of drag throughout the world. Oh, my goodness. Big kiss from Mama Ru.”

Miller: That is RuPaul. Every now and then, I do wish that people could see our guests, including just now when BinKyee, when you heard the video of RuPaul’s, you have 40 seconds left, but what was going through your mind then?

Bellflower: It’s like I’m reliving it. It’s like she’s here and obviously, you know, she’s in my head and we play that video every single night before our show starts. When the audience comes to the show, literally, we have her voice as a mark in sync with Darcelle XV Showplace and I just have goose bumps. I’m reliving it every single time I hear it. It’s fresh to me. It’s exciting to me.

Miller: BinKyee Bellflower and Eden Dawn, thanks very much.

Dawn: Thanks, Dave.

Bellflower: Thank you.

Miller: BinKyee Bellflower is one of the 60 drag queens who broke the drag show world record this summer. Eden Dawn helped organize the Drag-a-thon. She’s a host of the new podcast “Slaying a Drag-a-thon” about that project.

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