Award-winning theatre and film producer, comedian, director, writer, and drag superstar BenDeLaCreme has joined Teatro ZinZanni’s Spectacular Summer Show in Chicago as a special guest performer and creative consultant in a limited engagement through July 19th, 2025. Before becoming a global touring sensation and breakout star on two seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, DeLa got her start in entertainment in the Windy City as a drag and burlesque performer while she pursued a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Teatro ZinZanni brings BenDeLaCreme into the Spiegeltent and back to the city that helped shape her artistry, with an exciting new role that’s uniquely DeLa.
Through her production company, BenDeLaCreme Presents, DeLa has written, produced and directed multiple sold-out international tours of The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show as well as her critically acclaimed solo works Terminally Delightful, Cosmos, Inferno A Go-Go, and Ready To Be Committed, as well as the festive favourite film The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special. She’s also the director of Monét X Change’s one-woman show “Life Be Lifin”, which premiered at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023 to rave reviews and toured the US earlier this year, and directed and co-wrote Jinkx Monsoon’s sold-out Carnegie Hall show on Valentine’s Day.
Teatro ZinZanni’s new show debuted on April 25th and is an ode to all things Summer in Chicago, directed by Kevin Kent. Alongside DeLa, the spectacular summer show features the incomparable LiV Warfield as Madame Z, the sensational hula hoop artist Vita Radionova, astonishing aerial straps and capoeira artist Raphael Nepomuceno, renowned Chicago-based trapeze duo Duo Rose, and the incredible hair aerialist artist Danila Bim.
From her dressing room in Chicago, BenDeLaCreme speaks exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about her first Teatro ZinZanni experience, what it means to her to be part of the company for the summer, how she got started in drag, how art school informed her approach to her craft, the impact that Paul Reubens’ Pee-wee Herman had on her as a performer, and her perspective on Pride this year.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: I’d love to take you back to your first time in drag, which I believe was when you were hosting Gay-Straight Alliance events at high school. What did drag mean to you as a teenager and how has that evolved over the years?
BenDeLaCreme: “My grade school and the beginning of my high school experience was in a small town in Connecticut. I was the weirdo for sure and it was not super accepting. I would dress in drag in secret and it was something I loved. I got brave enough to do it for Halloween a couple times, which was the only relatively safe time to do that. At the end of high school, I went to a private school for the arts in Massachusetts and that’s where I really got to settle in and feel more accepted. We had a Gay-Straight Alliance and I became the leader of that. I’d throw these events and the whole school would come. I’d host them in drag and sometimes I’d get a couple other kids to get in drag too and we’d do a little number together. We would invite Gay-Straight Alliances from neighbouring schools and it was a really cool early introduction for me into the way that drag can build community and bring folks together. I was just doing it because I wanted a place to do drag, but from the very get-go it was bringing queer people together who needed more community. I didn’t even know that’s what was happening at the time, but that’s what I’ve continued to be able to do through the art form.”
It was a long time before Drag Race began, but RuPaul was on television in the 90s, was she the first drag queen that you encountered?
“Yes, RuPaul was the first drag queen I ever saw when Supermodel came out and she was on the MTV Awards in 1993. The first time I saw her was on a red carpet and it was just this brief back-and-forth interview snippet. I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I didn’t know what RuPaul was, but without having the words for it, I understood that her gender was more complicated than the other people on the red carpet and that was really exciting to me. So that was the first time I ever saw drag and I loved it. I loved drag before I knew what it was. I was emulating all my favourite female characters.”
“But when I really got introduced to drag in the way that I was like, ‘Oh, there is a life for me’, was through Wigstock: The Movie which I got my hands on a VHS copy of. The event was hosted by Lady Bunny, and Coco Peru was there, Candis Cayne, and Flotilla Debarge. RuPaul is featured in it too of course. There was this incredible group of queens and it was seeing the breadth and diversity and irreverence and celebration of that live performance that made me feel, ‘Oh, that’s the world I want to be a part of.'”
You’re in Chicago now for your Teatro ZinZanni run and you have quite a storied history with the city, don’t you?
“Yes, it’s funny because Teatro ZinZanni is actually mere steps away from my first dorm at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago which I attended and I had an incredible experience there. It was a really formative time for me. It’s a fine arts school and I went in with a portfolio in sculpture and painting. Once I got there though, what was so incredible and my eyes were opened by—and what I still carry with me today —is the the way that I was taught to develop concepts. To take an idea or a feeling and communicate it through a medium.”
“One thing that’s really great about that school is that in the opening year you have to take classes in every single department. The professors who I really connected with were the ones who were like, ‘What do you want to say and what’s the best medium to say it in? Don’t cram something that should be a video into a painting. Don’t make something that should be a sculpture into performance art.’ That’s when I started thinking about it being the message that should determine the medium. Even though that sounds really heady and what I do is really silly, it very much is something that I carry with me and think about.”
“At the Art Institute, I was in that fine arts world and I was bringing drag into everything that I was doing. I was infusing everything with elements of this art form I loved and in some places it was embraced, but in a lot of places I was told, ‘This is not fine art. What we’re doing is fine art and you have to speak this language.’ There is a distinct line drawn that entertainment cannot be fine art and there’s a gatekeeping aspect to that. So I loved my education, but I also felt like I couldn’t bring everything I wanted to bring into it.”
“At the same time, I turned 21 while I was living in Chicago and I headed over to Boystown. I entered my first amateur drag competition at Roscoe’s. It was actually called “Drag Race” and this was back in 2001 or 2002! I won that and then I started getting work around Boystown. I was performing in drag shows and hosting events on the weekends. In the drag world, I was trying to bring in all of this weirder, more conceptual stuff and people loved what I did. I was experiencing success, but when I tried to move things more in that direction people were resistant. I found that during the day at school I was doing this heady work which I loved, but drag was kind of shunned and then during the evening it was the opposite experience. That really started to inform the journey that I’ve been on, where I’ve been like, ‘If nobody wants you to do the thing you want to do, you’ve just got to do it yourself.’ I like to think that what I do now lives in between those two things.”
It’s exciting to see everything you do with your production company, your solo and holiday shows, and all you do as a director and writer as well. So it’s interesting to hear what led you towards generating your own work. You saw your first Teatro ZinZanni show around 15 years ago in Seattle. What was your reaction to it then?
“It blew my mind. I had only recently moved to Seattle and there was such an incredible performance scene there all around with so much blending of burlesque and drag and contemporary dance and music and circus artists. Teatro ZinZanni was the most highly realized version of that blended circus art form that I’d ever seen. Just stepping into the environment was amazing, this old German Spiegeltent that’s covered in ornate woodwork and chandeliers, where the stages rise out of the ground and it’s a fine dining environment. Then watching these incredible performers like Kevin Kent, who is directing me in this show. He was the drag comedian in that first show I saw and I remember he just blew my mind with his improvisation skills interacting with the audience and the circus performers from all around the world, tumblers and acrobats. I’d never seen anything like it and it was something that I really wanted to be a part of at the time, but I wasn’t an established enough artist back then, so it’s really cool to do this now. It’s everything I love about entertainment.”
Give us a a flavour of this particular show that you’re part of and what people can expect.
“It’s all these same elements. You come into this gorgeous environment, there’s white table linen and a three course meal is served over the evening while you’re watching this blend of all these incredible circus artists from the US, Brazil and Ukraine. I do these interactive comedy pieces throughout. The theme of the show is a love letter to the city of Chicago. Teatro has been here for a while now and the people involved with the show become really immersed in this community, so they wanted to create something that was all about Chicago.”
“DeLa, my character in the show, is on a tour which brings her to Chicago and she’s exploring all the neighborhoods. That’s how the show is woven together. It’s great, it’s theatrical, and these performers are all so brilliant. I love that I get to be in scenes with them. They all have characters that really ground you in the environment as the viewer. The whole thing is very interactive. They’re coming around to your tables and doing tricks. It’s a very special thing.”
You mentioned that Kevin Kent was the drag artist when you first saw ZinZanni, what does it mean to you to be bringing your own brand of drag to the show?
“Kevin Kent has been with the company for 25 years and every time I’ve seen him do the show his skill has been overwhelming. He’s a brilliant character based drag artist, very funny and it’s very much the school of drag that I love. So to be coming into this and working with him is amazing because it builds on all these skills that I’ve used as an emcee, as a clown, as a theatre maker and all the narrative shows that I’ve done. Pulling the audience into the action throughout is a skill that he has worked with me meticulously on to guide me how to do that as skillfully as he does it. It’s a lot to live up to, but it feels great. It’s so fun to do something that feels like it sits in my character of DeLa, and everything I’ve done with her, and pulls in her sensibility and her style of storytelling, but in this whole new way. I’ve never gotten to flex some of these muscles before.”
The longer you live with DeLa the character, do you learn more about her by putting her in different situations like with ZinZanni and your holiday shows?
“Yeah, I’ve been doing that in my solo work too, like Cosmos, Inferno A-Go-Go and Ready to be Committed. They’re all about her being plunked into these environments where she has to discover new things. What I’ve found is that early on I stumbled upon a character that is conducive to constantly being in new environments and learning new things while also maintaining who this character is. She’s excited and as dewy-eyed as a newborn baby. Everything is new and exciting to her. She’s open and wants to explore, but also has this lovable ditziness that means that you can walk through all these things together and learn with her. I think of her as Alice in Alice in Wonderland in almost any situation. That’s something that I never set out to do but it has really served me well with this character and is serving me well in in this environment. Especially with the wildly diverse and bizarre group of entertainers and acts that are in this show. It really is even more like Alice in Wonderland than ever in some respects.”
The vibe sounds like you’re part of a circus family, which is wonderful.
“Very much so, it really is. It’s really reminiscent of the stuff that I was doing when I first moved to Seattle, but on a much larger scale. I was working at the Can Can Cabaret in the Pike Place Market, which is a little underground spot but doing such cool work, blending all these things. There are a lot of spots like that in Seattle. This show with ZinZanni is tapping back into it because the nature of that community is unique. One thing that’s so pleasurable about this, and that has me so looking forward to the rest of the run, is that all of these extremely talented artists have been so kind and so welcoming and I already feel very happy to be spending my summer with them.”
I don’t know if you’ve had chance to see Matt Wolf’s HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself yet, but I thought of you while I was watching it. We’ve spoken about the Playhouse Christmas special before and I was thinking about what we were just discussing about DeLa being a character who you can put into all of these different situations, rather like Pee-wee. Was Paul Reubens an inspiration for you?
“Very much so. I actually haven’t watched the documentary yet because I’ve been so crazy in rehearsal and I don’t want to watch it when I’m tired. I’m waiting until I can really put myself into it because Paul Reubens was such a huge inspiration and growing up Pee-wee was so intriguing to me. I felt so bonded to him and that character was an early introduction to the idea that fictional heightened reality can actually tap into something really truthful. It looks like artifice, but sometimes artifice can help you get to something that is beyond. We’re in artifice all the time, we just accept it as reality, so you kind of break it when you get as wild as Pee-wee.”
“That character is also so childlike, everything is exciting and fresh and his reactions are so visceral. He’s either there and he’s thrilled about what’s happening or he has that sort of guttural recoil. It’s a really masterful thing to watch him embody this character so fully. He clearly understands every aspect of the logic of the Playhouse so you as the viewer don’t have to. I think about that a lot when I’m building worlds. It’s like, if I believe it and if I get it internally then you will trust me enough to go on this journey with me. All of that really comes from Pee-wee. Pee-wee’s Playhouse the series was a variety show disguised as something else. It had these narrative qualities and these characters you felt attached to, but it was pulling in aspects of those 70s variety shows where you got a song and a sketch. It was introducing that to a whole new generation. That was very inspiring to me as well.”
Jinkx Monsoon made her debut at Carnegie Hall on Valentine’s Day which you co-wrote and directed. What was it like to be part of bringing that special night to the stage with Jinkx?
“It was really amazing. I was honoured that she asked me. It’s no small thing for a drag queen with a big personality to be, not just willing, but excited to put themself in another drag queens’ hands in that way. I had never directed her without being beside her on stage and it was incredible. She really trusted me so much to push her outside of her comfort zone in certain ways. We got together over several months last summer and talked. I took pages and pages of notes, asking her questions about different things that she was thinking about and things that she’d gone through that felt important. I took that and was like, ‘Okay, what are the main themes here? What is our through line?’ Out of that, I structured something for her. I’ve been writing in her voice for a long time, so it wasn’t challenging or a new thing to figure out how to infuse heart with all of the dirtiest dick jokes I could think of!”
“When it came to the the direction, we went into rehearsal in New York and Will Van Dyke was the musical director and he was brilliant to work with. He has all of this experience in New York musical directing Off and on Broadway musicals. I’d never worked with an orchestra before and Will was so wonderful in guiding me through all the aspects of that. In terms of the performance, Jinkx let me guide her in a way that I was really thrilled by and I’m proud of her for trusting me in that way. We were taking risks, we took big swings and you never know what’s going to happen. I felt like a nervous stage mom watching it. I was shaking during most of act one, but then seeing the amazing response, I was like, ‘Oh, we hit something here. This is working!'”
What are your thoughts as we celebrate Pride this year?
“Everything is so crazy and by necessity I hope that this Pride we are going to be pushed into identifying more strongly with where Pride began. We have been lulled into complicity with corporations and the creature comforts that we receive every day that allow us to put up blinders to a lot of what’s going on. This year, I am excited to see folks in the US really starting to click with the idea that you vote with your dollars. The effective boycott of Target around DEI is so amazing to see because it’s been working. I think we’re seeing that the populace has this power. We’ve been having conversations for years about the commercialization of Pride and corporate sponsors, but we haven’t really resisted enough for it to make any change. I think this year there is a shift in understanding and we’re also going to start seeing the way that corporations betray us now that the political environment is different.”
“My hope is that we can continue to celebrate our community, to know that celebration and queer joy and gathering together in physical space is an act of political resistance, but that we will also be reminded that Stonewall was a riot. And you know what? We’re kind of back there and pushing back against the powers that be. We’ve had a little bit of luxury in getting to disconnect from that in recent years, but now we’re seeing that we don’t get to disengage. We’ve come so far. We’re not where we started, but we all have to pick up a brick and start fighting again.”
By James Kleinmann
BenDeLaCreme is a special guest performer in Teatro ZinZanni’s Spectacular Summer Show through July 19th, 2025. For performance schedule and to purchase tickets head to ZinZanni.com. Follow BenDeLaCreme on Instagram @BenDeLaCreme, Facebook, and YouTube.
