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The San Francisco drag sensation known as Peaches Christ is preparing for a photo shoot in the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall when the cameraman snaps a few shots before she’s ready.
“No, no, no. Not yet,” chirps the ultra-voluptuous glamazon, all decked out in a wondrous purple-and-blue, sequin-studded frock she calls “peacock-inspired.”
A diva moment? Not quite, darling, it’s just that she’s — gasp! — wearing a pair of plain flat shoes. And so there’s a brief time-out as the alter ego of Joshua Grannell slips on a pair of shiny, 5½-inch platforms.
There. Much better.
“Other drag queens would have killed me if they saw me in those flats,” Peaches says with a hearty, Ursula-the-Sea-Witch laugh. “If you’re on stage, you definitely should be wearing heels. Plus, it’s all part of making the character big and intimidating and almost cartoonish. It’s like ‘Attack of the 50-foot Woman’ or something.”
That Peaches, a figure who emerged from the edgy, underground drag scene, is even here at Davies might raise some less volumized eyebrows. For the second straight year, Peaches will co-host the symphony’s New Year’s Eve program, an event billed as a “festive evening of wicked sass and fabulous flair fit for a queen.”
It’s testimony to drag’s amazing pop-cultural evolution. An art form that once was derided by much of society, limited to niche venues and mostly intended for the queer community, is seeping into the mainstream. Comic Con-like drag conventions, for example, draw thousands, and cruise lines offer drag-themed voyages.
This rise in popularity can be traced in part to the reality TV hit “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” whose host regularly preaches, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” Fresh off its 10th season, “Drag Race” has earned multiple Emmy Awards and given birth to several spin-off shows, while attracting notable celebrity judges, including Lady Gaga, Shania Twain and Neil Patrick Harris.
Grannell considers RuPaul “the epitome of drag mothers” and credits “Drag Race” with introducing the art form to “middle America.”
“Ideas and attitudes continue to evolve, and people are less afraid of queerness,” he says. “We’re seeing drag attain its full potential because people aren’t afraid of it anymore.”
Jeffrey Jordan, the symphony’s Pops & Presentations Program Manager, clearly agrees. He’s happy to have Peaches on board for another holiday bash.
“(Conductor) Edwin Outwater and Peaches have developed a strong collaborative relationship over this much-needed inclusive and accepting art form,” he says. “Peaches is not only gregarious and hilarious on stage, she also understands the bridge we are trying to cross from the conservative to the outrageous.”
Indeed. Peaches is gearing up to be a charming and hilarious host and emcee.
“We’re going to listen to great music, see amazing performances and really just ring the new year in with a lot of laughs and hope and optimism,” she says.
In some ways, drag’s current popularity doesn’t surprise Peaches’ creator. Grannell, 45, points out that female impersonation has existed in pop culture for ages.
“If you look back at the old films — Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Bugs Bunny — it’s there. But it’s been sort of sanitized, so there wasn’t any queerness to it,” he says. “And you’ve got highly popular movies about drag — ‘Some Like It Hot,’ ‘Tootsie,’ ‘Mrs. Doubtfire.’ Yet they always find a way to make it not gay.”
Peaches, in fact, has roots in the cinema. She began in the mid-’90s as a character in a movie Grannell wrote and directed for a senior thesis project at Penn State’s film school. The actor originally cast for the role flaked out, so Grannell stepped into the stilettos and played the lead in his own project.
After moving to San Francisco, Grannell honed the character in “Midnight Mass,” a late-night movie event series in which he and collaborators performed live versions of classic camp films. The religious references stem from Grannell’s youthful years in Annapolis, Maryland, where he attended Catholic school and too often was made to feel like an outcast.
“I was definitely rebelling against church doctrine when I created this character,” he recalls. “It wasn’t my intention to piss off people I loved. … I was just hurt and angry. To be turned away from your community and to be told you’re a sinner — that you’re going to hell — is pretty devastating.”
Grannell’s entry into female impersonation was largely inspired by two fellow Maryland natives — the drag icon Divine (Glenn Milstead) and cult film director John Waters. He also was drawn to Dr. Frank N. Furter, the alien transvestite played by Tim Curry in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Those movies changed my life,” he says.
Although the “Midnight Mass” shows became popular enough to launch tours, Peaches wasn’t always warmly embraced. For a performance at the University of Missouri, she had to be escorted across campus by security officers because angry members of a Christian student group showed up to protest (“Some of them spit at me … the level of rage was intense.”) Another time, in Belfast, Ireland, Grannell was detained at the airport by government officials expressing concern that his show was “blasphemous and lewd.” (The show eventually did go on).
Although Grannell is pleased that such agitation has become less common and that drag is more popular than ever, he worries about his art form becoming too mainstream.
“Yes, drag has been exposed to a lot more people, but the kind of people who are primarily attracted to it are still the weirdos, the goth kids, the moms and daughters and sons who didn’t fit into their schools or communities …” he says. “I believe drag is the most punk-rock, rebellious form of performance. That’s because we’re basically taking everything we were told not to be — and not to do — and giving a middle finger to our upbringing. So that power comes through. If drag ever becomes too normal, I don’t know if it will be cool anymore.”
SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY NEW YEAR’S EVE GALA
Conducted by Edwin Outwater and featuring Peaches Christ, Jane Lynch and Cheyenne Jackson
When: 8 p.m. Dec. 31
Where: Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco
Tickets: $60-$175; 415-864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org.
