SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 10, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — The Kinsey Sicks, America’s favorite Dragapella® Beautyshop Quartet, is coming to the Jeanné Wagner Theatre at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center for just one show next month, on Sunday, Dec. 3.
The group’s award-winning a cappella singing, sharp satire and over-the-top drag have earned them a diverse and devoted following. For nearly 30 years, the group has served up a feast of music and comedy to audiences at performing arts centers, music venues and comedy festivals throughout the U.S. and internationally. The performance record includes an Off-Broadway show, an extended run in Vegas, two feature films and four concert DVDs, 11 studio and live albums, and appearances in over 40 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Australia.
The concept for the Kinsey Sicks began in 1993 when a group of friends who went to a Bette Midler concert in San Francisco dressed as The Andrews Sisters. Assuming they’d be among many drag queens, they found themselves to be the only ones. They were approached that night to perform at an upcoming event. Their reply, “we don’t sing,” was quickly disproved when they realized that all of them had musical backgrounds. They began singing and harmonizing that night, and the seed for The Kinsey Sicks was planted.
If you’re wondering where the name came from, the number six on the Kinsey scale means exclusively homosexual. Ratings one through five are for those who report varying levels of attraction or sexual activity with either sex, and people at zero have exclusively heterosexual/opposite sex behavior or attraction.
The group has toured internationally with their recent musicals “I Wanna Be a Republican,” “Oy Vey in a Manger,” “Wake the F@#k Up America,” “Each Hit & I,” “Electile Dysfunction,” “America’s Next Top Bachelor Housewife Celebrity Hoarder Makeover Star Gone Wild,” and “Things You Shouldn’t Say.”
The Kinsey Sicks has been profiled on national television, including “20/20” and the “CBS Early Show” with Bryant Gumbel, as well as being highlighted in a lengthy cover feature in the arts section of The New York Times, a profile in The New Yorker, and an appearance on the finale of “RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8.”
The group last performed in Salt Lake City in May 2022 at the Salt Lake Masonic Temple for Flourish Bakery’s annual fundraiser. This year’s Utah show, which begins at 6 p.m., will be presented by SafeZone Utah/Utah LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce and Ed Turner.
Nathan Marken, who joined the group in 2014, hails from The Kinsey Sicks’ hometown of San Francisco. A lyric baritone and native of Illinois, Marken first heard of the group in the early 2000s as a collegiate music student and later joined as Winnie, who is a vegetarian, Jewish lesbian.
Marken has also performed in the ground-breaking immersive experience “The Speakeasy” and as the title role in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” produced by Boxcar Theatre. He’s also appeared in “Devil Boys from Beyond” and “Xanadu” at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, “The Rocky Horror Show”, “Le Nozze di Figaro” with Opera on Tap:SF, and “Insignificant Others” at Pier 39 in San Francisco. He has been a featured soloist with Soli Deo Gloria and the Mission Dolores Basilica Choir.
Marken spoke to Gephardt Daily from his new home base in Chicago, Illinois, where he also grew up, about his path to becoming a professional performer, his decade with the group, and what 2024 has in store for The Kinsey Sicks.
We asked him what his path has been to becoming a singer and actor.
“I come from a classical background, I have a master’s degree in classical singing from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music,” he said. “That is indirectly how I got connected to the group because I ended up doing a lot of theater, opera, cabaret in the Bay Area. I finished my masters and then I did a show at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, which is literally right around the corner from where I went to grad school, that’s where The Kinsey Sicks did a lot of their early works in the 90s and so when the group was looking for an understudy at the time, they reached out to the executive director there and he referred me, and I thought, this is something I could definitely do. And also at the same time, I was also getting into doing more and more drag, playing with makeup, playing with my own gender and exploring that. It was a perfect fit. For the group and for myself, when I joined the group in 2014.”
Marken explained that the group was on his radar before he became a permanent member.
“I heard of The Kinsey Sicks probably a little over a decade before I joined, when I was in college, because The Kinsey Sicks did a lot of college stuff in the early aughts,” he said. “I think an ex of mine who I knew at another college in Illinois; I grew up and went to college in Illinois. He went to another college and he brought The Kinsey Sicks to a regional LGBT collegiate conference. They were the entertainment, so he had told me about them. I knew of the group, I knew what they did, like OK, it’s drag. It’s parody. It’s edgy. It’s political. All great things, so I was like, that’s really cool. So, when there was an opening, I was thrilled to audition for them.”
Marken also told us about his audition for the group.
“The auditions have evolved over the years but they pretty much involve the same thing, where it’s very similar stuff,” he said. “We just did an audition process for another understudy and swing for the group. It’s changed a lot since the pandemic because we are able to conduct the entire process online which is incredible. Because it would have been unheard of when I auditioned in 2012, but I think I sang a song of my choosing, a couple of different songs of my choosing a capella and maybe, I don’t know if I did a monologue or not. But they had provided me with a few songs from their repertoire and I learned the part they were interested in, and that they wanted me to audition for, which was the bass part, Winnie, which is who I currently play. So I sang that with them and did some scene sides with them, just to banter and play with, you know, comedic timing and to get a feel for how my delivery was and how I would interpret the comedy of the script. So I did some singing, some comedy, cracked some jokes, and had some laughs.”
He added of the audition: “It was very supportive, I left feeling very supported from that. It was very positive. And obviously they wanted to work with me, in hindsight, at the time I’m like, well, we’ll see what happens. I felt as good about it as one can. The environment that they created and we try to create now when we audition people is it’s collaborative. We want to hear what somebody is bringing to the table, hear what their unique point of view is and how they interpret comedy, and how they want to use the medium that we play with in with drag and a capella to make an impact and to make a statement. It’s a statement enough to be a drag in the first place. With that great power does come a degree of responsibility and we want to know what excites you in terms of making social change and using this platform. That was also a conversation that we had, that we would have never actually had in audition before because it’s not normally part of the plan, it’s like, can you play the role, can you learn the role?”
Marken also talked about what “Drag Queen Storytime Gone Wild with The Kinsey Sicks” consists of.
“It’s chock full. It’s got a dozen new songs in it. It parodies that ruin childhood favorites from nursery rhymes to Disney,” he said. “It puts it in the context of a drag queen storytime; it’s gone wild, it’s certainly gone off the rails for sure. The loose plot that we sort of connect all this material to is the group’s been hired accidentally to perform at a conservative Christian elementary school. The principal, who happens to have the same name, happens to be Ron DeSantis and high jinks ensue and madness happens. It’s a laugh a minute, it’s a riot and it’s got some pointed moments to it.”
The show was also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland earlier this year.
“We’ll be doing a slightly longer version in Salt Lake City, fringe shows are typically an hour time slot, so we had to make critical choices and cut some darlings, but we put them back in the show and we’re excited to have the show in it’s full length, uncut, in Salt Lake City,” Marken explained.
He said the group had a great time performing at the Fringe Festival.
“It was terrific,” he said. “It had been about six years since the group had been to Edinburgh, between the pandemic and we had been doing a lot of stuff here in the U.S. in the years before the pandemic too. So it was a wonderful return. We got some terrific press. The audiences there loved the show every night, repeated standing ovations regardless of the size of the audience and people were not afraid to express how much they enjoyed the show. We had some big audiences for the most part, some smaller audiences depending on the night and at what point in the festival we were, even smaller audiences really enjoyed it too, so for us it was incredibly rewarding. It’s also an incredibly exhausting experience.
“The one hour we were on stage doing the show was probably like the least exhausting part of the experience; when you’re self-producing something at a festival and you’re one of 3,000 acts that’s performing all sorts of genres, you spend a good amount of your time flyering and doing promo, doing press and just trying to get traction or making yourself visible and known and available really. So there’s a lot to it. But also at the same time you’re engaging with other artists, you’re engaging with other people, you’re having the opportunity, since there are so many other artists there, to get the opportunity to see so much other work, and commentary and experiences from all over the planet, and I say that with no level of exaggeration, so it’s truly remarkable experience.”
Marken also talked about the group’s plan for 2024, which includes another new album.
“The ‘Storytime’ show is so successful and there’s so many other places we want to take this,” he said. “So as we are working on booking next year, it’s also the group’s 30th anniversary I might add, we’re crafting a show for the 30th anniversary, it’s a ‘best of.’ We’re really taking a new twist on what a Kinsey Sicks show is, we’re trying to kind of pack in as many songs as possible but also medleys and snippets and shtick that we have.
“So we are crafting that show, but we also recognize there’s lots of places that we want to take ‘Storytime’ to the people have not been able to see it. So we’re gonna be touring both of them. There’s tons of great repertoire in it that we want to give some more mileage, but we’re currently in post production process for a live album of the new songs that are in ‘Storytime,’ and there’s some surprise gems in there too; things that we have in the show that are part of our regular repertoire that we’re excited to have a live release of too. But all of the ‘Storytime’ songs we will have on the new album, that we hope to have released in the early part of 2024.”
Marken also spoke about what else in life brings him joy.
“I love to travel,” he said. “With The Kinsey Sicks, I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to travel to so many different places. It’s a double-edged sword because we’re able to see so many places and cultivate new relationships and friendships all over the world which makes you feel very connected. But also it has parts of your heart spread all over the place. There can be a lonely existence to it, but there’s also some incredibly fulfilling moments that come from that. I love to cook for myself and my family or friends, and I love to eat as well.
“I love the outdoors, I love hiking, when I was living in San Francisco, I was an avid cyclist. So I am so itching to have roots again and have a place finally that I can get my bike out here and get back in my saddle and everything. So those are things I love to do. I love reading, I read a lot of sci-fi, and I read a lot of non-fiction too; non-fiction related to queer culture, drag culture.”
Marken and the rest of the group also undertake volunteer work and activism.
“I’ve been nomadic since before the pandemic, so finding my roots, that’s my new goal; we’ve been traveling so much and not really needed to have roots but I really like to have a home base, hence I moved to Chicago,” he said. “But nothing connects you to a community better than serving it. When I was in San Francisco, I thoroughly enjoyed working with a bicycle coalition and advocating for safer streets. And the other thing I got into was getting into food scarcity. And working on addressing access to food and food deserts, which is where so many people live without access to a grocery store or some place to go eat; to easily access food within a mile of their homes, and in cities that really is really a critical thing, where a lot of people may not have vehicles. So it’s just stuff like that are passions of mine.”
He added: “Outside of my mere existence preserving the safety of myself and other queer people in the drag and the trans communities, so there’s no end to the things to be an activist for. And to that point, I’m glad that I’m able to still make a difference and have a platform with my work in The Kinsey Sicks and to be able to do shows like ‘Drag Queen Storytime’ that takes this right-wing hysteria head on, and I’m able to do that. Because I think, I think when it comes to activism, it’s important to do what you can, where you can, and making a difference where you are, you do what you can, so that’s what I’m able to do.”
For more information on The Kinsey Sicks, click here. For tickets to the Salt Lake show, click here.
