Preston Meneses
Audio By Carbonatix
If being a showgirl isn’t as glamorous as it seems, Sasha Colby has us fooled.
Last year, her Stripped Tour made history as Live Nation’s first tour with a drag performer headlining. With the Stripped II run — which arrives in Dallas at House of Blues on Friday, Oct. 3 — Colby is turning up the heat.
“If you went to see Stripped I, it is not the same as Stripped II,” Colby tells us. “It’s in the same world, but totally different stories, different costumes and a brand-new show. It’s a definite way to escape for a good hour-and-a-half and to really explore creativity and other worlds and other exciting dimensions.”
Stripped II showcases various elements of the Drag Race season 15 winner’s lip sync prowess while also pulling back the curtain with sketches that re-tell stories from Colby’s life. The show’s arrival comes at a time when restrictions on drag performances are a buzzy subject, and as trans rights are being threatened. But Colby, who is transgender, says the newest iteration of her show is a form of protest while homing in on the feminine mystique by channeling different archetypes.
“We’re working with a lot of different high-feminine characters, like the siren, the showgirl, the goddess, the vamp and really just having a lot of fun,” Colby says. “Because there’s not a lot of fun going around nowadays in the world.”
Colby’s career spans nearly three decades, during which she’s watched the drag landscape evolve immensely. She’s grateful to have witnessed new eras of drag performers, including AFAB queens, trans-masc performers and drag kings. She says the growing visibility in the community has been essential, especially in the current political climate.
“Having my good, close friends around and people we can rely on and find support in are the two things that I find I really lean on,” she says. “And that’s what I’m trying to convey with the show. Hopefully, people can really remember that when they’re thinking about how to not feel completely useless in these times.”
Though times may be polarizing, one thing that does give Colby hope is the fact that drag is, for now, at least, more accessible than it’s ever been. Many bars, venues and clubs — both inside and outside of local “gayborhoods” — often host events like drag bingo or curate performances and brunch shows of their own, a testament to how far the industry has grown since she first stepped on the stage.
“I come from the generation where you had to go to a club and find drag, and you had to really seek it out, and it was only maybe during the weekends,” Colby says. “And now you can see it on every television, and it’s so accessible — it’s really wild, because drag was always about mirroring pop culture. And now I feel like drag is a part of pop culture. We’re really the tastemakers and trendsetters, which is really cool because we are really cool people.”
Since her time on Drag Race, Colby has become a rising figure in pop culture herself. But despite her status as one of the most recognizable names in mainstream drag, she still carries the gratitude from her earliest days as a performer.
“I feel like I do the same amount of drag because I was always working hard and always doing any gig I could,” she says. “And I still had that same mentality, but I just get to do it on such a large scale [now]. I get to meet more people and travel different cities and soak up different cultures. The opportunities I’ve had from being on a television show and having such an amazing, huge fan base made whatever dream I could possibly dream up come true because of drag.”
Tickets for the Stripped II Tour stop at House of Blues Dallas are available now.
