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Coco Peru has a story for you. Catch this year’s Carnival Parade grand marshal in her Provincetown debut on Friday. |
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Drag Diva Coco Peru: the boy behind the girl
By Susan Rand Brown
Banner Correspondent
For her first time in Provincetown, comedic stage and screen personality Coco Peru, described as “hilarious, inebriating and elegant at the same time” (L.A. Weekly) and “a heavenly hoot” (Los Angeles Times), whose trademark look is more Doris Day than Dolly Parton, will find herself, as grand marshal of Thursday’s Carnival Parade, surrounded by thousands of glistening participants and spectators in Wild West drag.
On Friday, Aug. 22, the drag queen, whose lengthy list of film credits begins with “Wigstock: the Movie” (1995), performs at the UU Meeting House (see show details below). Peru is one of a trio of comedic icons, along with Provincetown’s Varla Jean Merman, to star in the first, award-winning “Girls Will Be Girls” (2003); two new “Girls Will Be Girls” featuring Peru were released this year. As in Shakespeare, all female roles, including extras, are played by men.
Coco Peru creator and actor Clinton Leupp, just back in Los Angeles after two weeks on the cruise circuit followed by three weeks in Spain with his long-time partner, Raphael (they recently married), shared his clear-eyed take on growing up as a visibly gay boy, and carving an identity as a stage personality, ultimately embracing the whole person he has struggled to become.
Early idols when this City Island, N.Y. native was coming of age were Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler, outrageous yet compassionate comic personalities “creating their own material and their own characters,” Leupp recalls. Later, through the work of playwright and drag performer Charles Busch, Leupp realized the potential of drag as full-blown theater.
Leupp had just gotten to college when homophobic slurs, directed at him, appeared on the bathroom wall. “Here we go again, I thought; I was so used to it, in high school. But by the end of those four years, I had become very popular, by just being myself, and being relatable.
“As a gay guy who was never going to be passing for straight, it was probably best for me to be openly gay on stage, and create my own character. I did a one-person show early on as myself,” Leupp says, speaking in a youthful, inflected voice. “All my friends came, and loved it; I was always considered funny. But I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. With friends who were sick, and dying of HIV/AIDS, I wanted to be an activist as well as an entertainer.”
There was an awful ACT UP meeting where people were screaming at each other. “It totally intimidated and frightened me; I knew I wasn’t ready to take that on. But I also thought, how do I change people’s minds, those who might not have a clear picture of who gay people were?
“Wouldn’t it be great if I did something in drag, I decided, where people perceive you as a drag queen in a way, but as I tell the story — my story — they would forget I’m a drag queen and just relate to the story. This is what I had in mind when I started writing my first drag show,” Leupp says.
Today, Coco Peru’s character and personality, her backstory, is memorable and loved. “I’m not impersonating a woman. It’s just an extension of me. I’m telling autobiographical stories, and Coco gives me the freedom to be a little more outrageous and say things I wouldn’t say in everyday life.
“Drag allows me to embrace a lot of the things I hated about myself growing up,” Leupp continues. “Having been called a girl-boy and all that, drag is a way of saying, I’m going to embrace everything that anybody said about me, and put it out there on stage. People have said I shouldn’t call myself a drag queen, that I do a disservice to myself.
“My reaction,” Leupp says, “is I’m proud to be what I am. When I see video footage of Stonewall, I am proud to be a part of that history. I’m not saying that I am historical, but just being out there doing the drag, on television, in movies … I have young nephews, who know Uncle Raphael, and who know Coco, and who think it’s great that I dress up as a girl. In this way, I am changing the world.”
“Miss Coco Peru in Concert” will be performed at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 22, at the UU Meeting House, 236 Commercial St., Provincetown ($25 in advance, $30 at the door, if available.) Advance tickets can be purchased at Ptown.org, or at the Fire House next to Town Hall.
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Principal resigns
George J. Silva Jr., 64
Posted Meetings
Outer Cape Worship Services
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Aug 21st, 2008