Rust Belt updates "Drag Queen" moves to bigger hall

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Robert Dennick Joki’s offbeat holiday mainstay “How The Drag Queen Stole Christmas” will return for its seventh year with new songs, characters and plot twists — and in a new location.

Performances will be at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and again Dec. 7 and 8, with an extra-risque midnight showing Dec. 8.

The Rust Belt Theater Company show will take place in the gymnasium of Calvin Center in order to meet demand for tickets, said Joki, who wrote “Drag Queen,” and also directs and stars in it.

“We have had to turn away hundreds of people over the years because we just couldn’t fit them into the old space,” said Joki. “At the Calvin Center, the number of seats can be doubled from what it used to be.”

The show had been staged at the Oakland Center for the Arts in past years.

Joki is the founder of Rust Belt Theater Company, also located in Calvin Center, 755 Mahoning Ave.

Loosely based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” “Drag Queen” follows the story of drag queen tyrant Starrlet O’Hara as she is visited by three ghostly divas on Christmas Eve.

The show is rewritten each year, taking cues from politics and pop culture, and has become a local favorite among theater patrons.

Audiences can look forward to new characters and plot twists in this year’s production, as well as five new songs: “Good Morning Youngstown,” “Apocalypse,” “Dragzilla,” “I’m Gonna Get Some Sleep if it Kills Me” and the new finale, “Drag it Out for the Holidays!”

Joki has once again teamed up with local musician Josh Taylor to create the new score.

The cast also includes Nicole Zayas, Marisa Zamary, Kelsie Moon, Celena Pollock Coven, Andrew Labedz, David Cirelli, Rachel Lynn Clifford, Vincent Sylvester, Jo Ellen Jacob, Beth Farrow, Lynn Sabeh, Kage Coven, Crystal Beiersdorfer, Tyler Norris, Murad Shorrab, Brooke Shorrab and Harrison Shorrab.

There will be a reception at intermission each night, as well as a silent auction featuring gift certificates from local businesses and restaurants, and the work of local artists.