Posted on March 14, 2019
Oh this was one heck of a Birthday Party. It was the nicest and gayest gathering I’d been to for a long time. It was like Pride but without the getting sad. Pride is political and makes me reflect on injustice and closets.
What is it?
House of Daze are a drag collective in Norwich. They have been running Take the Weight off Your Mascara out of The Birdcage for the past year. Now they are putting on a huge show to celebrate that milestone. I’ve put their trailer at the bottom of this post. It is representative of the show.
Hello Ladies!
Five queens came onto the stage to chears and wolf whistles. They are The House of Daze and most of the audience already loves them. At the end of the show I understand why. Liv, Blazing Rose, Sylvia Daze, Devil Child, and Bishie Barnabee.
One of the performers, Blazing Rose, is a cis woman which is cool. Especially nice for the teen girls in the front row to see unashamed femininity is for everyone who wants it.
Solo Numbers
The solo numbers start with a duet from Silvia and Blazing Rose followed by numbers by Liv (with a monster round her shoulders), Bishie Barnabee, and Devil Child (with her boob tube falling down). I should have taken notes. They were engaging performances with energy and slipping costumes.
There’s then a bit of back and forth with their special guest: Ginny Lemon, a drag queen from Birmingham. Very from Birmingham. She has great patter and physicality. She might look uncordordinated but it’s all part of the act. She had a few numbers where she sang (rather than miming) and danced infront of projections of herself. I was loving it before she covered one of my favorite Eurovision songs:
The Audience
Waiting for the show to resume I watch the crowd from the bar balcony. There were extravagantly dressed queens and young women in bondage gear, old gays in smart casual and families with teenage girls. It was nice to see so many different people come out for this kind of thing. There was a small group in the audience in the second act who didn’t seem to be watching the show but no trouble.
I am dressed like an idiot in my aunt’s giant pink hat with matching dress and gloves. Glad I wore my platform heels too, as this is a tall crowd.
The Second Act
This is definatly a Birthday Party. They had a cake on stage and party games! Members of the audience were take on stage and asked to make outfits out of silly string for a fashion competition.
After the stage was cleaned up they asked all the kings and queens who had performed with them over the past year to come on stage and strut. There were such a varity of performers. Who knew we could have that in Norwich! I can’t find any information on the one with a blue hawk nose and rubber hair but they were fantastic.
More audience particiation with a catwalk competition, now everyone had been shown how to do it. The guy who actually knew how to vouge won.
The closing number
Thought I would miss it as my very heterosexual boyfriend came to pick me up before the show was over. He’s not interested in this sort of thing but joined me for the last ten minutes. We watched the closing number, Proud Mary, together. He let me enjoy it and we didn’t stay for the party. This was the one party that could be wilder than the last bus to Great Yarmouth on a Saturday night. Ginny Lemon is performing in Yarmouth soon for Quay Pride and wow is he not interested. And I super respect that. I’ve tried watching videogame tornaments and that’s not for me.
