Debbie with a D Talks Theatre with a T 

Debbie with a D Talks Theatre with a T 

Bess Rowen 

In March of 2026, I had the pleasure of seeing my second Debbie with a D drag show in New Orleans. The first time I had seen her perform was as part of a drag brunch connected to the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival a few years ago, and this year she returned to the festival program with Debbie with a D’s Tennessee with the Tea. This adult Drag Queen Story Hour was produced by The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans, led by Co-Founding/Producing Artistic Directors Augustin Correro and Nick Shackleford. Drag queens Tara Shay Montgomery, Vantasia Divine, Muffy Vanderbilt III, Kozmik, Laveau Contraire, and Debbie herself each read the plot of a specific Tennessee Williams play before performing a lip sync inspired by the plot. Debbie served as the emcee and also contributed a story herself. After seeing her perform in two shows involving Tennessee Williams, I wanted to ask her more about her connection to theatre and how she sees it connecting to her drag work. And, of course, in the current political climate, I wanted to know more about how being a full-time drag queen feels at this moment. 

Debbie with a D has received many awards and honors, including two Mardi Gras Bourbon Street Awards, 2026 King Cake Queen, and Gambit’s #1 Drag Queen in New Orleans. You can also find her in the newest iteration of Queer as Folk. She is not only a celebrated and talented drag queen, but she also has a master’s degree in public health. She is particularly adept at combining her advocacy work in this field with her drag, which is something we discuss at the end of the following interview. We also discuss her theatrical origins, her love of Tennessee Williams, her drag journey, the importance of queer art, and how she came to be a public health drag queen. 

This interview was conducted via Zoom on April 24^th, 2026. It has been edited for length and clarity. 

Bess Rowen: Thanks so much for doing this! You had teased a bit of your theatrical past and your involvement with Tennessee Williams, so maybe we could start there? Or maybe how you got into drag?  

Debbie with a D: I guess the quickest way to go through it all is to start all the way back. I was homeschooled Pre-K through 12^th grade, but I was part of this megachurch. My father was a pastor, and they did huge theatrical productions for Christmas and Easter. And because I was homeschooled, that was my first introduction into a theatrical situation. Of course, I loved it! Once I started college, I still wanted to do like whatever theatre I could get into. But because it wasn’t part of the church and I wasn’t necessarily great because I hadn’t been to acting classes in home school, I was not getting roles in college. But I did do a bunch of theatre classes there, but oddly enough I did not really come across any of Tennessee Williams’s works at that point. 

BR: I’m not surprised by that. A lot of people don’t actually encounter him in the discipline of Theatre anymore. 

DwaD: It’s crazy! Because his work is so good.  

There were a couple other theatre-related things I did along the way. Eventually, I was cast in Picasso at the Lapin Agile in college. After coming out, leaving the church, and finishing college, I was working in a coffee shop—where I actually met my partner. He was in town for a post-bac program to get into medical school in New Orleans. He had already lived in New Orleans, so we always knew that he was going to be coming back. We did long distance for a little bit and then I followed him down here. I went and got my master’s in public health at Tulane. I didn’t want to move solely for a relationship, so I had to do something for myself. That’s why I went back to grad school.  

All of that time, there was no theatre really in my life. But then I got my day job managing a clinic at Crescent Care. About a year into that job, I started feeling like I had no big projects. I asked myself: What are my interests now? What are my hobbies and art? So I tried out for a play here in New Orleans and started working with a couple of the small production companies. Then I auditioned for a show at Le Petit Theatre and was cast in Jesus Christ Superstar. I was a swing, one of the priests, and an understudy for Jesus. But it was there that I met Augustin Correro and Nick Shackleford, co-founders of the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans. Nick was playing Jesus, and Augustin was the director. I had met Augustin earlier that year as he had come in and interviewed for a job in the clinic. Then, within that year, I auditioned for the show and he hired me. Shortly thereafter, they started the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans. They asked me if I’d be interested in being a production manager. I’d also started doing drag by then. I became the production manager for Small Craft Warnings and The Rose Tattoo in the first two years the company was producing work.  

BR: Weird Tales was the first thing I saw from Augustin and Nick. And that was before they had a connection with The Lower Depths Theater at Loyola University.  

DwaD: I had never experienced Tennessee Williams until I was the production manager for the company. And what was the first one they did? Kingdom of Earth! That was my first experience with Tennessee Williams. I went in not knowing anything. But I came out changed, and deeply feeling things. As someone who, at that point, had experienced lots theatre, it was just one of the most visceral feelings I’ve ever left a theatre feeling. Somehow, Williams makes new what you’ve been feeling your whole life. You think, “How did he put words to that?”  

BR: I am delighted by that way into Williams! I feel like we often encounter people who love Williams, and even queer people who love Williams, but most people only know the “big three”: A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. So, I’m delighted that your intro was Kingdom of Earth and Small Craft Warnings, which are absolutely bread and butter parts of what his entire work means to those of us who love all of it, but now what most people encounter for the first time. Have you ever seen or encountered those big ones that everyone talks about? And what did you think when you saw them? Were you expecting this other version of him and his work from later on in his career? 

DwaD: I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Le Petit the last time they did it. That was my first time seeing it. My second time seeing Cat was when the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans put it on.  

BR: Do you have a favorite Williams play? Is Small Craft Warnings your favorite?  

DwaD: Small Craft Warnings for sure is up there. I also love The Rose Tattoo. I love the scene where Serafina comes in covered in the ashes. Camino Real too.  

BR: So out there! But also a delight. There’s a one-act version and also a full-length version of Camino Real. The Williamstown Theater Festival did a production with Pamela Anderson this summer, which was the perfect casting that none of us knew we wanted.  

DwaD: That’s amazing. 

BR: It’s such a wackadoo play. I don’t know if you know where it comes in his oeuvre, but it’s after Streetcar and before Cat. Williams was convinced that it was going to be his next big hit. And people were like, “What is this?!” They kept putting him in this box of playwrights whose plays are sentimental and realistic. But he was never actually writing that. But Camino Real has these grander themes that I think—for those of us who really dig the later plays—are used to seeing. But boy were his audiences not ready for it when it premiered.  

DwaD: But maybe they are now. It’s like the original White Lotus!  

BR: That’s such a good connection! I have never thought about it like that, but absolutely. Talk about family dynamics gone astray, and failing aristocracy. 

DwaD: Miserable people that don’t necessarily meet, but then are all in the same station and place. But then: Who’s gonna die? 

BR: Is Small Craft Warnings the original White Lotus? 

DwaD: I think so. You heard it here first! 

BR: I think you’re so right that Williams puts words to things that we feel deeply. I think especially as queer people—although I don’t know that we have sole ownership over Williams at this point—we see that he has compassion for all of his characters. And he’s deeply interested in how society treats the most vulnerable. He’s able to really see that and unflinchingly look at that in a way that still makes it seem like there is hope.  

I’m wondering if you can loop in your fabulous drag work by talking a little more about this latest version of Debbie with a D’s Tennessee with the Tea that I know you’re doing in collaboration with Nick and Augustin. Can you talk a little more about how you got involved in that?  

DwaD: I’d like to jump back to the bookmark we left on my drag from before. I had just started my day job, finished grad school, and had done the production of Jesus Christ Superstar. After three weeks of intense rehearsals every night after work, and I was exhausted. I loved it, but it wasn’t sustainable and I had to pay off my student loans. So, I let theatre go for a while, but stil attended the various festivals in New Orleans on nights and weekends. But soon I started getting that theatre itch again. And I thought: I’m queer. I could try drag. But I had no clue where to start. It was Vinsantos DeFonte who started the New Orleans Drag Workshop. I had seen a couple of little articles pop up about that. I looked it up and sent him a message to see if I could join the workshop. I ended up being in the eighth cycle of that workshop. That experience gave me knowledge of the drag basics: what I need to purchase, creating a character, and starting on the journey of learning costuming, wigs, and makeup. Because each of those is its own profession! 

But an eight-week course does not a drag queen make. I started with a booking maybe once or  twice a month. But then the pandemic hit and I was locked in my house. I had so much time that I just started practicing a lot of those skills, and thankfully, it went really well. At one point, right before the pandemic hit, Poppy Tooker—an institution in New Orleans—put out a casting call for her Drag Queen Brunch book. It was a Facebook open call, so any drag queen who wanted to be in it could be in it. She could pay $50 for the day for the photo shoot. And I, being a new queen, was like “$50 for a gig? Absolutely!” But I think a lot of the other queens that had been doing it longer were not so impressed. But I lucked out and ended up on the back cover of that book. Then I ended up doing a bunch of brunches with Poppy at Tujague’s, Dickie Brennan’s, and all around New Orleans. So there’s the Vinsantos tie-in, the Nick and Augustin tie-in, and the Poppy Tooker tie-in. Unintentionally, these were my introductions into the Tennessee Williams scene in New Orleans. 

After the drag brunch book was published, I ended up getting a bunch of bookings, which allowed me to put more money into costuming and better products, and consequently more gigs. Later, I was on the new version of Queer As Folk as an extra in New Orleans, but that paid so much money. They wanted all the local queens to be in the show as regulars to make it feel like New Orleans. That pushed me to take the leap into full-time drag three years ago. 

BR: And here you are, a multi-award-winning drag queen.  

DwaD: I still cannot believe it. Through Poppy Tooker, I got involved in some of the Tennessee Williams drag brunches. And Nobu or [Dickie] Brennan’s wanted us to do a Tennessee Williams themed drag brunch. That was the first time I started thinking about what it would look like for a drag queen to interpret Tennessee Williams. I did a mix where I cut in different clips from Streetcar of Blanche saying crazy things into Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho.” 

BR: Yes, I remember that! And one of the other queens had been the runner-up in the Stella Shouting Contest that year, and she did the Stella shout for us. Iconic.  

DwaD: I think we did that show three times with Poppy. Then Nick and Augustin approached me about doing Tennessee with the Tea in the annual Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival in New Orleans. They were really the visionaries on the project. They approached it as a Drag Queen Story Hour where we would get local playwrights to write reimagined versions of the plays, and then various local queens reading the stories and interpreting them.   

BR: Now that you’ve gotten to do this show a few times, what’s your favorite play that’s covered in there? And were there plays that you didn’t know before the show?  

DwaD: At this point, I have seen everything covered in Tennessee with the Tea, so getting to see the drag interpretations has been a lot of fun since I get the references. But not all of the queens doing the interpretations have seen all the plays. Probably most of the queens didn’t really know much about Tennessee Williams other than A Streetcar Named Desire or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. So, some of them were like, “What the fuck is going on? What is the story here?” 

BR: Which is a correct response.   

DwaD: I loved it. It’s been fun to get to watch them know Tennessee Williams in this draggy way for the first time. And then get to explain to them a little bit the plot of each show.  

BR: I appreciate that when you set up the conceit of the show at the top you say that these are actually not exaggerated versions of the plot. The stories are literally telling the audience the plot, but I feel like some audience members don’t believe that. But it’s true! People are also rarely describing a Williams play blow by blow. Williams plays have been kind of deranged since the start, so that’s half the fun! 

DwaD: Yes. And my favorite performance in the show is probably The Glass Menagerie version that Muffy Vanderbilt III did as the unicorn. 

BR: The splicing of Menagerie with the Toni Braxton song “Un-Break My Heart” as “Un-Break My Horn!” was hilarious.  

As a Tennessee Williams scholar who also loves and writes about drag, I saw this show as an amalgamation of all the things I like in one place. The things that I love about Tennessee Williams are his deep sensitivity, and the ability to see the strange, the crazed, the queer, as the characters say in The Mutilated. You’re here to see the strange, the crazed, the queer, but you’re also here to see drag queens do what drag queens do best, which is to both poke fun and look at something from a really interesting angle; to highlight something you didn’t see before. They let you see the work in a completely different way. I mean, talking about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof dressed like Cat in the Hat, I was living. Like, give me a drag queen name pun in real life, Cat in a Hat on a Hot Tin Roof is exactly what I want. I mean, The Glass Menagerie is my favorite Williams play, and now I will never look at it again without thinking about “Un-Break My Horn”! 

What is your dream role, in drag or out, in Tennessee Williams’s oeuvre? 

DwaD: I think there are two that pop to my mind. One is Maxine from Night of the Iguana. And the other is Violet from Small Craft Warnings. I mean, come on, reimagined as a drag queen? Handies under the table? 

BR: Handies under the table, yes. But also such deep feeling. I love Violet. I also think a drag version of Maxine running the hotel in Night of the Iguana would be really fun. 

DwaD: Also Lot in Kingdom of Earth. He dresses in his mother’s clothes.  

BR: Definitely. Also, you’ve touched on this a little bit, but I’m curious about why you think we keep going back to Williams today, especially from a drag perspective.   

DwaD: As humans, we love stories and storytelling. But his work is more than just stories. It leaves you feeling more human. And somewhere in the midst of this onslaught of language and words—and bless all the Williams leading ladies who have to memorize all of that—something from the words falls away and you’re left with the emotion and impact of being human that Williams is trying to convey. I feel like his plays are like those optical illusions where if you look at it long enough, another picture emerges… 

BR: Magic Eye! 

DwaD: Tennessee Williams is Magic Eye. His words come at you fast and fierce, but once you sit there and lock in, you get what he’s saying. And not every playwright has that ability. With Williams, in just about every scene there are moments that you’re like “oh, they’re human. Oh I’m human. I felt that.” He was ahead of his time in storytelling, in creating relatable characters that are timeless. Regardless of it being decades after he has written these characters, they are still incredibly human. And there’s drama of course! And who doesn’t love a little bit of tea?  

BR: That’s beautifully put. Part of this interview series is also about what it’s like to make queer art now at this tumultuous moment. Williams is part of that, but as a queer artist who’s making queer art right now, what is that like?  

DwaD: Since it’s my full-time job, I have to find ways to be marketable in a country where an event can be targeted, or where it is not beneficial for a business or brunch spot to be widely visible. If they hire a drag queen now, they’re very clearly aligning themselves with one political view. It’s become very political to be visible. I have to find ways to survive and make a living by being palatable. However, I don’t always necessarily think of that part as creating the art. Being a drag queen and being visibly queer is an act of resistance at this juncture in the country. And so there is an aspect of any visibility—regardless of if it’s for work or as a creative outlet—there is an aspect of art in it because I’m a product of the time, and the things I’m doing are products of the time. But for me, it doesn’t always feel like that because I also do drag for a living. However, there are spaces when I get to do art more explicitly, and that is really special.  

I host this show at Oz on Tuesday nights on Bourbon Street—it’s a competition every week. It’s mostly drag queens who compete, but we’ll get some burlesque performers, drag kings, comedians, and live vocalists. But it’s heavily drag queens, and many of them trans. Especially over the last three years it’s been really great to see—and great to create a space—where there is a little bubble of safety, where everyone gets to be and express themselves through art. Part of my art is creating the space for others to create art. A lot of these queens have started their journey during the last three to five years while in this show. And that’s brave given the political state of things. Do we need to vote? Yes! Do we need to do other things? Yes! But in this queer space where we are creating art tonight, it is okay to take a deep breath, enjoy art, enjoy your creative process, and find a way to refresh oneself for the work ahead. So, I think that’s what queer art is doing now. It is an outlet and a way for us to take a breath, reflect, figure out what is important to us, so when it’s time to work, we can work.  

BR: Times of great political upheaval and repression often produce astonishing art. It’s radical to have a space of queer joy right now because there are people who don’t want that to exist. And I know whenever I’ve had the privilege to be in spaces like that, I always feel refueled and recharged. And that’s what drag does for me. That is why I try to see as much live drag as I possibly can, everywhere I go. That community and that art is sustaining, especially right now.  

DwaD: You know, I’m just putting it together right now, but you saying that you seek out drag wherever and thinking about how it helps us recharge—it’s kind of how we feel human, which is also what Tennessee Williams is doing. It’s like watching people create and perform their art that is about themselves. There’s something similarly trance-like, especially right now when it is political, and it means that much more that you’re being visible and okay with that. You are seeing someone who is being real, maybe afraid, but they’re being brave. You’re seeing all of these different aspects of a person and that’s so beautiful and relatable . And I think that touches on the things that Williams captures in those plays. He gets you to see those things in his characters. And maybe that’s why I like both of these things! 

BR: I love that connection. The vulnerability involved in making art that shows people as they truly are is definitely a commonality between Tennessee Williams and drag. I do think there’s a special experience I have when I watch drag as well as when I watch Williams’ plays. I’m on this ride, and I’m ready for you to take me wherever you want.  

I want to transition to another area of your life where I think you’re making some brave space and also leaning into your Master’s in Public Health and the training you have involved in keeping communities safe and informed. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got into this sort of activism, education, and work? 

DwaD: After I completed my Master’s degree, when I first started doing drag, I was still doing full-time work at the clinic. I was managing the HIV testing program, and a couple of the clinic’s programs had done community outreach. We had medical mobile units that went out to churches, parks, festivals, concerts and do free testing. We started giving out at-home HIV test kits. And we were doing testing at the bars in the French Quarter for years before the pandemic. When I started doing drag, I knew what was possible in terms of outreach from where I was performing and the resources I could bring into the community. I was doing grant writing for a CDC clinic and knew what deliverables they were looking for, especially community-based programs. We were supposed to identify members of the community who would be able to help us reach the community and make a finded program more likely to succeed.  

As I started doing drag, I was finding myself in this place where I was becoming that community person who knew everybody, and I was trusted by the community. I also had the access and knew how to code switch into the public health speak. Our healthcare system is a mess. A superpower I have is connecting people with resources. Even when I first started doing drag, I joked that I would be the “public health drag queen.” I created an event called Debbie with Plan B where I was bringing out Plan B and HIV test kits and then doing referrals for PrEP at the events. Eventually, the Plan B stuff dried up, but I was still able to have a medical mobile unit out or have someone from the clinic there for referrals. But I usually still had tests to give away, and that eventually turned into COVID test kits.  

When I made the jump to full-time drag, a clinic started asking if I’d be their person on the ground for PrEP referrals. They started compensating me to put on the talent competition that I was telling you about on Tuesday nights. They would sponsor a lip sync battle halfway through the show. I’d have two queens come out and do a lip sync battle, but before that, I’d say a sixty-second thing about PrEP and DoxyPEP and U=U [Undetectable = Untransmittable]. And then the lip sync battle would happen, and the audience would choose a winner. After that, I would quiz people on the information that I had told them. If they answered questions correctly, they got drink tickets. So there was motivation for people to recall that information. More recently, that also became connected with the anti-smoking campaign that Louisiana is doing too.  

BR: That’s fantastic! Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me.  

DwaD: Thank you!