Join Kris Andersson, creator, playwright, performer, and director of Dixie’s Never Wear a Tube Top While Riding a Mechanical Bull and 16 Other Things I Learned While I Was Drinking Last Thursday, and DMPA President and CEO Jeff Chelesvig for our latest episode. The duo chat about the origins of Dixie, her history in Des Moines, and why this iconic Tupperware lady appeals to so many folks.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
Thank you for joining us for thisepisode of DMPA Conversations. I'm Jeff Chelswig,
President and CEO of des Moin PerformingArts. This episode features Chris Anderson,
who in two thousand and seven createdthe character of Dixie Longate in the
show Dixie's Tupperware Party, which wefirst presented at the Temple Theater in two
thousand and eight. Chris is thecreator, playwright, performer and director of
(00:30):
our current show at the Temple Theater, Dixie's Never Wear a Tube Top while
writing a Mechanical bull and sixteen otherthings I learned while I was drinking last
Thursday. This show is part ofour Prairie Meadows Temple Comedy series and runs
through March seventeenth. These podcasts aredesigned to give you an insider's perspective of
the fantastic performances headed to dmpa's stages. Thank you again for joining us,
(00:54):
and now here's my conversation with ChrisAnderson. Let's start from the very beginning.
Let's start from the creation of thecharacter that you created, Dixie Longate.
Tell us a little bit about howall of this evolved. It's the
(01:14):
weirdest situation where yeah, I wasan actor. I studied acting, That's
what I went to school for.I was living in Los Angeles, ebbing
and flowing as actors do. Youwork a little bit, you stop working,
you work a little bit. Anda friend of mine had a top
war party and I thought that wasa riot. I'm like, oh,
yeah, I've got to go tothat that it reminds me of my mom
and the nostalgia the little thing.So went to the top wear party and
(01:36):
the woman was very funny, shewas very good, and she was very
convincing. It was. She triedto get everybody after the party to sign
up. And a friend of minethat was there, it's like, oh,
you'd be great at this. You'refunny and you have an improv background,
and this would be a great thingfor you. So he kind of
dared me to do it, andthen he said you should do it in
drag and I call all together acostume. Most things I borrowed from friends
(01:59):
of mine, a wig, anoutfit and everything, and just started doing
topwur parties. And I was terribleat the beginning. I'd pick up a
bowl and call it a spoon,and I just there was no float or
whatever. I was doing. Iwas like, hey, these are great
products, and my mom had themand you should buy them. And there
you go, and I started doingreally well, just selling things, as
sort of irony would have it.I was doing a bunch of parties in
Orange County, California, and oneof the hosts of one of the parties
(02:22):
said, look, I've got afriend that works for the Orange County Register,
which is the big paper down there. It would be okay that came
in, took a few pictures anddid a little story. So a couple
of weeks later, I get acall. They're like, have you seen
it? Have you seen it?You were the front page. So two
full color pictures right on the front, above the fold, and then on
the second page, two black andwhite pictures. It was a huge article
about the parties and how fun theywere and everything. So I had gotten
(02:44):
a call from the interviewer saying,Hey, if we want people to get
a hold of you for a partyor whatever, what should we do,
And so I said, I guessjust put my phone number. So they
published my phone number in the paperand I woke up the next morning and
my answering machine was full, andit was just a message upon message upon
message of people going I saw youa neighbor, or what every party?
(03:05):
What was that? And so thatsort of was the catalyst of how the
business exploded. And then I wastalking to a friend of mine who's the
director of New York and telling him, you know, what are you working
on? And I said, well, I'm doing this little Toughware party thing,
and he said, that's a show. There's a show in there,
and so we talked about it fora while and then we put it together.
It's a show. We took itto New York, did it there,
(03:27):
and it got a lot of attention, and that kind of got some
people to see it, and thatthrough a series of situations that escalated that
up to getting an off Broadway developmentrun. So that happened in two thousand
and seven. There was a bookor attached to it that said, you
know, hey, this could gowell on the road if you want to
try it. And so it wasabout writing it and creating the right version
(03:52):
of this show, and having doneToughware in people's living rooms for so long,
it just really became apparent to methat I wanted to tell the story
of you know, women's empowerment.I wanted this to be a love letter
to all the women who feel likethey are not enough, the women who
always kind of thought like, oh, the husband comes first or the kids
(04:12):
come first. I'm always in thebackground. And so that's how I wrote
it and structured it and I didit, you know. So it's an
allegory for women's empowerment, all toldthrough the tup War party and you guys,
and this is what I love aboutDes Moines so much. You were
where the show opened in two thousandand eight. You were our first market
for the tour. You took itsight unseen. You had a little bit
(04:33):
of paperwork. In fairness, Ihad a little bit of paperwork. I
had a YouTube video that was sentto me by the booking agent and I
said, we're in. And wedid twelve performances, did great business,
and we've had Tupperware here five timesnow. Yeah, it's crazy. It's
been a fantastic run. And thankyou, thank you so much for always
(04:55):
you know, opening up the door. It's so funny because people think that
I'm from there. People think thatthey that's why I just keep coming back
and doing the show. People thatdon't realize it's a tour and they keep
you know, they'll come up tome after the show, like what part
of the city do you live?And I don't. I'm not from here
to the hotel. Well, let'ssegue to Tube Top because that's the show
(05:17):
you're bringing to Des Moines and we'vehad the show here before. It was
in twenty fifteen. Tell us alittle bit about the startup of this show.
I had been called by the peopleof the Denver Center for the Performing
Arts, and that is another placethat we had just been. There's something
like thirty nine weeks if you addup all the runs we've done, so
I practically do live there. Butthey were calling back, and I think
(05:41):
it was they were asking for maybeeither the third or probably the fourth round
on TopWare, and I thought,I'm actually getting a little nervous. Have
we we kind of outlived the audience? Aren't the audiences ready for something else?
And I know we always sell reallywell and we'd love to come back
and there's always demand, so andI said, not even thinking about it,
I'm like, well, what ifI I gave you a new show?
And you know, the ears wentup like Scooby Doo and They're like,
(06:03):
what do you mean, and soI'm like, well, maybe a
show about you know, the lifeplessence that Dixie has learned. Let's,
you know, let's take the characterout of the Tupware realm and let's like
Dixie's Tupware party to me is Dixieat work and Tube Top would be Dixie
at play kind of thing. SoI'm like, let's people tend to like
her, so let's see if wecan move her into a different environment.
(06:26):
And we talked and it was anotherthing that like I pitched the show.
I didn't have a script yet,but they're like, we love this,
we love this idea, and we'llget on board. And I was like,
okay, well that means I guesswe'll develop it. Well, little
did I know, Denver Center broughtme back in for four weeks of Tupware
and they said, we're going totack this on at the end, so
we'll be here seven weeks Tuttle Do, four weeks of to War, three
(06:47):
weeks of Tube Top, and Ithought, okay, great, and that
then meant it's a fully produced show. And they're like, oh yeah,
tickets are on sale and I don'thave a show yet. And so I
I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted it to be, you
know, the title never were twotop wile riding a mechanical bull and sixteen
other things I learned while I wasdrinking last Thursday. I wanted it to
(07:08):
be life lessons that Dixie teaches youfrom the most odd way. And I
thought, Oh, everything you everneed to know in life, you even
learned by riding a mechanical bull.So how can I take lessons from running
a bull and extrapolate those into life? And so I sat down I was
writing them and figuring out and thenI remember when I was a kid.
We had HBO for a hot secondwhen I was a kid, until my
(07:30):
parents were like, there's nudity andsex on that, we're getting rid of
it. So back in the day, this is in the eighties early eighties,
they would run movies over and overand over and over and over and
over and over again, so youjust sort of memorized movies. Well,
there was a movie called SOB whichis Blake Edwards movie starring Julie Andrews,
and the movie is about kind ofautobiographically, this woman who is the darling
(07:54):
of kids movies and she's getting stuckin a rut and she doesn't know what
to do, and they make thisthis movie. Haspent all this money and
it flops, and so they goback and say, hey, let's make
this movie, but do it asan adult movie. And so all they
do is they or you shoot thisone scene where she takes her top off.
The entire movie drives to that sectionwhere she takes her top off.
And I remember when I was akid, I knew about the movie because
(08:16):
I would see the trailer on atree all the time, and so my
parents were watching it one night.I was looking through the loover doors and
you know, at that moment andshe takes her top off, and I'm
like, oh my gosh, thisis this woman that everybody has this incredibly
high opinion of, that everybody likes. There's nobody that has a negative thing
to say about Julie Andrews, andshe just completely changed up everybody's perception about
(08:41):
her. But nobody ever, youknow the term we used today, slut
shameder. Nobody ever told her shewas bad. Nobody ever, like her
career wasn't over because of it.She was still considered this kind of grown
dumb, and I thought, there'sa story in there that I think is
really great about finding your own pathand autopologizing for what you're doing. And
(09:01):
so I made her kind of thehero of the story. That was how
it I'm like, Okay, howdo I put her in here? And
how do I kind of tether thestory to her? And so I sat
down and started writing and writing andwriting, and came up with neverwork tooped
up or writing a mechanical bowl.And then we premiered it at Denver Center
and I invited a bunch of presentersup to see it and like, if
(09:24):
we were going to tour it,would this be something you would want?
And it was a very positive response, and so everybody jumped in. And
the thing that I remember that I'llalways sort of it's my favorite little story.
I remember drawing the idea for theset on a nap get, like
on a piece of paper, andI was like, oh, this is
kind of what I want the setto look like. And I didn't see
(09:45):
anything during the production period because Iwas working, and I remember walking in
and seeing the full set and Icried and I was like, oh my
god, somebody took my dumb littleidea and they made it real and it
was the most overall moment for meas a creative artist to look at it
and go, it's not just mea a tupperware table in a couple of
(10:05):
bowls anymore. This is people takinga risk on me as an artist above
that and to tell a story thatthey think their audiences will really connect to.
And it was a real watershed momentfor me as an artist. Tell
us a little bit about why youthink Dixie is such a beloved character and
what makes her connect with people.As I have described her in the past,
(10:28):
she to me is a metaphor.She is that place in the base
of your spine that has to stiffin for a fight. She doesn't back
down, she doesn't apologize for whoshe is and what she is. And
she's not this kind of like,look at me, I'm better than you,
I'm polished. No, she's damaged. She and she wears all that
damage in front of everybody for themto see. But there's not a mean
(10:50):
bone in her body. And sheeven when she says the wrong things and
seeks her foot in her mouth repeatedly, she's doing it out of grace.
And out of kindness and out ofher wanting the world to be better,
and she doesn't know how to makesure everything is good, but she knows
when things are bad, and shegoes, well, if I do this,
this result happens. And I don'twant that result. So at least
I know what doesn't work. Letme keep trying to know what does work.
(11:13):
And I think being so comfortable inher flaws it makes her human and
it makes people connect with her inthat way because they see those things about
themselves, but they look at herand go but somehow she is okay with
it. How can I get tobe okay with it like that? And
I think that's what galvinizes people toher so much, is that she is
this. She's somebody that we hopewe can be like. She's the wingwoman
(11:37):
that stands by you at the barand says, girl, I got you,
what do you need? Let's fight, you know? And I think
people like her for that. Andit's interesting because I never set out to
make a career out of this character, and then when I started seeing how
people were affected by her and themessage, it just became a natural,
like, let me keep going,let me keep creating let me keep writing
(11:58):
because it's touching people way that Ithink is kind of significant. And you
know, now drag has become soculturally relevant, it's everywhere, and I
never you know, the thing thatwe do that's different with Dixie. Dixie
in our world isn't a drag queen. She's a real woman who exists from
Alabanda. She's got three kids,she's got three failed marriages, like these
are all real things. It's notwhat you see in sort of current drag
(12:22):
culture. So I've always kind ofseparated her from that because it's there're two
kind of different artistic forms of thesame thing. For me, So I
you know, I never wanted itto be like making fun of women are
poking fun it at, you know, their struggles. I always wanted to
be like, no, let meshow it to you in the way I
hear the struggle and if I canreflect back a possibility that you might not
(12:46):
have thought of before. And soyou know, again, the first time
we saw Dixie here in de Winin two thousand and eight, You've been
here so many times, I thinkone hundred and thirty five performances so far
and over twenty two thousand people haveseen you here at the Temple. Oh
it's funny because I rarely get itput into numbers like that, So that's
like three Taylor Swift concerts. Butno, you know, it's so funny
(13:13):
because when you think of des Moinesand you think of the Flyover States,
you think of sort of the forgottenpeople. And I thought, oh my
god, I'm starting my show inDes Moines. This is weird. I
don't know, I I've never been. The house is going to work.
And the kindness and the graciousness fromthe audience was so wonderful and continues to
be and I will never forget.There was like a Austin and wife that
(13:33):
came and they sat at some ofthe tables right in front. The guy
was literally wearing overalls and he's like, well, my wife says, are
funny. So I figured I'd giveit a try. And it just was
like he got off the tractor andcame to the theater, and I'm like,
this is amazing that somebody that youwould never think would be at a
theater is coming to a theater togive you guys a chance, give me
(13:54):
a chance, give the artistic frameworkof theater a chance, and you're like,
yeah, it really shows that youcan't ever judge a book by its
cover, and just I don't know, there's so much about the Demina audiences.
They are so kind and graceful andwonderful. And I've gotten countless letters
and messages on social media from theaudiences there, just being so graceful and
(14:16):
kind and just telling me that whatI said, what I did in the
show, how what I said tothem after the show when I did meet
Greed was you know, kind oflike altered their ideas, their framework of
how they live. And that's justyou can never put a price tag on
that. It's just so amazing.That's fantastic. Chris, thank you so
much for taking the time. We'reso looking forward to having you in Des
(14:37):
Moines through March seventeenth, final performanceon Saint Patrick's Day. Just saying not
to be irish and dix your redhead, so there's got to be able to
be irish in there somewhere. Allright, We'll see you soon. Thanks
Chris, take care. Thank youso much, Jeff, I appreciate itciate
(15:00):
you joining us for this special conversationThe DMPA Conversations podcast is produced by Andrew
Downs. To our donors and seasonticket holders, thank you for providing the
foundation for great performances and educational opportunitiesat Des Moines Performing Arts. Visit DMPA
dot org or wherever you get yourpodcasts for future conversations like this one.
(15:22):
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for joining us for thisepisode of DMPA Conversations. I'm Jeff Chelswig,
President and CEO of des Moin PerformingArts. This episode features Chris Anderson,
who in two thousand and seven createdthe character of Dixie Longate in the
show Dixie's Tupperware Party, which wefirst presented at the Temple Theater in two
thousand and eight. Chris is thecreator, playwright, performer and director of
(00:30):
our current show at the Temple Theater, Dixie's Never Wear a Tube Top while
writing a Mechanical bull and sixteen otherthings I learned while I was drinking last
Thursday. This show is part ofour Prairie Meadows Temple Comedy series and runs
through March seventeenth. These podcasts aredesigned to give you an insider's perspective of
the fantastic performances headed to dmpa's stages. Thank you again for joining us,
(00:54):
and now here's my conversation with ChrisAnderson. Let's start from the very beginning.
Let's start from the creation of thecharacter that you created, Dixie Longate.
Tell us a little bit about howall of this evolved. It's the
(01:14):
weirdest situation where yeah, I wasan actor. I studied acting, That's
what I went to school for.I was living in Los Angeles, ebbing
and flowing as actors do. Youwork a little bit, you stop working,
you work a little bit. Anda friend of mine had a top
war party and I thought that wasa riot. I'm like, oh,
yeah, I've got to go tothat that it reminds me of my mom
and the nostalgia the little thing.So went to the top wear party and
(01:36):
the woman was very funny, shewas very good, and she was very
convincing. It was. She triedto get everybody after the party to sign
up. And a friend of minethat was there, it's like, oh,
you'd be great at this. You'refunny and you have an improv background,
and this would be a great thingfor you. So he kind of
dared me to do it, andthen he said you should do it in
drag and I call all together acostume. Most things I borrowed from friends
(01:59):
of mine, a wig, anoutfit and everything, and just started doing
topwur parties. And I was terribleat the beginning. I'd pick up a
bowl and call it a spoon,and I just there was no float or
whatever. I was doing. Iwas like, hey, these are great
products, and my mom had themand you should buy them. And there
you go, and I started doingreally well, just selling things, as
sort of irony would have it.I was doing a bunch of parties in
Orange County, California, and oneof the hosts of one of the parties
(02:22):
said, look, I've got afriend that works for the Orange County Register,
which is the big paper down there. It would be okay that came
in, took a few pictures anddid a little story. So a couple
of weeks later, I get acall. They're like, have you seen
it? Have you seen it?You were the front page. So two
full color pictures right on the front, above the fold, and then on
the second page, two black andwhite pictures. It was a huge article
about the parties and how fun theywere and everything. So I had gotten
(02:44):
a call from the interviewer saying,Hey, if we want people to get
a hold of you for a partyor whatever, what should we do,
And so I said, I guessjust put my phone number. So they
published my phone number in the paperand I woke up the next morning and
my answering machine was full, andit was just a message upon message upon
message of people going I saw youa neighbor, or what every party?
(03:05):
What was that? And so thatsort of was the catalyst of how the
business exploded. And then I wastalking to a friend of mine who's the
director of New York and telling him, you know, what are you working
on? And I said, well, I'm doing this little Toughware party thing,
and he said, that's a show. There's a show in there,
and so we talked about it fora while and then we put it together.
It's a show. We took itto New York, did it there,
(03:27):
and it got a lot of attention, and that kind of got some
people to see it, and thatthrough a series of situations that escalated that
up to getting an off Broadway developmentrun. So that happened in two thousand
and seven. There was a bookor attached to it that said, you
know, hey, this could gowell on the road if you want to
try it. And so it wasabout writing it and creating the right version
(03:52):
of this show, and having doneToughware in people's living rooms for so long,
it just really became apparent to methat I wanted to tell the story
of you know, women's empowerment.I wanted this to be a love letter
to all the women who feel likethey are not enough, the women who
always kind of thought like, oh, the husband comes first or the kids
(04:12):
come first. I'm always in thebackground. And so that's how I wrote
it and structured it and I didit, you know. So it's an
allegory for women's empowerment, all toldthrough the tup War party and you guys,
and this is what I love aboutDes Moines so much. You were
where the show opened in two thousandand eight. You were our first market
for the tour. You took itsight unseen. You had a little bit
(04:33):
of paperwork. In fairness, Ihad a little bit of paperwork. I
had a YouTube video that was sentto me by the booking agent and I
said, we're in. And wedid twelve performances, did great business,
and we've had Tupperware here five timesnow. Yeah, it's crazy. It's
been a fantastic run. And thankyou, thank you so much for always
(04:55):
you know, opening up the door. It's so funny because people think that
I'm from there. People think thatthey that's why I just keep coming back
and doing the show. People thatdon't realize it's a tour and they keep
you know, they'll come up tome after the show, like what part
of the city do you live?And I don't. I'm not from here
to the hotel. Well, let'ssegue to Tube Top because that's the show
(05:17):
you're bringing to Des Moines and we'vehad the show here before. It was
in twenty fifteen. Tell us alittle bit about the startup of this show.
I had been called by the peopleof the Denver Center for the Performing
Arts, and that is another placethat we had just been. There's something
like thirty nine weeks if you addup all the runs we've done, so
I practically do live there. Butthey were calling back, and I think
(05:41):
it was they were asking for maybeeither the third or probably the fourth round
on TopWare, and I thought,I'm actually getting a little nervous. Have
we we kind of outlived the audience? Aren't the audiences ready for something else?
And I know we always sell reallywell and we'd love to come back
and there's always demand, so andI said, not even thinking about it,
I'm like, well, what ifI I gave you a new show?
And you know, the ears wentup like Scooby Doo and They're like,
(06:03):
what do you mean, and soI'm like, well, maybe a
show about you know, the lifeplessence that Dixie has learned. Let's,
you know, let's take the characterout of the Tupware realm and let's like
Dixie's Tupware party to me is Dixieat work and Tube Top would be Dixie
at play kind of thing. SoI'm like, let's people tend to like
her, so let's see if wecan move her into a different environment.
(06:26):
And we talked and it was anotherthing that like I pitched the show.
I didn't have a script yet,but they're like, we love this,
we love this idea, and we'llget on board. And I was like,
okay, well that means I guesswe'll develop it. Well, little
did I know, Denver Center broughtme back in for four weeks of Tupware
and they said, we're going totack this on at the end, so
we'll be here seven weeks Tuttle Do, four weeks of to War, three
(06:47):
weeks of Tube Top, and Ithought, okay, great, and that
then meant it's a fully produced show. And they're like, oh yeah,
tickets are on sale and I don'thave a show yet. And so I
I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted it to be, you
know, the title never were twotop wile riding a mechanical bull and sixteen
other things I learned while I wasdrinking last Thursday. I wanted it to
(07:08):
be life lessons that Dixie teaches youfrom the most odd way. And I
thought, Oh, everything you everneed to know in life, you even
learned by riding a mechanical bull.So how can I take lessons from running
a bull and extrapolate those into life? And so I sat down I was
writing them and figuring out and thenI remember when I was a kid.
We had HBO for a hot secondwhen I was a kid, until my
(07:30):
parents were like, there's nudity andsex on that, we're getting rid of
it. So back in the day, this is in the eighties early eighties,
they would run movies over and overand over and over and over and
over and over again, so youjust sort of memorized movies. Well,
there was a movie called SOB whichis Blake Edwards movie starring Julie Andrews,
and the movie is about kind ofautobiographically, this woman who is the darling
(07:54):
of kids movies and she's getting stuckin a rut and she doesn't know what
to do, and they make thisthis movie. Haspent all this money and
it flops, and so they goback and say, hey, let's make
this movie, but do it asan adult movie. And so all they
do is they or you shoot thisone scene where she takes her top off.
The entire movie drives to that sectionwhere she takes her top off.
And I remember when I was akid, I knew about the movie because
(08:16):
I would see the trailer on atree all the time, and so my
parents were watching it one night.I was looking through the loover doors and
you know, at that moment andshe takes her top off, and I'm
like, oh my gosh, thisis this woman that everybody has this incredibly
high opinion of, that everybody likes. There's nobody that has a negative thing
to say about Julie Andrews, andshe just completely changed up everybody's perception about
(08:41):
her. But nobody ever, youknow the term we used today, slut
shameder. Nobody ever told her shewas bad. Nobody ever, like her
career wasn't over because of it.She was still considered this kind of grown
dumb, and I thought, there'sa story in there that I think is
really great about finding your own pathand autopologizing for what you're doing. And
(09:01):
so I made her kind of thehero of the story. That was how
it I'm like, Okay, howdo I put her in here? And
how do I kind of tether thestory to her? And so I sat
down and started writing and writing andwriting, and came up with neverwork tooped
up or writing a mechanical bowl.And then we premiered it at Denver Center
and I invited a bunch of presentersup to see it and like, if
(09:24):
we were going to tour it,would this be something you would want?
And it was a very positive response, and so everybody jumped in. And
the thing that I remember that I'llalways sort of it's my favorite little story.
I remember drawing the idea for theset on a nap get, like
on a piece of paper, andI was like, oh, this is
kind of what I want the setto look like. And I didn't see
(09:45):
anything during the production period because Iwas working, and I remember walking in
and seeing the full set and Icried and I was like, oh my
god, somebody took my dumb littleidea and they made it real and it
was the most overall moment for meas a creative artist to look at it
and go, it's not just mea a tupperware table in a couple of
(10:05):
bowls anymore. This is people takinga risk on me as an artist above
that and to tell a story thatthey think their audiences will really connect to.
And it was a real watershed momentfor me as an artist. Tell
us a little bit about why youthink Dixie is such a beloved character and
what makes her connect with people.As I have described her in the past,
(10:28):
she to me is a metaphor.She is that place in the base
of your spine that has to stiffin for a fight. She doesn't back
down, she doesn't apologize for whoshe is and what she is. And
she's not this kind of like,look at me, I'm better than you,
I'm polished. No, she's damaged. She and she wears all that
damage in front of everybody for themto see. But there's not a mean
(10:50):
bone in her body. And sheeven when she says the wrong things and
seeks her foot in her mouth repeatedly, she's doing it out of grace.
And out of kindness and out ofher wanting the world to be better,
and she doesn't know how to makesure everything is good, but she knows
when things are bad, and shegoes, well, if I do this,
this result happens. And I don'twant that result. So at least
I know what doesn't work. Letme keep trying to know what does work.
(11:13):
And I think being so comfortable inher flaws it makes her human and
it makes people connect with her inthat way because they see those things about
themselves, but they look at herand go but somehow she is okay with
it. How can I get tobe okay with it like that? And
I think that's what galvinizes people toher so much, is that she is
this. She's somebody that we hopewe can be like. She's the wingwoman
(11:37):
that stands by you at the barand says, girl, I got you,
what do you need? Let's fight, you know? And I think
people like her for that. Andit's interesting because I never set out to
make a career out of this character, and then when I started seeing how
people were affected by her and themessage, it just became a natural,
like, let me keep going,let me keep creating let me keep writing
(11:58):
because it's touching people way that Ithink is kind of significant. And you
know, now drag has become soculturally relevant, it's everywhere, and I
never you know, the thing thatwe do that's different with Dixie. Dixie
in our world isn't a drag queen. She's a real woman who exists from
Alabanda. She's got three kids,she's got three failed marriages, like these
are all real things. It's notwhat you see in sort of current drag
(12:22):
culture. So I've always kind ofseparated her from that because it's there're two
kind of different artistic forms of thesame thing. For me, So I
you know, I never wanted itto be like making fun of women are
poking fun it at, you know, their struggles. I always wanted to
be like, no, let meshow it to you in the way I
hear the struggle and if I canreflect back a possibility that you might not
(12:46):
have thought of before. And soyou know, again, the first time
we saw Dixie here in de Winin two thousand and eight, You've been
here so many times, I thinkone hundred and thirty five performances so far
and over twenty two thousand people haveseen you here at the Temple. Oh
it's funny because I rarely get itput into numbers like that, So that's
like three Taylor Swift concerts. Butno, you know, it's so funny
(13:13):
because when you think of des Moinesand you think of the Flyover States,
you think of sort of the forgottenpeople. And I thought, oh my
god, I'm starting my show inDes Moines. This is weird. I
don't know, I I've never been. The house is going to work.
And the kindness and the graciousness fromthe audience was so wonderful and continues to
be and I will never forget.There was like a Austin and wife that
(13:33):
came and they sat at some ofthe tables right in front. The guy
was literally wearing overalls and he's like, well, my wife says, are
funny. So I figured I'd giveit a try. And it just was
like he got off the tractor andcame to the theater, and I'm like,
this is amazing that somebody that youwould never think would be at a
theater is coming to a theater togive you guys a chance, give me
(13:54):
a chance, give the artistic frameworkof theater a chance, and you're like,
yeah, it really shows that youcan't ever judge a book by its
cover, and just I don't know, there's so much about the Demina audiences.
They are so kind and graceful andwonderful. And I've gotten countless letters
and messages on social media from theaudiences there, just being so graceful and
(14:16):
kind and just telling me that whatI said, what I did in the
show, how what I said tothem after the show when I did meet
Greed was you know, kind oflike altered their ideas, their framework of
how they live. And that's justyou can never put a price tag on
that. It's just so amazing.That's fantastic. Chris, thank you so
much for taking the time. We'reso looking forward to having you in Des
(14:37):
Moines through March seventeenth, final performanceon Saint Patrick's Day. Just saying not
to be irish and dix your redhead, so there's got to be able to
be irish in there somewhere. Allright, We'll see you soon. Thanks
Chris, take care. Thank youso much, Jeff, I appreciate itciate
(15:00):
you joining us for this special conversationThe DMPA Conversations podcast is produced by Andrew
Downs. To our donors and seasonticket holders, thank you for providing the
foundation for great performances and educational opportunitiesat Des Moines Performing Arts. Visit DMPA
dot org or wherever you get yourpodcasts for future conversations like this one.
(15:22):
Thank you for listening.
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