‘James and the Giant Peach’ Axed Over Imaginary Drag Queens

Witch hunts and mob mentality are growing

So, you aren’t going to believe this, or maybe you might not WANT to believe it. A large school district in Houston, Texas just canceled all field trips to a beloved children’s theater — over imaginary drag queens.

Yes, no drag queens appear in this story. But plenty of anti-LGBTQ hatred does.

Artists, actors, and playwrights have been warning for months that conservative hysteria over drag will have a chilling effect on ordinary art and public life … and, well, here’s a sad example.

Uninformed outrage is fostering real hatred in Houston today, leaving the targets of that hatred bewildered and scared. Meanwhile, outrage is painting “groomer” targets on the backs of LGBTQ Texans who have nothing to do with this silly, manufactured controversy.

According to the Houston Chronicle, parents at Spring Branch Independent School District raised an outraged, uninformed stink over Main Street Theater performances of “James and the Giant Peach,” adapted from Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel. Those parents convinced administrators to declare a district-wide ban on already-scheduled trips to see the play.

There’s a special irony, by the way, in conservatives canceling Roald Dahl. Only weeks ago, conservatives were insisting that Dahl’s work — which has been criticized for racist, antisemitic language — must never be altered or updated. The Main Street Theater play in question is faithful to Dahl’s text.

But hang on, let’s get the facts on the table.

For over 43 years, Main Street Theater has brought children’s classics to life on the stage. Like many small theater companies operating on shoestring budgets, Main Street often uses “cross-gender casting” to reduce cast size, save money, and make children laugh.

If you love the theater like I do, you already know how that works.

Cross-gender casting is not new. Main Street has been using it for decades, and until now nobody had ever complained.

Indeed, from adaptations of Huckleberry Finn to Mrs. Doubtfire, U.S. actors have often cross dressed for humor and dramatic purposes, with no resulting uproar. The tradition of cross-gender casting goes back to the earliest days of English-speaking stagecraft when women were forbidden to perform on stage for religious reasons.

The practice never completely died out. Just ask Milton Berle, Bob Hope, or Tyler Perry.

Remember watching the children’s TV classic The Electric Company back in the 1970s? Remember how men occasionally dressed up as women? Those men were not drag queens, they were actors. They weren’t pushing any sort of agenda. They were making children laugh, which was supposed to make lessons about reading and math go down a little easier. (They couldn’t fool childhood me! I thought the show was dry as toast, but to each his own.)

Anyway, back to Texas.

“Do you see how they are coming after our kids?”

The controversy began when one Houston-area mother went to see ‘James and the Giant Peach’ at Main Street and noticed that a male actor sometimes played a female role.

Indeed, 7 actors play 19 characters in the show, which means some men play women characters and vice versa. She didn’t spot all of the cross-gender casting. She noticed one man playing a woman, called him a drag queen, and raised cries equivalent to, “Kill the witch!”

Then Spring Branch parent Jessica Gerland showed up at a school board meeting outraged over “drag queens” harming children, saying she feared for the health and safety of her 5-year-old child. She later spoke to local TV station KHOU, which gave her unfounded “fears” a sympathetic hearing.

War drums began to beat, groups began organizing on social media, and the school district came down like a hammer. No drag queens shall perform for our vulnerable children! No groomers allowed! All trips canceled! (Kill the witch!)

Only, there aren’t any drag queens in the show, which is about a seven-year-old orphan boy who befriends magical creatures living inside a giant peach — in case you wondered how realistic the play is.

Also, no content in the play negates traditional gender ideas.

Not human gender, not insect gender.

Insect? Gerland is ALSO outraged over a glowworm, who in faithful adaptation of Dahl’s novel, has a gender that children can’t discern until he explains that male glowworms do not light up. Somehow, Gerland made that about non-binary gender, which she finds offensive and harmful to children. But she wasn’t paying attention, because the glowworm is male in the play, not nonbinary. He says he’s male, without equivocation.

Just like in the book.

“James and the Giant Peach doesn’t feature any drag,” Main Street spokeswoman Shannon Emerick told the Washington Post. “We’re true to the script, and the script is true to the book. And we’re just continuing to tell the story.”

The panic over this play is irrational, hysterical, and actually hateful

The Instagram account that organized protests resorted to the tired trope that LGBTQ people sexually groom children for abuse:

The theatre can’t define what a drag is and says he’s not in drag at the show. Then why is he dressing as a woman? That’s drag to me. It’s all grooming no matter how you dissect it. We have to call this out and continue to. Our children don’t deserve this!! Dress as you want in front of adults but LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!

That message resonated in the Houston area. Is anybody else getting really tired of that?

Can you imagine being an LGBTQ person in Houston, putting up with even more unfounded charges of being an innate sexual predator?

Can you imagine being one of the cross-cast actors and being accused of sexual predation just for doing your job? Most actors struggle to get by financially, anyway. They don’t need public demonization and witch hunts over uninformed nonsense.

As an aside, a 7-person cast is BIG for small theater. Main Street Theater employs Houston-area actors only and uses standard Actors Equity (union) contracts, which mean they pay real living wages to real professionals, whose three-shows-a-day schedule is grueling. Could Main Street afford to pay 19 Equity actors? Of course not. They ain’t Broadway, baby, and some Broadway producers hesitate to hire a cast that size.

Before moving on, I should talk about what drag shows are and who drag queens are.

Drag (by that name) is a traditional gay male art form that dates back to about the mid-19th century in the United States. Drag kings, who traditionally are lesbians, date back about as far. By the 1920s, drag art was popular all over the world, but especially in the United States, France, and Germany. Gay men and lesbians entertained one another with drag shows, which were supposed to be funny, subversive, cutting, and ironic.

Drag art is, fundamentally, ironic commentary invented by queer people to entertain other queer people. It is not supposed to be sexually provocative, although it does sometimes poke fun at sexual provocation by imitating it. Gay men are not attracted to women. (Duh, right?) Lesbians are not attracted to men. (Double duh.) Gay men don’t dress as women to sexually titillate one another. That would be at least counterproductive.

(That’s not to say that all drag is the same. Like all art, drag constantly evolves. Drag today is not the drag of the Roaring 20s, and transgender people are increasingly staking out artistic space in the form as it evolves. But that’s another story for another day.)

If you don’t understand or appreciate drag art, that’s fine. Nobody says you have to. Some queer people don’t like drag, just like I didn’t like the Electric Company as a child.

It’s time to can the hysterical hatred

Guess what I did about my personal taste when I was 9 years old? I changed the channel when I could. I did NOT complain to my parents about my sister enjoying a program I hated. Nor did I ask them to forbid its airing in our house. To each his own.

I should confess that my sister might not remember me being quite so gracious, but at least I didn’t invent untruths about the show to get it banned.

That’s what mobs of hysterical people are doing in Houston right now.

For almost 50 years, Main Street Theater has been staging cross-cast plays, an absolutely mainstream theatrical tradition. Main Street is not fringe theater. It’s conventional, unremarkable, workaday theater that has always been welcome in Houston.

But today, cries of “kill the witch” threaten Main Street and bleed over to further demonize already despised queer Texans.

Over literally nothing.

How about we knock it off?

Do you live in Texas? Do you live in a place where hysterical nonsense is fanning flames of hatred? If you aren’t LGBTQ, could you do us all a favor? Could you speak up with a reasoned voice?

Also, could you show public solidarity in your daily life?

Will you wear a rainbow to tell the world you stand against the anti-LGBTQ hatred, that you stand for love? Click the rainbow below to see what I mean and learn how to help.

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