Sasha Velour

press release: Sasha Velour’s “Smoke & Mirrors,” the critically-acclaimed one-queen show by global drag superstar and theater producer Sasha Velour, will come to Overture Center’s Capitol Theater on Friday, Nov. 1 at 8 p.m. as part of the show’s 23-city North American tour. This is Velour’s first solo tour, following her win of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9, with sold-out engagements in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Australia and New Zealand.

At over 90 minutes, “Smoke & Mirrors” introduces audiences to a whole new side of Velour’s artistry. Its 13 dazzling and genre-busting lip-synch performances are all directed, produced and choreographed by the queen herself. “Smoke & Mirrors” has been widely praised as an astounding combination of drag, live theatre, visual art, magic and personal storytelling.

Viewers will be on the edge of their seats as Velour explodes into rose petals, vanishes in a poof of smoke, saws herself in half, conjures a rainstorm and even transforms into a tree in front of their eyes—but the real magic is the way that these illusions and deceptions serve to unmask deeper truths, sparking fresh analysis of gender, fame, family, loss and the importance of dreaming big and living life over-the-top.

In an exclusive statement to Entertainment Weekly, Velour says, “I am literally and figuratively shaking with excitement to embark on my first solo theater tour with ‘Smoke & Mirrors!’ This production has been years in the making and is without a doubt the most

personal and honest I have ever been on stage. I hope ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ can be a new introduction of myself—as not only a crown-wearing drag queen, but also a real person—with a very specific taste in colors!"

On speaking about audience reactions to the show, Velour adds, “What really makes me proud of this show is when people tell me that ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ inspired them to start painting again, to write their first novel or to send in an application to their dream  job. Some have even said it made them feel a sense of community or helped them deal with grief or depression. ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ is about ‘illusions’, sure, but sometimes illusions are just tools to understand and cope with reality, to uncover the truth of who we are or to bring some of our dreams into the spotlight.”

Sasha Velour’s “Smoke & Mirrors” features the music of Annie Lennox, Whitney Houston, Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland, Celine Dion, Sia, Nina Simone, Le Tigre and more.

Along with “Smoke & Mirrors”, it’s been announced that Velour will executive produce an eight-part docuseries, titled “Nightgowns”, adapted from her long-running, all-inclusive drag revue of the same name for new streaming platform Quibi, set to premiere in 2020. This spring, Velour made a cameo on the final season of Comedy Central's Broad City and landed a prominent guest star role in The Bold Type on Freeform. In June, Velour released a 50-page comic book, called Three Dollar Riot, about the Stonewall Riots in honor of its 50-year anniversary and collaborated with Lyft for their World Pride campaign.

Sasha Velour is a gender-fluid drag queen. Her performances have been called “an entirely new level of performance art” (Yahoo) and “heart-wrenching” (Billboard). She pioneered the use of projection mapping in lip-synch drag performances and is known for combining emotional pathos with theatrical stunts. In September 2018, she collaborated with Opening Ceremony to produce, direct and host their Fall Fashion Show. She has appeared in Vogue, Vogue Italia and Plastik Magazine. Her visual art was the subject of two solo gallery shows in New York. In 2017, she drew the Google Doodle of Marlene Dietrich. She is the creative director of the art magazine “Velour”. In December 2018, Velour spoke and performed at The Smithsonian’s The Long Conversation among the world's leading cancer surgeons and NASA scientists to share how the power of drag can provide optimism for the future.

Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, Wis., features seven state-of-the-art performance spaces and five galleries where national and international touring artists, 10 resident companies and hundreds of local artists engage people in more than 600,000 educational and artistic experiences each year. Overture.org