Loverboy is very excited about this year’s VAULT Festival in London. One of the standouts that speaks to our drag-drenched heart is Prom Kween. Fallon Gold spoke with playwright Rebecca Humpries about sequins, drag anarchism and making up dance routines with your gay bff to Mariah songs.

With Prom Kween you’re melding two beloved pop cultural phenomena – the high school movie genre and drag queens. Why do you think these two entities are so popular and why do they endure?
I think it has to do with reality and fantasy. The high school genre is a long-used trope; it represents all that is familiar, a shared experience that everyone has been through. The characters are recognisable, the situations universal. Whereas Drag for most is a fantasy and fascinating in its’ mystery. The thing they have in common is a heightened style, which is just fun isn’t it?

Is Prom Kween going to be a revenge fantasy for anyone who grew up queer in the harsh school world?
We make no Rupologies for being a revenge fantasy; but it’s one for anyone that felt like they didn’t know themselves or fit in when they were young. So, everyone really.

Rupaul is promised: tell us more!
Is it too tragic to say you’ll have to come and see it? It probably is, isn’t it? Ok, all I’ll say is it’s a nod to one particularly fabulous moment in the biggest High School musical of them all. Cher also pops by.

Why do you think drag race took off in such a mainstream way? Especially considering how America has become more and more conservative and the backlash against any queer gains has been so fierce?
Well really you could say Drag is the backlash. I have no experience of being a part of that world, but the thing that fascinated me with it was the shared determination to celebrate one’s diversity despite popular opinion.

You’re totally right about how mainstream it has become. It’s sickening how many people from all walks of life have taken to it. I think it’s because here is a show that rewards graft, kindness and individualism. I adore how they applaud each other, aren’t afraid to admire each other’s work. It’s incredibly unselfish, and invigorating as a viewer. In themselves, the queens are fearless; in many ways standing on a stage caked in makeup and totally unrecognisable as a person of the opposite gender is laying yourself bare, expressing who you truly are, and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. And that’s what people can relate to, and love to see.

I adore musicals. I believe that musicals can change the world and are an underused political form: discuss
Oh, I have always been obsessed. My entire life. I become enraged with people who insist they don’t like them – it’s such a boring, sweeping statement. Musical theatre relies more on story and integrity than it does on belting out High Cs and jazz hands. Which many people – including many at the helm of current musical theatre productions in my opinion – either don’t realise or choose not to acknowledge.

Politically they’re not so much underused but overlooked, in my opinion. Look at shows like West Side Story – representing gang culture in New York in the 50s, something that had never been done before. My Fair Lady, which explores social identity through the way we speak (which is seemingly becoming more and more pertinent in this country). More recently, Hamilton, a show that employs colour blind casting in order to be more reflective of modern America and display the country’s diversity, is a phenomenon. Musical theatre doesn’t muck about – the subjects are bold and important. It deals with war and love and class and death and diversity and elevates it all through music. It’s amazing.

You promise untold amounts of sequins with this production. I believe camp is incredibly subversive and that the revolution with be fabulous – full of fierce glittered fags and dykes and transgods and goddesses. Is this where the sequins come in? Is this a camp uprising? With song?
Yes. Just yes. To everything.

What are you looking forward to seeing at VAULT Festival?
Texas Tax Man, I Need to Vent, Seven Crazy Bitches, We’re Younger than Adele. But there’s also a lot to be said for soaking up the atmosphere of the venue itself. I can’t wait.

What’s your favourite Mariah Carey song and what in her catalogue would work best in a subversive high school drag musical setting?
Fave is ‘Dreamlover’. A friend and I used to choreograph what were on reflection inappropriately sensual routines to it when we were 8 or 9 in his* house.

Let’s face it, as far as a subversive high school drag goes we could just use her entire catalogue and do a jukebox musical. But the big number… the one before the interval… would probably be Fantasy. The lyrics and the notion of horrendously lusting after someone and being quietly tortured by it seems to speak to my high school self.

*(yes, he is a gay man now.)

Prom Kween is on at VAULT Festival 15th-19th February. VAULT Festival is on now and runs until the 5th March