Sasha Velour is packing up her wigs to take Smoke & Mirrors on the road.
EW can exclusively reveal the drag superstar, performance artist, and RuPaul’s Drag Race season 9 champion will headline the bewitching solo show (which she directed in collaboration with the House of Velour) across 23 dates throughout the fall, marking her first solo tour since snatching the Emmy-winning reality competition series’ crown in 2017.
POSTER BY SASHA VELOUR, PHOTO BY TANNER ABEL (ASSISTED BY NICHOLAS NEEDHAM)
Velour first launched the 90-minute show throughout Australia and New Zealand in Jan. 2019, followed by sold-out engagements in New York City, Los Angeles, and London, with celebrity attendees including Troye Sivan, Hari Nef, Allie X, and scores of Velour’s Drag Race sisters.
Through 13 genre-blurring lip-sync performances curated and designed by Velour, the queen combines drag, live theater, visual art, and personal storytelling into the innovative and immersive show — which includes Velour exploding into rose petals, vanishing in a poof of smoke, sawing herself in half, manifesting a wild rainstorm, and morphing into a black and white tree as she highlights themes of gender, fame, family, and loss.
“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,” Velour exclusively tells EW in a statement about the show. “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!
“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,” Velour continues. “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.”
In addition to Smoke & Mirrors traveling the continent later this year, Velour will executive-produce and star in an eight-part docuseries for the upcoming streaming service Quibi. The short program will chronicle a new round of performance artists preparing to star in her popular revue Nightgowns, which has served as a showcase for underground drag in New York City since 2015.
The North American leg of the Smoke & Mirrors tour kicks off Oct. 21 in San Antonio, Tex, with stops continuing through November (European tour dates for spring 2020 will be announced in the near future). Presale tickets are available here (public sale begins Thursday).
Read on for the full list of Smoke & Mirrors domestic tour dates.
Oct. 21 — San Antonio, TX (HEB Performance Hall)
Oct. 22 — Austin, TX (Paramount Theatre)
Oct. 23 — Dallas, TX (Bomb Factory)
Oct. 27 — Columbus, OH (Southern Theatre)
Oct. 29 — Pittsburgh, PA (Byham)
Oct. 30 — Royal Oak, MI (Royal Oak Music Hall)
Nov. 1 — Madison, WI (Capitol Theater)
Nov. 3 — Chicago, IL (The Vic)
Nov. 6 — Kansas City, MO (Arvest Bank at The Midland)
Nov. 7 — Nashville, TN (Polk Theatre)
Nov. 8 — Durham, NC (Carolina Theatre of Durham)
Nov. 11 — Washington, DC (Lincoln Theatre)
Nov. 12 — Philadelphia, PA (Merriam Theater)
Nov. 14 — Norfolk, VA (Harrison Opera House)
Nov. 15 — Asbury Park, NJ (Paramount Theater)
Nov. 16 — Boston, MA (Emerson Colonial Theatre)
Nov. 18 — Toronto, ON (Danforth Music Hall)
Nov. 19 — Toronto, ON (Danforth Music Hall)
Nov. 20 — Ottawa, ON (Algonquin)
Nov. 22 — Winnipeg, MB (Burton Cummings Theatre)
Nov. 24 — Edmonton, AB (Myer Horowitz)
Nov. 26 — Vancouver, BC (Queen Elizabeth Theatre)
Nov. 29 — Seattle, WA (Moore Theatre)
Nov. 30 — San Francisco, CA (Palace of the Fine Arts)
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