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Power, Philanthropy, and Drag with Michael Barrett Jones #50
39 Plays1 month ago
Michael Barrett Jones - Activist, Director of a Nonprofit and Storyteller —joins Mattie Bynum and Shane Lucas as he shares a powerful journey from grassroots HIV activism to leading fundraising efforts that center equity and inclusion. Reflecting on his time at Iris House, he unpacks how women of color were historically excluded from funding and strategy conversations—and what it means to challenge that. He also opens up about how his drag persona, Witty Repartee, helped him find confidence and voice in both performance and advocacy spaces. Through humor and honesty, Michael illustrates how identity, art, and activism intersect in his life. This episode is a story of growth, accountability, and using your platform with intention.
Guest descriptors:
Insightful, Theatrical, Unapologetic
Episode tags:
#philanthropy #LGBTQ #activism #Fundraising #Strategy #HIVadvocacy #racial #equity #drag #performance #community #organizing #socialjustice #nonprofitleadership #queervoices
Tags again:
#philanthropy #fundraisingstrategy #HIVadvocacy #racialequity #dragperformance #communityorganizing #socialjustice #nonprofitleadership #queervoices
Tags again:
#LGBTQ #activism #fundraisingstrategy #philanthropy #HIVadvocacy #racialequity #dragperformance #communityorganizing #socialjustice #nonprofitleadership #queervoices
Recommended
Transcript
Democratic Party's Inclusivity Issues
00:00:00
Speaker
We have a Democratic Party that still thinks it knows best for everybody else. Everybody has can come in, but not everyone gets a voice. If we listen to Black women specifically, we will get the White House back because the Black women are the ones who are out there fighting and challenging and doing the field work and the ground work for the white men who come in and go, thanks, we'll take it from here. No, we will not take it from here. Stop taking it from here.
Introduction to Power Beyond Pride Podcast
00:00:26
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Power Beyond Pride, a weekly queer change-making podcast bringing you voices and ideas from across our fierce and fabulous spectrum to transform our world. I am Maddie Bynum, your hostess with the most is actress, singer, comedian, and all around just a joy to be with. And I am also in the great company of my wonderful co-host, Mr. Shane.
00:00:50
Speaker
Hi, and I'm in great company, actually. I'm Shane Lucas, and I am a lifelong activist. I'm one of a great ideas. And I am I would say, in music zealot. I love my musics. So I am loving today because we are going on a musical journey, and I feel like we are going to be spending some time just enjoying all of the different ideas. We are probably going to be singing half of this ourselves. We're just going to sing through this entire
Guest Introduction: Michael Barrett-Jones
00:01:16
Speaker
interview. Because in this episode, we are talking to Michael Barrett-Jones.
00:01:20
Speaker
a nonprofit development and governance leader, strategic planner, and storyteller with years of activism under his belt. But so much more than that. Also, celeb utante, drag queen, Ritchie Repartee.
00:01:34
Speaker
Extraordinaire. Welcome, Michael. Or can I call you? As long as you don't call me late for dinner, I'll take it either way. I know that's right. Well, Michael, I am glad that you have joined us tonight. Me and Shane Boat, we are so glad that you are
Work at Iris House & Health Disparities
00:01:49
Speaker
here. And I do want to go ahead and just jump right in. So my first topic tonight to talk to you about is I love that you have some great work to talk about. But let's start with the development director's job at the Iris House, a center for women living with HIV.
00:02:06
Speaker
Just tell us about that journey. Well, it it was kind of fascinating. i was the director of development at Iris house from 2010 to 2018, late 2017, it's not somewhere in there, about um but not quite eight years.
00:02:20
Speaker
And I had been doing volunteer fundraising for HIV service organizations since the nineties through my work with the Imperial court and the New York city gay men's chorus, and just being a good human being in New York city.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I was looking for my next job. I was looking for my next gig and I ran across Iris House, which was founded in 1992 specifically to serve the needs of women of color living with HIV.
00:02:48
Speaker
Because people of color have different health disparities than white boys. Women have different health disparities than white boys. And by 1990, all the HIV service organizations in town were serving the rich white boys who were getting sick on Fire Island.
00:03:02
Speaker
Which is not to say they weren't doing a good job, but they were very hyper-focused in, these are the people we know, these are our friends, these are the people we need to help. Except there was a whole wide world out there of people who needed help. So a woman named Iris de la Cruz and a bunch of her activist friends in East Harlem came banging on the mayor's door and said, excuse us, hi, you're not helping us, so we're going to do it ourselves.
00:03:30
Speaker
ah Because so often in our world, we assist white men leave women of color behind. We get what we need and we say, oh, thanks. a Side note, I had a boss once who said, our work is not done till the trans women of color tell us they're okay.
00:03:43
Speaker
I'm snapping for that. That is, ah that thank you. That is powerful. I need you to put a pin in that because i actually want to circle back to that since you brought it up. but We can absolutely circle back to that.
00:03:55
Speaker
But I was astonished to find Ira's house because at that point I'd been doing HIV work in New York City for 15 years. And I had never heard of them because even 15, 16 years after their founding, they were still being kept in a smaller footprint. And I'm going to say that because it's not by their choice.
00:04:17
Speaker
that their fundraising and that their realm of influence was still above 125th street, but the HIV service industry complex ah decided that they needed to be in their little niche.
00:04:31
Speaker
So i made it my goal to say, okay, here, I've got all the cis white male power and privilege. I'm going to do what I can. And I'm going to sit around with the other white cis male directors of development of HIV service organizations. And I'm going to say, what are we doing for the limit of color?
00:04:46
Speaker
And I'm going to watch their heads roll because no one had asked that question So I spent almost eight years up there learning the world, learning, learning what my place is. Let me tell you, when you are a white man and you are working for an organization with a staff of, I'm going to say 60 ish, and there are two or three white men out of 60 people, you learn real fast that your voice doesn't have to be the first.
00:05:15
Speaker
It doesn't have to be the loudest and it certainly doesn't have to be the last. And in fact, maybe it's not a seat at the table that you're offering. Maybe it's the question about Is it my right to offer people a seat at the table? Is the table the right conversation to have?
00:05:31
Speaker
Or is there an entire world where we should build a space to have these conversations that is not of my design?
Critique of National HIV Strategy
00:05:38
Speaker
um Fascinating lessons about how to move through the world and how to take up less space when I can or use the space I take up for the power of good otherwise. Yeah.
00:05:50
Speaker
That is so powerful to me and it's so meaningful that you share that because the reason I think we wanted to ask about your Iris House experience and bring that into conversation is because in this moment where we're seeing HIV cuts, we're seeing cuts around access to a trans community and gender affirming care, other areas. Like ah in your experience, like what ah can you share a little bit about your vision of what you're seeing right now and how this is playing into a longer narrative?
00:06:16
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because when I got to Iris House for the first time, they had just had the first round. And my timing may be off a little bit. on The dates are a little fuzzy. But the first round of the National AIDS Roundtable, the national discussion, the national strategy, Obama had the first national strategy of HIV.
00:06:35
Speaker
Right. It took us until Obama's administration to get a national strategy. And it started back, when did when was the AIDS but epidemic? 1981 was the first article. So and a Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, four presidents before there was a national strategy.
00:06:54
Speaker
Democrats and Republicans alike, this is not a partisan issue. This is an anti-queer, anti-Black women issue. So when Obama
Political Dynamics & Black Women's Influence
00:07:03
Speaker
finally convened and had the national strategy, they didn't ask any women to be at the table.
00:07:09
Speaker
So when I first got to Ira's house, all of the strategy was around men's issues. A lot of young teen men, a lot of young black men, a lot of groups for young fathers and really important groups to serve.
00:07:23
Speaker
We had a young father's program that was just fantastic, but women were not part of the conversation. So women's needs were not part of the strategy. So the funding which followed the strategy did not follow the women's needs.
00:07:38
Speaker
So when I first got to Iris House, we finally had a national strategy and the first thing it did was cut Iris House and organizations like it right out of the picture.
00:07:49
Speaker
You have to be, I'm going to go back to the table metaphor again. You have to be at the table to have a voice. We have to make sure that when we convene, when we get together to talk about strategy, when we try to figure a way forward through any issue, that the people at the table having the conversation are the people who are affected.
00:08:10
Speaker
You know, nothing about us without us. We've heard that, right? That came out of disability justice. It applies to HIV. It applies to any world where people in positions of power and privilege, most of them who look like me, make decisions for people who don't.
00:08:27
Speaker
And that is a failing paradigm. We have a Democratic Party that still thinks, that still thinks it knows best for everybody else.
00:08:37
Speaker
We are a big tent party on the left, right? Everybody has can come in, but not everyone gets a voice. David Hogg just resigned from the Democratic National Committee. That's a A lovely thing, because here's a 25-year-old, you think, progressive little man who's forcing his opinion and forcing his ideas in front of a an indigenous person and a woman of color who had the right to be at the table first.
00:09:00
Speaker
Still happening. Mm-hmm. If we listen to black women specifically, we will get the White House back because the black women are the ones who are out there fighting and challenging and doing the field work and the groundwork for the white men who come in and go, thanks, we'll take it from here. No, we will not take it from here. Stop taking it from here.
Future of HIV Services & Community Involvement
00:09:21
Speaker
Sorry. Absolutely. I agree. No, no, no, no. We want to give you a minute. You are fine. i I love this conversation because you really are right. And I do want to bring it back to fundraising.
00:09:32
Speaker
But i also have another question to ask you, since we're on this conversation with our LGBT community. Do you, can you recognize and see, and you really have already, that once white gay men got the right to marry, once white gay women got the right marry to assimilate. Are going up the Empire State Pride agenda? Are you going to actually make me call them out on their shit?
00:09:57
Speaker
Like, how is it that we got there and then got complacent that we forgot about trans women? We forgot about gay men. Maddie, didn't get complacent. We got what we wanted. We white men got marriage equality and the Empire State Pride agenda says, hey, guess what? We won.
00:10:16
Speaker
Wiped its hands clean and shut its doors. Shut its doors. Now, I know a lot of good people who worked for that organization, who were staff members, who were board members.
00:10:26
Speaker
And to this day, we're what? 10 years later, I still go, what the? Am I allowed to swear? i don't know. What the fuck were you thinking? You made promises to women. You made promises to trans people. You made promises to communities of color about how important marriage equality was as a poverty issue, as a social justice issue. And it is.
00:10:48
Speaker
But you said, we'll get to your priorities next. And then you said, oh, whoops, sorry. Just kidding. We got this one. We're good. Fuck you. We're not good. And it's exactly what happened. And I want to ask the question when we get back for break, because I know we do have to go to break to pay the bills. But when we come back, I have a two-part question for you is, how do we start even thinking about fundraising for these organizations? One, and then two, how do we reopen that door?
00:11:15
Speaker
because I love the narrative that people are making now that trans women and trans men are just a new thing. And I'm looking at people and I'm like, first off, trans people have been here way much longer than you think they have. And then that, that to me, that trickles into the conversation of intersex and hermaphrodites and the fact that the reality of it is we do not even honor the people that deserve to be honored.
00:11:37
Speaker
But like I said, we have to take a quick break. So I do hate that we got to stop the conversation, but we got to pay the
Fundraising Strategies & Community Building
00:11:42
Speaker
bills. So babies, please go get you something to drink. Come back and we were going to jump right back into this journey of Power Beyond Pride. We'll be right back.
00:11:56
Speaker
Welcome back. This is Power Beyond Pride, a queer change-making podcast, and I'm Shane Lucas, here with my amazing co-host, Maddie Bynum, talking with the amazing- Hello. Everybody's amazing. There's Maddie. Amazing Michael Barrett-Jones or Witty Repartee. Maddie invited you to share your thoughts, Michael. And I want to reiterate this because it's such a powerful moment to be talking about the growing distance between haves and have-nots within the queer community, between those who benefited the most from the social movements over the last several decades, and those who who basically, as we've talked about before, haven't really benefited from those same advancements. And so now we're at this point where we're seeing the government make aggressive attacks on many of our trans plus community members, on many of our communities that are intersecting with immigrant refugee experiences with as communities of color. We're seeing a lot of that targeting.
00:12:46
Speaker
Any thoughts about how we take this philosophy, which you shared before the break, which is so powerful, into this current moment where people can see what they can do and how communities can show up who are generally separated from so much of this?
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a huge conversation a big chunk that you just sort of asked me to bite off there. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tie my first job as director of development but in with my current job and then see where we come back.
00:13:14
Speaker
My very first job as director of development was at the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine on New York City's Upper West Side. And we all know St. John the Divine because Episcopal bishops wear lavender and fuchsia and it's really fun and very gay.
00:13:28
Speaker
And i was, I, it's a bit really as we had an openly lesbian head of school. I was an openly gay director of development. I let it world AIDS day, even song for the upper school kids. I'm like, let let's put together this. So, but one of the parents, I had a board member who had three daughters in the school. And at that point, the tuition was about, I'm using round numbers, $25,000 year. This is close to 25 years ago, 20 years ago.
00:13:57
Speaker
And he said, but even on top of that tuition, I still feel it's really important that we give $25,000 year to the annual fund I said, well, that's wonderful.
00:14:11
Speaker
Why? i want to take this i want to take your why. And he said, because it is very important to us that our daughters grow up in a world where they interact with people who do not have what we have every day.
00:14:23
Speaker
And they understand and they learn empathy and they learn financial diversity. The school was pretty good with ethnic background diversity, but also financial diversity. We had a third of the families there on financial aid.
00:14:36
Speaker
And yet 97% of the families contributed to the annual fund because that was the world they all wanted. They all wanted a world where they contributed what they could to make sure that everyone had equal space and equal footing.
00:14:51
Speaker
So the reason this family gave it $25,000 was because when you're talking about schools, there's the gap between what tuition covers and what the actual cost is. It's a stupid fundraising. Make up a gap. No, no one's going to give to make up a gap.
00:15:05
Speaker
yeah But they understood that their kid's gap was $15,000. And they wanted to make sure that they were covering two or three other gaps because they could, because they had to, because a third of the families couldn't make up that gap at all.
00:15:22
Speaker
They saw it as part of their social responsibility for the world in which they wanted to live. I think that's important to recognize. That's why on the left,
00:15:33
Speaker
Major donors to social causes give because they understand the world exists because people who have the power and the privilege of giving more give more.
00:15:45
Speaker
It's really important. Fundraising, being a development director, it's hard. i' I'm both a fundraiser who works with major donors every day, but I'm also a democratic socialist. So it's really Robin Hood going out to people who made a fortune.
00:15:59
Speaker
I sympathize. So thank you for that. It's about to say. But okay, so that that's the first, my first job as a fundraiser, that was sort of The ethos of the place I was, it was a great place to have my first game.
00:16:13
Speaker
I'm currently at a theater in Bethesda, Maryland that has a mission that believes that forces conversation. The shows that we do are designed specifically so people have conversations about the issues in them.
00:16:27
Speaker
Our artistic director believes that theater is an empathy gym. You go to work out and build your empathy, right? So we have a play and it's called Bad Books and it's a two-person play about a librarian and a mother and a book that the son of the mother, the mother's son took out and she wished he hadn't. And very topical, very timely issues. And it won a grant from the NEA that we were told in November and announced in early January.
00:16:56
Speaker
Well, we all know what happened with the NEA grants, right? A $20,000 grant the NEA.
00:17:03
Speaker
Our community has more than what seven times that at the moment we have seen more than $140,000 in gifts come to help make up that one grant That's incredible. That's beautiful. I have had to tell donors, no, give me money after July 1st because I need it next fiscal year or not. We're good. We're good. You have all been so generous and I love you all for it. Now, wait till July.
00:17:30
Speaker
I'll take it in
Limitations of Philanthropy in Systemic Change
00:17:31
Speaker
July. i need it in next year's budget. But shoot to get back to the point, this is one of the things that I think we need to focus on.
00:17:41
Speaker
And it's the difference between fundraising and development. a We had a great gala. The gala was five days after, or actually eight days after we lost the grant officially.
00:17:52
Speaker
So the energy was still very much in that room. We had the most successful fundraising we had ever had. It was the biggest gala this theater has ever had in the middle of all this, the economy, and in the DC area where everyone's losing their jobs.
00:18:06
Speaker
It was an incredible night and that was fundraising. But development was 20 years of work that had gone on to making sure the right people believed in our theater, believed in our mission, were in that room, brought their friends to that room.
00:18:24
Speaker
It is not an overnight thing. Fundraising is a bake sale. And when we think about fundraising, if we think about fundraising that way, we are undercutting our ability to support 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
00:18:38
Speaker
We are looking at to- today. We're looking at our immediate issue. We need to be fundraising for issues we don't even know about. We need to be building endowments so that organizations that do not exist today because the need does not exist today will have resources. Because there's a lot of money today.
00:18:56
Speaker
I know the economy is a little wonky right now, but the top two or 3% right now have so much more money than at any time in America's history. We need to transfer some of that, if not directly into service right now, then into, I hate to say donor advised funds, community foundations, because those are just parking lots for cash. But if rich people take their money and park it someplace where eventually it will be used for philanthropy, where eventually it will be used to make a difference.
Major Donors & Mutual Aid's Role
00:19:26
Speaker
I think that's the language. That's the conversation we need to have. definitely want to ask the question because you brought up a good point. It's not about the funding, fundraising. It's about the development and the cultivating the relationship so the fundraising can come about.
00:19:42
Speaker
But how do you develop a community that wants to wipe us out altogether? So as a fundraiser, like how would you strategize to even start developing those relationships?
00:19:55
Speaker
with the top 2% because the top 2% want to wipe us out. Let's just be honest. Let's have a real conversation. I'm not sure that I completely believe that, Maddie. I believe that most of the people in the top 2%, most, I'm not making apologies for any of them,
00:20:13
Speaker
are well-educated, do believe in supporting their community, and also believe in supporting the hopes that their great-great-great-grandchildren will someday have as much money as they do, which means that they are holding on to it, which means they are voting for fiscal policies going, oh, I'm a social liberal but a fiscal conservative, so I've got to vote that way.
00:20:34
Speaker
Well, we all know that you can't fucking be a social liberal and a fiscal conservative because being socially liberal requires investment in the community, which is not fiscally conservative. You've spend more money on social programs, right?
00:20:48
Speaker
um But I want to, can I ask you, can I interrupt? ah I just want to ask a question around that because i hear what you're saying, that there are people who have means and resources to be able to use them. And I think that's powerful because there are people who see themselves as having an influence on those social policies. Mm-hmm.
00:21:04
Speaker
What I think the history of that is, and maybe one of the things I'm curious about how you navigate, is how do you navigate the lack of it, like trying to compete against a savior complex? Like the history sometimes of these funds being used is so that wealthy people can kind of inscribe their names on things to get awards and plaques on stuff to get names for stuff. And what many communities need, right? There's a lot of systems that have been out there that have been funded and reinforced time over time, but it hasn't actually fixed the problem.
00:21:32
Speaker
So it kind of sits there and it doesn't, it's not a systemic resolve. It's really kind of like a way for the wealthy itt to perpetuate sometimes a problem. And we see this a lot in poverty systems. We see this in systems like that. So, so and I what you say about building something more development, which to me sounds like a lot about advocacy building, right? Like building, how do you do that?
00:21:49
Speaker
Two things I'm going to answer. The first is, if we look at philanthropy, which has been approximately 2% of the gross domestic product for the history of of counting it.
00:22:00
Speaker
It's not gone up. It's not going to change anything. It's going to treat symptoms. The only thing we can do to fix problems... is to have the government systems invest institutionally combined with corporate interests, combined with individual donors. It has to be a full court press to really change the world.
00:22:25
Speaker
People, individuals will never give enough money to impact the programs to the level that changes require. They don't have the resources. They just don't.
00:22:37
Speaker
No nonprofit organization out there We've moved the needle a little bit here or there. We're not going to fix the problems by ourselves. We need the social justice system. We need the infrastructure that we don't have.
00:22:50
Speaker
But I'm going to go back to that first school, right? I had Mr. Board Chairman giving me $25,000, but I also had a third of the families on financial aid and 97% giving the annual fund.
00:23:03
Speaker
That is why the rich people gave, because every everyone was invested, because the wealthiest did not feel like they were carrying it themselves, because the people who did not have that much money were committed to the level they could be.
00:23:18
Speaker
I had one mom come in with a $10 bill and say, this is all I can do. Is it enough? That was the most important gift I have ever received. Brought in million-dollar gifts.
00:23:29
Speaker
The $10 from the single mom who wanted to make sure that she was contributing to her daughter's class fundraising. That is the most important gift because that is the gift that emotionally affects everybody else. That is the story of the institution. That is what makes other people step up.
00:23:49
Speaker
So it's not going to be saved by David Geffen all of a sudden leaving two gazillion dollars to solve this is issue.
Listener's Role in Systemic Change
00:23:57
Speaker
It's going to be solved in the way we've always, as a community, solved these problems, mutual aid.
00:24:02
Speaker
It's Larry Kramer sitting on the fucking boardwalk with a coffee can saying, my friends are dying, give me a dollar. And we are going to build it dollar by dollar, donor by donor, relationship by relationship, because authenticity sells.
00:24:17
Speaker
People give to people. And when you ask, number one reason, someone will make a gift. What's the number one reason you think someone makes a gift to an organization? Because they know somebody. They know somebody who's impacted. Because they're asked.
00:24:29
Speaker
Because they're asked. And the number one reason they give a second gift is because they are thanked quickly and told how their money made a difference. And there you have it. well i'm going to I'm going to give us a pause for a second. well First of all, going to take that piece of knowledge and wisdom. And we want to appreciate that very much. That was mind drop right there. And that was a mic drop and a call for anyone out there listening to think about how you are participating and how you are thinking about both systemic change and your own access to resources and what you're doing with it. So that's really powerful. I know I'm going to take those words, so I appreciate that very much. And we're going to think about that as we take a really short break. So please stay tuned, because when we come back, we're going to hear a little bit about witty repartee. I want to hear a little bit about witty repartee and the power of theater and drag. And we have some speed round questions.
00:25:14
Speaker
for Michael Barrett-Jones.
Drag, Identity, & Activism
00:25:16
Speaker
See in a minute.
00:25:24
Speaker
Welcome back to Power Beyond Pride. We are enjoying our conversation. I don't know if you're just joining in or if you have been listening from the beginning, but we are talking to the famous and beautiful Michael Barrett Jones, a.k.a. Witty Repartee, correct? Repartee. Oh, yeah.
00:25:43
Speaker
You got that. Because I don't want to say Repartee. We done had that conversation before, just want make sure say it correctly. Party is when you don't get drunk enough the first time and you got to go back out.
00:25:53
Speaker
but That's a reparty. Hey, that's my Saturday night. It's a combination of a mink party and a reparty for that matter. So I do want to come and ask the question to you, Witty. I'm talking to Witty, not Michael right now.
00:26:07
Speaker
I love theater because I'm a theater person as well. So tell me how your journey of theater and drag has helped you to... be a more of a fundraiser and be more of a change maker.
00:26:19
Speaker
And also the second part to that question is, how do you feel about the argument of drag queens reading to children? but Okay. This is, there's there's, there's a lot here. I'm going to, I'm going to try to be quick. i'm going to start with the end.
00:26:35
Speaker
Of course we should read to children. I was part of New York city's drag queen story hour. Of course we should do that. I would say mic drop, but I think it's more of a book drop, but we'll go with that. So here's the thing.
00:26:47
Speaker
Musical theater is filled with a lot of great material for women. It has not had nearly as many great songs written for men or parts written for men.
00:26:58
Speaker
So when I started in college doing cabaret, i was like, oh, I want to sing this woman's song, but oh, let me just put on some makeup. Oh, let me just do this. Let me just do that. And it started as a theater trick.
00:27:09
Speaker
Right. And then I graduated from college and got involved in my local, the gay activists Alliance of Morris County out in Morristown, New Jersey. And started performing with them under the name Octavia Thunder pussy.
00:27:23
Speaker
Oh, three times, three times I performed under that name. And the third time, the queen who was sort of the mother bird of the group said, that's not working for you. Winnie Repartite.
00:27:36
Speaker
And I said, as long as I can spell it with an I, she said, fine, whatever you want. And that was, it'll be 30 years, 30 years ago next spring. So she'd been around a while.
00:27:48
Speaker
And what what I found, i there's several ways that she's helped my fundraising. The first is Michael, believe it or not, despite being an eldest child redheaded Leo Dry Queen ENTJ, Michael is actually very shy.
00:28:01
Speaker
I know it doesn't sound like it on here right now, but Michael was the fat redheaded queer fifth grade kid who you know just keeps his mouth shut his head down, sort of. Well, most Leo's are shy anyways. They, we get a bad rap. I'm a Leo as well. People think that I'm very outspoken, but I'm like, I'd really rather be at home with my leggings reading a book.
00:28:20
Speaker
So Whitty is a character. I treat her like an actor, like a theater. My my greatest inspirations are the five Charles's Charles Pierce, Charles Luglum, Charles Nelson, Riley, Charles Bush and Vera Charles, not RuPaul Charles, never RuPaul Charles.
00:28:39
Speaker
So like a theater character, she has a backstory. She has a history. Everything she's done for 30 years hangs on the arc of that character. And her mere existence has made Michael braver.
00:28:53
Speaker
I can channel her and I can find where our overlap is and bring her into a conversation. The people I'm talking to may not know she's there. But if I do, it makes me a little bolder, a little brave. So that has helped with fundraising in a sort of practical day-to-day Michael is a professional development director way.
00:29:14
Speaker
Other than that, she's a hood on stage. I've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was Empress 26 of the Imperial Court of New York. I've been the half Empress of five or six other cities around the country. um Ran the show at Folsom Street East for a few years. Hosted was Will Clark's.
00:29:32
Speaker
I was Joan Rivers to Will Clark's Johnny Carson for porno bingo around New York City. His regular guest host when he couldn't be there. And just, it's easier when you're in drag to say, give me that money.
00:29:45
Speaker
Give me that dollar. I see you have that dollar in your hand. So just from a pure theatrical and spot of joy and whimsy, it's just a lot easier. At my current job, we offered in the auction this year, we offered a drag bingo party that witty you could bring 40 of your friends into the event space we have on the second floor. And what he would do a drag bingo party for all your friends and my bosses and the president of the board were like, oh, we don't know if it's going to sell. We're going put a couple people in the room just to sort of raise their paddles. So it's not embarrassing.
00:30:16
Speaker
started a bidding war. we ended up giving away two, raising over $10,000. So
00:30:23
Speaker
I mean, because it brings joy because the community loves drag. It loves freedom of expression. Anyone who thinks that drag is sexualizing children is just wrong.
00:30:36
Speaker
They're looking at too many Queens and leotards doing death drops. But if you look at talent, there's more out there. There's so many rich layers. um the theatrical history of drag. They don't know. There is a Broadway theater named after a drag queen. Did you know this?
00:30:51
Speaker
The Empire 25, the AMC 25 on 42nd Street is the front building with the facade and the proscenium of the Julian Eltinge Theater. Julian Eltinge was a drag performer back 110, 115 years ago who made enough money that he had his own theater and it was an important enough building that it was landmarked on the south side of forty second Street.
00:31:13
Speaker
And when AMC came to Disney and they redeveloped that whole side, they put that building on rollers and moved it to the west 50 yards because they could not tear down the proscenium arch or the facade.
00:31:25
Speaker
And when you go into the AMC 25 on 42nd Street, you are going up the escalator through a proscenium arch that was built and named for a drag queen. Yes. We have always been here. love I love it. love it. That is so, that is, yes. Yes. Yes, queen, I should say.
00:31:45
Speaker
No, thank you so much, Witty and Michael. That is so amazing again. Thank you for sharing that. And really about the courage, I think that i think what you, I think was really resonant for me.
00:31:56
Speaker
is the amount of courage that I think going into drag provides. And it really, in many ways, inspires in the rest of the work that you do, being able to, again, for a lot of queer people, we've looked at this ability to take on these personas, to say the things that we really need to be said in so many different ways and the performance of it, the theatricality of it. I mean, for every queer kid who has played at being so many different roles, drag is just such an um important experience. to see and witness the joy and the celebration and the and just what's amazing. And i again, I appreciated everything that you shared, which is really powerful. Again, thank you for sharing all of that. I do want to get to know you a little bit better.
00:32:35
Speaker
So we do have a little bit of a rapid fire round, which means that what we do is we're going to ask you some questions and you have only a couple seconds to reply. and then, the first thing that comes to the top of your head, so make it good.
00:32:49
Speaker
Since you are Witty Repartee, we are expecting... I about to say, Shane, be careful what you ask for, because you do have the Witty Repartee here with you. And just the name alone lets you know that... I know, I'm gonna get red. I'm gonna get red. It's a Leo in the hot seat. So you be real careful and mindful when you ask Leo. Wait a minute, we're all Leos here. Don't set me up too much. Come on.
00:33:09
Speaker
We're all Leos here. Let me say this. We're all Leos here, and I'm a ginger Leo. like I'm also a ginger Leo. I know. That's what saying. Are you a ginger Leo or an August Leo? I'm an August Leo.
00:33:19
Speaker
Oh, well. Maddie? but Wait a minute. I am an August Leo and we allow July Leos to call yourselves Leos. So come on. I am a triple Leo, right? Smack dab in the center of Leo season, August the 8th. And I am not accompanied by my beautiful co-host on August
Rapid-Fire Questions with Michael/Witty
00:33:38
Speaker
the 10th. So we we are, we we are, we are, mean, we are here with love for the Leo and we are going to bring that love with these questions.
00:33:48
Speaker
So first, you want to kick it off? um I was like, so first question, Witty, describe your drag in three words and three words only, Leo. Classic cabaret camp. man And alliteration. oh my gosh. Really brought it out.
00:34:04
Speaker
So since you're so good with words, what word do you have the hardest time pronouncing? Fork. Well, as fork, is there a reason for fork? You can just work on that.
00:34:18
Speaker
Does it? Nope. You asked me, it's a question. I'm looking at an issue. There was no problem either, so you've thought about this. Shane, do you have a word that you have hard pronouncing?
00:34:33
Speaker
Oh, that's a really, that's a tough one. i find aneurysm. Aneurysm? Don't ask me why.
00:34:43
Speaker
Well, me and Reba have one thing in common. Neither one of us can say I-s. Because every time I say ass, it's like I'm saying ass. And my cousins be looking to be like, I'm crazy. Because I'm like, can get some ass in my teeth?
00:34:54
Speaker
i was going to say, do you just stir your ass with a fork? Depending on what time it is, don't do that now. Come on, Whitty. Okay, so Whitty, since we're on that topic of letters and words, what are four words that come to your mind when you hear the letter B?
00:35:13
Speaker
They have to start with the letter B. Four words to start with the letter B. Berries. Mm-hmm. Boys. Mm-hmm. Broadway. Mm-hmm.
00:35:25
Speaker
And brown sugar. Not where I thought it was going to go, but I love it. All right. i think that's awesome. What is your favorite age so far and why?
00:35:36
Speaker
The age I am now, right now, very much today. Every decade. I'm 51. I'll be 52 next month, Leo. Woo-hoo! Every decade has been better than the one before, and I wouldn't go back to my teens or my 20s for all the money in the world.
00:35:51
Speaker
Hell yes. I agree. And the truth of the matter is, i recently, two and a half years ago, moved from New York City down to Northern Virginia. And I thought in college I was an actor and i was going to wait 10 years and then start acting again because I was a character actor. And in the meantime, Witty came around.
00:36:09
Speaker
And I went on three humiliatingating humiliating auditions. I forked them up. but And I got down here and all of a sudden someone says, oh, you should audition. And I played Princess Dragomiroff in Murder on the Orient Express.
00:36:23
Speaker
And now I'm playing Edna in Hairspray. And Winnie still there, but Michael is is is sort of acting again and playing character parts. And I'm working for a theater. I'm running a theater. I'm acting in shows. Everything is all theater all the time.
00:36:38
Speaker
And that didn't hit till my fifties. That was the goal starting off. Wait, do the work. It will come. May not be today. May not be tomorrow, but it will come.
00:36:49
Speaker
I just want to put that on a poster and run that on a wall. I was about to say, I'm so supposed to ask another question, but I have to stop right there and just say thank you. Being that I'm an actress and a comedian, sometimes you wonder in your 40s, did I do enough to get to where I'm at? And just hearing you say, wait, like, I love it. I love it. It lets me know we're not done yet. Thank
Michael's Journey & Personal Growth
00:37:10
Speaker
you. So this question is for Michael and for Witty.
00:37:15
Speaker
savory or sweet yes
00:37:22
Speaker
okay we'll stop we'll take that we appreciate versatility we appreciate versatility on this show do salted caramel baby salted caramel come on oh yes it is a wonderful delight isn't it the most expensive makeup product that you like The most expensive makeup product is my foundation, which is it comes in a jar and you need a spatula to get it out. It's Dermablend.
00:37:48
Speaker
It is Dermacolor, honey. It is de not Dermablend, but Dermacolor because mama is sometimes... in drag for 12 hours and you just can't have things poking through. It is a glorious product that, and I'm still using, i have leftover from my days at Iris house. the The Mac AIDS foundation would give us leftover makeup at the end of the season.
00:38:09
Speaker
And I still have seven or eight tubes of Rihanna's lipstick when she did the Viva glam. Cause it was the most glorious shade of red with a little bit of silver sparkle in it. I'm just, I'm hoarding those they're precious nuggets.
00:38:22
Speaker
the I did go ah Gaga over i did go go over the Selena collection, so I'd definitely get you that red. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, so as a drag queen and as an actress, I mean, as an actress-actor, I know that you do stand-up a lot, but would you ever, would Michael ever just do stand-up?
00:38:42
Speaker
I don't know. That requires, I'm a great emcee and host, but to actually have a tight thigve or earn my my forty five or my 45-minute set with all the callbacks, that's too structured. I don't have the i don't have the patience or the discipline for that.
00:38:59
Speaker
and So it's improv. So would you do it you like to roll with the improv? I am great at rolling with the improv. I admire that. In fact, I'm directing a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum next spring.
00:39:10
Speaker
And rather than having a dance callback, it's going to be improv games because I need a cast that's going to be able to play with each other and just have fun bouncing stuff back and forth. And I need to know the energy is right.
00:39:21
Speaker
It's all about energy. I love it. yeah Okay, so so so knowing that, first of all, the amazing impact you've had as a leader, whether it's organizing, fundraising, all of it, we obviously stand on the shoulders of our many different community members and people who have influenced us. So if you were to think of a favorite quote that has that that summarizes kind of what informs you and inspires you, what's a favorite quote?
00:39:43
Speaker
Oh, God. I'm going to paraphrase this a little bit, but I think it's right. And it's it's paraphrasing Winston Churchill. And the line is, We make a living by what we get.
00:39:55
Speaker
We make a life by what we give. i like that. Another book drop. I'm just saying. You know what? There's been a lot of books dropping in this conversation. I love it. So this is our last rapid fire question. Where would you prefer to go on your first date?
00:40:10
Speaker
On my first date, I want a wine bar with a good charcuterie plate. Ooh, there is a word. Yeah, I can't do charcu- char- That's a, well, you know what? That's a word I can't do well.
00:40:22
Speaker
Charcu-y? Matty, if you ever need to trip him up four syllables or more, it doesn't seem to- I never said I was the smartest. I never said that. No, but you're pretty.
00:40:33
Speaker
ah You're beautiful. You're beautiful. all All the work that you do. And I'm not just saying that because I am another 50-year-old Leo looking at another 50-year-old Ginger Leo and going, of course. But but hey you are your work is powerful. you thank you for joining us today. It's been so incredible. So I'm so great so glad you could join us today. Delighted to have been here.
00:40:54
Speaker
And I have to echo that sentiment. This has been probably, I don't even want to make anybody else feel bad, but this has probably been the best interview to date that I've done in a very long time. Not just with this show, but just in general. And I thank you for giving me the space to be. No, seriously, because sometimes as an interviewer, you have to be mindful of making sure that you don't put your interviewee in a position where they feel uncomfortable. And when I say you came into the conversation more than comfortable, it's just, yes, thank you, God. love
Episode Wrap-Up & Listener Engagement
00:41:27
Speaker
So, Michael, i do have to ask one quick question. Where can people follow you on social media? What are your social handles? Mostly I 51 Facebook, Witty Repartee at Facebook, W I T T I R E P A R T E E. She's also on blue sky, but she's barely there because she left X and Twitter and all those things. She's on Instagram, but she's barely there.
00:41:50
Speaker
Facebook is where I live and it's on Witty's profile. Michael has a profile, but if you like send a DM to Michael, I'll respond by email going, I'm never over there. I can only get there on my home computer.
00:42:02
Speaker
So if at my desktop, I can do it. But otherwise, just text WIDI. So as you hear people, like we've been dropping books all night. If you go to the book and you can book her face, because when I tell y'all can't see this, but when I'm looking at this beautiful face, the face of many, many, many, many many many beautiful things, Facebook, Witty Repartee is where you can find her.
00:42:22
Speaker
And I am Maddie Bynum, one of your co-hosts this evening. And you can find me at Instagram, Maddie Simone 737, Facebook, Maddie Bynum. And that's it because I don't deal with the other ones.
00:42:34
Speaker
I'm your co-host, Shane Lucas. And you can find me at shanelucas.com. And I am an a lifelong activist and I'm really i a music lover. And now I'm a Woody Repartee fan. So that's all the things that have to be there. so And I want to say again, thank you so much, Michael, for joining us today. It's been absolutely amazing.
00:42:54
Speaker
And you can remember to subscribe and get your friends to subscribe to Power Beyond Pride on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And check out our site at PowerBeyondPride.com. And Power Beyond Pride is a project from A Great Idea, queer-owned design and content agency. Learn more about them at AGreatIdea.com.
00:43:13
Speaker
And this episode is produced by Shane Lucas. That was me. It's me to start cars, our project developer, our editor is Jarrett Redding with support from Ian Wilson. And again, I want to throw much love to my co-host, Maddie Bynum.
00:43:25
Speaker
I love you, baby. ah It's always a good time to be in a seat beside you. And we are just a part of this amazing hosting here at Power Beyond Pride. So if you enjoy listening to us, you will have a great time listening to all of us at one time, I promise you. So please send in your questions, your comments to powerbeyondpride.com so we can always be here to lend our voice.
00:43:47
Speaker
And you can check out new episodes each week, and we look forward to queer changemaking with you. Thank you from all of us at Power Beyond Pride.