“I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. For no one who wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyze it; he can only, whatever his intention, exhibit it. … To talk about camp is therefore to betray it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for the edification it provides, or the dignity of the conflict it resolves.” – Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp
Too many people think they can do camp. They can’t. They really can’t. Sontag in her seminal work Notes on Camp defines camp as “a vision of the world in terms of style – but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off’, of things-being-what-they-are-not” but does so with affection rather than mockery.
It’s that last part that people miss. Those who fail at camp arrogantly co-opt flippancy and disdain as a way of attempting to connect with an audience – as if we are all in on one contemptuous joke. That doesn’t work. At best it falls flat and rings hollow, and at worst it feels cruel and alienating.
Good camp is love, first and foremost – affection for the absurd as a lens for embracing and, yes, critiquing our common human condition.
At least that’s my pretentious opinion.
Jane Don’t does camp exquisitely. And when it’s done this well, the work is in an intoxicating league all its own.
Don’t just launched their Don’t Does America tour, and we took in one of the early stops in Chicago … well … Schaumburg at Chicago Improv, located in Woodfield Mall. Don’t made GREAT hay out of performing in a shopping mall in suburban America. And their exaggerated pronunciation of Schaaaaaummmberrrrhg was offered frequently as a wry punctuation mark on their self-effacing observations of life in America 2026.
The show is in essence a cabaret in the guise of a travelogue. Don’t learns some devastating news about fellow Drag Race Season 18 contestant and frenemy Athena Dion (who has a delightful, very Athena Dion cameo). Don’t is then sent on a cross-country scramble to fulfill their friend’s “final” wishes.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: for those who have been anywhere in my orbit the past few years, Athena is a dear pal … after being forced to sing “Born This Way” with me at 8:30 in the morning in Hollywood, Florida, before 1500+ gobsmacked legal marketers in 2023. But I digress…).
This narrative conceit deftly ties up any loose ends for those Drag Race superfans presuming the show will be a six-months-past nostalgia trip/confessional. It ain’t. The “plot” (which is being charitable – and that is clearly by smart design) sends Don’t to a handful of landmark American cities, as conveyed by John Waters-meets-Sesame Street video projections.
In each locale Don’t features one of their many talents: e.g. stand-up comedy (Don’t really slays with comic timing that is impeccable – both zingers and dad jokes), lip syncing (Celine Dion wept), and Broadway belting, among others. I REALLY hope Don’t releases a digital EP of the catchy AF songs delivered during the show. All are textbook definitions of earworms, particularly the deliciously torturous title theme song which repeats about 83 times during the 90 minute run time.
Don’t does playfully land a well-deserved jab at the corporate entity that drag has become in the Mama Ru era, an epoch that has elevated and mainstreamed the art form while also turning it into a revenue machine for everyone but the queens. At a “slam poetry” night, Don’t savagely reads some verse that only a scatalogically inclined Mad Libs could love. “I always travel with an emergency poem,” Don’t intones. The punchline? The poesy in question is RuPaul’s less-than-stellar, sophomoric rap on pop icon Miley Cyrus’ forgotten ditty “Catitude,” with a side-eyed aside that the lyrics were written at the height of Ru’s popularity. Well played, Jane Don’t.
BUT the centerpiece of the production occurs when Don’t’s car “breaks down” in Amish country and, to gather cash to pay for the repairs, Don’t delivers an Amish … burlesque. Basically a riotously zany strip tease … in reverse. I dare not spoil too many of the visual jokes here because I haven’t laughed that hard in ages – but there IS a butter churn.
What Don’t does SO effectively is walk that razor’s edge of incisive satire and good-hearted sheer goofiness. At the meet and greet, I told Don’t that the show felt like Pee Wee’s Playhouse if hosted by Bette Midler. Don’t responded that they felt seen. 😊 But the deep cut cultural influences don’t stop there – Sophie Tucker (of course), Mae West, Kathy Griffin, Carol Burnett, Elaine Stritch, Rosalind Russell, Kay Thompson, Jonathan Winters, Angela Lansbury, Joan Rivers, Bea Arthur, Don Rickles, maybe even a smidge of Mary Tyler Moore and Marlo Thomas all seem to haunt the stage around Don’t. Plus, the show comes with a heaping slice of agitprop, Brechtian technique. (Lord, I REALLY do sound affected.)
Kindness and compassion, inclusion and equity are clearly critically important to Don’t. (Footnote: all merch is sourced to small businesses.) Don’t celebrates their Seattle-bred values, and all of those progressive queens who preceded Don’t. Don’t never shies away from clear-eyed analysis of the fraught times in which we are living, but, through the absurdity of the narrative’s circumstances and the brassily confident yet tenderly winsome way Don’t frames herself, you still walk away feeling hope. And THAT is the power of camp done properly, with a messy precision that welcomes us all in.
Don’t flashes a QR code at one point, encouraging attendees to donate to local causes near and dear that could use a helping hand. (Full list here.) Don’t features local queens at each whistle top – offering them extended featured moments. Yet it all still clearly remains Don’t’s world. And what a gift it is for us to be living in it.
Check the schedule and buy tickets here – and spring for the meet-and-greet if available. Don’t is as accessible and real offstage as on.
