Pride 2023 - Featured Stories: Werq the World

Cast of Werq the World. Photo by Marco Ovando.

Rupaul Drag Race has become the go-to for drag aficionados around the world. In the 15 years the show has existed, we’ve meet some of the most lively and bold performers that have left us gagging for more. That is where Werq the World comes into play. Jon Norris, Producer of Werq the World, sat down with PRIDE & Equality to discuss the new tour, its history, and how far they’ve come.

How did Werq the World come to fruition?
We've been doing RuPaul's Drag Race events, small format tours since the first season. Brandon Voss started with the very first winner, Bebe Zahara Benet. He did the grand finale party event for her crowning. If we were doing a holiday show, like for Halloween, we would cast these Queens from all these seasons of drag race, putting together a thematic show around that holiday. So all of those little types of events and shows amounted to what we would call our turning point at Voss Events. 
We were like, "Let's just do the whole tour. Let's go International! You know, go big and go home! We didn't go home. We just kept going bigger and bigger. Now it's gone from a 500-capacity venue in New York City, where we used to do press events, to a 10,000-capacity Arena. It's a big come-up, and we're looking for that new temple. Like last year, we just found ourselves at Radio City Music Hall. Who would have thought? Being a New York-based company - we made it to Radio City! You can't get better than that. But, hey, we're going find that next better thing.

We had the opportunity to take in the show at Kiva Auditorium, and we're looking forward to the performance at The Rio Rancho Events Center on July 13th. How long does it take to create a show of this magnitude?
It's a challenge, and a team effort. We always have the creative team go in with the producer that handles the music. You have the choreographer handling movement and blocking on the stage. Then the Queens themselves. They're helping bring in the flavor of themselves and their performance. It's super important to get the whole team together. So you're creating that vision, the side by side parallels, to develop the magic coming from those numbers. We all love what we do. We all take pride in what we do, excited to get that Queen to show the best version of herself on that stage. It always amounts to something incredible, and a few shots backstage before the performance always helps!

The show is going on 16 now. How do you choose who goes on the tour? Who are the perfect round of Queens?
Choosing the Queens is probably the hardest decision of any tour. You find what works and what doesn't and the queens that work and the queens that don't. Those are the types of people you can find on the drag race.
We like to work with Queens managed off the Voss roster first and foremost. We enter work with them because we already invest a lot of our time in them, but then the queens we like to bring in to complement the show are usually the finalists of the most recent season. Sometimes we take a legacy Queen from the first ten seasons. There are so many queens to choose from, and they like to pick the Queens who put fans in a chokehold. So with all the strong personalities, it's good to have one or two of them, maybe not eight of them. You learned that pretty early on.

Where did the inspiration come from for this year's theme, Cyberpunk?
The first year of Werq the World was called "Queens Werq the World." It was just like a World International theme. Each Queen selected a country, and they represented that country. Very Universe America - pageantry and then the pageant. The patch, as they like to call it, transformed into our travel theme. We looked at, I think, a Chanel runway show - spring or summer 2006 - and all these air stewardess costumes were coming down the runway, and I think Victoria's Secret did something like that too. So we took that inspiration and created a traveling theme - a story behind the show. The first year we threw the Queens on stage and said go dance. With the upcoming years in the pipeline, you had to have a story to bring people back. People pulled in by a song and dance lip sync isn't always going to do it. So you have to throw in a little more sprinkle of story. One year we're like, "Let's go to space!" We started working the planets. Every Queen was Mars, Venus, and Saturn - the Queen of that planet. After we conquered the "worlds," we said, "Okay, what do we do next?" We conquered "space," so we thought, "Let's go back in time!" So, we assigned each Queen to pick a period they found exciting and could make a number out of it. We had the Queen of the Neanderthals and the Queen of ancient Egypt. So, we've traveled through space. We've traveled through time. Where do you travel next? The Matrix came out of that. It just came back like a year or two ago, so why not take what's always on top of everyone's mind? There are also strong transgender allegories within the Matrix films. So, it became our cyberpunk Matrix theme.

With some outrageous laws created to pigeonhole some people, has the tour experienced any difficulties, or has they been welcomed with open arms?
We tried to make the best of it. We're a show, first and foremost. We act as if we were like a musical - with swings and a cast that changes by city. With our content, drag queens will talk like sailors, so we didn't want to hear any vilification of 'My son heard you say the f-word!' So, we raised the age to 18. We didn't want to be the reason why anyone was losing any more rights. We're taking it city by city, day by day, show by show. We'll go through this tour with the idea that people can make something from nothing. We want to stay away from that as possible as much as possible. But because we're 18 plus now, it's no holds bars. This show is going to be crazy this year. You'll laugh your ass off! We're excited about coming out to Rio Rancho.

Where can people learn more about the event?
You can go to worktheworld.com. You can also connect with the Queens through their socials and see if they're not going to be there, unfortunately, God forbid, they can’t be there, we'll always supplant that with a Killer Queen regardless of who's gone and who's not there we're always giving the correct show no matter what.”

Werq the World will take place at the Rio Rancho Events Center on July 13th. To learn more or to purchase tickets, visit vossevents.com/werq-the-world-tour.