Fiesta’s Cornynation — a comedy show that features performers dressed in drag — was filled with plenty of dark humor Wednesday night about the future of drag performances, as well as the grim political landscape for LGBTQ Texans.
Over the course of roughly two hours performers skewered Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, GOP presidential hopeful and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as well as Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Councilman Clayton Perry (D10).
The jokes came as a handful of bills introduced by Republicans in the legislature this year seek to regulate drag shows or criminalize drag performances in the presence of minors, ideas that critics say could have a broader chilling effect.
In a nod to those concerns, master of ceremonies Payton Kane invited attendees at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre Wednesday night to take photo or video evidence of the night’s performance.
“Big brother loves a snitch,” joked Kane. Later he warned queens to “take cover, girl, the future is fraught,” before introducing a skit titled “F— House Bill 4378 and the horse it came on.”
HB 4378, filed by Rep. Steve Toth (R-Woodlands), would allow people who view drag shows as a minor to sue the performers, though critics say the language is broad enough to include traditional theater.
“Deep in the heart of Texas it’s been a right wing fever dream made flesh,” said Kane, who cohosted the event with Mindy Miller Hill, who served as King Anchovy in 2019.
“[Gov. Greg Abbott] and crew want that deep red cred for the 2024 Hunger Games,” Hill said told audience.
Cornynation has been a Fiesta tradition since 1951. It started as a costumed satire of the Coronation of the Queen of the Order of the Alamo, and has since grown into one of Fiesta’s most popular events.
Billing itself as “adult-oriented satire,” the show weaves expletive-laden, R-rated jokes into biting political commentary. Its sponsors this year included law firms, local businesses and alcohol companies.
Among the top targets of this year’s performance was Abbott, played by a performer wearing a giant costume head of the governor.
One skit depicted Lady Liberty pulling a fetus out of Abbott, who in 2021 signed into effect the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Another performance showed Abbott being chosen to receive an interspecies heart transplant, a procedure that doctors temporarily succeeded with on a patient last year.
“We know just the heartless son of a b—- who could use a new ticker,” Kane said.
Near the end of the show, one popular skit showed Abbott’s character crushed by a sawed down-tree while performers danced to “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” from the Wizard of Oz. (The real Abbott was paralyzed from the waist down after a tree fell on him while jogging at age 26 and uses a wheelchair.)
Cornyation’s cast expressed similar sentiments toward DeSantis, whose administration implemented a program last year that lured migrants onto a flight from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, and is currently fighting with Disney over “woke” corporate practices after the company spoke out against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Disney filed suit against DeSantis Wednesday.
“This living Napoleon complex cherishes nothing more than controlling how you live, learn, think and f—,” Kane said of DeSantis. “… You can only push so far before the fairies and their godmothers … rock you like a hurricane.”
Performers depicted a pre-DeSantis Florida in which “fairy godmothers brought children’s dreams to life … golden geriatrics golfed gleefully … and queens delivered joyful readings to audiences of all ages.”
Drag queens swoop in to tie DeSantis to a maypole with rainbow ribbons. The skit was sponsored by trial lawyers at San Antonio’s Hill Law Firm.
Performers also took aim at Twitter CEO Elon Musk, whom they accused of “giving free speech to the goose.”
“He bought the bird and s— the bed,” Hill said of Musk. “Twitter’s market value collapsed faster than [Mayor] Ron Nirenberg turned his back on [Proposition] A.”
Don’t ‘party with Perry’
Cornynation’s final act blasted the handling of Perry’s hit-and-run car crash, depicted through a Nutcracker-themed journey through that November night. Perry, currently the only conservative voice on City Council, isn’t seeking reelection.
Video from that night showed Perry consuming 14 drinks in four hours at the Evil Olive Elixir Lounge, attempting to hand an employee his keys at the drive-thru of a Bill Miller Bar-B-Q, then lying on the ground in his backyard. Body camera footage from the police officer who found him that night showed Perry deflecting questions by repeating that he “had a good time,” and at one point declaring “there’s a lot of acorns living here tonight.”
Kane called the punishment for Perry’s “martini-fueled demolition derby” — 12 months of deferred adjudication — a joke even in San Antonio, “where a DUI is just an inevitable Fiesta rite of passage.”
The evening’s grand finale featured a dreaming Perry joined first by an evil olive dancing to Ke$ha’s 2009 song “TiK ToK,” then a Bill Miller Bar-B-Q cup dancing to Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places,” and finally an acorn and squirrel dancing to Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy.” Signs warned the audience, “Don’t Party with Perry,” a nod to the councilman’s Fiesta slogan.
“We hope you had a good time, too,” Kane told the audience.
