Prating with Panti

When she’s not being sued by right wing journalists, dismantling homophobia with eloquent, viral speeches or leading a nations campaign for equal marriage, the Emerald Isle’s beloved Panti Bliss can be found on stage, performing her show High Heels in Low Places. Ahead of her run at the Soho Theatre, Chris Godfrey caught up with the Ireland’s accidental activist. 

 


Hey Panti, tell us a little bit about the show; will it touch on similar themes to your famous Noble Call speech at the Abbey Theatre?

In the Noble Call I was talking about being publicly gay as a private person in a sense, whereas I guess the show is a bit more about being publicly gay as a public person in my context. It’s very particular to me, but a large piece of the show is about the weird pressures for Panti in Ireland to always be the perfect gay, where every single thing is taken very seriously. Which is fine sometimes, but other times it’s a total pain in the arse.

I guess with the way in which you became the figurehead for the same-sex marriage referendum there’s now an expectation on your part to almost ‘toe the line’ for a more mainstream audience?

Everybody here takes everything I have to say so seriously now. And you know I am first and foremost an entertainer and so it’s a weird thing to suddenly have this pressure. You have to suddenly second-guess that all the time, you know: ‘can I say that now’. Five year’s ago Panti could say anything she wanted, whereas now, even if I put something small on Facebook it’s pored over and six months later in some argument it will be thrown out on the TV or something. Even if I make small silly joke somewhere people can get upset. That’s a weird position for a drag queen to be in.

It’s a double edge sword. Sometimes it’s a good thing it means I can say things that are taken seriously. But on the other hand I don’t represent every single gay and you’ll find gays who don’t agree with me and you’ll probably find some who hate me. There’s this weird pressure on me now that they think that I represent every gay. So whatever I say some people think ‘that’s the gay thought on this’. No, that’s my thought on this.

“Now even if some drunk idiot decided to shout something at you or wherever, there’s a general feeling of ‘fuck you, 65% of the people on the street think you’re the arsehole’. “

So people are forgetting that you’re an entertainer?

They have a tendency to do that and I have to constantly remind them. Of course sometimes it works in my favour – sometimes I want people to take what I say more seriously. I spent 20 years of my career trying to get people to take what I say more seriously.

Most people have a low opinion of drag and what drag is. The mainstream saw a drag show in Lanzarote once and now they think every drag is that. It’s such a weird thing because people don’t have that same view of any other art form. People don’t say ‘oh I hate all kinds of comedians’ because they understand that you can’t compare Woody Allen to Joan Rivers, or whoever. There’re all different kinds of comedians and people understand that.

Somehow there’s this thing about drag where the mainstream mostly think that drag is simply a bloke putting on a dress and that therefore all drags are the same. So I spent 20 years fighting that, because you’re trying to sell them tickets to your theatre show and they’re all like ‘oh I went to that bar in Lanzarote once and saw a drag queen so why would I want to go to buy a ticket to see another one? I’ve seen one.’

The gays understand generally that drag comes in all kinds, that you can’t compare Taylor Mac, to Lily Savage, to David Hoyle, to RuPaul’s Drag Race. We understand that some of them are funny and some of them lip sync to Britney. Most people in the mainstream don’t know that. They think it’s only putting on a dress and that that is the act. I spent years fighting against that and now I almost did too well!

And how have things been in Ireland since the referendum? 

As I’m sure you know we were the only country in the world to do it by referendum and I wouldn’t recommend that to anybody because it’s a very risky way to do it; if we’d lost the vote we’d have had to wait another 15 years to have another go at it, because you can’t just constantly have referendums. It was a difficult way to do it and quite a stressful way to do it, you spend six months walking around with posters all around the country telling you you’re terrible. It’s kind of depressing and horrible.

But when you do it that way and you win the result is much more powerful, because no one could talk about it afterwards and say it’s just politicians doing it. Obviously having that giant conversation and having six months of every family talking about it and every shopkeeper talking about it, again when the results are positive it’s very powerful.

Since the day of the referendum the gay community definitely feels different, they feel more comfortable. The really obviously sign of that is you see gay couples holding hands wandering around the streets now in a way that you just never did before.

I guess that goes back to that TED talk you gave on how even something as small as holding hands with a partner can be a political statement. Is it less so now?

I think there was a feeling before the referendum that a gay couple might decide to hold hands depending on where they are; there’s always that thing of ‘oh is somebody going to shout faggot at us’ or something. And before the referendum a gay couple might have felt maybe lots of people on the street agree with this arsehole. Now even if some drunk idiot decided to shout something at you or wherever, there’s a general feeling of ‘fuck you, 65% of the people on the street think you’re the arsehole’.  That’s a really obvious physical thing that’s happened since the referendum that’s lovely to see and unexpected.

So what’s next on Panti’s political and theatrical agenda?

At the moment I do an awful lot of speaking to companies and schools and that sort of stuff because even if you have full equality under the law it doesn’t mean there’s a day-to-day life everything is perfect, especially for kids, so I do a lot of that sort of stuff. But for the next couple of months I’m concentrating on putting this show that I’ve been doing for the last year and a half finally to bed!

 

• You can catch Panti’s show at Soho Theatre (21 Dean Street, W1D 3NE) between Monday 12th and Saturday 17th October. Tickets from £12.50. Visit the www.sohotheatre.com for more details.

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