“I’m 56, and not many drag queens are still running around in drag at 56, and my own career trajectory – life trajectory – has not been typical,” says Rory O’Neill, aka Ireland’s most famous drag queen, Panti Bliss.
“So the [new] show is, in many ways, about re-finding your place in the world as you get older. What is your purpose as you get older?”
Here in Australia to perform Panti Bliss: If These Wigs Could Talk – including seasons in Melbourne, Sydney and Brunswick Heads, in addition to debuting the character in Aotearoa New Zealand at The Civic’s Wintergarden in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland – O’Neill says the one-woman show began after a period of lockdown-induced depression in 2020-2021.
“Like a lot of people in the creative industries, my whole life was just put on hold during the pandemic and I spent essentially the best part of two years lying on the sofa eating chocolate biscuits and drinking gin and tonic and getting fat, and really, I think for the very first time ever in my life, I became depressed. And so coming out of all of that, when you’re writing a show for a live audience again, it really made me have to consider, ‘What am I actually for anymore? What am I all about?’”
O’Neill’s period of self-reflection was intensified by the prominent role he’d found himself unintentionally catapulted into during Ireland’s divisive, often bitter, marriage equality campaign, after a speech he gave in character as Panti Bliss, onstage at the country’s national theatre, The Abbey in 2014 went viral.
Panti was immediately thrust into a very public role in the marriage equality campaign, with O’Neill becoming an accidental activist and a figurehead for queer rights nationally, an experience detailed at length in Conor Horgan’s acclaimed 2015 documentary, The Queen of Ireland.
“When I first came out in Ireland, homosexuality was completely illegal. It was a criminal offence. I was 25 years old before it stopped being a crime in Ireland,” says O’Neill.
“We went from being one of the last countries, in the English-speaking world anyway … to decriminalise homosexuality … and yet not that long afterwards, really, being the first country in the world to introduce marriage equality by a popular vote. So we’ve had an incredible journey here in Ireland in regards to the queer community.”
Once a deeply conservative country effectively ruled by the Catholic Church in all but name, the seismic impact of the Church’s role in child sexual abuse in Ireland, closely followed by the Church-run mother-and-baby homes scandal, resulted in social change leaping forward dramatically after being held back for decades.
Read: Queer and present danger: Part 1
In 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce marriage equality by popular vote, enshrining the right to marriage equality in the Irish constitution. A similar referendum, to overturn the constitutional ban on women’s access to abortion, followed in 2018, and was equally successful. The Catholic Church in Ireland, meanwhile, is considered to be in “terminal decline“, according to The Irish Times‘ Patsy McGarry.
As a result of Panti’s prominent role in the marriage equality campaign, O’Neill suddenly became the media’s go-to person for commentary on a wide range of issues.
“I’m treated incredibly seriously in Ireland these days,” he laughs. “People hang on my every word; they want me to say the exact right thing all the time, and they take my opinion on everything from immigration to cycling lanes really seriously. And every seven years … I get all of these calls asking me, ‘Am I going to be running for the presidency?’, which is just such a wild, crazy, insane place for an old drag queen to find herself in.
“I got into drag originally because it was stupid and ridiculous and brilliant and punk and underground and transgressive, and now people want me to be some sort of elder states-lady… So this whole show is, humorously for the most part, looking at that weird position that I’m in and trying to find my own path forward, in a way, but it also just reflects on ageing in general,” O’Neill explains.
How resisting the far right inspired ‘If These Wigs Could Talk’
The rise of the far right in Ireland – and their attacks on drag queen story time events at libraries and bookshops across the country, events that occurred in Australia also – was another catalyst for the creation of If These Wigs Could Talk.
As Panti Bliss, O’Neill was invited to be the Grand Marshall of the first ever LGBTQ+ Pride Parade held in O’Neill’s home county, Mayo, on the far west coast of Ireland – with one of the Mayo Pride events being a Drag Queen Story Time event at the inclusive, independent Tertulia Bookshop in the seaside town of Westport.
“Westport is a beautiful, gorgeous, picturesque small town on the Atlantic coast, very popular with tourists and all of that … and I was very proud to be asked to be the Grand Marshal of their little parade … so I said I would do that,” he says.
“And then we discovered that these far right fascists were picketing outside this adorable bookstore, which is right on the seashore – I mean, you couldn’t find a more beautiful location for your bookshop – and so I took the microphone, because there was this really lovely little party – and if you’re thinking of Pride parades like Mardi Gras or something, you’ve got to get that out of your head. This was an adorable little parade in a little village where half the village was in the parade and the other half were standing outside, waving as we went by.
“And so I took the microphone, I told everyone who was at this little party down at the shore, ‘Let’s go and meet some fascists.’ So we went and we had to sort of stand them down. And they were there with their horrible, disgusting, badly-spelled signs accusing us of all sorts of awful things,” O’Neill continues.
“And this was two years ago. We were just coming out of the pandemic, and in retrospect I think it was good for me that [the counter-protest] happened, because it really underlined for me how much progress these people were making or trying to make, and how far they had gone down this rabbit hole of far right nonsense. Because it’d been many, many, many years since I had seen people with signs like that in Ireland.
“It sort of snapped me out of a complacency, really, and maybe out of my post-pandemic stupor, and it really reinvigorated me … and it’s actually the thing that sparked off writing this show, that was the genesis of this show,” O’Neill concludes.
Produced by THISISPOPBABY, Panti Bliss: If These Wigs Could Talk concludes its Melbourne season on Sunday 9 February. Thereafter O’Neill performs as Panti at Brunswick Picture House in Brunswick Heads, NSW on 11-12 February, the Auckland Wintergarden from 19-23 February and The Factory Sydney from 25-26 February. The Queen of Ireland is streaming on Stan.
This article is based on a conversation between Rory O’Neill and Richard Watts, which was broadcast on Watts’ long-running 3RRR program SmartArts on Thursday 23 January. Listen to the interview in full.
