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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

September 25, 2009

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www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

Drag and Tupperware connect with a snap

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland has seen some strange times involving iconic storage containers.

First, Jewish lesbian folk singer Phranc opened the Cleveland International Film Festival with a Tupperware party a few years ago. It was a surreal start to the week of cinematic glory.

Now, Dixie Longate is bringing her own wares to Playhouse Square's 14th Street Theater from September 30 to October 18.

A phantasmagorical congruence of drag show, girls' night out, social commentary and trailer park witticisms, the evening features giveaways, the latest assortment of

public record, either through police reports or court documents.

Still, there is absolutely nothing connecting her to the mysterious deaths of her three former husbands.

Through her Tupperware sales, Dixie earns as much as $25,000 a month, and holds the record for the top-selling party of all time, bringing in $5,400 in a single evening, over ten times as much as the average Tupperware party.

She'll be heading to Cleveland from Scotland, where she put on a successful run of Dixie's Tupperware Party and spent the entire time "drunk as a sorority girl the night after she rolls out of a VW bug

behind the Shop-Rite without the Sunday coupon circular."

Perhaps, to keep her from getting too culture-shocked, everyone at her parties should speak with a Scottish burr. She probably will be too intoxicated to realize she's back in the United States.

Dixie's Tupperware Party runs September 30-October 14 at the 14th Street Theater. Tickets are $10-$35 and can be purchased by going to www.playhouse square.com or calling 216-241-6000.

Tupperware products for sale, and some down-home pondering on the meaning of life.

Dixie's Tupperware Party is the brainchild of actor and writer Kris Andersson, who between tours is a top-selling Tupperware peddler. On tour, however, and in heels, the sales go through the roof. Dixie is as Dixie does, and every single interview for her show is done as Dixie. "What's funny is I didn't know for two years you could use Tupperware in the kitchen," she told the Herald Scotland. "I thought it was for the bedroom."

"Then I saw some in my neighbor's kitchen cupboards and thought, 'Is that what that's for?' So I took my favorite pieces out from under the bed," she continued. "The things I used to do hanging from the ceiling fan with a shot cup, a midget and a goat, I can't even get into."

"It's versatile stuff," she insists.

Fleeing from Mobile, Alabama after the somewhat fatal failure of her third marriage, she left behind her three children Dwayne, Wynona and Absorbine, Jr., and embarked on a new, glamorous life filled with plastic kitchen accessories and dresses made out of tablecloths.

"The dress I wear in the show was an old Fourth of July tablecloth," she noted. "I cut around the gravy stains and fashioned it into a little dress for myself."

"Why would you throw away a perfectly good tablecloth just because there are spots on it?" Longate asks.

Dixie is fond of calling her audience members/pafty guests "hookers," because, while other people call everyone "honey" or "sweetie," she just doesn't like to lie. "Half the people I know have done things that are untoward to Jesus," she drawls. Above all else, that honesty is what she believes in. If she's not up-front with people and tell them things right away, "I'm going to tell them anyway when I get drunk two hours later."

Not to mention that much of her life is

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