Mass Drag — a new, joyful musical by James Lapata about queer theology, church history, and a mysterious burial gone rogue — is playing at the Rochester Fringe (Sept 15–18 at the Biltmore) and, believe it or not, it’s already sold out.

Check out the episode on Just Can't Not wherever you get your podcasts or on Lunchador.org!

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/98d7de81-7c1f-4986-a93c-3de3225d004f/

I’m Chris Lindstrom, your host, and we sit down with James to unpack how this show grew from grad-school rabbit holes into a full-on “gay Da Vinci Code” sung by five drag sisters who mix history, humor, and hymnody. We explain the basics: queer theology means looking at religious history through LGBTQ+ experiences; James digs into medieval “brother-making” rites, the odd case of John Henry Newman’s missing remains, and how groups like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence rose to care for communities the institutional church abandoned. The musical chooses joy as its weapon — it’s a 75-minute blend of satire, sincere grief, and showtunes designed to teach as much as entertain, because catchy lyrics are how people remember theology. If you missed Fringe tickets (yeah, we grinned about that), jump on massdrag.org to “join the congregation” and get on the email list so you don’t miss future productions or demo tunes — the sisters promise their emails are anything but boring.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Visit joebeanroasters.com to get fresh roasted specialty coffee either by the bag or with a Perpetual Joy subscription!

Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom, and this is part of our previews for the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival happening from September 15th to the 26th in scenic downtown Rochester, New York.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to get your tickets for as many events as you can possibly go to.

And I'm here with one of the creative people from Fringe.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Sure.

My name is James Lapata and I am the, Ooh.

Writer, lyricist, composer and director of a new musical that we're doing at the Rochester Fringe Festival.

Very excited about it called Mass Drag.

How the church Came to Bless Gay couples again.

Yeah.

So Mass Drag is happening on September 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th at the Biltmore Bar and Lounge, a great new jazz venue here in town.

So a fun venue for the Fringe.

You can get your [email protected] tickets are $23 and all of the shows are at 8 o'.

Clock.

And it looks also looks like you've sold them all out already.

We're sold out.

Wow, look at you.

I mean, one, congratulations.

That's, that's an amazing thing this far ahead of the first event.

I mean, Rochester's a. Rochester is a late town.

I ran a restaurant service for three years and it's always last minute.

So one, that's awesome.

Two, let's, let's dive in and let's just chat because this is, this is a fun thing.

So when you're lining up a show like this one, this is a 75 minute show.

Right.

This is an hour 15.

This is one of the longer Fringe shows.

Yeah.

When you're deciding how to format a show, what, what were the things you were thinking about when, hey, this is a topic I want to cover.

What, what were those decisions like to decide what the format of the show was going to be?

Perfect.

So let me just back up for just a second because even though it's sold out and we're thrilled that it's.

Yeah, there have been some talks and I won't name any names, but with some theaters around Rochester and other places to find a place to do a new production of it.

So I encourage people to.

We call it jointhecongregationassdrag.org and we'll keep you up to date on when we'll have some other productions as well.

Perfect.

So in terms of deciding what type of show, I mean, I am of the artistic mind that the show shapes itself Kind of like that idea that Michelangelo said.

The sculpture is in the block of marble and the artists processes to release the image inside.

What happened with Mass Drag was the format.

Yeah, that's a short story.

Hey, we got time.

No worries.

Well, this is the interesting story.

So I.

The topic, of course, is a lot of queer theology.

We say it's five dragons in a gay bar and a thousand years of queer history the Church doesn't want you to know about.

Yeah.

So you can imagine I've got a queer history.

Queer history in the Catholic Church.

I grew up in Webster and I wanted to be going to the priesthood.

In fact, I had a picture of me dressed as Pope John Paul II going to a costume party when I was very young at St. Paul Church in Webster.

I wanted to be the first American Pope.

So I'm very upset about Pope Leo right now.

I mean, you're so close.

I mean, in history, you're so close to it.

I know, I know.

So decided after I began to discover my sexuality, I decided that it's not a route that I wanted to take in the priesthood.

Other people have taken it.

I think it's wonderful.

Sure.

But along the way I kind of kept interest in it.

I got a master's degree in theological studies and continued to work in churches and struggled with the whole church thing along the way.

But when I went to grad school, it was very interesting.

I learned some fascinating history that most people don't know about.

A lot of people will know about the fact that the church had what were called brother making ceremonies.

Back in the early Middle Ages.

There were rites that were done in the altar with the priest between two men.

We don't really have records of it between women until much later, but we're pretty sure it happened.

We just don't have records.

So I learned about that in school.

And then I learned about another saint that was buried with the person that they loved and then was dug up to be separated from them by the Church.

Wow.

I mean, that's dedication.

That's dedication to separating others from.

From things they enjoy.

Because it's.

Yes, it's, it's.

I, it's.

It's amazing the efforts that people go to.

To make things, you know, to force things apart.

Yeah.

And that's a huge part of what the musical is about.

Yeah.

Beyond gay marriage and queer theology, it's about what do we do when the institutions that are meant to care for us turn against us.

Yeah.

So we've had a lot of straight people, not just queer people.

Watching, you know, our rehearsals and such.

And people really respond that institutional question.

And that's happening a lot right now.

A lot of institutions are turning against people.

So.

So this one particular story really got my attention and based on that story.

And I can go into it just a little bit, but let me give you kind of the.

The funny part.

So I was like, nobody knows this story.

And I'd ask people, you know, who are, you know, scholars.

And his name was John Henry Newman, if, you know, Newman centers and in colleges and universities.

So he was buried with Ambrose St. John.

He insisted to be buried with his best friend.

And he was.

And then the church went to dig him up.

But when they went to dig him up, there was nothing in the grave.

And there had been gay protesters in England, because this happened in England, who were trying to get the church to not dig them up.

But they were unsuccessful because, of course, it's the Vatican.

Yeah, exactly.

But nobody really knows.

The church says that they basically dissolved in the soft English clay.

But they'd only been there about 118 years.

And most forensic experts think that that's not quite right.

So we really don't know where St. John Henry Newman is.

So I was like, people got to know this.

So I decided to write a gay Da Vinci Code.

I love that as a starting point.

To anything, you know, where is this body?

Where are these bones?

And so the Da Vinci Code, the gay Da Vinci Code begins with a bunch of people being killed off who all know where the bones are.

But there's a friend of theirs who didn't want to know.

And she's Sister Donna want to know.

She's Donna wanna know.

But they all get killed off, and she's the last one standing.

And so they've left kind of breadcrumbs for her, like this DaVinci Code.

And she's all upset.

She's like, oh, and I got to go to London.

I don't have sensible shoes.

So I wrote this novel, and I still have the novel that hasn't gotten published.

But everyone I talked to and gave it to, they're like, you're a playwright.

There's great dialogue.

Write the play.

And I tried to write the play, couldn't do it.

And it turned into this musical.

So Sister Donna Wanano has already died in this musical.

But it's a Mass.

They're trying to get her beatified now.

Oh, she's passed away.

It's on the feast day of St. John Henry Newman.

And they go through this whole history,.

What happened Well, I find it fascinating because, like, there's so many different, you know, there's such a rich history of, I guess, you know, distaste for.

Distaste for same sex couples.

Distaste for any number of things is the nicest way to put it.

Many people, you know, bordering on, you know, you know, hatred and otherwise.

And I think the word, when reading your descriptor, I think is the most important choice in here is joyful.

Right.

That there's obviously, I'm sure there's going to be moments that, you know, it's not going to be levity the entire time, but the choice to.

The choice to look back at, you know, the varying levels of othering that occurred through the course of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years has, you know, there's a lot of darkness in reflecting on that, looking at religious history, it's riddled with darkness in many ways.

The choice to make it about joy, how did that feel when you were coming up with this?

Was that a choice or was that like, oh, I want to make this this way?

It was definitely a choice, but it also was a lived choice.

So I've lived through most of this.

The sisters.

So I use sisters.

It's five sisters that are running this mass.

And if anybody knows the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I'll just explain them briefly.

They were founded in San Francisco just before the AIDS crisis.

And when the church turned away from especially people with aids, they stopped caring for them.

They wouldn't bury them.

I mean, I have horrible stories, personal stories, of course, from friends and such.

And the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a very serious order.

They look funny.

They got banned again from, I can't remember what LA team last year.

People still get upset about it, but they are very serious about their charitable work and how they reach out.

But they're like, they cared for people who are dying, but they're like, but we're gonna make you laugh.

I mean, you know, what good is this if we're, if we're not gonna enjoy life?

And so it has to be this joyful process of healing and mission.

Yeah, I think that's also that genuine.

The, you know, the words can be whatever you interpret them to be.

But the, in the end, like the things that, you know, for, for those of us that don't have religion.

Right.

That's not something that's part of my life.

When I see the people who are doing the good works, you're at the capital G, capital W, Good works, right.

Which are you're feeding, you're feeding the hungry.

You are clothing the unclothed.

You are, you know, tending to the sick and you are helping the impoverished and you are treating the other as if you.

They're yourself.

Those are the good works that define what we all think that this should be doing.

And that's what you're describing is those are the good works.

Because in the end, if you don't have all those, you don't have the compassion and the genuineness that, you know, these things should be built on.

Yeah, Actually, one of the interesting things about the show too, is part of the proposition.

Cardinal Henry Newman became a saint.

There's like over 10,000 saints, but he's become a doctor of the church.

There's only 39 doctors of the Church.

And so he's really important.

And a huge reason he's important is because he's come up with doctrine about how doctrine changes in the Church.

Why you can have doctrine of one type and then a few centuries later, the opposite, and how that develops.

But one of the things that we see is that when the Church begins to deviate from what's actually happening in the world with doctrine or works, it opens up this gap.

And in that gap, the wider the gap gets, the more new things emerge.

And so you get the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, you get other sorts of works and people doing that work and making it work in a religious context that's different than the one that the Church has provided.

So what Mass Drag posits is that this is actually what's happening.

But they keep walking it back.

And it was just.

It was.

It was light.

Right?

It was.

It was not a. I wouldn't say.

I mean, it wasn't a full throated defense at the very least.

Right.

It was a. Oh, yeah, whatever.

We're not going to worry too much about it.

But as one of the sisters says in the musical, she says, so the Church says they can bless us again.

That's nice.

And the thing is that the Church generally comes back around and it takes a while.

But the Church didn't deviate on homosexuality.

I mean, it wasn't called homosexuality back then, but the word sodomy wasn't invented until the 11th century.

And so before that, this wasn't a big deal.

Sodomy itself was not thought of as a sexual issue.

It was hospitality.

And so, you know, things change for various reasons.

That's the next musical.

It's St. Peter.

Damien, who invented the term, he didn't necessarily invent the term Saudi.

Somebody in his group did.

But how that happened, like how people can begin to fixate on something that doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

And then how we bring it around again.

Well, I'm kind of intrigued.

Right.

So you, you know, you're exploring all this history through this context.

It seems like you found kind of the groove for where you're.

For your creative output is that, you know, after writing the novel and, you know, maybe it didn't quite catch her.

Hey, this, you know, maybe wasn't the right path.

How does it feel having, like, created this?

Does this feel like, oh, this is the path for me to do this creative work?

Yes.

It's so interesting for me to have written a musical because I was going into theater as an undergrad, so I was doing musical theater.

I was writing musical and directing them.

And I went into theater in New York City for a time, and like any young person, you know, I just didn't pan out.

So, of course, what did I do?

I went to Wall street, and it was the Reagan years, so.

Right.

I mean, hey, it was the style at the time.

Exactly.

And.

And then along the way, you know, I've done a number of different things.

If you look at my career, it's.

It's.

It's scattered all over the place from.

From being editor in chief of a couple of publications in New England.

I worked in digital consulting and then executive coaching, et cetera, et cetera.

And then most recently, this musical just popped up.

And it just was.

I mean, somebody asked me once in an interview recently, how hard was this?

I was like, actually, it just, it was so easy.

Like, it came about just about a year ago, just popped out of me.

And.

And yet it was so hard because it's been my whole life.

Yeah.

Well, it's also like you're.

You're describing, I mean, a lot of ways.

Right.

You're describing an entire career that is in.

I mean, I'm going to use the term, it's not in the creative field.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, and like, hey, my day job is not in the creative field.

My day job's in engineering and automation, and I live in that world.

I'm so.

This is, you know, I.

This resonates with me.

Right.

That idea of, hey, I want to now create something for others to tell part of my story, but also show my passion for this topic and empathy for everybody else who has gone through this.

What was that, you know, was.

There was that something that was boiling over during, like, bubbling during your entire career, that you knew you had this creative thing in you, or is it something that came later in life, you know, through other context?

Probably a little of both.

Yeah.

I mean, it's been bubbling underneath for a long time.

Yeah.

I really felt like I wasn't able to do my true calling, which was to become a priest, because of the doctrine.

And then when I went into theater, there was definitely a creative component of it.

And that has stayed with me.

I mean, some of the things that I did along the way, too, kind of like what you're referring to.

I've had a lot of avocations.

So even though I was working on Wall Street, I was also at the same time, a Cantor at St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan during the AIDS crisis.

I was singing a lot of funerals and some weddings, and that was a wonderful creative outlet.

And I was writing some music actually there as well.

So it's all been sort of there, and I didn't feel like I could do it because, like, nobody makes a living doing that.

Sure.

But at this point, it was more of.

Well, the other thing is, I moved back home to Rochester around Covid to help my parents.

And a lot of the other stuff that I had started to do, I had my own business that kind of fell apart.

And then everything fell apart, and it was like, ugh, what am I going to do?

And I just started writing and what.

The writing was different this time.

When you're younger.

When I was younger, anyway, I wanted to make a living at it.

Right.

Yeah, this is much different.

This is a message that I think needs to get out there, that we need to understand.

There's a whole generational component in the musical.

There's the older nuns and the younger nun who's trying to get elevated, and they kind of have an argument about, you know, the different movements and stuff, and it's.

How do we transition to, you know, new ways of being and new activism?

But this is stories that we need to know, and I think I just need to have them out there.

Well, and I think you also brought up such a, you know, such an important topic.

Right.

Like, you know, the history and the, you know, the feeling of being present during those times.

Right.

During.

During the AIDS crisis in a major city in the US Right.

Is a very specific thing to have lived through.

And it's come up on some of the other shows on the network, this feeling of, yes, it's obviously joy that, you know, the people don't have to go through that now in the same way.

But there's also this.

There's like a melancholic joy, right.

To have.

To have to have lived through that for those things to have changed.

Mm.

It's such a.

It's one of those, like.

I'm sure there's a German word for that.

Right.

Where it's these compound emotions that are almost impossible to feel unless you have gone through something like that and seen things change.

Not to say that things are perfect by any means.

There's, you know, a resurgence on attacks and resurgence in trying to, you know, roll back some of the.

I'm going to use the term.

Some of the.

The rights that were given.

Right.

They weren't given.

They were already.

They should have already been there, but they don't have to go through this thing that you had to go through is that.

Is.

That has to be part of this process, too, is reconciling those very complex emotions of having gone through that.

Yeah.

One of the big things that I struggled with in my life is, why did my life have to be this?

I think it should have been just a holy mission as a priest, like working with people, but instead, it's been the struggle with my sexuality and with spirituality.

One of the hardest things that I ever had to do in my life was when the music director I was working with at St. Francis Xavier, his partner passed away.

And so.

And the music director is my best friend, and we all did a lot of things together.

And he passed away young of aids, and we were preparing for the funeral, and my music director said.

I was like, okay, so who's going to do the music?

He said, we are.

I was like, I. I can't sing for Chris's.

You know, I.

There's no way.

Yeah.

But he's like, no, that's what Chris would want.

And so it was a celebration of life.

Chris was one of the most alive people I've ever known.

Like, he had his rules for living.

He's like, go to Paris at least once.

Always use the fine china.

And Chris was just a joy to be around, and that he passed away so untimely.

So it is kind of reconciling those things.

It's also reconciling my life to those things that I lived through that and that the church I claim or wanted to claim.

Well, it's also, like you.

That opportunity to do that for somebody even.

Even after passing.

Right.

Is such a special thing to be able to do for somebody that you knew deeply and, like, you really Knew them.

Yeah.

And it's so hard because it's, it is a weight, right?

It's a, it is hard to do that.

I kept crying.

I couldn't, I couldn't sing through my tears practically.

Yeah, but that's also something that somebody's.

Going to remember exactly.

That the right person might have felt something that day.

And it's not about changing somebody's mind in that moment.

It's about that honesty, right?

It's that honesty and emotion where you, you weren't reacting.

This wasn't a put on, this was genuine.

That you knew somebody and that that emotion is real.

And that when, you know, it's when somebody's gone through these things, like listen to their experiences, try to learn something, try to maybe that maybe this is going to apply to something else in your life where you can hear somebody who has gone through that.

And even now, like I can hear it in your voice, right?

It's, it's never fully gone.

Right.

It's not like ever there every day or anything like that.

But those emotions are like that Genuine love for somebody is, is the whole reason why we want to be parts of community.

It's.

This is the community that we all hope to be a part of.

And I mean, just, just to go back, because you, you mentioned a couple times that you thought your, that your path was going to be in, you know, in the church, in the priesthood.

If you look at what you think it could, what the church could be, do you think that could have been a place for you in, you know, in a different version of it?

Or do you think that, you know, it's just, it was a thought from where I was at the time and that I've found a path that is better suited to me now.

I guess I found my own mission.

Yeah.

I mean, even in like my corporate work, executive leadership and such, there's mission in that.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times I'm working with an executive, you know, in a major company high up and.

And then they started asking me about spiritual questions.

Yeah, these are things that all of us struggle with.

And so I began to find ways to express my calling.

I think part of, I guess part of the musical too is again, this is my way of making sense of it.

And the other thing is when I was going through this through my whole life, it's like, well, nobody's paying attention to this stuff.

Nobody really understands it.

I'm like, well, how am I going to get people to pay attention?

Particularly when I was in grad school, and I'm reading all these academic papers about fascinating things about theology and people that nobody else knew about.

And I asked my professors about it, and they're like, whatever.

I'm like, that's academia.

And I'm like, no, no, you don't get it.

People need to understand this.

So my journalism background was like, get it out there.

And I was like, it's the best way to get it out there.

I was like, a musical.

Well, and sometimes it's.

Hey, sometimes people need that different format to engage into a topic that is thick.

Right.

It's not.

This isn't a.

It's not a light topic.

It's thick.

And it has so much depth and history and ties and circuitous paths and everything else.

And sometimes just, you know, turning the format on its hat and say, let's do it in the form of a musical with drag.

Like, what a.

What a great.

What a great opportunity to take something and maybe put in a digestible format for people.

Yeah.

And so they began to say, oh, we gotta pay much more attention to lyrics.

Especially my music director, who was writing a lot of music that was going all over the world, and he would get changes to his lyrics sent to him.

And that was powerful for me to think about with a musical.

It's like, okay, I can write different songs because people are remembering the lyrics.

You know, we did a reading of it a few weeks ago up at a spiritual retreat center, and somebody called me and said, I want to do it at this other retreat center.

And I'm like, oh, yeah?

He said, like, I want to do this particular song.

I'm like, okay.

They didn't ask me, you know, can you read a monologue out of it?

Like, it's the music that we remember in the lyrics that teach us the theology.

Yeah, well.

Well, we have to cut for.

For right now.

I've got another recording right after this.

This is a delight.

I'd love to chat more another time.

Feel free just to reach out and swing over for, you know, another project or whatever.

But, you know, James, this is a delight.

You can't buy tickets for this now, but follow massdrag.org to see.

See other performances coming up.

Is there anywhere else.

You want people to follow you to see other opportunities.

I think that's a big thing right now.

Masstrag.org There's a join the congregation button.

There's also a whole bunch of other information.

There's some links to some demo recordings of the tunes.

We hope to get up more information.

But if you get on our email list, I assure you the sisters are very fun in their emails.

This is not going to be a boring email.

And if you want, they said you can definitely delete us.

They said the sisters have been kicked out of lots of other places before, so they're okay with it.

Thank you so much for having me.

I mean, this is wonderful.

That's a delight.

So thanks everybody for listening.

Check out the other shows on the Lunchador podcast [email protected] and we'll see you out on the fringe.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchador Podcast Network.

Now that's composing right there.

That's awesome.