San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Holiday lesson learned from ‘dragapella’ performances
When you’re a member of the Kinsey Sicks — the socalled “dragapella” beautyshop quartet — you might be on the road touring for months at a time, singing snarky parodies, not just in four-part harmony but in high heels and eye shadow as well.
So Nathan Marken, 41, the lone member who lives in San Francisco, has learned a holiday lesson in his eight years singing bass for the group: “It’s a matter of making home wherever you are.”
Each winter, the Kinsey Sicks (a homophone for the “exclusively homosexual” ranking on the Kinsey Scale) perform “Oy Vey in a Manger,” which is loosely structured around the premise of trying to sell off Christ’s manger before it’s foreclosed upon, mostly as an excuse to perform delicious titles such as “God Bless Ye Femmy Lesbians.”
This December, the show returns to New Conservatory Theatre Center for three and a half weeks.
Last year, Marken was touring “Oy Vey” in Washington, D.C. “We had a two-show, very exhausting day, and omicron was just starting to spike, so I wasn’t going to go out,” he recalled. But he didn’t want to do nothing and pity himself either.
“I made a whole plan of making one of my favorite new holiday cocktails in my hotel room and enjoying it with Christmas music and having a YouTube video with a Yule log,” he said, adding that he texted friends and family to keep himself company. “I was by myself, and it was an absolute idyllic thing.”
That pluck and spark extends into Marken’s performances with the group, where his bass “ba-doom-doom” isn’t just a song’s foundation, it has propulsion and attitude.
Performing at New Conservatory is especially meaningful for Marken, since Artistic Director Ed Decker first recommended Marken to the Kinseys for an audition. Marken formally joined after his predecessor, Irwin Keller, retired to become a rabbi — “as one does,” Marken joked.
To prepare for his new role, he took a drag makeup class at Kryolan taught by Sister Flora “Floozy” Goodthyme of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “She’s part of my drag journey; she’s like a fairy godmother to me,” Marken said with a laugh.
The chief lesson of drag makeup? “It’s clown!” he said.
A cappella, Marken acknowledged, “can get a dorky reputation, but that is fine because I love nerds. I identify as a nerd.” What naysayers might miss, though, is how accessible and versatile the form is.
“You don’t need a piano or instruments or even power to do it,” he said.
When Marken’s performing, he doesn’t have to wear his contact lenses, but he does for “Oy Vey” because of one particular number: “Soylent Night.”
“It’s such a joy just to sing it as earnestly as possible, as if we were singing about sugar plums and berries and wassail,” he said. “The puns, they just come at you a mile a minute. It is so satisfying just watching the audience when it dawns on them what we’re doing. It’s everything from jaw-dropping to pearlclutching to laugh-out-loud howling.”