Mink Stole and Peaches Christ Hit the Highball

According to stage and screen actress Mink Stole, Austin is home to many attractive people. “I was shocked when we were there before,” she recalls, “at how really attractive everybody was.” Her performance partner Peaches Christ agrees: “If anywhere in Texas is our place or our people, it’s gotta be Austin.”

Now just why are these two buttering up the Bat City crowd? Well, they’re bringin’ their two-woman show to ATX for a one-night-only scream. Touring showcase Idol Worship haunts South Lamar this Monday, April 7, at the Alamo’s in-Drafthouse bar, the Highball – with local drag star Louisianna Purchase as their special guest. Its combination storytelling, singing, and screening setup comes naturally to Mink and Peaches after over 20 years treading venues together. Peaches relayed their friendship’s origin story over Zoom, which started before Mink even knew. “I grew up in Maryland,” Peaches recalls, “and I was, of course, obsessed, and my life changed, when I discovered the Mink Stole movies that we all love so much.”

Skip forward to the year 2000, when Peaches was a few years into her cult-movie podcast Midnight Mass. “It had become popular enough that I thought, ‘Well, why don't we invite one of our idols to come and be part of the show?’” Peaches remembers, “So I wrote a letter to Mink … and it was very gushy, and invited her to come up to Midnight Mass. She said yes and it was amazing.”

After Mink’s first yes response came many more – yes to introducing screenings together, starring in Peaches’ film All About Evil, and performing together with Jinkx Monsoon at the Return to Grey Gardens stage show. Idol Worship started in much the same way, with Peaches bringing to Mink a show concept centered around her as the titular idol. “As we became better friends, worked more and more together, traveled together, made the movie,” Mink explains, “we've changed the show so that it's certainly about my career and the effect that [my] films that have had on Peaches, but it [also] became more about our friendship and how we have evolved as friends over the years. … So it's now a show about us, not just about me.”

For Peaches, the name and concept reference the queer community’s tongue-in-cheek relationship to idolatry – one of the Big 10 Sins. “Part of the creation of my character has been that Peaches Christ is, quote, unquote, a ‘cult leader,’ you know?” she remarks. But irony isn’t the whole story: Under the camp is a genuine collaboration between two creative spirits. “Mink was the first of many idols I've been able to worship over the years,” says Peaches, “and that's why Mink will always be the most special to me, because she was the first to say yes.” There is also a religious aspect to centering the night around cult cinema – which both Mink and Peaches are devout worshippers of. “For me,” Peaches says, “the movies are my church.”

Mink points out that much like the irreverent sacrilege of her early work with John Waters, these shows she puts on with Peaches are humor in the face of hate. “We need to celebrate ourselves, each other, and the joy that there is in this community,” she says. This goofy exterior allows them to present as non-political while performing inherently political theatre, Mink muses.

“It's political without being political,” Peaches agrees. “We're literally celebrating things that you know they want to arrest us for.”

Those tantalizingly arrestable acts include bits and bobs from the duo’s previous work together, including reflecting on Mink’s career, showing clips from cult movies, and even singing songs – with track back-up rather than a live band, Mink assures. That allows them to keep the whole tour down to, as Peaches puts it, “Mink, myself, my husband at the computer, and then usually a suitcase full of merch.”

“We're like a little punk band that can drive around and go from venue to venue,” she says.

Interested audience members better make up their minds before Monday, as these two never visit the same city with the same show twice. “If you want to see this show and you're in Austin, it is one night only,” Peaches warns. “Here is your chance to see a Louisianna Purchase, Mink Stole, [and] Peaches Christ. It is not going to happen again in Austin – so don't miss it.”

Idol Worship: An Evening With Peaches Christ and Mink Stole

Monday, April 7, the Highball at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

Tickets available through Monday