Despite decades of success on television, in nightclubs and on the musical stage, some theatergoers seem surprised Lea DeLaria can sing, too.
“My audience is pretty much aware,” says the lesbian comic icon, perhaps best known for her Screen Actors Guild ensemble award-winning portrayal of Carrie “Big Boo” Black in the hit Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.”
“If they're my audience they 100% know that I sing,” says DeLaria, who performs on Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Broward Center with the South Florida Pride Concert Band. “If it's people that only know me – because they've never seen me perform live, they've never seen me on a comedy special, possibly the only thing they've seen me do is ‘Orange is the New Black’ – those people may not know. But even a lot of them know. Mostly because I have so much of that on my Instagram, my social media.”
She believes everyone coming to the Fort Lauderdale concert will know.
“I would be very surprised, given where I'm going, that little area of Florida, which we know is filled with gay men,” says the outrageous DeLaria. “It's filled with fagelas who are guys that know me starting with ‘On the Town’ straight through to ‘POTUS,’ which was my last Broadway show a couple of years ago. They're very informed.”
Still, she acknowledges, “there are plenty of people who just go ‘Lea DeLaria sings?’”
“It's like, ‘Oh good Lord, what else do I have to do?’ You know? And you just kind of laugh at it. I even did it on the Conan O'Brien show, very famously. There's a great link of me and Conan where I teach Conan O'Brien how to scat sing, and it's fantastic. It's fantastic!”
DeLaria, now 66, made her late-night television debut in 1993 on “The Arsenio Hall Show.” Her first words on stage: “Yes, we are! Yes, we are going! Yes, we are! It’s great to be here because it’s the 1990s and it’s hip to be queer and I’m a biggggg dyke!”
“Then it was off to the races,” recalls DeLaria. “There was nothing slow about it. And I went on the couch and continued to say ‘dyke’ and ‘fag’ and ‘queer.’ And push the envelope more and more and more.”
DeLaria has since appeared in several feature films including “The First Wives Club” and as the voice of Miss Fritter in “Cars 3,” along with lots of scripted television including several episodes of the original “Matlock,” “Will & Grace,” “Further Tales of the City” and an extended run on “One Life to Live.”
In 1998, she appeared as Hildy the cab driver in the Broadway revival of Leonard Bernstein-Betty Comden-Adolph Green’s classic musical “On the Town.” DeLaria stopped the show singing “I Can Cook, Too” with Jesse Tyler Ferguson (in his Broadway debut) and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress In A Musical. DeLaria also won a 1997-98 Theatre World award.
At Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania, Andrea McArdle starred in 2013 as Jerry Herman’s “Mame” opposite DeLaria playing Vera Charles.
DeLaria also has recorded about a half-dozen albums of jazz standards, David Bowie hits and Christmas songs.
“My father taught me how to read music,” she says. “My father taught me how to sing jazz. I used to sing with him all the time. He was a professional musician. He was a jazz pianist.”
The day after she performs in Fort Lauderdale, she starts, on Sunday, Nov. 10 through Sunday, March 9, a Sunday monthly music and comedy showcase at “Brunch is Gay” at 54 Below in New York City.
Expect similar entertainment at the adults-only Broward concert.
“It’s going to be a combination of funny stuff that I do and songs and the jazz that I love,” DeLaria says. “I do like three tunes during the course of the show. There might be other times that I talk. It’s going to be a really fun night.”
Dan Bassett, artistic director of South Florida Pride Bands, says the show will be “very heavily jazz influenced.”
“Lea DeLaria is an extremely accomplished jazz vocalist and she'll be singing several selections on the concert with us,” says Bassett, who’ll conduct the concert band. “We also have our jazz band who's going to be playing and she'll be singing a selection with them. And our steel drums will be in the lobby during intermission. We’ll have several different ensembles within our organization playing.”
South Florida Pride Bands has “a long history with the community,” says Bassett.
“We've been here since 1986, through the whole AIDS movement. We're the oldest LGBTQ arts organization in the state of Florida,” he says.
(The original Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida launched first in early 1986. Later known as the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men’s Chorus, the group is no more – it merged last year with a newer Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida that began in 2010.)
Bob Turlington of Fort Lauderdale was South Florida Pride Bands’ 13th member when he joined 38 years ago. He still plays his E-flat alto clarinet.
“The band was started at a time, back in 1986, when the AIDS crisis was such a scary thing. We felt like the gay community needed to stand up for ourselves. It was at a time when people were forming choruses and bands, and the quilt was starting, and all those kinds of things,” recalls Turlington, now 66.
“I graduated college in ’84 and it was just a time where I knew I wanted to get involved, but I wasn't an ACT UP [AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power] kind of person. I thought the band was a harmonious way of projecting an image about the gay community.”
Turlington, whose late uncle Ralph served 12 years as Florida’s education commissioner and later helped establish the state lottery, says the Pride Concert Band is still relevant in 2024.
“The band builds community. I love the fact that once a week I get together with people and you wonder if they're not there where they are,” says Turlington, who is retired from the travel industry. “You create a group of people who care about other people. It's not like going out to the bars and who's out tonight, and that kind of stuff. We created our own kind of community of people.”
For years, Turlington’s phone number was the one to call “for more information” about the bands. One such call came two decades ago from Bassett.
“I can remember the phone call when he first called,” recalls Turlington. “He still tells the story of how when he first called, (he asked) ‘What's the band all about? Why is the band? What's the point of a gay band?’”
Now, Bassett is the one who promotes the bands’ importance.
“Unless you've played in a band or sung in a choir, there’s this connection with the people around you that is different than just maybe going out to a club or dancing,” he says. “You're making music together and there's this incredible connectivity that happens.”
In addition to the Pride Concert Band that performs Saturday, Nov. 9 with DeLaria, South Florida Pride Bands also has smaller ensembles including a steel band, jazz band, woodwind quintet, clarinet quartet and brass quintet, says Bassett.
The bands have South Florida gigs throughout the year, especially during the holiday season. Combined, they have around 65 members currently and all are local musicians from Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
“We've got every age group from just out of high school to well into their 80s playing with us. It's a very diverse group,” says Bassett. “It’s LGBTQ+ and allies. We don't obviously ask when they come what they identify as, but we have lots of straight members who just really enjoy playing music with us, as well. Just being like-minded.”
Musicians needn’t audition to join.
“We're open to anyone who plays an instrument who'd like to come and join. We've had members who have been away from their instruments for 50, 60 years,” says Bassett. “It's not auditioned and when they join, if they've not played for a while, we're extremely patient with them and they play what they can when they can until they pick it back up.”
Rehearsals are 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at Saint Mark’s Episcopal School, 1750 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fort Lauderdale. To join, fill out an online application at southfloridapridebands.org/join-us/.
Two other big concerts are planned this season, according to Bassett. The popular Pride Youth Band will perform at a date to be announced in February at The Parker, and a third concert will be in May either at the Amaturo or Parker.
South Florida Pride Bands is affiliated with the 36-member international Pride Bands Alliance.
The alliance’s mission “is to promote LGBTQ+ Music, Visibility and Pride,” according to its website.
“That filters down to us,” says Bassett. “We need to be visible in the community, be present. ‘We're here and it's OK.’ Our youth band initiative is big as far as giving youth a safe space to perform and be themselves. So that's really important to us.”
The nonprofit organization has an annual budget of about $150,000.
“That’s for all the bands. That’s the overall budget, which is pretty low because we have skeletal staff. We don't have any full-time staff. We’d like to eventually get an executive director on full time,” says Bassett, 51, whose day job is head of middle school at Saint Mark’s Episcopal.
The bands depend on financial support from the community, he says.
“We're very fortunate to apply for and receive quite a few grants. The Our Fund Foundation has been very integral and pivotal in helping us out,” says Bassett.
In September, the LGBTQ-focused Our Fund granted $20,000 to South Florida Pride Bands, and since 2014 has given the organization more than $160,000, according to CEO/President David Jobin.
Other fundraising organizations supporting the bands include FLoatarama, Bears of South Florida, Bona Italian Restaurant, Funding Arts Broward (FAB), Warten Foundation, Community Foundation of Broward and Broward County Cultural Division.
Private donations also help fund the bands, “to keep everything running – from buying music, to renting the facility for rehearsals to underwriting the concert halls,” says Bassett.
“Ticket prices don't always cover everything we do, especially when we're bringing in some of these big names like Lea DeLaria.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “South Florida Pride Concert Band: An Evening With Lea DeLaria”
WHERE: Amaturo Theater at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW 5th Ave., Fort Lauderdale
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9
COST: $45. Adults over 18 only.
INFORMATION: (954) 462-0222 and www.browardcenter.org
This story was produced by Broward Arts Journalism Alliance (BAJA), an independent journalism program of the Broward County Cultural Division. Visit ArtsCalendar.com for more stories about the arts in South Florida.
