International Drag Race queens are spilling the tea about an Aussie tour company
Kandy Muse, runner up from the latest All Stars, has had her tour cancelled and says the move is "complete bullshit, sincerely fuck you ITDevents"
Icon, Drag Race star and runner up on the recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Kandy Muse, has just blasted Australian touring company In The Dark Events for cancelling her upcoming and already advertised tour to Australia.
“sorry Australia, unfortunately I will not be touring you this September” she tweeted.
“@itdevents has removed me from the tour because of ‘negative feed back’ they've gotten about me being on the tour. in their words- maybe next time. “
The company then proceeded to block Kandy Muse.
In The Dark bills themselves as “Australia's leading LGBTQIA+ Production Company Since 2010”, and seem to have the monopoly on any tours in Australia by RuPaul’s Drag Race drag queens, including queens from Drag Race Down Under. They also run Drag Expo and a gay bar in Adelaide called Marys Poppin.
They seem to have exclusive dibs on touring international queens from Drag Race.
Season 15 finalist Mistress Isabelle Brooks quickly joined Kandy Muse, recounting her own experiences with the tour company, both on twitter and in her Instagram stories. She alleges that after her season, they abruptly cancelled the tour she was doing with fellow contestant Luxx Noir London, “in the middle of the night”, without any dialogue with them or their management.
“If you live in Australia, I need you to know and understand that ITDevents is a collection of clowns who are playing with people’s livelihoods, time, and money. I will never support this ‘company’ of fools and I encourage you to be mindful when supporting their ‘events’ (cash grabs).”
Mistress points out that this deprived her of not only thousands of dollars of work - important for working queens - but as this was already a confirmed tour (like Kandy Muse’s) it also meant that she’d turned down other opportunities in favour of this.
Coming out to Australia is not a simple or cheap proposition for any performer.
However, she also states that “money is not the main priority” when it comes to what upset her about this behaviour - but rather how this affects the queen’s fans and supporters.
She also alleges that In The Dark has done this to “multiple drag race queens and poc queer artists who are already prone to being taken advantage of in this industry”, and also claims that the company has a history of not paying their artists.
“The same company who prides themselves on being inclusive and showcasing queer artists from around the world are really just clowns…”
Other queens have shared their own experiences in the comment sections, with Acid Betty simply commenting “Deja vu” and Vivacious replying “remember that year he did us dirty”.
All The Heterosexual Nonsense has reached out to In The Dark for comment, and I’ll update this story if one comes through.
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An ACCC complaint has been raised against ITD, hopefully it will go somewhere!