Despite the so-called “Texas drag ban” that went into effect last month, what many don’t know is that there is a huge drag culture in Texas, notably San Antonio. That’s where Nicolas Moncoya developed and introduced his drag persona, Amory Legato.
Amory is about to burst on the New York scene when her “one-woman” show, “Memoirs of a Drag Queen,” begins performances Off-Broadway on April 29. As Moncoya describes her affectionately, Amory is larger than life, loaded with glam, and ready to spill the tea about her hilarious, complicated — and fabulous — life.
Moncoya, in a Zoom interview, says the show describes “the past of a senior drag queen, her childhood traumas, shyness and introversion, but she finds freedom in entertainment.” The show includes 14 original songs by Bernard J. Taylor, and while the show gets a little serious at times around personal vulnerability, it is for the most part comical.
“I have a light spirit,” Moncoya continued, “and my goal is just to distract, for a short time, what’s going on in the world right now.” He describes Amory as a “party clown who is very glam.” At the same time, he is hoping to present drag as a sophisticated and nuanced art form that avoids clichés and is deeply personal to the performer.
Moncoya has been doing drag for years. “I jumped into drag when I think I was 19 or 20 and was doing drag for about 11 years,” he said. His first performance was “My Baby Shot Me Down,” the old Nancy Sinatra number as performed by “Lady Gaga Alejandro.”
Moncoya was deeply involved in the drag culture in San Antonio. He was one of the founding members of the House of Eternas, which he says was started in memory of one of his late friends. They did fundraisers for Buckle Bunnies, an organization founded by young, queer, sex workers that provided assistance for Texans seeking abortions, doula services, and harm reduction.
Other fundraisers included a toy drive with a reading of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which Moncoya says was disrupted when two right-wing reporters “came in disguised, and manipulated the story.” Moncoya and his colleagues received harassment and death threats. “I did my shows and took my bows, but I didn’t want to add gas to the fire, and I stopped doing drag in 2022.”
“The climate was very scary,” he said. “But one thing that I learned about myself is that I don’t have that much fear now that I’m 30. Life is too short to live in the closet.”
As an artist, Moncoya he grew up with alternative drag queens.
“We were wearing a lot of leather and spikes,” he said. “We came from the outcasts of the outcasts, and I’ve been through a lot on my journey, but San Antonio is a mecca for transgender people and performers.”
So where did the high camp Amory come from? It’s been a creative process over time. Moncoya says the germ of the idea came from a character he created called Siren LaCoast. Inspired by fantasy and the female villains of DC Comics, he also created a variety of different characters. “Amory now is the idea of glamor, more blush and highlighter, and I get to exude a personality that’s always been inside of me, and it’s also more marketable to be one personality.” The result is a dazzling character who combines Broadway vocals, high glam, and inspired by Ursula (from “The Little Mermaid”), Moira (from “Schitt’s Creek”), Tim Curry (from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”), and the iconic Divine.
“It’s always been my purpose to entertain; that’s been in me since I was young,” he said, though he notes that “drag is inherently political, and as much as I try to refrain from personal political performances, just being on the stage, being who you are, and defying these evil people, that’s inherently political.”
“We should be 10 toes down, heels in the ground,” Moncoya said, referring to a phrase he coined to celebrate standing firmly in one’s identity and authenticity onstage and off. Identity and personal authenticity figure prominently in the show, and Moncoya currently identifies as non-binary. “I’m mostly masculine, but I can ‘queen out.’ Why can’t I be both? It’s fun to play with identity.”
The show is partially presented in a style of performance Moncoya calls “park and bark,” basically standing downstage and singing big out to the house. (It’s a phrase that is often used to describe some opera performances as well.) He says that’s a San Antonio style of performance, “and I want to honor that with high glam and a very big, demanding presence. I want to convey that Southern charm, and I want to represent for the Latinos and the Latinx community.”
“We’ve got a lot of big things in Texas,” he said, “though in the Northern states people plays us down.” He’s looking forward to introducing Amory and showing New York the unseen side of San Antonio.
Memoirs of a Drag Queen | Sargent Theater | 314 West 54th Street | Tues-Sat 8:30 p.m.; Sun 3 & 8:30 p.m. April 29-May 24 | $40 at On The Stage Tickets
