Wanzie's 'Deloris Scrud' returns to Orlando to save the holidays

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It’s been awhile since we’ve seen local playwright, actor and theatrical impresario Michael Wanzie on an Orlando stage. And it’s been even longer since we’ve seen his singular creation Deloris Scrud in the dramatic flesh. Orlando has either been incredibly naughty or nice, because both Wanzie and Scrud are back to ring in the holiday season this year.

Scrud — a maximum-sass Phillips 76 truck-stop waitress in the mold of Alice’s Flo with a dash of Wanzie’s own characters in Ladies of Eola Heights, but less hifalutin and with a fiercely progressive sensibility — hasn’t been seen nor heard of since a raucous holiday run of A Trailer Trash Christmas at the Parliament House’s Footlight Theatre in 2004. But in December she holds court at Savoy with a new cabaret show and a surprising, though unseen, co-star. (More on that in a moment.)

Beyond the satisfyingly full-circle nature of bringing Scrud back for the same holiday season where we left her, Christmas time has long been a perversely perfect framing device for adventurous theater and subversive commentary. Think: the Christmas tours of John Waters; Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme; Orlando’s Phantasmagoria; all the way down through the underlying anti-capitalist message of A Christmas Carol. It’s not all fuddy-duddies in sweaters singing about it being cold outside.

“I know it sounds clichéd, but I think it has to do with the spirit of the season,” agrees Wanzie. “One of the motivating factors is how defeated and forlorn and just upset that people, especially people in the gay community, are feeling right now with everything that’s being heaped upon us by the Trump and the DeSantis administrations. It’s a very politically charged thing, it is very anti-Trump and very anti-DeSantis, but it ends in a message of hope, and I’m hoping that it’ll give people permission to laugh despite what’s going on, while at the same time hopefully having them leave the theater feeling better than when they came in.”

This is also a very personal performance for Wanzie, his first time on a stage in his home city for three years, most of which were spent overcoming some serious health challenges.

“I was in a near-fatal car accident, with a very long, painful recovery process and physical therapy that stretched on for over a year and a half. I had to literally learn to walk again,” says Wanzie. “But I wanted to put something together quickly for Christmas, and I just thought of that character and how much fun she was to do and how much the public seemed to enjoy her.”

Wanzie isn’t coming alone — to mash up Dolly Parton and an ancient proverb, it takes a village to look this cheap. So Wanzie will be aided and abetted by local drag performer Gidget Galore with hair and makeup, longtime directing partner Kenny Howard, composer and sound designer Rich Charron, and costumer Douglas White. Not to mention hidden co-star and man-behind-the-curtain playing himself: the Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell. How did this festive alliance come about?

“Surprisingly enough, it was not difficult! Just about everyone I knew said, ‘Oh, he’ll never do that. The paper’s never gonna let him do that.’ But I am a huge fan of Scott and we’ve gotten to know each other and become very friendly over the years,” says Wanzie. “So it seemed like he would be the perfect choice for interviewing Deloris. I wrote and asked him, and he immediately said, ‘I’d be honored to do it.’”

The scoop that intrepid reporter Maxwell is after is an exclusive interview with Scrud after the release of her tell-all book How Serving Up Biscuits & Gravy Helped Me to Overcome a Lifetime of Racism & Bigotry. Like any good Southern belle, Scrud is posted up in front of her trailer, phone on speaker (and then some), drinking and smoking and putting on a li’l holiday show for the neighbors (that is, the audience).

“The interview is happening while Deloris is sitting in her lawn chair out in front of her trailer, and she’s invited all of her neighbors to bring their beer coolers and lawn chairs over and sit and listen in on the telephone interview, which she’s hooked up to the trailer-park loudspeaker system via Bluetooth,” explains Wanzie. “While the interview is going on, she’s working on her craft projects that she’s getting ready to sell at a holiday pop-up fair with all the money going to the Trans Peer network [a very non-fictional group that meets at The Center]. So the whole time, she’s working on these Christmas ornaments and decorating her trailer lot for the annual trailer-decorating contest.”

The interview between Maxwell and Scrud won’t just touch on the book and the finer points of holly and mistletoe; things will get freewheeling and punchy as the two (well, mostly Scrud) touch on more than a few hot-button local issues and local figures in typically fearless fashion.

“I wanted the show to be very supportive of the trans community, because I think that really, more than any other group of people, they’re feeling the hatred that’s been channeled and targeted toward them by the president and our governor. And I just find that to just be unconscionably sad. Even within my own community, within the gay community, there are still people who struggle to come to terms with the fact that we include the ‘T’ in LGBTQ at all. I wanted to address that as well,” says Wanzie. “But Doris has opinions on everything. She touches on local businesses, she touches on local politicians, she touches on erasing rainbow crosswalks.”

Though it’s somewhat bittersweet that Scrud cannot hold court at her familiar stomping grounds of the Carolina Moon at Parliament House, Savoy is a fiercely (ahem) festive venue for Scrud to strut her stuff. Despite it being a somewhat nontraditional venue for theater, we’re betting this is an audience willing to go drink-for-drink with Scrud and cheer on her meaner monologues.

“I hate to deal in clichés, but I think gay audiences are just more giving and more willing to laugh out loud. And then that becomes contagious and spills over to the non-gay audience members,” says Wanzie. “Even though it’s in a bar, it really is more of a theater crowd. But it is in a nightclub, and you can buy a drink before you go into the theater, and you’re welcome to carry the drink into the theater. And that always helps for a comedy, I think.”

So whether ye be naughty or nice, Deloris Scrud has some holiday home truths for you.

(A Deloris Scrud Christmas: Dec. 6, 13, 14; The Starlite Room, Savoy, 1913 N. Orange Ave.; tickets; $20-$35)

Wanzie’s ‘Deloris Scrud’ returns to Orlando to save the holidays

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