Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews on Kym Priess

Dear Kym,

In 1939, Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion was the only character to get two theme songs in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Somewhere between “If I Only Had The Nerve” and “Were I King of the Forest,” Lahr’s sad sack would-be-king cat ad-libbed his lines, sent castmates into fits of laughter, and drove the production totally off the rails.

How can a lion—any lion—top that act? Well, let’s start at the bottom by pissing in a can, stuffing your bus with yokelly Philly Fringe-goers, and then strut your junk around while we bash our air-drums to a bunch of has-been hair-metal. (Was every third song on your pre-show playlist “Breaking The Law” By Judas Priest? Yes-oh-yes it was!) Your Loser Lion Party Bus delivered as promised, crashing our festival hard with a one-cat drag show that transcends gender and species, and maybe life and death itself. That titular kitty—y’know Jerry? Loser Lion?—is an even sadder sack than Lahr’s when his theme song is just pawned from a freaking tiger (or the eye of one, at least), revealed mid-show to be the real king of the jungle. That sad sackery drew us in, your pathos begat empathos, and we were with you, thorns and all, loving this Loser Lion in all his thronelessness, come down from on high to party with the people…Put ‘em up, put ‘em up.

While we grew to trust in the inflatable Dolly behind the wheel, I could only think of that other Dolly, the Lioness of Country Music who’d just left us after 80 short years on this planet. I wondered how her passing injected some wigified essence into the show, even before we started floating your ass around on a rubber ring to the tune of “Workin’ 9–to–5.” I loved most those moments of liminal space-time: pitch-shifted costume changes drenched in noise as your Loser-Lion-cum-Love-Doll seduced us with a polyphony of beats and boops on this busride to nowhere. How many times you looked me in the eye, lay across my lap, and interrogated my anonymity before finally asking, “What did we learn?” Better call your sensei so he can tell us: We’re not in Kansas anymore.

Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews

Kym Priess is the Creator/Performer of Loser Lion Party Bus.

Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews is the Creator/Performer of Columbo’s Day (The Nonsense Explorer Series, Vol. 1).