Stilettos Made for Stomping

This month, the Orpheum hosts drag queens in very high heels. No, Trannyshack isn't headed to Broadway. It's Kinky Boots, the Tony award-winning play about making boots for drag queens, by Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein and pop idol Cyndi Lauper. Here, the duo discuss the sky-high shoes.

Harvey Fierstein: “Can you really wear kinky boots up and down these San Francisco hills?”

Cyndi Lauper: “Hell, no.”

Harvey Fierstein: “Kinky boots have six-to-eight-inch heels. If you wore them on these hills, you’d have the best legs in the world. We should have the ensemble dancers have a race here.”

Cyndi Lauper: “Oh, don’t do that to them—they need to perform.”

Harvey Fierstein: “That’s true. One actor stepped down wrong—not falling down, just stepping wrong— and had 12 broken bones in his foot.”

Cyndi Lauper: “But the show’s about more than boots. A lot of people hear “kinky boots,” and they think it’s about, you know...”

Harvey Fierstein: “It’s not a show for fetishists—they leave everything so sticky.”

Cyndi Lauper: “It’s about family, all kinds of family.”

Harvey Fierstein: “It’s about accepting your holes and accepting yourself, but not just because you’re a guy who wants to wear a dress. It’s deeper than that.”

Dec. 2-28, shnsf.com

Originally published in the December issue of San Francisco

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