THE SLOW DRAG Comes to Ophelia's Jump

Ophelia's Jump will celebrate Pride Month with it's production of The Slow Drag - a Jazz Play by Carson Kreitzer and directed by Sheila Malone. The production will be performed at the OJP Theater located at 2009 Porterfield Way, Ste I, Upland, from May 30 through June 29, 2025. The Slow Drag is a play with a full complement of musical selections from the jazz era along with one original composition written for Ophelia's Jump's production by resident Music Director/Composer Janette Combs in consultation with Kreitzer.  

About The Slow Drag - a Jazz Play: Inspired by the real-life story of Billy Tipton, a jazz musician, bandleader, and talent promoter who upon his death at home in 1989 of a bleeding ulcer, was discovered to have been a biological woman. A fact that he had kept secret even from his common-law wife and three adopted sons. Though varying accounts exists about the events surrounding Tipton's transition from female to male sometime during his high school, many stories mention his having wanted to play in his high school band, but not having been allowed because it was not considered an appropriate activity for a girl. Though the details are hazy, there is not question that a few years after he graduated from high school, Tipton was working in bands as a musician and had transitioned to life as a man.  Over the years, Tipton found a measure of success in music and was involved with three women who each during their time together referred to themselves as his wife.  He adopted three sons with his third wife and later died at the age of 74 after refusing to go to a doctor for treatment.

Kreitzer's play draws inspiration from Billy's story in creating three fictional characters, a cornet playing bandleader named Johnny Christmas, his beautiful and vibrant wife, June Wedding, and their friend pianist Chester Kent, who is a black man passing as white. The play picks up Johnny at the moment of death.  As life is seeping away from him, he enters a liminal "cabaret" space where he performs his final show for the gathered audience-a survey of his life and love with June told through dialogue and the music that underscored all the important moments of his life and for which he may have kept the biggest secret of all.

The play includes jazz standards such as The Man I Love, The Way You Look Tonight, Love Me Or Leave Me, Tea for Two, More than You Know, My Blue Heaven, They Can't Take that Away From Me and others, along with two original songs, Sweet Melinda and Dream Waltz with lyrics by Carson Kreitzer.  

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