Alaska Knows Why Her Drag Show Resonates: ‘It’s About Family’

Alaska, the bigwig drag queen starring in “Drag: The Musical,” has a surname that’s unprintable here. But she has an adorbs alternative.

“You can call me Alaska Thunderfun, which we do for family occasions,” she said recently during an interview at a bistro near the theater where the show is playing in Manhattan.

“Drag: The Musical” has been around since 2016, when Justin Andrew Honard — Alaska’s “government name,” as she called it — and fellow creators Ashley Gordon and Tomas Costanza started writing the Pop Rocks-colored, pop-rock comedy about sparring drag queens at warring bars.

Alaska plays the claws-out queen Kitty, whose nemesis-in-drag is the equally barb-tongued Alexis, played by Nick Adams; fellow cast mates include the drag queens Jan Sport and Jujubee. And, yes, they actually sing instead of lip-sync. The show, directed and choreographed by Spencer Liff, debuted this fall Off Broadway at New World Stages.

Alaska, 39, caught the musical bug early: She did shows in high school in her native Erie, Pa., and studied theater at the University of Pittsburgh. Her big break came in 2013 when she literally towered over the fifth season of the reality series “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — in platform heels she can top seven feet tall — to place in the final three. (She returned in 2016 to win the second season of “Drag Race All Stars.”)