A Woman Named Carlos Rolls Into Town
by Steve Desroches
It rained the entire time Zach Letty first visited Outer Cape Cod. He had just begun his studies at Wagner College in New York, on Staten Island, and come out as gay not long prior. He’d heard of Provincetown—one take coming from gay friends, the other from his religious parents. But when Letty was in a production of Cabaret on campus he learned more while getting in drag for the first time. As a friend put his makeup on, he said out loud, “I think I could get used to this,” with his friend replying, “If you like this there’s a whole town that’s full of drag.”
Her family had a place in Wellfleet and she said he needed to visit Provincetown as soon as possible. At her invitation he came to what was a very soggy Cape Cod, and upon hitting an equally water-logged Commercial Street, they bumped into the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the LGBTQ charitable and activist group that dresses as flamboyant nuns. “My friend was terrified, I just felt at home,” says Letty.
Later that night he came back on his own, feeling almost called to do so despite the inclement weather. “I just wandered around and looked up at all the Pride flags, wet and heavy, blowing in the wind,” says Letty. “I was overcome with this feeling. There was just something about this place that I wanted to be a part of all this.”
Years passed and a pandemic came and went, and now Letty is realizing his dream by embarking on his first summer in Provincetown, in drag, performing under the name A Woman Named Carlos with a show at the Post Office Cabaret. With all-live singing and high-energy dancing the stage show A Woman Named Carlos is the New Girl in Town is not only an introduction, but a statement of reverence for Provincetown and the hard-earned opportunities it can provide once one lands a coveted gig in town, something that is no easy feat considering how many drag performers want to work in Provincetown far outnumbering the stages and time slots available. Carlos, for short, honed her chops in New York City as well as on Virgin Voyages, a cruise line on which every ship has a resident Diva, a drag queen, to keep the party rolling. But Letty’s goal was always Provincetown as he’d always heard it referred to as the Broadway of Drag from his friends on the drag circuit. With all due respect to New York City, it’s here in Provincetown that if you can make it here, in drag, you can make it anywhere.
How Letty started in drag flowed from theater to clubs and cabarets. But how did he get such an unusual drag name like A Woman Named Carlos? While just a baby queen Letty didn’t have a steady drag name. One night he and a bunch of his girl friends went to Pieces on Christopher Street in the West Village to see drag queen Shequida’s show when the New York queen begin to pick on Letty asking what was he doing there with all these girls further inquiring if he was their Uber driver named Carlos. For the rest of the night Shequida called him Carlos the Uber driver. Letty thought that was a brilliant drag name and began performing as Carlos the Uber Driver…until he received word from the apps corporate headquarters via their legal team. Turns out its legal to use the word uber and the word driver, even uber driver if someone was really good at driving. But use Uber driver and you’ll get a cease and desist letter.
“Any drag queen worth their salt has received a cease and desist letter,” says Letty. “That being said, it helped that my brother is a lawyer.”
With a bit of a linguistic shift a boy named Zach became A Woman Named Carlos. And Letty is laser focused on the task at hand as he looks to become a talked about name in the drag scene as well as become woven into the fabric of Provincetown, both the town and the idea. The drag scene here is supportive, but also commands excellence. Provincetown audiences, too, Letty notes are sophisticated and demanding, recognizing drag as an art and not just a flashy confection. Here people want drag performers to have a unique voice, a clear and distinct point of view, and prefer a strong narrative or tightly packaged show. Fabulous, says Letty. A Woman Named Carlos is ready. But just who is she?
“A Woman Named Carlos is a woman of a certain age,” says Letty. “Carlos is in her late 30s, early 40s and is trying to get her groove back. But she can’t really get it together. She doesn’t get any pop culture references. She’s like Sally Field in Soapdish. She’s trying to be younger than she is. She’s like one of those charming Karen types that tries to appeal to a younger audience, but she thinks Ann Miller is a current pop culture reference. That’s the women I like to love. Trying to embrace change, but missing the mark. You can’t help but love her.”
A Woman Named Carlos is the New Girl in Town is at the Post Office Cabaret, 303 Commercial St., Thursdays through September 11 at 10 p.m. (with the June 19 show at 8:30 p.m.) Tickets ($35/$40) are available at the box office and online at postofficecafe.net. For more information call 508.487.0006.
