Aaron Collier as Princess Edward and Richie Wilcox as Abel T. Suckizone
HEIST’s iconic characters Princess Edward, played by Aaron Collier, and Abel T. Suckizone, played by Richie Wilcox, are turning ten years old, and to celebrate HEIST is, of course, throwing a party this weekend at the Marquee Ballroom with two performances of The Princess Show on Saturday, May 9th, 2026.
Ten years ago Collier and Wilcox were still living in Lethbridge, Alberta, but they were gearing up for their move back to Halifax. As part of their fond farewell to the deeply influential theatre community they had found in Lethbridge, surrounding a Queer club they ran with their friends at Theatre Outré, they created The Princess Show with Deonie Hudson, and in collaboration with other friends and colleagues at the club. In February of 2019 I sat down with Collier and Wilcox and they gave me a vividly detailed account of how the show first came to life there. In 2016 audiences here in Halifax met Princess and Abel at the Halifax Fringe Festival where it was awarded the Best of the Fest prize. You can read my review of the show from the Fringe here. The show was also a finalist for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award, and has been presented by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, as well as having its script published by Canadian Theatre Review.
I caught up with Richie Wilcox over Zoom this week to chat about this milestone performance for HEIST.
Wilcox says that he and Aaron Collier have been marvelling a bit over the sheer longevity of this show. “We really only thought that we were making it for our club family in Lethbridge, the Queer club that we were running there. The thought of us doing [the show] ten years later wouldn’t have even entered our minds. So, to see the journey where it’s now been across the country, and has been published, and streamed for the National Arts Centre… that’s really funny to think about because the intention was never for that sort of longevity and that impact. I’m very grateful for it.”
The show went through some workshopping between when it was performed in Lethbridge and when it arrived at the Halifax Fringe. Wilcox says that they “learned an awful lot” during that process. “Princess was on the cover of The Coast because it was a print edition. This is how long ago it was,” he says laughing.
He says that recently he ran into Rich Aucoin on the street and they were talking about the show and Aucoin pointed out how ahead of its time it was, specifically in terms of the way the projections are used to create the world of the show, and especially doing that level of tech on their own for a Fringe show was quite revolutionary. “I do remember,” Wilcox says, “that at the Fringe people were quite shocked and awestruck because it was, and it still is, a heavy lift for a Fringe show…. It obviously struck a chord with people, and still continues to this day where, whether it be in small audiences in Fredericton or the 40th Anniversary of Buddies’ Rhubarb Festival, we were the closing performance of that… people [were] shouting and screaming throughout it. It’s just so much fun. And that was just a Toronto crowd that didn’t have a connection to the characters before [they saw the show]. I think Aaron’s storyline [as Princess], because it’s so akin to a children’s book, the fable of it, it really does tug on the heartstrings of people.”
Wilcox describes the show as a “fully lip synched mashup between drag and anime that is a multimedia extravaganza.” He explains, “It’s a story of someone tackling depression and finding self-love. So, by the end of it, there’s just such queer joy. And that is sort of impossible to resist for audience members… It’s a real joy maker. And one of the things that is fun to do, I’ve only done this once before, but this version that we get to do on Saturday for our 10th Anniversary, we get to have a little post-show party, and have two of our favourite DJs, Douvet and HotMail Summer, play some music afterwards. Because you’re watching a drag show, and you’re kind of standing up at the Marquee watching this, and maybe dancing along to some of the numbers that are in the show, by the end of it, you are so happy, and you’re ready to dance, and ready to move because there’s music throughout the show. So, thankfully we’ll have that gift to give at the end of this performance on Saturday night.”
They are also doing an all ages matinee for The Princess Show on Saturday afternoon. “We haven’t changed anything about the show because people have brought their preteens and teens to the show before. We’re fully transparent- STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING– that The Princess Show has some profanity throughout the show, but the themes of it and the costumes and the projections- there’s just so much that can be drawn from a cartoon that I feel like younger [folks] connect with it just as much as us… We draw off of video games and we draw off of Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe it’s our own Queer Stranger Things.”
Wilcox says of the beloved characters of Princess and Abel “like many drag personas, they are an extension of ourselves. Abel, for me, is definitely an uncensored explosion of Richie in ways, whether it be in the confident, or also tackling insecurities, and allowing me to be vulnerable in ways, but also playful in ways that I think I might not do otherwise. We do bring them out for other parties, whether it be at the Merritt [Awards]- just like the show, for me, it can bring a lot of joy to just be Abel for a night, and hopefully that’s spreading the joy to other people.”
Since the entire show is lip synched and Wilcox and Collier have performed it so many times over such a long period of time he says that he knows the audio so well it allows both he and Collier to be incredibly specific in their performance. “There’s a really great moment in the dialogue where Princess is on stage alone breaking down crying, and it’s a lot of sniffs and lots of blubbering, and Aaron is able to lip synch it perfectly because it’s just in our bodies now. After 10 years of lip synching it, you just know it.” He says that getting the lip synchs just right was hard when they first started to do the show, “now it feels [like] muscle memory. You’re also returning to things that you’ve overcome, or maybe things that you are still tackling with in your life, but in a different way, so some of the themes and content that Princess and Abel talk about, yes, they’re drawn from our life. So, to revisit it at a more mature age, then also perhaps still having the same questions, I find it kind of comforting. I can use this art form to continue to ponder my life and the questions of life. Abel is able to do it in a way [where he] doesn’t get weighed down by it.”
On the idea of literally lip synching to your own voice from ten years ago Wilcox says, “seeing how you’ve grown, where you still connect, where you might have slid backwards somehow, all of that is in there. You’re kind of forced to confront that when you continue to do the show.”
Obviously the world has changed a lot over the last decade as well. Wilcox says that he sees it in the number of trolls that comment on their promotional materials, which wasn’t as much of an pervasive issue in 2016. “[That] means, well great, let’s do the show even more. It means more to be so visible and to bring queerness and queer joy out into the world. It doesn’t silence us, that’s for sure.”
Not everything in the last ten years has been demoralizing, however. Wilcox tells me that there have been positive changes in Lethbridge since he and Collier left. “Aaron and I went back to Lethbridge a couple years ago because it was the ten year anniversary of Theatre Outré and Club Didi, where The Princess Show originated, and where our characters originated. It was a hotpot for so much creativity. When we first moved to Lethbridge, Aaron and I were scared to hold hands walking down the street, and the queer dances were outside the city limits down a dirt road. That was in 2012. Then we have this club and Princess and Abel are created alongside and by Didi [the drag persona of Jay Whitehead], and we come back and the celebration for this theatre company and for this queer club, the club had now grown beyond the space, and now it’s in the big mainstream bar downtown. It’s a sold-out night. It’s packed- they have drag brunches now at this place on Sundays- and there’s a pride parade [that is well attended]. Seeing that progression within that society, and I know that’s from the work that we did, and that we were a part of that, we weren’t the only part of that, but we were a big factor in some of that movement, and Princess and Abel were a major part of that. I can tear up thinking about it because it was really affirming to be like- oh my god yes- this [work] can make a change.”
The Princess Show plays at the Marquee Ballroom (2037 Gottingen Street, Halifax) Saturday May 9th, 2026 with an all ages dry show at 4:00pm, and then a performance at 9:00pm with special guest Elle Noir, with a pre-show reception beginning with music from Douvet at 8:00pm, and a post-show party with Douvet and HotMail Summer and featuring special guest drag performances.
On August 1st the show will cross the causeway for one performance at the Eltuek Arts Centre in Sydney.
August 6-8th the show will make its debut on Prince Edward Island (very fitting for Princess Edward) at The Arts Guild in Charlottetown.
For more information or to book your tickets please visit this website.
