Ginger Minj is coming home. The reigning champion of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars is adding a surprise 75-minute cabaret show to the lineup of Orlando Out Fest, the queer arts festival running September 10 through 13, after the national tour she was set to headline this fall was abruptly canceled.
The addition of Ginger Minj's Big Gay Cabaret came together after Out Fest had already released its schedule without her participation, according to the Orlando Sentinel, whose reporting by Matthew J. Palm forms the backbone of this story. The choose-your-own-adventure style show, which includes live vocals, games and stories, will run at the Renaissance Theatre at 415 E. Princeton St. with performances at 9:15 p.m. on September 10 and 4 p.m. on September 12. Tickets are $18 and the show is restricted to ages 18 and older.
Ginger Minj — the drag persona of Orlando-based performer Joshua Eads — will be performing the cabaret in Central Florida for the first time. Eads made cameos in Sin: The Musical during the closing weekend of the May 2026 Orlando Fringe Festival, and will also appear in a Dolly Parton tribute show at Anthem Orlando on September 16.
A Canceled Tour Frees Up a Local Legend
The reason Minj suddenly had room on her calendar traces back to Hokus Pokus Live, a drag spoof of Disney's Hocus Pocus that Minj co-created and starred in as lead witch Winifred Sanderson. The show's planned fall tour, which had a stop scheduled at the Plaza Live in Orlando for November 1, was canceled on September 4, per Ceejay Russell, who cited business-related issues and an overall lack of ticket sales. The dossier's background material notes the tour had also been booked into major markets including Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., and that the withdrawal of obsessedwith.com from the production was part of what unraveled it.
Russell said the production team hopes to bring Hokus Pokus Live back bigger and better in 2027. For now, though, the cancellation is what freed Minj to slot her own cabaret into Out Fest. Daisy Dior, Mocha Skye and Cora Halloway are associated with Minj's separate September 16 Dolly Parton tribute show at Anthem Orlando, not the Out Fest cabaret.
Out Fest Marks Its Own Comeback
Minj's surprise appearance lands inside a festival that is itself staging a return. Orlando Fringe produces Out Fest as a celebration of queer artistry, and the event is spread across shows, films and events at Savoy Orlando, The Center and the Renaissance Theatre. The 2026 edition follows a canceled second edition in 2025, when Orlando Fringe's financial struggles forced organizers to pull the plug — a setback Hoodline reported on last year.
George Wallace, chief executive director of The Center Orlando and a former executive director of Orlando Fringe, curated the 2026 lineup of 21 shows, blending local Fringe alumni with national performers across drag, theater and film, according to Bungalower. A portion of ticket sales from the festival is designated to benefit A Walk for Change, the third annual AIDS fundraiser organized by The Center Orlando, as detailed by Orlando OutFest. Unlike the main Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, which requires attendees to purchase a button on top of show tickets, Out Fest does not mandate that extra purchase, and individual show tickets across the festival are capped at $18 or less.
According to the Florida Department of State's Division of Arts and Culture, Florida's arts and cultural industry generated $5.8 billion of economic activity, including $2.9 billion by nonprofit arts and culture organizations.
A Familiar Venue, Freshly Reopened
The Renaissance Theatre, one of Out Fest's key host venues, only recently returned to hosting live audiences itself. The theater temporarily halted performances in late 2025 to update occupancy permit paperwork and install fire safety systems before reopening earlier this year, per Bungalower's reporting. The venue's return adds another layer to a festival built on comebacks — one Orlando Fringe is navigating even as it planned to move its administrative offices to Virginia Drive, with the Lowndes Shakespeare Center expected to be vacated by the end of August, a move Hoodline covered in its report on Fringe's office move.
Minj's path to Orlando Out Fest also follows a banner year for the performer nationally. Paramount+ announced in July 2025 that Minj had won the tenth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, defeating runner-up Jorgeous in a final lip-sync to secure the competition's grand prize, according to NickALive!. Minj rose to fame through RuPaul's Drag Race across four seasons before claiming that first crown, and she also played a drag version of Bette Midler's Winifred Sanderson in Disney's 2022 feature film Hocus Pocus 2 — the same character she was set to reprise on tour before Hokus Pokus Live's cancellation.
