LOS ANGELES — Before Jordan Kai Burnett slips into their custom-made costume and Scissorhands gloves, they casually stroll down Hollywood Boulevard, looking every bit as a cool as the venue they are about to enter.

“We are going into the Bourbon Room,” they said, pointing to the neon sign above the door.

Inside, they immediately soak it all in.

“Performing on Hollywood and Vine feels like Hollywood,” they explained while climbing the stairs. “Like, when you say Hollywood and Vine to anybody anywhere in the world, they know what you’re talking about.”

The hallowed building screams both Hollywood and history and the reminders are everywhere, with rock and roll royalty watching from every wall.

“Every time I walk by I sort of do a nod,” Burnett said, offering a minor salute to a photo of David Bowie and Debbie Harry. There’s a framed portrait of Elton John and another of Pat Benatar who Burnett has met and calls their Italian Mama.

“Scissorhands: A Musical Tribute” began in 2018 at a different bar, the now closed Rockwell Table and Stage, where it had several popular runs. Written by Bradley Bredeweg, the jukebox musical features songs by everyone, from Alanis Morrisette to Taylor Swift to Chaka Khan. Burnett has been with it since day one and said over the years and various reincarnations, so to speak, “Scissorhands” has definitely evolved.

“I’m not sure that we understood like the journey that it would take in terms of the storytelling and in terms of the adaptation,” they said, “and I’m very lucky that it has sort of become this magical queer Christmas fantasia.”

It’s not that they changed the story by making the title character of the 1990 Tim Burton film nonbinary. As someone who identifies as gender fluid, Burnett said in their mind that interpretation was there all along.

“It certainly, for me, is a very big part of the narrative,” they explained. “I think that the movie always talked about feeling other, feeling outside, feeling like not a part of the, let’s say, the mainstream or what everybody else is doing.”

Ryan O’Connor agrees. 

He plays a plethora of characters: Helen the nosy neighbor, Bill, Kim’s dad and a talk show host that he winkingly said may or may not be Delia Deetz from “Beetlejuice.”

“As a queer kid who was finding my identity when this movie came out and saw it thirteen times in the theaters,” he explained, he identified with Scissorhands, who is seen in his small town as a ‘weirdo,’ in air quotes. “And people don’t know whether the weirdness of him is a threat to them, or an excitement to them. And I think that that is something that as queer people we innately relate to.”

O’Connor is no stranger to exploring gender on stage.

In the past few years, he directed a gender expansive production of “A Little Night Music” and recently held a staged reading of “The Cowards” — a play he wrote reframing Noel Coward’s Hay Fever through a queer lens.

“For so long, queer people were making the theater but weren’t allowed to be queer on stage,” O’Connor said. “Very rarely were queer characters allowed to exist. I think we live in a time now where we get to revisit, as queer people, some of these things and say, ‘what if this person was queer?’ and look at how it doesn’t affect anything about the story other than saying, we’re here too and we’re part of this.”  

He’s also been part of “Scissorhands” since the beginning, and says performing at the Bourbon Room allows that same kind of audience involvement felt at Rockwell Table and Stage, but elevates the production a little. Burnett says it’s a faster paced, tighter show that still manages to keep the heart intact. And while it’s been described as a jukebox parody, the title calls it a musical tribute and Burnett says there is a distinction.

“A tribute, I think, in my own dictionary that I’m making up right now, lends itself to be more full-hearted,” they said, explaining that people often associate the word ‘parody’ with making fun of something. “I think this is more of an homage, an affectionate homage to a thing, an adaptation of a thing, and an interpretation of a thing.”

With the run extended through the holidays and into January, Burnett said “yes,” “Edward Scissorhands” is a Christmas story — “ahem, like Die Hard,” they jokingly added. But more than that, this is a musical with a year-round message to anyone who feels a little on the outside.

“I think the message of the show is to be exactly who you are,” actor Alex Ellis, who shares a dressing room with Burnett, said.

“Be exactly who you are,” Burnett added with a beaming smile, “and love yourself for it!”

And take up space, they both agreed, whether that space is a small town or a legendary venue on Hollywood and Vine.