Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers

Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 1

Mark Edward, Stephen Farrier, Enoch Brater, Mark Taylor-Batty, Mark Edward, Stephen Farrier

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350082953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

In recent years drag performance has moved from the fringes to emerge as a mainstream phenomenon, showcased on TV shows in the US and the UK. This collection offers a diverse range of critical engagements by drag performers, makers, scholars and writers reflecting on work from the UK, USA, Israel, Germany and Australia. Moving beyond discussions of gender theory, the essays consider contemporary drag performance practices, connecting them to the histories, communities and politics that produced them. Chapters range across discussions of drag kings in the US, UK and drag and activism; the influence of RuPaul on the generation of new forms of work in New York; transfeminist critiques of drag; 'bio'/faux queens;
engagements with race and ethnicity through drag performance; drag andragogy; audience concerns; drag intersections with animal personas, and how drag performance relates to personal narratives of history and identity. Collectively the contributions focus on drag as a mode of performance that is diverse and that uncorsets the easy thought that drag is simply a cross dressing man in a dress or a woman in a suit.

1

Drag

Applying Foundation and Setting the Scene

Mark Edward and Stephen Farrier

As we were editing this volume and writing this joint chapter between 2018 and into 2019, Mark performed alongside Otto Baxter in Jeremy Goldstein’s Truth to Power Café. Baxter, whose drag name is Horrora Shebang, is a drag queen who has Down syndrome and performs in the UK with the east-London-based company Drag Syndrome.¹ Under the directorship of Daniel Vais, Drag Syndrome has started to garner mass recognition in the UK, overseas visibility and an international online media following. Vais’s work with Drag Syndrome and his latest venture, Radical Beauty Project, in which photographic images are presented of models who have that ‘something extra’ (radiant beauty and an extra chromosome), are making strong waves in fashion, art, drag and photography. Both Drag Syndrome and Radical Beauty Project² present images and practices seldom seen in mainstream, or queer, contexts. These kinds of representations, images and people have mostly been situated as a discourse of the periphery (see Kuppers, 2003) but Vais’s performances serve not only the community with whom he works but, for this book on contemporary drag practices, these projects also provide a prick to rupture ideas that saturate the way drag is so often seen. The Drag Syndrome project in particular exemplifies how we in this book, and the accompanying Volume 2 (Edward and Farrier, forthcoming) focusing on the histories of drag, identify drag in its broadest contexts.

For the project of writing a book about drag, Drag Syndrome opens much-needed discussions around the assumptions of drag visibility and the romanticized concept of what constitutes best drag practices, or drag practices per se. For example, Drag Syndrome’s performance at Andrew Logan’s 2018 Alternative Miss World (hosted at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London) smacks the audience with an array of drag personas dancing and strutting their drag to the sound of Divine’s 1984 song ‘I’m So Beautiful’. Here Horrora Shebang and others offensively gesture to the audience (by sticking two fingers up, which in the UK context is often offensive) while dragged up (see Figure 1.1). The performance is powerful and commands the space, resonant in part because the participants and performers occupy the high-profile Shakespeare’s Globe, and via drag’s aesthetics there is a demand to be seen through the obvious fakery of drag. This kind of drag performance resists boundaries constructed through a reductionist reading of stable identities in drag king and queen performance. Much of the kind of work presented at the Alternative Miss World is more regularly based at the margins and often positions itself as wanting no part of the normative. Vais’s works flows with those who challenge representations anchored in conventional glamour and perfection such as Rasso Bruckert’s 2003 Ganz Unvollkommen (Completely Imperfect) in which Bruckert presents the viewer with imagery that explores the beauty of the nude and disabled body. Also noteworthy is Ashley Savage’s ongoing exhibition and documentation work Bodies of Difference and Theo Chalmer’s work for the charity Paul’s Place, in which Chalmer documented various disabled people from the charity. Much of Robert Andy Coomb’s work, particularly on disability and sexuality, is an archive of beauty: a celebration of difference. Earlier disabled artists, models and performers paved the way for others to take to the catwalk and theatrics, such as Debbie van der Putten, Viktoria Modesta, Aldon Plewuniska and Sarah Gordy.

Figure 1.1 Horrora Shebang (Otto Baxter) at Alternative Miss World, 2018. Photo: Damien Frost.

However, our task is not to make an analysis of Drag Syndrome in terms of the visibility of disabled performers, though of course that is an important part of our work; rather, for this book the project and its performers embody one fabulous place on the wide gamut of drag performance. That is, in this volume and the next we are keen to open up the discussion of drag practice by consistently returning to a focus on the diversity of practices that constitute it. Thus, we examine drag’s deep grass-roots and community connections and explore how drag for minority subjectivities and communities (mainly, historically, the LGBTQ+ community) in part provides a channel to articulate a voice and subject position, and/or a mechanism of access to speak in a certain way to a specific audience. Drag Syndrome also makes visible current trends in drag performance and can stand as a pathway to acknowledge countercultural drag performance, another long historical root that we explore in Volume 2. With, for example, the likes of the established drag performers/drag and trans activists Bette Bourne, Panti Bliss (discussed shortly), Marsha P. Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie and Sylvia Rivera, drag has powerful roots in subcultural contexts, and this position has fuelled its activist and political agendas. Though it is clear that not all those considered established drag follow an activist or political agenda, for example, Danny La Rue, Bunny Lewis, Lily Savage, Dame Edna Everage and Laverne Cummings are not known for fighting for their political beliefs. Understandably with the recent international rise of RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) (Logo TV/VH1), much important attention has been turned to the way in which drag performance is constructed and represented for a mass audience; as film scholar Julia Yudelman understands, ‘It is not surprising, then, that a vast amount of academic critique has surfaced surrounding RPDR phenomenon. Most of these analyses revolve around political questions of representing drag culture through mainstream media and, more often than not, ultimately argue for either a “yay” or “nay” position toward the reality show’s representational accuracy’ (2017: 16).

Even with the welcome energy RPDR has brought to drag, we are keen to see its representations as culturally and geographically specific, and historically positioned. Yudelman goes on to say:

As the most commercially successful queen in drag history, RuPaul Charles and his TV series have generated critique from scholars, critics, and fans alike. On the one hand, many accounts praise RPDR for its perceived fidelity in representing drag culture, championing the program … On the other hand, a plethora of critics have chastised the show for not accurately representing … drag culture progressively. (2017: 17)

In such a context we want to emphasize, contrary to popular discussions of drag at the time of writing, that not all roads lead to RPDR nor does RPDR represent drag’s pinnacle. However, for good or ill, what stands is its contribution to the explosion of drag visibility in the recent past; it has stormed online and popular media and spawned chat shows such as Hey Qween (2018), films like Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate (2018) and Hurricane Bianca (2016), and the fly-on-the-wall documentary series Dancing Queen (2018), which follows the life and everyday happenings of drag performer Alyssa Edwards/Justin Dwayne Lee Johnson’s dance school; and the Brazilian cartoon series Super Drags (2018) turns drag queens into superheroes. (In addition, at the time of this book’s production in the UK, Drag SOS (Channel 4), a drag makeover show, was aired and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK was in production with BBC Three.) However, such visibility has not always been drag’s comfortable home. Drag may find shelter or popularity in hegemonic, heteronormative settings, but in such settings, it tends to fall into the trap of repeating itself and appearing to solidify in a particular way, just as repetitions of gender performativity seem to stabilize sex. We note here performers like Dame Edna Everage and Danny La Rue (in the UK) made their living in mainstream entertainment (both received civil honours from Queen Elizabeth II). Important though these figures are, in this book lesser-known journeys are the fuel for the discussion, or at least we are interested in work that seeks, often explicitly, to make a difference to the contexts and communities in which it plays. Maintaining a focus on the mainstream risks our consideration of drag being cut off from its lifeline, which, when it is at its best in grass-roots contexts, pumps the life blood of disruption, perceptive anarchy and creativity into wonderfully crafted diverse forms of performance. However, we would not want to maintain a critical outlook that positions drag as only present in radical forms; historically it has a deep connection to mainstream audiences and performers. In addition, often performers like these did little publicly to change LGBTQ+ lives when working in the mainstream; indeed, La Rue often avoided discussions of gayness, and Everage reportedly expressed transphobic comments (see Glauert, 2019). Whatever their personal perspectives, developed in their historical and cultural contexts, these performers’ works can be seen to solidify normativity. So, although these kinds of performers did little openly to question or uncorset gender norms, they remain part of the shape of the field of drag – and although we acknowledge their presence and success, for the volume in hand they will not form a major part. This position is so that we are able to give space to practices that are often overshadowed by the figures popularly known, and often, historically in any case, those figures who have survived and found success in the mainstream did so without much connection to queer or gay culture.³

At its roots, if those are possible to concretely know, or as part of its performance DNA, for this volume we are interested in addressing drag performance where it is anarchic, politically activist (as we discuss further in this chapter), questioning of current discourse, indecent, perverse, performatively disruptive, challenging, and socially and academically engaging. Yet we too would be falling into the trap of romanticization to think that all drag embodies this. On the contrary, lots of drag outside the mainstream reinforces normative positions and has a stake in the status quo, and we have both seen lots of work that is regressive, racist, misogynist, transphobic and homophobic, even. Thus, the position we might take in response to questions that drag reinforces binaries (see Taylor, Rupp and Gamson, 2004), or that it embodies misogyny (Berbary and Johnson, 2017), or that it might be a gender version of ‘blackface’ (Kleinman, 2000) is one that is balanced with the response: it depends when and what show/performer is being watched. There are plenty of practices across drag that reinforce what we would see as negative positions, but there are as many that challenge such assumptions – and complicatedly, there are practices that do both at the same time such that they require further discussion and analysis.

Drag visibility

Despite its chequered history, herstory and (t)hairstory, drag remains as current as ever on a local and international scale. Drag was once considered a subcultural form of ‘impersonation’ (Baker, 1968), yet to some extent it has made the transition from the periphery to mainstream culture within the Western world. As Kirk and Heath, in their 1984 publication of Men in Frocks, state, ‘If you’d been living in Britain fifty years ago and wanted to see men in frocks, where would you have looked?’ (1984: 7). The same could be said for women dragging up as kings. However, it does not take more than a glance around the globe to see drag’s shift, mainly (though by no means only) in Western contexts, from underground and counterculture to mainstream culture. This has meant that others can see drag not only as a performance form exclusively embodied by drag queens, but what is revealed is the creative intelligence and diversity of contemporary drag: drag kings, sissies, bio-queens/kings, post/alt-drag, non-binary drag, animal-drag, for example – this list could go on. Drag is as multiple and creative as the forms are original, and it is in an ever-changing scene.

It is essential then to cast our net wider than the main player on the international scene at the time of writing (that is, RPDR). For instance, there are other cognate practices that have drawn our eye as we have been writing, including drag protests against US President Donald Trump’s visit to the UK (2018); drag in challenging places, such as The Fearless Drag Queens of Beirut (BBC news); and Drag Syndrome, as noted above. Muslim drag performers have also been brought to prominence with the UK television documentary Muslim Drag Queens⁴ (Channel 4, 2015), showing mainly Asian drag performers and their daily struggles with Islamo-, homo- and drag-phobia. There have been book projects ensuring or asking that young people do not forget the histories of drag performers such as Mother Camp (1972) and more recently Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Vol. 2 (forthcoming), the companion volume to this edited collection. Likewise, social media debates include thought-provoking pieces about biologically female drag queens and cultural appropriation, drag as transphobic and children embracing drag performance.⁵ The latter discussion is becoming more popular, with examples such as Montreal-based 9-year-old Nemis Quinn Melancon-Golden, who goes by the drag name Lactatia; in Boston (UK), 14-year-old Bailey Lewis goes by the drag name Athena Heart; and from Brooklyn, New York, 10-year-old Desmond Napoles, aka Desmond Is Amazing, has featured in RuPaul’s videos and set up his own drag academy/club for children under the banner of Haus of Amazing.⁶ These are self-affirming children who embrace the form as a source of creative self-expression.⁷

Drag is a messy business, in practice and in context. To attempt to see the patterns of activity in this mess, our aim is to begin to shift the focus of drag study to look at it as a performance form while considering the many threaded international narratives that make up the area. We are keen to make it clear that the emphasis of this work is not on the representation of drag as it may appear in plays and performance or as performers playing characters. Often this kind of work happens in what is traditionally known as ‘straight theatre’ (Campbell and Farrier, 2016) and as such mostly shows only the representation of drag in service of a larger narrative (some recent examples include Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the Musical, and Kinky Boots). Frequently, the structure of works that represent drag serves to romanticize the form. The narrative often positions the drag performer as a function in a tale of redemption (of straight people in the case of Kinky Boots). Even in instances where this is not the case, drag characters in mainstage shows are rarely performed by drag performers themselves and lack authenticity as a result.⁸ Of course, some works have a much clearer sense of being connected to the communities and contexts of drag: where queens’ and kings’ work appears on main stages and where writers occasionally invite queens onto the stage in straight plays to do segments of their acts or to play cross-cast characters (examples here would be Neil Bartlett’s A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep from 1987 and Mark Ravenhill’s A Life in Three Acts from 2009).

Connected to this idea of ‘in service of’, we are also aware that drag is often used as an exemplar in discourses on gender, queer theory or politics, including performative theories of gender. This approach has been extensive, yet we aim to redress the balance and recentre discussions of drag exactly how it is lived and practised beyond, in spite of, or before this theory. In this sense, our focus is on drag practice. We highlight the importance of this sense of being historically and geographically specific, while simultaneously acknowledging that the form is inevitably and brilliantly intersectional. Although we may flirt with discourses of ethnography or sociology, such as those present in some contributions to Schacht’s and Underwood’s volume The Drag Queen Anthology (2004) and Esther Newton’s f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Drag: Applying Foundation and Setting the Scene
• 2 Dragging the Mainstream: Drag Race and Moving Drag Practices between the USA and the UK
• 3 Race for the Money: The Influence of RuPaul’s Drag Race on the Livelihood and Aesthetics of New York City’s Drag Culture
• 4 Chinoiserie Drag: Masquerading as the Oriental Other
• 5 ‘It’s Always Better Performing with the Troupe’: Space, Place and Collective Activism
• 6 Of Hills and Wheels: Tilda Death Drags Memory
• 7 A Transfeminist Critique of Drag Discourses and Performance Styles in Three National Contexts (US, France and UK): From RuPaul’s Drag Race to Bar Wotever
• 8 Not a Cock in a Frock, but a Hole Story: Drag and the Mark of the ‘Bioqueens’
• 9 Destabilization through Celebration: Drag, Homage and Challenges to Black Stereotypes in the Practice of Harold Offeh
• 10 Gender Euphoria: Trans and Non-Binary Identities in Drag
• 11 The Tranimal: Throwing Gender out of Drag?
• 12 Drag Kings and Queens of Higher Education
• 13 Drag Publique: The Queer Spectacle, the Emaciated Spectator and the Public Secret
• 14 ‘Blessed Is the Fruit’: Drag Performance, Birthing and Religious Identity
• Index
• Imprint