Stevie Wonderful – with thanks to Lennaland For a long while they were the only online Drag King presence in the UK. With their exquisite costumes and convincing facial hair they were the toast of the Lesbian Scene, modellng and performing in the south. In 2006, the Hot Frollick Drag Collective formed in Brighton. Three years later in 1999 The Drag King Book was published, showcasing Kings across Europe, the UK and USA. In 1996, Cherry Smyth published ∽amn Fine Art by New Lesbian Artists and held London’s first Drag King contest. This was a time when Lipstick Lesbian Chic was in, and being a Butch Babe was, apparently, only OK if you were KD Lang. Kings were performing in the gay clubs of London’s Soho, but the scene was still dominated by Drag Queens. In the early 90s, the burgeoning UK scene simmered under the surface of queer culture. From 1989, the amazing Diane Torr pioneered Man For A Day workshops all over the world. From ’87 they all performed as part of the Chain Reaction Collective for an LGBT-only audience. In 1985 in London, Annie Toone met Della Discrase, Sophie Moorcock and Billie Goodfellow. The Eighties and Ninetiesīy the end of the 20th Century, Drag had gone underground and found a new following in the Lesbian community. These women didn’t have the vote and they weren’t allowed to own property in their own right, but they could dress up and mock the patriarchy (well, as long they were funny). Ella Shields’ most famous character, Burlington Bertie from Bow, was a caricature of a certain kind of London man about town. Performers like Vesta Tilley, Ella Shields and Hetty King began performing in drag, shocking and thrilling audiences across England. Women performing onstage at this time were looking to stand out by doing something a little out of the ordinary.Įlla Shields as Burlington Bertie from Bow Victorian Variety Theatre and Music Hall altered the face of England’s theatres. Back in Shakespeare’s time, women were known to bind their breasts in order to appear on stage at a time when women acting was considered reproachable.įast forward a few centuries to Queen Victoria’s day, and there was an explosion of performance for the masses. History has been repeating itself since the 16th Century. When Lady Gaga made every member of the LGBT community question her sexuality by taking to the stage as Joe Calderone she was one in a long line of awesome women sticking two fingers up at convention by donning mens’ clothes, adopting a casual swagger and drawing (or sticking) on facial hair. FrustratedPoet checks out Drag Kings in the UK from their historical beginnings to their thriving Now. Newsbeat meets three drag kings to find out why they do it and address how being a drag king relates to someone’s gender, identity, and sexuality.Lada Gaga stepping out as Joe Calderone was the tip of the iceberg. More club nights are being put on, especially for drag kings and more girls are getting into it. But there’s a smaller community of Drag Kings across Britain – the women who dress up and perform as men. Meanwhile in the UK : Drag Queens are a fixture of pubs, clubs and bars across the UK. Today, drag kings are pushing for space in a cis male-dominated field. And by the 1990s, there was a big, thriving drag king scene in cities like New York City, San Francisco, and London - all over the world. And in the early 1900s, Go-won-go Mohawk was likely the first indigenous male impersonator.īy the early 1900s, black performers like Gladys Bentley and Stormé DeLarverie were becoming drag pioneers. In the mid-to-late 1800s, drag king pioneers like Annie Hindle, Vesta Tilley, and Ella Wesner began performing. In China, documentation of “male impersonators” dates back to the Tang Dynasty, from 618 to 907 AD. And these performers have been around for centuries. In the words of King Molasses, drag is full of “ that swag you get in the shower that nobody sees.” Drag king performances are all about playing with masculine identities: politicizing them, satirizing them, and having fun with them. ![]() Five drag kings are interviewed in this video about their relationships to drag, how the art form has transformed, and what they love about it. Drag kings have historically gotten a lot less attention than drag queens, but that’s starting to change.
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