Even so, August emphasises that drag can be “funny or sexy or both.” The performances and characters vary, but the recurrent theme is freedom. “Performing as a drag king with a beard on is a lot more freeing, but they can still appreciate my tits”, he says. Frida uses their king Dyke Van Dick to perform sexiness without being objectified. On the other hand, Lily finds that drag performance and gender expression are very separate.ĭrag likewise changes experiences of the body. When putting on drag for the first time, August wore a binder, which contributed to their realisation that “I was non-binary, that non-binary existed, and that I needed to do something about that.” Their top surgery and the start of their drag involvement were four months apart. Drag proves that what people think is innate is not so. In fact, while the influence is not always direct, many drag performers are transgender and their characters sometimes run parallel with changes to their gender identity. None of it looks that extreme next to what I’ve done in drag,” says Lily. “Drag allowed me to push my gender in my day-to-day life.
MALE DRAG KING FREE
These performances free gender expression. August becomes Jesus, but also a fantastical knight-errant in “alternative non-binary monster-fucker drag.” Lily’s drag king, Bert I’m A Cheerleader, is an “oily rat man” who is “a bit slimy but not on the side of creepy or nefarious but more comical or inept.” This act “takes some of the power out of this idea of masculinity.” Lily admits that it emerged when a friend said: “this act can either go sexy or creepy, and I think you’d be better at creepy.” In any case, drag kings take the opportunity to amplify male characters. But these ‘caricatures’ of masculinity have a critical bite.
“Drag allowed me to push my gender in my day-to-day life”Īugust describes drag as the heightening of gender, taking in the gendered elements of everyday life and extending them to their logical conclusions. Instead, these kings are making ambitious and subversive rediscoveries of gender. This group cannot be reduced to female-bodied people putting on male stereotypes. This performance is one of many plays on masculine archetypes produced by a dynamic group of drag kings and things in Cambridge. He states that “the ultimate dysphoria” was Christ bearing our sins: “the ultimate feeling of being in the wrong flesh.” When first hearing this, August, who plays as drag king Justa Knight, thought “surely what he’s saying is that Jesus is trans.” Indeed, in their staged interpretation, ‘Beelzechub’, played by drag king Clit Eastwood, emerges from the wings, pierces the trans Jesus with the Lance of Longinus, and so performs the first top surgery in history. Overhead thunders the voice of Sam Allberry, an evangelical pastor. In a performance at the ADC theatre, Jesus Christ is the main character in a destabilised crucifixion scene.
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