![]() Lamenting how the drag community doesn't exist anywhere in the LGBTHIQ umbrella, she adds, "We hope to see many queens and kings in the audience too.Unless you've been a hermit for your entire life, the chances are you'll know that drag queens exist and you may have seen a few performances. There's an element of spoof, but also a celebration of understanding what it means to behave male."Ĭalling the performance "important from a political standpoint especially in India, where alternative modes of expression are being increasingly outlawed", Gangwani hopes Tape will create a space for drag culture to exist. She also rubbishes the notion that it's anti-men? "Not at all. As long as they're performing masculinity." In fact, they don't even have to be women. Although most of us are, drag kings don't have to be lesbians. "No," protests drag king artiste and tutor Lenna Cumberbatch. Like author Judith 'Jack' Halberstam has said: "It was about time too! Gay men had turned their alternative forms of femininity into outrageous drag performances, but until recently there has been little evidence to suggest that lesbians have done the same." So is the drag king tradition a lesbian thing? But it wasn't till the rise in gender identity politics that the contemporary version of the drag kings began to emerge. Think Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Yves Saint-Laurent's Le Smoking. The male roles these actresses took on continued well into Queen Victoria's reign (today they are a pantomime's dashing boy-hero), becoming a key element of the music hall tradition.Īs music halls made way for cinema, male impersonation persisted as a playful element in film and fashion. "She earned the nickname Moll Cutpurse and was even immortalised in a play."ĭonning breeches was practical until it became theatrical, especially after the reinstatement of the monarchy in Britain (1660), when professional theatre first began featuring actresses. "Women who had to travel at night, for example, would dress up as men to keep safe," she'd pointed out to The Telegraph two years ago, citing the case of Mary Frith, the notorious cross-dresser and daring pickpocket's example. In the 1600s, female to male cross-dressing was less about thrills, more about personal security as Professor Laura Gowing of King's College pointed out. The historical thread goes back several centuries. It may not have made it it to too many honours lists, but the lesser known gender-bending tradition of drag kings has an equally long back story as it strutted its way onto stages in Los Angeles, Manchester, London, Berlin, New York and now amchi Mumbai. And we got excited with the idea of bringing a drag performance to India in a format common in the west." Drag opposes gender stereotyping in dress. Many queer people do not understand gender and gender fluidity. ![]() While we've successfully created public spaces for conversations on queerness between the queer and straight community, we realised that gender is a tricky subject. "Gaysi has been hosting its open mic event called Dirty Talk for three years to explore the notions of queerness through art and performance. She explains why Gaysi Family decided to produce a new milestone in Indian queer culture with Tape, a drag king theatre show. ![]() The Indian queer scene is blind to the female counterparts - the performers who inhabit overtly masculine personas as drag kings." "When we think of drag, we usually think of a man in a dress, but men aren't the only ones who lampoon the culture's definition of men and women. "But there's more to it than that," says 32 year-old Priya Gangwani who founded Gaysi Family, a safe space for desis (people from the subcontinent) that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. At its most basic un-nuanced version, it's a woman performing as a man. ![]()
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