Drag kings have historically been mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of an individual or group routine. As documented in the 2003 Journal of Homosexuality, in more recent years the world of drag kings has broadened to include performers of all gender expressions. A typical drag show may incorporate dancing, acting, stand-up comedy and singing, either live or lip-synching to pre-recorded tracks. Drag kings often perform as exaggeratedly macho male characters, portray characters such as construction workers and rappers, or impersonate male celebrities like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Tim McGraw. Drag kings may also perform as personas that do not clearly align with the gender binary. Drag personas that combine both stereotypically masculine and feminine traits are common in modern drag king shows.
Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone who performs femininely and a drag king is someone who performs masculinely. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
Hope Emerson was an American actress, vaudevillian, nightclub performer, and strongwoman. Emerson started acting when she was three years old during a production with her mother. Her career started when she advertised sheet music by playing the piano at a 10-cent store. Emerson made her Broadway debut in Lysistrata in 1930. She starred in other plays, films, television shows, and commercials. She often played the role of a villain in comedies and dramas. Emerson's performance in Caged "became the standard model for women's prison films." Her roles included being a circus strongwoman, a nefarious masseuse-conspirator, a mail-order bride, and a prison warden.
Jack Halberstam, also known as Judith Halberstam, is an American academic and author, best known for his book Female Masculinity (1998). His work focuses largely on feminism and queer and transgender identities in popular culture. Since 2017, Halberstam has been a professor in the department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University. Previously, he worked as both director and professor at The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the associate professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC.
Ken Murray was an American comedian, actor, radio and television personality and author.
Neo-burlesque, or new burlesque, is the revival and updating of the traditional American burlesque performance. Though based on the traditional burlesque art, the new form encompasses a wider range of performance styles; neo-burlesque can include anything ranging from classic striptease to modern dance to theatrical mini-dramas to comedic mayhem.
Del LaGrace Volcano is an American artist, performer, and activist from California. A formally trained photographer, Volcano's work includes installation, performance and film and interrogates the performance of gender on several levels, especially the performance of masculinity and femininity.
Shawn Hollenbach is an American comedian, writer and actor, based in New York City. He worked at Comedy Central in the programming department. As a comic and actor he has performed around the country and throughout New York. He is an energetic and upbeat performer and self-deprecating humorist focusing on LGBT subjects and a "style that capitalizes on the myriad incidents and accidents that befall us all in the midst of our human existence". He currently works at Logo, Viacom's channel that appeals to the LGBT community and their allies as the social media manager for the channel and its most popular show, RuPaul's Drag Race.
Dirty Martini is an American burlesque dancer, pin-up model and dance teacher.
American burlesque is a genre of variety show derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall, and minstrel shows. Burlesque became popular in the United States in the late 1860s and slowly evolved to feature ribald comedy and female nudity. By the late 1920s, the striptease element overshadowed the comedy and subjected burlesque to extensive local legislation. Burlesque gradually lost its popularity, beginning in the 1940s. A number of producers sought to capitalize on nostalgia for the entertainment by recreating burlesque on the stage and in Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s. There has been a resurgence of interest in this format since the 1990s.
The New York Burlesque Festival is an annual four-day event that takes place in New York City each fall, where performers from all over the world appear on stages for musical acts, burlesque shows, and other performances.
Sequinette Jaynesfield, often referred to simply as Sequinette, is an American female-to-female drag performer and avant-garde filmmaker in Brooklyn, New York. She also works as a make-up artist and stylist for herself and other performers. She is the founder of the Coney Island Sweetheart Pet Pageant, an alternative beauty pageant for pets that raises funds for various animal welfare charities.
The San Francisco Drag King Contest is an annual contest for drag kings held in San Francisco, California and founded by performer and producer, Fudgie Frottage. It is the biggest drag king contest in the world, and the longest running drag king competition in the U.S. The related International Drag King Community Extravaganza (IDKE) is the largest drag king performance event in the world but not a contest. The 26th Annual San Francisco Drag King Contest will be held Sunday, August 21st, 2022.
Lesburlesque is a British troupe of over thirty burlesque performers that perform on the cabaret circuit. They are notable for being the first and only burlesque troupe in the UK that performs lesbian burlesque. Following on from the success of Los Angeles-based girl band and dance troupe, the Pin Up Girls, Lesburlesque appeared on the burlesque scene in September 2010. They came to wider public attention in 2012 for having performed at a former church and continue to incorporate traditionally lesbian specific cabaret entertainment, such as drag kinging to broadening its appeal to the wider cabaret circuit.
BenDeLaCreme is the stage persona of Benjamin Brock Hamlet Putnam, an American drag queen, burlesque performer, and actor based in Seattle, Washington. He is known for being a contestant on the sixth season of RuPaul's Drag Race and the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars. He is also known for his solo shows Ready To Be Committed, Terminally Delightful, Inferno A-Go-Go and Cosmos, and as co-creator and host of burlesque revues Freedom Fantasia and Homo for the Holidays.
The Columbia Amusement Company, also called the Columbia Wheel or the Eastern Burlesque Wheel, was a show business organization that produced burlesque shows in the United States between 1902 and 1927. Each year, between three and four dozen Columbia burlesque companies would travel in succession round a "wheel" of theaters, ensuring steady employment for performers and a steady supply of new shows for participating theaters. For much of its history the Columbia Wheel promoted relatively "clean" variety shows featuring comedians and pretty girls. Eventually the wheel was forced out of business due to changing tastes and competition from its one-time subsidiary and eventual rival, the Mutual Burlesque Association, as well as cinemas and cruder stock burlesque companies.
The Slipper Room is a variety theatre and house of burlesque, comedy and neo-vaudeville, located in the Lower East Side district of Manhattan, New York City.
Club Cumming is a gay bar and nightclub in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It frequently hosts cabaret events, Broadway-style shows, dance parties and drag performances. Celebrities, especially Broadway actors, often make pop-up appearances there. The club opened in 2017 and is co-owned by actor Alan Cumming and promoter Daniel Nardicio, who founded it with the owners of the space's previous establishment. The bar was ordered to temporarily halt its shows in 2018, when it was discovered that its liquor license did not include a provision for live entertainment. The matter was resolved swiftly and with community support. The club was shuttered in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it continued to host cabaret and comedy shows via live stream for most of the year. The venue reintroduced on-site outdoor events in December 2020 and reopened at full indoor capacity in May 2021. Club Cumming has generally been well received by critics, who cite its eclectic entertainment repertoire, its inclusivity and the spontaneity of its atmosphere.
King of Drag is an upcoming drag reality competition series set to premiere in 2025 on American LGBTQ+ streaming service Revry. The series is set to be hosted by drag king Murray Hill and will be the first drag competition series to feature solely drag kings.
