That Lip-Synching Feeling: Drag Performance as Digging the Past

Farrier, Stephen

doi:10.1057/9781137411846_11

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Indeed, some of these queens note that 'YouTube was my drag mother' (in Farrier 2016). Whilst I have argued elsewhere (Farrier 2016) that this non-local form of learning might appear to undo some of the traditions of specifically located drag, given that large amounts of on-line material presents drag from a US perspective and tradition, the younger performers who adopt it are doing so with a knowingfulness perhaps brought about by the local context in which they make and show work. That is, in order for it to have some kind of resonance and relevance for the audience it should in some way connect to the locality in which this happens.…”

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“…This is not to deny or reject arguments made by others that drag is mainly about gender malleability, given the number of extant academic papers and books in this area and the importance of gender discourses and politics to the lived experience of non-normative gender existing in the communities where drag is most prevalently practiced. Rather, this discussion seeks to show how the making of drag kings and queens is rooted in a minority community, a community that in some ways uses drag forms to engage with its histories and politics, which are always in relation to gender (Farrier 2016). So, although kinging and queening are a form of performance, they are also the exercise of a specific community's identity, history, politics, pleasures and entertainment -crucially in a specific time and place.…”

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“…Of course, this may be true for any form of training, as any performer trains her/his/their identity develops as a performer. The difference here is that in the process of the king or the queen, the identity work links directly to a community identity -and, it has been argued, drag performance is a key site where queer and gay communities learn and explore their cultural and personal histories (see Farrier 2016, Hunt 2016. Although in places, some drag work may sit uneasily, kings' and queens' performances are viewed in this discussion as enactments that produce many simultaneous personal and community effects (and, for some, affects).4…”

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International influences and drag: just a case of tucking or binding?

Farrier¹

2017

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

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In mid-January 2017 Her Upstairs, a London drag bar, pays tribute to David Bowie.1 The lineup includes amongst others: Ruby Wednesday, a drag queen; Adam All, a drag king, tonight appearing with femme, female-identified singer Apple Derrieres; Pi The Mime, a performer working in boylesque cabaret with drag elements; Mynxie Munroe a burlesque performer, and Drastik Measures, another performer who uses drag elements in their act. Ruby Wednesday, who uses both lip synching and singing in their act and who works in both the drag and cabaret scene in the UK, emcees the evening. The bar is run by, amongst others, Meth, a very popular drag queen who has worked internationally, has a global fan base, and has featured in a fly on the wall documentary about drag queens in London, UK. The regular crowd in the venue reflect the range of the performers on stage. Often present are a mist of genders and sexualities (some cis, some trans, some straight, gay, queer, some wearing their identities, literally, on their sleeve) and there is regularly a smattering of drag in the audience. This is a queer crowd, mixed and only partly decipherable to normative looks. On stage, all the acts have their own distinct flavour in relation to gender, sex and sexuality, which is often at the centre of their performances. The acts' look different too and arouse diverse energies, yet despite the performance work appearing different in many ways, at some level, it speaks a similar lexicon. Many of these performers refer to their acts as drag, or burlesque or cabaret-and it is worth noting that the descriptions of the acts above describe the kinds of work present in the bar, rather than any classification the performers declare themselves, that is often more complex. Yet, it begs the question, given as the work and genders are diverse, what coheres the performances? Moreover, crucially, how can the work be spoken of and accounted for without crushing the diversity so vital to the heart of this work and community? The popularity of nights like the one at Her Upstairs is a sign that both kinging and queening have gained popularity in recent years. From worldwide television programmes such as Ru Paul's Drag Race (Logo TV), to mentions in recent national newspapers, international websites, blogs and youth programming on the BBC, the performance form appears to be more ever-present.2 As Senelick (2000) has described, drag has kept a presence in performance and popular culture for a very long time. The work of drag has maintained deep roots in popular culture and performance and, as this article notes, serves several functions for the communities in which it most often appears.

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International influences and drag: just a case of tucking or binding?

Farrier¹

2017

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

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“…7 Focusing on drag in particular, Bourcier (2006) has emphasized the ways in which the form can be productive of subcultural counter-identity, for example in the drag king workshops organized in America in the 1990s by Diane Torr and Annie Sprinkle. Luca Greco (2012), considering Belgian drag king workshops, and Stephan Farrier (2016Farrier ( , 2017, considering British drag training and practice, likewise explore the local subcultures that drag supports even at a time when drag is achieving international fame through the mainstream success of RuPaul's Drag Race.…”

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Eleventh-Century Drag Acts? Three Old English Poems at Exeter Cathedral

Critten

2020

Exemplaria

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The Exeter Book was made towards the end of the tenth century; by the mid-eleventh century at the latest it was at Exeter Cathedral, where bishop Leofric had installed a community of canons living under the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang. This article seeks to recreate the reception amongst Exeter's mid-eleventh-century canons of three Exeter Book poems: The Wife's Lament, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Husband's Message. I advance evidence suggesting that The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer were performed by Exeter canons and adduce contemporary drag as a parallel to these putative renditions of the poems. My approach affords fresh perspectives on the ambivalent gendering of the texts' voices and the identifications that they might foster between the canons and women beyond the cathedral close. The presentation of The Husband's Message in the Exeter Book suggests that it was destined for private reading. In this mode, I argue, the poem invites its male readers at Exeter Cathedral to perform a mental impersonation of gender by assuming the position of its second person woman addressee. Finally, I show that the three poems support a breadth of thinking about gender that might be matched at other locations in early medieval England.

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“…Drag as a method of critique Drag performance has a history of being subversive, not only in its relationship to gender, but also its relationship to other identities, such as race and class, and other political proclivities. 62 Drag performance has been used by minoritarian subjects as a tool of disidentification, explains José Esteban Muñoz. 'Disidentification resists the interpellating call of ideology that fixes a subject within the state power apparatus.'…”

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Diplomacy in drag and queer IR art: Reflections on the performance, ‘Sipping Toffee with Hamas in Brussels’

Charrett

2018

Rev. Int. Stud.

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This article presents drag performance as a queer method of critique in the field of IR, which contributes to a longstanding move in IR to engage with aesthetics, and a more recent move to engage with performance art. The article discusses the author’s making of a performance piece that revisited the EU’s response to Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Soft, camp, feminine, and childlike voices; a female body in men’s clothing; and the translocation of bodies in spaces are used in the performance piece to disrupt the coherency of normalised diplomacy. Queer IR theory emphasises the imperative to dismantle logics of normality that prevent creativity in response to political issues. Performative drag practices disrupt anxious attachments to a ritualised discourse of strategic interests that shapes political initiatives. This article comments on other drag moments in politics, such as the anxiety around Jeremy Corbyn’s dress, Barack Obama’s anger translator, and Janelle Monáe’s androgynous articulation of community. The form that research dissemination takes implicates the kind of knowledge that is produced. This article reviews three methodological provocations of drag, an alternative departure point of the ‘what if’, performing a politics of refusal, and a Brechtian technique of estrangement.

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That Lip-Synching Feeling: Drag Performance as Digging the Past

Cited by 18 publications

References 13 publications

International influences and drag: just a case of tucking or binding?

International influences and drag: just a case of tucking or binding?

Eleventh-Century Drag Acts? Three Old English Poems at Exeter Cathedral

Diplomacy in drag and queer IR art: Reflections on the performance, ‘Sipping Toffee with Hamas in Brussels’

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