This book explores drag performance in London since 2009 via the pubs, bars and clubs that make LGBTQ+ communities thrive.
It studies the complex relationship between drag performance, LGBTQ+ venues and queer communities. In exploring drag performance, the book develops a greater understanding of the connection between drag performance and queer communities, in particular exploring how drag might facilitate queer communities and offer queer modes of survival and resistance for queer people. Through this, the book describes a contemporary moment in which drag performance is increasingly popular and increasingly important at a time when homophobic and transphobic violence is prevalent, and LGBTQ+ venues are often under threat of closure. Understanding the increased/increasing mainstream popularity of drag, the book examines drag performance that is connected to and resists mainstream attention in order to account for its complexity in London (and beyond).
This book takes the author’s engagement with and love for drag and exerts a critical, political and queer pull in order to develop new terrains of queer studies and queer performance studies.
List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: Utopian Drag Chapter 1 – Present Drag: Hope in the Face of Drag Chapter 2 – Classic Drag: Edginess, Visibility and Spiteful Drag Chapter 3 –Killjoy Drag: Queer Side-Eyes and Dragging Backwards Chapter 4 – Silly Drag: Failures, Failsafes and Plumbing the Depths of Stupidity in Drag Chapter 5 – Besides Drag: On the Edge of the Scene Chapter 6 – Future Drag: Drag Performers Show Up Conclusion – Plant Your Feet, take a Deep Breath and Remember it is Supposed to be Fun Index
Dr Joe Parslow is a Lecturer in Popular and Queer Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. They are queer researcher, writer, teacher and producer, as well as working in research ethics and integrity and practice research. They have worked extensively in queer nightlife as a producer of drag and cabaret events in LGBTQ+ spaces in London.
