Drag! The Ultimate Dragazine - 2nd Edition 2022

134 Pages·2022·127 MB·English

NEW
TTHHEE UULLTTIIMMAATTEE DDRRAAGGAAZZIINNEE
LILY SAVAGE!
The only interview
in over 10 years
DIVINE!
The world’s first
drag superstar
Lawrence
CHANEY
GET UP CLOSE TO
SCOTLAND’S QUEEN
SUPREME
RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE

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INSIDE! LADY BUNNY | BALLROOM | WILLAM | WIGSTOCK | PRISCILLA | TO WONG FOO
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SECOEDITI LATRICE ROYALE | DRAGULA | BEBE ZAHARA BENET | MISS COCO PERU | LYPSINKA + MORE

TTHHEE UULLTTIIMMAATTEE DDRRAAGGAAZZIINNEE
Future PLC Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA
Editorial
Editor Darren Scott
Designer Emma Wood
Compiled by Sarah Bankes & Adam Markiewicz
Senior Art Editor Andy Downes
Head of Art & Design Greg Whitaker
Editorial Director Jon White
Welcome to this very special publication celebrating very
Contributors
Michael de Búrca, Ryan Butcher, Dean Collins, Jack Cullen, Joshua Haigh, special people – drag queens! Specifically, celebrating drag
Alim Kheraj, Lee Kynaston, Louis Staples, Adam Tanswell queens in popular culture – you’ll find some of the most iconic
Cover images moments from music, stage, films, television and books within
RuPaul: BBC/World of Wonder
Lawrence Chaney photographed by Lovelace Visual these pages.
and retouched by Herr The Queen Growing up, I was drawn to drag queens from an early age.
Photography Perhaps, looking back, I admired – and envied – their ability to
All copyrights and trademarks are recognised and respected
embrace their sexuality and live their true lives. But all I knew
Thanks to
Jo Allan (Jo Allan PR), Sian Allen (LYBD), Haley Baker (FX), Mikyla Baker then was that the likes of Divine and RuPaul were, what I’d
(HBO), Denize Belingy (Discovery), Sarah Bemand (BFI), Tara Bennett, come to know as, ‘fierce’. I was hooked and I’ve loved drag for
Chris Boyd (Organic Publicity), Noah Brodie (Divine Official Enterprises),
George Butterick (Brian Butterick Memorial), Jenny Carroll (Premier), as long as I can remember. I hope that love comes across in
Ben Chamberlain (Bread And Butter PR), Nick Chen, Hannah Clapham Drag! The Ultimate Dragazine.
(HC Publicity), Jack Collins (Neil Reading PR), Adrienne D’Amato (FX),
Jeff Dorta (Project Publicity), Natalie Dubois (Stan), Len Evans (Project As you’ll be only too aware, there are all different types of
Publicity), Mia Farrell (BFI), Kevin Gibson (Universal), Kitty Greenleaf (Jo drag, as well as varying styles of performance and art – and
Allan PR), Stuart Henshall (Brunswick Aces), Matt Ingham (Cherry Red),
Sally Johnson (DNA PR), Aoife Kilbane (BBC), Lana Kim (FX), Jason King there are many, many entertainers mentioned within these
(Kings Queens Entertainment), Brian Lau (Producer Entertainment), pages. Please do look them up, watch their videos, follow their
Megan MacLeod (HBO), Joan Marshrons (BM Creative Management Ltd),
Lizzi Morton (BBC), Tom Parker (PWL), Anna Penney (Moneypenney PR), socials, and tip these girls. But also dig a little deeper – there’s a
Jill Reading (BFI), Imogen Reid (BBC), Lisa Richards (Organic Publicity), rich history of talent and I’m aware we’re only scratching the
Sarah Rhodes (Rhodes Media), Liam Rudden (Edinburgh Evening News),
Luke Seraphin (Sky), Charlotte Simon (FX), Stephen Sparco (Voss Events), surface here. One of the joys of putting this dragazine together
Hannah Talpassh (Disney), Susan Taylor (Stan), Rosalee Todd (Universal), was being able to revisit some classic performers, but also to
Kelly Walker (Universal), Derek Walsh, Michael Warwick (MW Talent),
Kevin Wilson (Kevin Wilson PR), Jason Woodely (Premier), Yildiz (Drags of discover new music, new books and new documentaries. And
Anarchy), Kim Yong (Disney) this is coming from an old drag queen herself! Queer history is
Advertising so vibrant and fascinating – there’s always something else if
Media packs are available on request
Commercial Director Clare Dove you take the time to look.
International Of course, it could never be a definitive history of drag – I
Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw know that. That’s why we limited it to drag in popular culture
[email protected]
www.futurecontenthub.com for this publication. Everything here is intended as a mere
Circulation appetiser before your Tic Tac main meal. The library really is
Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers open, and there’s so much
Production wonderful talent and history
Head of Production Mark Constance
Production Project Manager Matthew Eglinton and many life stories to
Advertising Production Manager Joanne Crosby discover. Get reading, get
Digital Editions Controller Jason Hudson
Production Managers Keely Miller, Nola Cokely, All content previously watching – honestly, the
Vivienne Calvert, Fran Twentyman appeared in this edition wonders you’ll find out there
Printed in the UK of Drag! at your fingertips… We could
Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 fill many, many magazines.
5HU www.marketforce.co.uk Tel: [phone]
Who knows, if you show us
RuPaul’s Drag Race is a trademark of World Of Wonder/VH1 © 2022
enough love we might come
Drag! The Ultimate Dragazine Second Edition (LBZ4415)
© 2022 Future Publishing Limited back to share some more
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DARREN SCOTT
Future plc is a public Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne (aka Molly Pageant)
cLoomndpoann Sy tqoucok tEexdc ohna nthgee NonC-heixeef cfiuntaivnec ciahla oirfmficaenr RPeicnhnayrd L aHdukninti-nBgrfaonrdd Editor
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com Tel [phone]
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108
06 A Potted History

of Drag
It’s been going on
for years and years!
12 Lawrence Chaney
The UK’s reigning queen 38 T he Adventures of
on winning Drag Race UK. 22
Priscilla, Queen Of
18 T he Library Is Open
The Desert
Drag terminology
A retro look back at
explained from A-Z.
the iconic movie via
22 L ady Bunny classic interviews.
New York’s reigning 44 D ivine
queen spills the T.
The legacy of the world’s
28 T o Wong Foo first drag superstar.
Revisiting the classic drag 52 B eBe
movie with its writer.
Catching up with the
34 P .S. Burn This original crowned queen
of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Letter Please
56 S um Ting Wong
An incredible
documentary about drag The Drag Race UK star on
queens in the 1950s. music and her new EP.
4 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine
94
28
112
102 L ily Savage
A candid chat with a
groundbreaking icon.
108 D ragula
44 The Boulet Brothers
discuss their love of
blending horror and drag.
112 R uPaul’s Drag Race
The ultimate guide –
featuring every season
and every spin-off!
58 P op Goes Drag! 86 P riscilla, Queen
126 E nvy Peru
The music icons who’ve Of The Desert
The journey to
been bringing drag to the
The Musical becoming Holland’s
mainstream for decades.
first drag superstar.
Jason Donovan talks
64 B luffer's Guide
donning drag and 127 P riyanka
To Ballroom
producing the new
Canada’s first drag
Waltz, darling. touring stage show. superstar is here!
72 W igstock 90 L ypsinka 128 R ock M Sakura
A look back at the The iconic star of stage She’s sickening AND
legendary New York and screen talks origins. spectacular!
drag queen festival.
94 E verybody’s Talking 129 H eidi N Closet
78 L atrice Royale
About Jamie Season 12’s Miss
She’s large, still in charge Congeniality has her
and a West End lead! Designing costumes for own chat show.
the hit stage show.
82 M iss Coco Peru 130 V anessa Mateo
98 W illam
She’s big, she’s beautiful Miss Vanjie… Miss Vanjie…
– you’re gonna love her. Business woman special! Miss… Vannnnjie!
5 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine
A POTTED
HISTORY OF DRAG
Drag queen legend
Jonny Woo.
6 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine
A POTTED
HISTORY OF DRAG
A P OT T E D
H I S TO R Y O F
From Ancient Greece via Shakespeare’s Globe to
RuPaul’s runway – a whirlwind introduction to those
that served looks first…
WORDS: JACK CULLEN
e love death drops and Drag history is a white-knuckle ride best. But let’s take a strut through
typing “OMG DEAD!” of radical counter culture. A risqué relay herstory, and zoom in on a few of the
but how much do we race of queer fantasy that has run its wacky wiggy sisters who’ve kept the
know about the drag way through centuries of underground world spinning like a disco ball for quite
queens who are establishments and illicit parties, not to some time now…
literally dead, mention a spiky assault course of
catwalking across the arrests, murders, suicides and scandal.
Today drag is the
centuries before us? The powerful story of William
Today drag is the glossiest and most Dorsey Swann, a black former-slave glossiest and most
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over pizza cooing at countless queens, exciting jigsaw waiting to be unearthed institutionally- GR
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some of whom are household names as more and more people become A
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7 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine
A POTTED
HISTORY OF DRAG
Police raid a and Mozart were constantly packing their
ball in New operas with cross-dressing palavers too, and
York in 1939. ‘castrati’ singers just added to the thrill.
MOLLYWOOD
Molly Houses were the meeting places for a
17th century sapling gay community, Molly
being a slur meaning effeminate man. In 1709
Ned Ward wrote in his exposé The Secret
History of London Clubs, “Mollies rather fancy
themselves women, imitating all the little
vanities that custom has reconciled to the
female sex, affecting to speak, walk, tattle,
curtsy, cry, scold, and mimic all manner of
effeminacy!”
Molly Houses were an assemblage of gay
bar, brothel, cabaret space, fetish club, café,
mafia den, LinkedIn and Tinder. Drag acts at
Ichikawa Komazo II Molly Houses parodied washer women and
as Akaneya Hanshichi housewifey chit chat, suggesting Cher might
in Hadesugata On’a not have been born yet. There were draggy
Maiginu, circa 1798. skits including ‘mock marriages’ and even
‘mock births’, that sometimes turned sexual.
Hindu histories have reference points for Illustrations from the 1700s show men
cross-dressing. The story of Mulan first pops laughing in female attire and fanning
New York up in the 6th century, and Japanese Kabuki themselves while boys stolen off the street
police arrest a theatre in the 1630s concreted a strong were seduced and had their feet kissed while
man in drag. tradition of female impersonation in Asia. other men watched through peep holes.
We’ll likely never know for sure – but did Yikes.
SHADY LADIES cavemen pull their willies between their legs
Judges condemning queens to prison couldn’t and say, “Look, I’m a cavewoman!”. Of course HE’S BEHIND YOU!
have imagined today’s glittering world of they bloody did. The UK’s great pantomime tradition has its
RuPaul. Yet just as they would struggle to roots in 16th century Italy’s Commedia
understand our times, we aren’t best A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S Dell’Arte. Think gorgeous leggings, bells, and
equipped to fathom theirs. Language evolves QUEEN masks like they sell in Venice. But these
faster than law while feelings often lay Drag timelines often kick off with clownish plays became popular in the UK. In
unspoken. Thanks to social media we now Shakespeare. There were dozens of 1732 the Covent Garden Theatre was built in
have a wide pool of definitions and playwrights in the 1500s but Bill was top dog
expressions that would have been alien to our as his company staged plays for Queen
ancestors, not to mention new ways to Elizabeth four times a year at The Globe.
connect. The queer spark was always there, Only men were allowed onstage and the
that’s for sure, but they didn’t have today’s word “drag” appears pencilled into the
toolkit. margins of scripts. Scholars argued over
When looking at drag history, many whether it was shorthand for “DRessed As
resources are linked to crimes, deaths or Girl” or a nickname for the costumes that
flashy promo from big productions because dragged along the floor.
these things leave indelible footprints (size 11 Shakespeare used the all-male schtick to
honey!) poke fun. Plays like Twelfth Night and As You
But to study drag you must ask yourself Like It are positively pinging with storylines
what it is that you actually mean – men in that dwell and delight in gender
dresses being amusing? Radical theatre? pandemonium. Iconic characters like Juliet,
Gender-bending fashion? Mrs Doubtfire? Or Desdemona and Cleopatra were all created
fame-hungry stage school kids living for the with particular boys in mind.
‘gram? People reflect on this period in terms of
restriction, but audiences loved the cocks-in-
ANCIENT ORIGINS frocks farce of it all. While in Europe Handel
Drag’s core elements existed thousands of
years ago and transvestites are cited in the
Hebrew Bible several centuries before Christ.
It may not have been meme-able and
“sickening”, but it certainly turned enough
heads for priests to condemn it in 450 BC.
The ancient Roman festival Saturnalia
upended not just gender norms but everything
including slaves dressing as masters. The
Feast Of The Holy Innocents was an
outrageous early Christian festival that had Dan Leno,
boys cosplaying priests, and before that William Shakespeare’s circa 1880, as
Pagans loved a slice of gender illusion with Twelfth Night at the Mother Goose
their sacrificial fire-leaping outdoor sex. Apollo Theatre in London. at Drury Lane.
8 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine
A POTTED
HISTORY OF DRAG
Frederick Park
(right) and
Ernest Boulton
as Fanny and
Stella, 1869.
Ella Shields has
her hair done
by Max Factor,
circa 1930.
London by John Rich, a successful harlequin, WILLIAM DORSEY SWANN
and producers began tweaking the format, Meanwhile in DC, yards away from The
remixing it with English tales like Dick White House, a party of black men were
Whittington and Robin Hood. Dames became arrested in 1888 for dancing in satin gowns.
a mainstay of pantomimes and broke the The organiser, William Dorsey Swann, was a
fourth wall to make fun of topical subjects. former-slave who ran a meet-up. Black
Peter Pan was an early ‘drag king’ character butlers, messengers and coach riders would
as audiences came to expect a woman in dress up, get drunk, and get laid. His parties
that role. also had white men “of respectable
Actor Samuel Simmons found fame as parentage”, drinking champagne, dancing and
Mother Goose while James Rogers made basking in “a hell of iniquity” (as one reporter
waves as Widow Twanky at The Strand (the put it). Swann became an early gay activist
name is a piss-take of Twankea Tea, a cheap and is currently the first person in America to
brand imported from China at the time). have identified as a “queen of drag”. A book
The biggest panto star was Dan Leno, about his life is due out soon, The House of
whose “Wicked Aunt” gave Drury Lane a Swann, published by Picador Books. This
smash sell-out with Babes In The Wood. In underground US scene eventually evolved
1900 Leno opened his own London venue, into ballroom culture (see page 66).
The Clapham Grand, which to this day still
stages the biggest names in drag – Alaska, VARIETY AND VAUDEVILLE
Baga Chipz and Sasha Velour, as well as local Vaudeville made drag commercially viable.
faves like Diane Chorley, Myra Dubois, and Among the magicians, ventriloquists and
Aaron Carty AKA The Beyoncé Experience. strong men, audiences would gasp in disbelief
when drag queens performed and then
FANNY AND STELLA revealed their true identities – how titillating!
Thomas and Frederick were two Victorian Unlike Burlesque, Vaudeville was supposed
good-time boys arrested one night in 1870 for to be a family night out and in 1915 Variety
leaving a theatre dressed as ladies – namely magazine ranted about “the offensive,
their female alter egos “Fanny and Stella”. disgusting, effeminate impersonators”.
Hundreds gathered to watch the boys leave Needless to say, everyday people LOVED IT.
the police station the next morning, roughed Bert Savoy became a big name and so did
up in their giant gowns. This was going out in Julian Eltinge (whose fee even outgrew
drag, yonks before the days of Wigstock or Charlie Chaplin’s). Big-budget musicals were
Mighty Hoopla. The nation was gripped when built around Eltinge, including Cousin Lucy
it emerged that Thomas was also dating Lord and The Fascinating Widow. The Russell
Clinton, who couldn’t cope with the exposé Brothers did well too with their show, Bitch,
and killed himself (or possibly fled). Penny pretending to be a pair of Irish servant girls.
pamphlets (the tabloids of their day) were Vesta Tilley, Hetty King and Ella Shields were
dedicated to the public’s hunger for this three very successful drag kings from this CE
case. Fanny and Stella toured for years after period. OFFI
the trial. A book (see page 10) and a stage play RD
O
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women clothing”. This suggests that some unsupervised, experimental scene flourished GETT
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9 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine
A POTTED
HISTORY OF DRAG
Malin was a prohibition era break-out drag
star. The Slide was one such bohemian joint
on New York’s Bleecker Street with queens
singing show tunes. Princess Toto, Madam
Fisher and Phoebe Pinafore were all on the
bill at this raucous dive.
Over in London drinking was never out of
season but drag parties were being raided. A
mass arrest at a Holland Park party in 1933
called “Lady Austin’s Camp Boys” saw 27 men
go to jail. Lady Austin, the event’s male
organiser, was unapologetic in court saying,
“Before long this will be allowed”.
Berlin and Paris drag scenes flourished but
then fell at the feet of fascism. The world’s
bubbling drag scene dissolved into World War
II and men who hadn’t been allowed to dance
in dresses were now suddenly required to run
into machine gun fire.
A TIME AND A PLACE Marsha P Johnson, a
By the ‘60s drag was surfacing again on a Stonewall legend.
tense mafia-controlled scene. The fantastic
1967 documentary The Queen followed a drag fellow queen and friend Marsha P Johnson
pageant hosted by The Flawless Sabrina and famously joined the struggle later on.
starring Crystal LaBeija. It went on to win Marsha went on to join the performance
wide acclaim at Cannes, but while a lucky few group Hot Peaches in 1972, and later The
were enjoying drag docs, authorities were still Angels of Light, a drag troupe that evolved out
hostile. of San Francisco’s Cockettes. She moved in
In the early hours of June 28th 1969 Warhol’s circle for a while but was a
tensions hit boiling point when patrons at troublemaker too, partly due to mental health
The Stonewall Inn fought back against a raid, difficulties, she was barred from many gay
kickstarting six days of carnage that energised bars whose proprietors said she would start
the contemporary gay rights movement. Some fights. Like civil rights and feminism before it,
Riots at The
of the arrested queens and transgender gay rights groups were divided and riddled
Stonewall Inn,
patrons were marched to the toilets to have with rifts. Some were trying to seduce rights
New York,
their genitals inspected. By chance, Sylvia out of governments via “good behaviour” and
1969.
Rivera was one of the queens at the Stonewall quiet assimilation, which clashed of course
that night, as was Stormé DeLarverie. Their with vibrant radical sex-worker drag queens.
Dressing Up Drag, A History British Music Hall: Fanny & Stella We Can Be Heroes:
Peter Ackroyd Of Female An Illustrated Neil McKenna London Clubland
(1979) Impersonation In History (2013) 1976-1984
The Performing Richard Anthony Chris Sullivan and
Arts Baker (2005) Graham Smith
Roger Baker (1995) (2012)
10 | DRAG! The Ultimate Dragazine