Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers - (Methuen Drama Engage) by Mark Edward & Enoch Brater & Stephen Farrier & Mark Taylor-Batty (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In recent years drag performance has moved from the fringes to emerge as a mainstream phenomenon, showcased on TV shows in the US and the UK.

This collection offers a diverse range of critical engagements by drag performers, makers, scholars and writers reflecting on work from the UK, USA, Israel, Germany and Australia. Moving beyond discussions of gender theory, the essays consider contemporary drag performance practices, connecting them to the histories, communities and politics that produced them.

Chapters range across discussions of drag kings in the US, UK and drag and activism; the influence of RuPaul on the generation of new forms of work in New York; transfeminist critiques of drag; 'bio'/faux queens;
engagements with race and ethnicity through drag performance; drag andragogy; audience concerns; drag intersections with animal personas, and how drag performance relates to personal narratives of history and identity.

Collectively the contributions focus on drag as a mode of performance that is diverse and that uncorsets the easy thought that drag is simply a cross dressing man in a dress or a woman in a suit.

Review Quotes

"A necessary, nuanced and well heeled step in understanding the scope, diversity and impact of our art." --Cheddar Gorgeous

"This is the drag book we have been waiting for: critical, entertaining, political. It provides us with a timely and much needed collection of analytical, provocative and engaging encounters with drag. Ranging widely over theoretical and methodological approaches, and drawing on and giving expression to a colourful cast of queens and kings, this book is a fabulous read with something for academics, activists, audiences and artistes alike. Unafraid to engage with the complexity of drag, it pushes at the paradoxes and potentialities of contemporary drag across diverse settings and in mainstream as well as countercultural formations. With a queer politics at its beating heart, it also puts drag to work in performing, challenging and understanding gender and sexuality in the 21st century." --Dr Cath Lambert, University of Warwick, UK

"Kick off your heels, peel down your stockings and get your complexly gendered bare feet on the gorgeous sticky floors of this fantastic book. Ferociously sexy, rigorously theorized and joyously kinky, Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers is a major mapping of fierce gender-queer space. Take this book to bed right now and read it!" --Tim Miller, performer and author of A Body in the O

"Offers a nuanced cross-section of drag studies at a watershed moment when drag is increasingly being assimilated into mainstream Western visual and popular culture, and finding new homes in various cultural contexts, media and academic disciplines. As such, it is a valuable contribution to the literature in the field." --Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies

"Edward and Farrier have edited a collection that offers both a taste of Drag for the uninitiated undergraduate and opens intriguing avenues for the more seasoned academic explorer and/or performer." --New Theatre Quarterly

About the Author

Mark Edward is a pracademic and Reader in Creative Arts at Edge Hill University, UK. His publications include Mesearch and the Performing Body (2018). Professionally he has worked for Rambert Dance Company and performed with the renowned American performance artist Penny Arcade in her work Bad Reputation (2004) and in Jeremy Goldstein's Truth to Power Café (2018). Mark is also the writer and producer of the immersive performance and film installation Council House Movie Star (2012) featuring his drag persona Gale Force.

Stephen Farrier is Reader in Theatre and Performance at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. With Alyson Campbell he has coedited Queer Dramaturgies: International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer (2015) as well as a themed edition of RIDE, The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance named the 'Gender and Sexuality Issue'.