It's a Drag

Cross-Dressing in Performance

Janet Tennant

• Publisher: Applause
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781493059065
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

From ancient Greek actors to all-male Elizabethan casts to the drag queens of today, cross-dressing performers have been around for nearly as long as live performance itself. In It's a Drag, Janet Tennant provides a fascinating and colorful look at performing artists who adopt the characters and dress of others. With a particular focus on theatrical history in Britain and North America, Tennant also turns to modern performers like RuPaul, Mj Rodriquez, David Bowie, and Billy Porter. She surveys the many reasons that performers have cross-dressed over the years, whether to tell stories, to amuse audiences, to create distinctive alter egos, to call attention to social and political issues—or merely for reasons of expediency.
In addition to its memorable portraits of Shakespearean boy actors, pantomime dames, and other cross-dressing performers across history, It's a Drag takes stock of the present and considers the future of the practice: How will the drive toward equality affect the use of cross-dressing and cross-gender role casting? Will gender-blind roles become as prevalent as color-blind casting? And will cross-dressing continue to amuse and impress audiences, or can we imagine a time when gender differences will cease to be important?

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1. Overture and Beginners
• 2. Boys Will Be Girls—Will Be Boys?
• 3. Restoration—A New World
• 4. The Lure of Shakespeare
• 5. Witches, Bitches, and Britches
• 6. Leaping the Divide—Cross-Dressing in Dance
• 7. Music Hall and Vaudeville
• 8. War Is a Drag
• 9. There Is Nothing Like a Dame
• 10. The Other Dames
• 11. Queening It
• 12. Pretty Women? Handsome Men?
• 13. Cross-Dressing—An Outdated Concept?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes and References