We’re celebrating the arrival of the Broadway blockbuster bromance Kinky Boots and wanted to take a minute to talk about how much drag queens have contributed to the joy that is the performing arts.
And transgender folks.
Oh, and cross-dressers. And gender-benders.
Of the many perks of life in the performing arts is the singular power of theater life to allow people to be who they are—and who they’re not. A theater world’s magic brims with exploration of identity, and for many centuries, humans have used the stage as a forum and refuge, a liminal space where character, reality, fantasy and persona blur into performance. LGBT identity historically challenges the arbitrary definitions of normal gender behaviors and sexuality for society at large, but LGBT is LIFE in the performing arts, part of the norm that adds its own value to the mix.
Mainstream movies tend to typecast drag queens as a comic device for sexual gags and variations on the bitchy glamorpuss, though it’s worth noting that in popular films like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and its American counterpart, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, as well as in Kinky Boots, drag queens continue to teach audiences the value of tolerance in a world too charged by judgment and violence.
Long a “fringe” performing art form, drag is making its way, slowly, as normative. In Kinky Boots, Lola is a complex character, not the schtick comic in a double act working off (literally) the straight man. Lola’s ambiguous sexuality in Kinky Boots remains one of the cooler parts of the musical often overshadowed by the fun of it all. Is she gay? Straight? Does it matter? And why are we so preoccupied with a man in a dress’s sexuality anyway? Can’t a person just be happy in a dress?
So, keep rocking the frocks, brothers and sisters, and we’ll see you stage side.
Patron alert: the Straz Center continues to see more fake ticket agencies pop up on the internet, selling our shows for far more than our ticket price, especially for the Broadway series. Be sure you get your tickets for Kinky Boots at strazcenter.org. Any other website is a ticket scam.