God save the drag kings of England
By Sheena McKenzie, CNN. Photographs by Sophie Green for CNN.
Ramsgate, England (CNN) — For the past hour, Trudi Jackson has been painting on a chiselled jaw, sponging dragon tattoos to her forearms, taping down her breasts and gluing hair to her chest. “My favorite bit is my chin because I get to do the dimple,” she says, makeup brush in hand. But it is the moment she attaches the mustache – a furry creature transported in its own Tupperware container – that a kind of spirit takes over. The voice deepens; the stance widens. Walking is now a rolling swagger, and every woman in the room is looked up and down with a raised eyebrow: “Alright ‘luv?”
Jackson has officially left the building. In her place, is the drag king Pat Riarchy.
Pat is a little bit like an inappropriate uncle at a family gathering in the 1970s. He’s leery and sexist and delights in making women squirm. Despite the bravado of his flowing mullet and leopard print G-string, Pat is tragically ill-equipped for today’s rules of engagement.
In his stage shows, Pat – often brandishing a Union Jack flag – tries to make sense of a world where “it’s hard being a bloke.” He jokes about “the girls taking our jobs” and is baffled by the acronym LGBTQIA+. At his “Karablokey” nights, Pat sings an original song called, “While Yer Down There Luv.” In another performance at a local pool as part of Pride festival, he told the gathered swimmers: “I am not a professional aqua aerobics instructor. But like all blokes, I can turn my hand to anything.”
“For me, it’s cathartic,” says Jackson, 52, an actor and performance coach who grew up in a mining town in south Wales. “It’s my playing out of what it’s like to be born female in a world of this masculinity which was hugely toxic when I was growing up.”
These days, Jackson and her drag king character live in Ramsgate, a port town on England’s southeast coast where – much like Pat’s flag – strings of Union Jacks flutter along the harbor. Like many towns along this stretch of coastline, it has pockets of deep deprivation, while also attracting artists and people looking for a quieter life away from London.
Tucked at the back of one barber shop is Screaming Alley, a cabaret production company supporting independent artists. Descending a hot pink stairwell plastered with posters of George Michael and Madonna, you’ll find the Alley Bar and stage. On any given night there might be an open mic, community workshop, or recently – Jackson’s masterclass for aspiring drag kings.
Over six weeks students develop their characters – learning about masculinity, costume, make-up and movement – with the aim of performing to a live audience at the end.
What’s striking is that these drag classes are happening in the kind of English seaside town that voted strongly for Brexit – and where, in the decade since, the hard-right Reform UK has become a major political force.
Like other hard-right populist parties across the globe, Reform’s brand is very much tied up in traditionalist masculinity. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has cultivated an image of the everyman who makes campaign stops in the pub. A politician who rails against what he sees as the social wokeism that’s stopping “young men being young men.” It’s the type of macho imagery drag kings delight in subverting.
“We’re living through a time when conversations around gender, identity, class and power have become increasingly polarized, and Thanet (the district Ramsgate falls under) reflects that as much, if not more, as anywhere else,” says Lara Clifton, co-director of Screaming Alley. “What interests me is creating a space in the middle of those conversations – not to tell people what to think, but to invite them to play, laugh and spend time together.”
As for working-class Pat, he would never vote for Reform himself. He views the affluent, private school-educated Farage as “a posh boy,” says Jackson. Pat is a more layered king than you might initially think, and class is an important element to his act. The so-called liberal elite are educated, and that’s a privilege, adds Jackson. “It’s a privilege to be woke. And rather than shaming people for their viewpoint, let’s have the conversation: ‘is it true? Is that real?’”
King about town
Jackson has been performing Pat for five years, but the character grew out of the cancel culture she was seeing years earlier. “If we can’t debate properly, you close people down and they go underground. Which is why then the manosphere exploded,” she says. “My feeling is, let’s shine the light on it and laugh at it – let’s laugh at Pat, not silence him. Because when you silence him, then it just becomes insidious.”
Walking the streets of Ramsgate with Pat on a sweltering Monday in July, as many people do double-takes as those who ignore him.
On the beach one woman, Vanessa Duarte, calls out to Pat with a wide smile – she recognizes him from a previous show at the Alley Bar. During the performance, “one of my friends felt uncomfortable but another one loved it,” she says. Personally, she’s a fan: “he reminds me of my dad. He has photos in the same outfit.”
Shortly after, a young man stumbles towards Pat from the direction of the pub, rubbing his eyes in disbelief. “Wait, is that… that’s a woman in there… is it real?” he asks. There is a tense moment when he gets close to Pat’s face, before deciding the drag king is “10 out of 10.” Jackson is pragmatic about the interaction: “That’s interesting to me because it opens up conversation. He’ll think about that.”
Girls will be boys
Later at the Alley Bar, Jackson’s masterclass is in full swing; tonight it’s a mixture of nine new and former students. It’s a glimpse of a thriving drag king community in the UK, which, while not as mainstream as their queen equivalents, still numbers in the hundreds.
During the day, these women work as teachers, painter-decorators, full-time carers. One is a suicide bereavement liaison officer.
Seeing them enter now dressed as kings is like a surreal timelapse of men through history: an 18th century fellow in a towering white wig, a pizza restauranter in aviator sunglasses, and a Lycra-clad influencer among them.
Each person’s character is in some way inspired by the men around them – a million little interactions and observations added up to a complete persona. Maxine Rowe, 49, created her drag king – Dr. Eustace Hunt – after encountering a real doctor who dismissed her request for menopausal HRT treatment. The character Dr. Hunt, she explains, is in his 70s, wears country club clothes, and is too busy practicing his golf swing to hear women patients describing hot flashes. But when the patient is a man, “they can come in for a paper cut, and I’ll send them for an MRI scan,” she says, stethoscope round her neck.
The more Rowe shared her character with other women, the more she found they had similar stories. “It feels like a release to be able to take something that’s difficult or horrible or stressful, and own it,” adds fellow student Katie Pope, 32, whose own drag king, Manny Sphere, is a young gym junkie, podcaster and grifter always trying to sell an enormous sports bottle of his “Man Juice.”
During the class, Jackson is now simply herself; wearing pink shorts, sneakers and a T-shirt with “Ken” written in Barbie-font. She instructs the kings to form a circle and strike a pose: “Smolder!” she shouts. “Macho!” “Do fragile man!” “Confused!”
“Now take your man and walk around your space as blokes. Ricky – more ‘aging rocker,’ give us a hip roll,” Jackson directs, imitating a leisurely swagger for 67-year-old Janis Royal, whose character is called Ricky Belissimo. Dressed in leopard-print leggings, silver boots and a thin silk scarf, Royal says her ‘70s glam rock look was inspired by her husband. “The wardrobe was already there,” she laughs. And when she’s not painting on a goatee and perfecting her manly stride? “I make art. Just a quiet life with my cat.”
What quickly emerges, is Jackson’s talent for bringing comedic punch to each character. The performer, who trained at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and has 20 years of acting experience, might use a prop in an unexpected way, involve the audience, or hold a gaze for just long enough to get people giggling. That’s if Jackson isn’t already in stitches herself.
Many of the drag kings talk of the confidence that comes with inhabiting a man’s physique – they stand taller, manspread, openly readjust their crotches. “You’re allowed to take up extra space being a man,” says Rowe.
At one point, 46-year-old Penny Harston’s character, Dave, lets loose to Blur’s Britpop classic, “Girls & Boys.” Wearing an English football top, beanie, and a drawn-on five o’clock shadow, Dave thrusts to the chorus: “Girls who are boys, who like boys to be girls… always should be someone you really looooove.” It’s joyous and furious all at once.
Harston is also one of the Screaming Marys, a performance collective managed by Screaming Alley, which regularly hosts workshops in everything from burlesque to lip-syncing – and previously did Jackson’s drag king course. Now, the Screaming Marys run their own drag king nights at the Alley Bar, where they perform on stage and invite audiences to come dressed as their “ultimate bloke.”
“It was so nice to be able to go to a group of people and be silly, get up and dance, and not be judged,” said fellow Screaming Mary, Helen Gibson, 43, of joining the collective and “finding your people.” Gibson’s drag king character, Barry, is one of the most intriguing to come out of Jackson’s course.
He sports a bowl haircut, drab T-shirt, oversized glasses, and tends to stand in the corner quietly watching. “Barry is a 45-year-old virgin who spends a lot of time with his mum,” says Gibson. He was inspired by the adult brother of a family friend, someone who as kids, they always found “quite scary.” But when played by Gibson, there is also a vulnerability. Like Pat, and all the kings here, there are so many layers to each character.
“To become a drag king, you need to be in some way curious about masculinity – you could choose to celebrate it, exaggerate it or expose its inherent contradictions,” says Clifton. “Drag in all its forms reminds us that masculinity – like femininity – is something we all learn, perform and negotiate.”
As the Alley Bar calls it a night, the performers wipe off their stubble and gather up their wigs. The kings have left the building.
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