Let us start from the beginning. The art of drag can be traced back to antiquity. It began in Greek theatre where all female roles were played by male actors. Little changed in the centuries that followed, be it in the Elizabethan theatre or, outside of Europe, in the Japanese kabuki where in fact the gender revolution is still to take place. However, the man considered to be the first "drag queen" in history is actually an American by the name of William Dorsey Swann. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Swann held drag balls in Washington D.C. in which men would impersonate women and often end up arrested and charged with moral offenses.

Briefly put, drag is the art of impersonating the opposite sex. Although it is considerably more common for men to assume a woman's identity, women, known as "drag kings" may also impersonate men. Do not confuse "drag" with "trans." The drag art is not directly related to a person's gender or sexual identity. Drag is a performance, an enactment designed to portray gender as a cultural construct. This is done by exaggeration and, consequently, the deconstruction of any related stereotypes, behaviours, imperatives, and outfits.

Drag is also a struggle, or at least an escape from the pressures of culture and society that make people look and act in a certain way only because they are assigned a specific gender role. A performance convention allows one to step out of one's daily role and, at least for a brief moment, embody the opposite sex in ways forbidden in the real world, as an outlet to one's fascinations, fantasies and desires and a way to see for oneself what it is like to be different.

The drag art first appeared in the early twentieth century in the American community of homosexual men. This immediately put it at odds with the strongly codified, obligatorily-heterosexual standard of masculinity. That drag was not only fun but also a form of resistance is best evidenced by the history of riots in the Stonewall club in New York in 1969. At the time, it was predominantly black drag queens that stood up to the police, giving rise to the modern LGBT+ movement.

Poland's first drag queen is believed to have been Eugeniusz Bodo, who played the role of the then famous American actress Mae West in the 1937 motion picture Piętro wyżej (Upstairs) and sang the song Seks appeal to nasza broń kobieca (Sex appeal is our female weapon). Opposite-sex disguises were actually a frequent device in comedies and farces. After all, nothing evokes such roaring and often crude laughter as a guy dressed as a woman. A woman posing as a man is definitely less funny because the patriarchal culture values masculinity more than femininity. And for this reason alone, the number of drag queens far outweighs that of drag kings. Femininity can be mocked and laughed at will, while masculinity cringes at being the butt of jokes, and often severely punishes those who dare to poke fun at it.

Despite their commercial nature, the comedies that relied on drag for a risqué appeal (see, also Poland's wildly popular 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot, played a subversive role of showing to the general public the blurriness of lines between the masculine and the feminine.

In addition to gender, drag may also refer to social class. This is shown in the famous 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning directed by Jennie Livingston, which chronicles balls attended by poor black New Yorkers who parody wealthy and privileged white people.

For a long time, drag was a practically underground niche form of art, that, as mentioned earlier, was even persecuted by law enforcement authorities and courts of law. It was actually limited to gay clubs. In Poland, up until recently, there were less than a dozen drag queens. The most famous of them was Kim Lee, of Vietnamese descent (who regrettably died in 2020, but who can be seen in a minor part in the currently screened movie 8 rzeczy, których nie wiecie o facetach (8 Things You Don't Know About Guys). A change seems to be coming as Poznań has recently become the true drag capital of Poland. Every weekend, all local LGBT+ clubs put on scores of performances by various drag queens. This change can surely be attributed to the stunning global popularity of the American show RuPaul Drag Race, available on Netflix. The series has as many as 13 seasons with several foreign language versions, including Canadian, Thai, and Dutch. It pits up to a dozen drag queens against one another and has them judged by a jury headed by the most famous drag queen of all time, the singer, actor, and director RuPaul. It was he who, referring to the famous quote from Hamlet, said: "We are all born naked and the rest is drag".

Sasha Velour herself, who is bringing her Smoke & Mirrors show to Poznan's Earth Hall on 18 March, privately describes herself as "gender-fluid", i.e. a person who does not want to define herself by any particular sex. She distinctively keeps her head shaved bald. This traditionally masculine attribute clashes with her glamorous dresses and heavy make-up.

The event's organisers bill her performance as "an astonishing combination of drag, visual arts and magic." Apparently, the artist is to be cut in half and turned into a tree right before our eyes. This description alone shows that drag has emerged from the underground and become an integral part of the show business. To be a professional drag queen today, you need not only a vivid imagination, but also considerable resources, as the competition is fierce. Some people resent such commercialism, which takes away the political relevance of drag, turning it into fancy entertainment. It nevertheless broadens people's horizons challenging what is considered granted and obligatory in the common understanding of gender.

Bartosz Żurawiecki

translation: Krzysztof Kotkowski

• Sasha Velour's Smoke & Mirrors show
• 18 March, 9pm
• PIF grounds, Earth Hall
• tickets: PLN 99-149

© Wydawnictwo Miejskie Posnania 2022