![]() on a Sunday at a party called Club Casanova at a venue called Cake on Avenue C. His earliest drag performance was as a “fat sweaty Elvis,” to use his words, at 2 a.m. ![]() “Those early days in the clubs were electric, uncharted and riveting,” said Murray Hill, 49, a New York comedian known as the “hardest-working middle-aged man in show business” since his emergence as a young drag king in 1995. Stormé DeLarverie, a Stonewall activist who preferred the term “male impersonator” to “drag king,” passed for a man while touring America with the Jewel Box Revue in the ’50s and ’60s. Male mimics Vesta Tilley and Hetty King were widely celebrated on British music hall stages of the 19th century. I don’t need to be the main course - I just want to be included.”īy appearing that night, he will earn a spot in a brotherhood of drag kings that, under various names, has been around for centuries. “This gives us a seat at the table,” said Tenderoni, who started performing in drag less than five years ago. Whether he wins or not, it doesn’t really matter. To that end, Tenderoni will go up against seven other disparate drag artists - some bearded, burly and burlesque some Jessica Rabbit curvaceous some known for their lingerie-clad muscles - for the Drag Queen of the Year crown in a show to be seen on the Sessions Live platform. “What they do isn’t just valid, it’s fierce.” Why, they wondered one sleepless night flying home from a gig, shouldn’t such performers all compete against and celebrate each other? “Everyone has something to prove, and everyone brings so much,” Alaska 5000 said. “We’ve worked with trans men and trans women and drag kings and all these different kinds of performers our whole lives,” said Alaska 5000, 35, the “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars” winner who founded the competition with a fellow drag queen, Lola LaCroix, in 2019. The Drag Queen of the Year pageant takes such diversity as its mandate. I’ve done shows and heard, ‘I’m from Brazil,’ ‘I’m from London.’ It has opened the floodgates.” “That has made the audience for all kinds of drag so much bigger. “Covid made everyone have to go digital,” said Tenderoni, who developed his act at Berlin, a club in Chicago. The closing of bars and restaurants has hit most performers’ pocketbooks very hard, but the mandated move to online entertainment may have helped level the playing field. ![]() 1 drew 1.3 million viewers, its highest-rated episode ever - performers who exaggerate and explore the tropes of manhood are getting a closer look.Īlthough a king has not yet been featured on “Drag Race” (a trans man named Gottmik who performs in female drag has), drag kings at last are getting more exposure elsewhere, and surprisingly, the pandemic may have helped. “We often got questions.”Ĭhief among them: “What the heck is a drag king?”īut now that drag has gone mainstream - the Season 13 premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on VH1 on Jan. “In the past, many of our audience members didn’t understand the concept of drag kings,” said Chad Kampe, a producer who has been staging popular drag brunches in Minneapolis since 2012. Casual fans who get their drag from TV or with a side of waffles at brunch, in fact, may never even have heard of this particular practice. While androgynous costume in this direction is hardly new - Marlene Dietrich famously set libidos afire in top hat and tuxedo in the 1930 movie classic “Morocco” - drag kings tend to be the lesser-exposed and underappreciated segment of drag. It’s drag, it’s cosplay and, he hopes, it’s enough to win. Tenderoni, his creator says, “is a mash-up of Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown, Prince, George Michael and Boy George.” He is what was once called a “male impersonator,” penciled-on mustache, compressed chest and all. He’s a drag king, which, generally speaking means a performer born female, who takes the stage in men’s clothes. But despite a penchant for lip-syncing to Missy Elliott, Tenderoni isn’t a drag queen. The pageant is called Drag Queen of the Year 2021. It should not be a big hairy deal that a 32-year-old Chicago-based drag performer named Tenderoni will be vying in a virtual talent competition on Sunday, and yet it is truly a reason to wig out.
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