Ms. Yuka Layme.
The setting: Missouri State Capitol, Hearing Room Seven.
The time: 1:16 a.m., Wed., Jan. 25.
Maxi Glamour stepped ahead, impeccably wearing a protracted maroon jacket, their signature blue make-up framed by a complementary wig and an outsized hat adorned with flowers. They had been there, together with different drag performers. to testify in opposition to the Missouri legislature’s proposed drag bans. These hearings on 4 payments—two focusing on trans youth by limiting their participation in sports activities and their means to obtain medical care till age 18, and two specializing in banning drag performances—had already featured a number of hours of dialogue, with not a single particular person testifying in assist of the drag bans.
Maxi shared their title, recognized themself as a drag performer and costume designer, then started their testimony.
“When I was 13, I started dressing up in different gender clothes and my mother kicked me out,” Maxi started. “I was living outside of my car and the drag community was the only community that would take me in.” They went on to element the profession they’d constructed since then, showing in and producing drag reveals over the intervening 14 years, by which time they labored with “every single major institution in St. Louis, every museum, every college, and most public libraries. So your taxpayers’ money is going to me, thank you.”
Maxi is a taxpayer too, in fact—at one level, they famous, residents like them “are paying your salaries, making sure that your bad hair jobs get a place to sit down at.” The homophobia and transphobia represented by these anti-drag payments don’t simply quantity to assault on the artistry of oldsters like Maxi; they’re additionally on assault on their earnings and livelihood.
Maxi closed by noting the urgent points the legislators are not speaking about—the opioid epidemic and meth habit, for starters. “I would love if you all could make sure that you all have the basic needs of Missourians met, so we [drag artists] are not constantly told that we would do better in New York, we would do better in L.A.. Because I love my city, I love my state, and I’m not going any-fucking-where. Any questions?”
Representative Peter Merideth (D-St. Louis) responded to Maxi’s “righteous anger” with an apology and a praise. “I want to say you look incredible,” he advised Maxi. “I’m looking at the detail and the work and the artistry that went into everything about how you’re presenting yourself right now, and if anybody in this room doubts that drag is a form of artistic expression, that is extremely well protected by the First Amendment in our country, I think all they have to do is look at you. Thank you for showing your art to us and being here to testify.”
Maxi bought the final phrase: “Thank you. And I think if more people had friends that were drag queens, they would be committing less fashion faux pas.”
Performances like this are enjoying out throughout the U.S. as a flood of anti-trans and anti-drag payments churn by state legislatures in locations like Arizona, Tennessee, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia. Indeed, issues are transferring terrifyingly quick on this house: In 2023, U.S. state legislatures managed to surpass the variety of anti-LGBTQ+ payments that had been proposed 2022—i.e., what took lawmakers 12 months to attain final 12 months took has taken a month this 12 months.
Indeed, these payments are popping up sooner than a sport of transphobic Whac-A-Mole, and it’s exhausting to maintain up. The proliferation is due in no small half to the newly elected crop of legislators from the current midterm elections. The Missouri state legislature solely gave 25 hours of discover of the general public remark interval, however households, docs, performers, and allies drove from all around the state, braving an oncoming snow storm. Some states are giving far much less discover than that.
While anti-LGBTQ laws will not be new, the so-called drag bans are a comparatively current development. These items of proposed laws comprise a minimum of considered one of three frequent features: They prohibit “cross-gender” efficiency, prohibit youngsters from seeing drag performances, and/or try and reclassify drag as grownup leisure, forcing venues that current drag performances to abide by the identical rules as strip golf equipment and grownup bookstores.
The intention behind these payments is obvious: pure transphobia and homophobia, knowledgeable by ignorance. But the potential affect of their usually sweeping or imprecise language is more durable to foretell, not just for the lives and livelihoods of drag performers and presenters however for LGBTQ people normally, and for everybody within the performing arts. Which is why everybody within the theatre discipline wants so as to add their voice to the resistance in opposition to these payments and the motion they spring from, no matter their gender or sexuality.
Words, Words, Words
According to activist and legislative researcher Erin Reed, who has been following these payments in granular element, the language in them is imprecise on goal, as a result of their creators need them to be twisted to suit a variety of conditions. Reed expressed concern for the trans appearing group as she defined the reasoning, equivalent to it’s, behind these payments.
“I especially worry for transgender actors, transgender people who are involved in the production of any plays or performances, because, to be frank, a lot of these bills are very, very broad in how they target the community,” Reed advised me. This broad brush method, she added, may doubtlessly “curtail the rights of many other people, gender non-conforming people, people that perform in various ways.”
Indeed, probably the most vital potential affect of those proposed payments is that they may make it unsafe to be transgender or gender non-conforming in public, onstage or in any other case. The method they’re written, they may apply to every thing from a transgender particular person singing karaoke at a party, supplied there are greater than two individuals current, to a stage musical that includes cross-gender casting.
On Jan. 27, Actors’ Equity launched an announcement condemning these proposed payments, centering considerations concerning the security of transgender actors, and going as far as to encourage theatres to implement emergency motion plans to make sure their security.
Peggy McKowen, creative director of the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., famous the downstream impact of such payments, even when they’re not handed.
“We are in a small town in West Virginia—a lovely, very supportive town and community,” she stated, and the CATF viewers is “adventure-hungry.” But if West Virginia is perceived as “this place where some artists aren’t welcome, it’s gonna be more challenging for us to get the plays we’d like to do for us to bring the artists that we’d like to bring here for us to offer the kind of season that we would like to offer.” She’s involved that the reputational injury of the legislature critically contemplating such measures will make it more durable for her theatre to say, “Come to West Virginia and do this play.”
Jay Hayden, director of adlescent programming on the Rose Theater in Omaha, Neb., articulated the significance that theatre for youth has for LGBTQ+ teenagers. They’re involved that these payments, if handed, may restrict such alternatives for Nebraskan youth.
“A lot of the queer youth I work with share their stories of feeling unsupported or unaffirmed in school settings,” Hayden stated. “Gender is performance. And performance is beautiful. Spaces where young people can develop, grow, and experiment who they are—whether by trying on a new name or set of pronouns for the day, or even just having an affirming group to vent to—are becoming more and more politicized.”
Some elected officers have requested in a number of hearings whether or not cross-gendered roles in Shakespeare, or such different historically cross-gendered roles like Peter Pan, to not point out reveals like The Legend of Georgia McBride or La Cage aux Folles, can be affected by these payments. Answers from the authors of those payments haven’t been clear or unified. Republican representatives in states equivalent to Missouri and Arkansas, as an illustration, hapazardly answered questions throughout testimony about how these payments can be utilized to stay theatre performances. One rep stated that Shakespeare would completely be protected; one other didn’t reply the query and insisted that in all of the productions she’s seen, Peter Pan was performed by a boy. Another consultant stated these payments would doubtless apply to all situations of drag and cross-gender efficiency in theatre. Unanimously, when requested, representatives stated it’s “very likely” that these payments would apply to Pride celebrations.
Kevin Asselin, creative director of Montana Shakespeare within the Parks, which excursions in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, and Washington, famous that his firm is supported by members of each main political events and sometimes supplies the most important cultural efficiency yearly to many rural places. Would payments like this have an effect on his theatre’s work, I puzzled?
He started his reply by alluding to the Elizabethan custom of males enjoying feminine roles, and stated that “the idea of cross-gendering did not change” even after ladies had been lastly allowed to behave professionally. “This has been going on for over 450 years,” he stated. The troupe’s present slate of touring reveals contains As You Like It, considered one of a lot of Shakespeare performs by which cross-gender role-playing is a part of the script, and the corporate’s summer time season contains Measure for Measure and The Three Musketeers. “We have 11 actors this summer with us, five of which are women, six are men, and all of it is cross-gendered. We have to be able to really blur these lines and to create—I don’t know if it’s so much opportunity, more than it’s just, here are the ways that the stories can effectively be told.”
Representatives of all of the theatres I reached out to, in states the place such payments are being proposed, stated that they might “not shy away from future programming if it included drag content,” as Gabriel Valezquez, advertising supervisor of Houston’s 4th Wall Theatre Company, put it. Said Christie Vela, affiliate creative director of Dallas’s Theatre Three, “I personally would lean harder into choosing shows that required drag.” Martin Miller, govt director/producer at Arkansas’s TheatreSquared, referred to as his theatre “a safe and welcoming space for families, for queens, for kids—for everyone. We’re watching this legislative session closely, but to state it clearly: We won’t change the work we’re doing on our stages or in our gathering spaces.”
Rebecca Greene Udden, govt creative director of Main Street Theater in Houston, stated she and her fellow theatremakers will rise to the event if Texas legislators sustain their anti-drag nonsense. “If it gets to the point where there’s any kind of hearing,” she stated, “I think we’d all charter a bus and let them know what we think.”
Kenn McLaughlin, creative director of Houston’s Stages, would positively be on that bus together with her. He referred to as Texas HB643, the anti-drag invoice proposed by legislator Jared Patterson, “laughable if it weren’t an precise—and critical—menace. I begin with a ‘what the hell kind of idiot took the time to write this shit?’ Then I hunker down and begin to consider what to do.
“First, no matter what, we aren’t going to be bullied or silenced. We are doing two shows this year with drag, and come what may, we are going to lean in and uplift this magnificent art form. We’ve talked as a staff about the price of this position, and we will most certainly center the safety of the community of artists—we do this with all of our work. For this moment, playwright Matthew Lopez says it best in The Legend of Georgia McBride: ‘Drag is protest. Drag is a raised fist…drag is many things, baby, but drag is not for sissies.’ And so, if they want to silence us, then up go our fists in solidarity with every drag queen who ever walked the earth.”
Pushing Back
Even if these payments don’t come in your native theatre, they—and the transphobic local weather that produced them—are already threatening the protection and livelihood of drag performers. Maddy Morphosis is a cisgender straight man who performs as a drag queen, most notably competing on Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The Arkansas native stated that the affect of proposed laws wouldn’t simply devastate performers like him—it might decimate native venues as properly. He stated he fears a “ripple effect” that would “echo through all along the South and other red states,” limiting the power of native drag queens to make a dwelling.
The affect wouldn’t simply be financial however cultural as properly. Waylon Werner, who performs in drag as Mrs. Yuka Layme (her surname is struck for family-friendly performances) and co-produces the Nebraska Chapter of Drag Story Hour from her new dwelling in Chicago, spoke concerning the significance of all-ages drag programming.
“It impacts all the queer families across Nebraska who aren’t going to see those people, or also the queer kids to see, ‘Look what I can do when I grow up,’” Werner stated. “When I started it in Nebraska, I started it with my partner, my husband, who’s also a drag queen, and I have a now eight-year-old son. So not only when we all went to these events and create this event, it was a performance opportunity for families, queer or not, to come see the possibility of being queer, which were two dads with a kid playing dress up, playing these characters, and giving a safe space for them to ask questions and to see gender representations that they would not see at school or in libraries because the state frankly lacks and all of that.”
Werner famous the variety of potential venues in Nebraska who had demise threats despatched to their board of administrators to dissuade programming from occurring. He stated he should fastidiously contemplate each like that is available in on Facebook in case it may be a consultant from an extremist far-right conservative group attempting to infiltrate and discover out the place performances could also be held.
Indeed, though these bans haven’t but handed, the tact that they’re being so broadly proposed and mentioned is empowering transphobes and homophobes extra broadly. On Feb. 2, the far-right account Libs of TikTok—infamous for his or her inflammatory content material about LGBTQ+ group members—tweeted their disgust with library programming in Olney, Md., which might have fun the musical Kinky Boots.
Ultimately, in fact, these proposed bans aren’t actually about drag. Their final purpose is to dehumanize and legislate transgender and gender non-conforming individuals out of existence.
I requested Maybe Stewart, the COVID compliance supervisor for the Phoenix Theatre Company in Arizona, co-founder of TGNC in Theatre and creative workers at the Bridge Initiative, what they need allies to know and do, they advised me, “I need them to grasp how very important drag is to the queer group and our lengthy historical past. I need them to do their analysis about its roots and perceive the burden it carries. But greater than that, I wish to see them take a stand. We know our native governments don’t see their queer constituents as a sizeable sufficient pool to take heed to. We want our allies to take a stance, and make it clear that they won’t assist selections like this which have an actual affect not solely on drag queens, however on a big portion of the LGBTQIA group at massive.
“I need them to grasp the concern that such proposals maintain for us, and take an actual, exhausting take a look at how such selections can and can affect these outdoors of the LGBTQIA group sooner or later. Drag bans and different such insurance policies set a precedent, and as soon as accepted as legislation, that precedent turns into far tougher to work in opposition to. This is a transparent transfer to regulate what types of gender presentation are acceptable within the public eye, and whereas it impacts the queer group most, it impacts all of us.
“This isn’t just about drag. This is about every individual’s agency to choose how they present themselves to the world.”
If you reside in a state the place considered one of these payments is transferring to a public listening to and are capable of testify, please do. Follow Erin Reed @ErinInTheMorn as she posts day by day about hearings and native LGBTQ+ advocacy teams to assist; she encourages individuals to examine in first with these teams to see the place volunteer hours are extra wanted. The Transgender Law Center, The Trevor Project, and particular person state chapters of the ACLU are additionally good locations to begin.
Okay. Woodzick (they/them) is a theatre artist and journalist presently residing in Northern Wisconsin on Anishinabek land. They maintain an MFA in up to date efficiency from Naropa University, and their writing has appeared in Theatre Topics and HowlRound. They are the founding father of The Non-Binary Monologues Project and produce and host the rebooted Theatrical Mustang podcast, distributed month-to-month by American Theatre. More at www.woodzick.com.
Related