When drag and disability collide (revisited)

By Philip Patston

After three weeks of struggling to compete for a share of audiences with over a hundred other shows in the NZ International Comedy Festival, I haven't got enough puff left for a blog. Instead, here's a piece I wrote on drag and disability in September 2006, with appropriate updates.

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(Originally written for Disability Arts Reader, Ireland)

Mix androgyny, gender creation, shape shifting, functional diversity, disablement, sexuality and identity in performance and what do you get?

Me! Well, not quite me – more accurately my alter ego, Philly Delphia (aka ‘Aunty Philly’), who emerged from me about ten years ago in a comedy show I did in Auckland NZ, where I live. Since then Philly has performed with me a couple of times each year, every time becoming stronger and stronger in identity.

I would describe my relationship with Philly as ‘indefinite’ – an aspect of myself as yet not fully explored but which, for the last year or so, I have felt compelled to get to know with more intimacy and understanding. I must confess that, still now, she’s a wee bit tragic, a tad under-developed. She itches to be bigger, better, rounder (but don’t you dare make me fat, she bitches).

There’s a strange synergy around drag and disability that begs to be investigated, including the very different way in which drag both presents –and often creates – new forms of gender identity. The creativity, humour and artistic expression of the drag genre offers a huge opportunity to explore and confront the way gay disabled men (indeed all disabled people) are perceived in terms of sexuality – polarised by assumptions of celibacy and impotence to sexual deviance and compulsion – both in life and on stage.

When Philip Patston performs, it’s all about the words and the wheelchair. When I’m not in drag I tend to try and be as controlled and as ‘normal-looking’ as possible. However, I notice when I’m in drag that my relationship with my body changes. Because drag naturally contradicts notions of conventional appearance, it seems my impairment melds into Philly’s gender ambiguity and shape shift, becoming integrated into the character, rather than a difference trying not to be noticed. Because the genre demands that everything is exaggerated, you have to notice everything. So an audience more readily accepts this particular character as uncoordinated and looking as if she’s on speed, not because she is disabled, but because she’s a drag queen. She can do and say things that Philip can’t, because she can be more focused on other aspects of herself than impairment, the wig, make-up, costume and ambiguous gender.

Disability arts is about challenging stereotyped, non-disabled and, what I call, ‘dysfunctionphobic’ (fear or hatred of losing function) interpretations of impairment and disability in arts and culture. It replaces biased and often negative images and references with authentic, first hand accounts that discuss the true identity of not only an oppressed group, but one which experiences physical reality through the paradigm of impairment, or ‘unique function’ as I prefer to think of it.

In terms of drag performance there is debate among scholars and audiences about whether it is simply a conservative perpetuation of gender stereotype or an innovative revolution. There seems to be a fine line between destabilising gender and sexual categories, and reinforcing dominant, traditional and institutionalised ideas of gender and sexual systems, which are so often binary and hierarchical. Researchers have documented the significant role of transgenderism, same-sex sexuality, and theatrical performance in the process of 'dragging up’ and in the personal and uniquely complex gender identities of drag queens.

In A Journal of Performance and Art, Jennie Klein refers to “the atavistic and transformative nature of drag as it is played out on stage.”

“Atavistic, because drag performance has its roots in the shape shifting, gender blending activities of prehistoric shamans. Transformative because, as [Laurence] Senelick argues [in his book The Changing Room], cross-dressing actors (who, for the most part, have been male) do not so much transgress binary categories of gender as create new categories.”

Philly combines these two fringe elements of artistic identity – she sits proudly on the fringe of the fringe. As enigmatic as she is in her raw, undeveloped form, I believe she could be extremely powerful with creative development and direction. To this end I applied for arts council funding to work with a renowned NZ drag artist Kneel Halt / Dee Za Star to begin an exploration into performance and artistic expression combining comedy, functional diversity and drag. Sadly the application was declined.

By mingling disability arts and drag I had hoped to foster and promote these two peripheral artistic elements, as well as explore, develop and enhance their synergy to create the innovation of disabled drag and showcase this to international audiences. The project was to have referenced the two sub-cultures of disability and queer expression.
Both have their basis in the artistic expression of diverse identity and are strongly influenced by histories of marginalisation, oppression and the struggle for civil rights.

The project would have created a short performance piece that embodied the result of this journey of discovery. In a three-week research and workshop process we would have experimented with image, form, function and focus, to develop a truly unique and entertaining character, who is provocative and inspiring. The exploration was to have included the use of a powered wheelchair with elevating seat and a hoist system to allow Philly to stand and maybe even fly. The performance piece – encompassing comedy, drag performance and demonstration of the creative process – was to have contributed to performances at MidSumma (Melbourne’ Gay/Lesbian Festival), Hero (Auckland’s now defunct Gay/Lesbian Festival) and the NZ Comedy Festival.

But Philly doesn’t really give a toss about the theory or the process – she just wants to be a fantastic creation, unique identity and flamboyant entertainer. She longs to be regarded with awe and wonder, tinged with fear and confusion. She aches to remind people of their own diversity of function, gender, sexuality, shape and identity. She yearns to hear the sighs of relief as each person who experiences her recognises something of them in her and, in that instant of appreciation, they realise the illusion of life. She's eminently patient and will wait until her time comes.

Meanwhile, the words of her inspiration – the divine Cyndi Lauper – cry out from deep within me: Girls just wanna have fun!

References
Chicks with dicks, men in dresses: what it means to be a drag queen. Taylor V, Rupp LJ. Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. (2004;46(3-4):113-33.) Source

A Journal of Performance and Art – PAJ 69 (Volume 23, Number 3) Jennie Klein, September 2001, pp. 90-96