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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Act like a Man
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Act like a Man

A new theatrical production offers a glimpse into the lesser-known world of drag kings

Rohini Malur dressed up as Sherlock Holmes for ‘MAN-i-FEST’. Photo: Indu AntonyPremium
Rohini Malur dressed up as Sherlock Holmes for ‘MAN-i-FEST’. Photo: Indu Antony

Raj Merchant was 7 when she first began to play dress-up. She would wear her brother’s clothes—shorts, pants, shirts—behind closed doors, with a friend. “I’d ask her, do I look like a man now?" recalls the co-author of the recently released No Outlaws In The Gender Galaxy, published by Zubaan books. The book examines the binary nature of gender norms, or the simplistic division of gender into two categories, masculine and feminine.

Merchant, who identifies as gender non-conforming, began questioning the gender binary at a very early age. But it was seven years ago that the 35-year-old Mumbai resident first dressed as a drag king to attend a house party. She went for a “dapper" look: formal pinstripe pants, shirt tucked in, pocket handkerchief, hat and coat. She wore a binder to flatten her chest, and applied make-up for facial hair. Since then, she has “dragged it up" on several occasions, including in public spaces such as the sea-facing Carter Road promenade in Bandra.

A drag king is a performance of hyper-masculinity, or exaggerated masculinity. The performer is usually a woman, or a person assigned female gender at birth, but not necessarily so. In Los Angeles and other American cities, where the drag king culture is a recognizable subculture of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, many performers are transmen. But, even in the West, drag kings are relatively uncommon. Drag queens—a performance of exaggerated femininity—are better known in India, perhaps due to our cultural familiarity with male actors playing female roles in several Indian theatrical traditions.

Indeed, this lacuna was the starting point for Sakshi Juneja, Priya Gangwani and Anuja Parikh—founder members of The Gaysi Family, which runs a blog on gender and sexuality, publishes a magazine, and hosts the open mic event Dirty Talk—and playwright Vikram Phukan to create Tape, a play about drag kings. Produced by The Gaysi Family, written by Phukan and enacted by Rachel D’Souza, a theatre actor, and Sheena Khalid and Puja Sarup of The Patchworks Ensemble, a theatre company, the 80-minute, two-act play will be staged at a Mumbai pub on 12 September. The choice of venue is not an accident; the idea is to create a “cabaret feel", says Khalid, and the play itself is a performance within a performance. The three actors will play multiple roles, including one called Rocky, a drag king who models himself on the 1960s’ movie star, Shammi Kapoor.

Sheena Khalid (left) and Puja Sarup of The Patchworks Ensemble. Photo: Devendra Parab/Mint
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Sheena Khalid (left) and Puja Sarup of The Patchworks Ensemble. Photo: Devendra Parab/Mint

“We’ve all seen or heard about drag queens at Pride marches, for instance. Asif Ali Beg even did a drag queen performance for us at one of The Dirty Talk events. The queer community in India is blind to drag kings, and through this production we hope to create a space where drag culture can exist," says 32-year-old Gangwani. It is interesting that the play, set to 1960s-era filmi surf rock, takes as its starting point a social milieu where drag king performances are quite common. “In the imaginary world of the play, drag kings are almost mainstream," says Phukan. “Tape attempts to give us a window into this subculture that isn’t too well-known, and present drag kings as everyday people even if their kind of gender expression is considered off-beat."

In reality, references to this subculture are hard to come by. Phukan’s inspiration for the character of Rocky derives from a 1956 film, Rangeen Raten, which starred Shammi Kapoor, Mala Sinha and Geeta Bali. The young Bali plays a male role in this film—she is Sinha’s brother. In the Punjabi folk dance gidda, it is common for one of the women dancers to play a man as a foil to the other dancers. The performance is usually exaggerated and could be called “drag".

The act of dressing in drag is increasingly being seen as a way to understand gender better. Around the time of the 2012 Bangalore Pride, photographer Indu Antony shot a series of photographs of drag kings for a calendar. Thirteen queer women dressed up as masculine characters of their choice, such as Chulbul Pandey, Quick Gun Murugan, even the late pop icon Michael Jackson, and posed in various public spaces in the city. The project, titled MAN-i-FEST, was exhibited in various cities, including Mumbai, during the inaugural Focus Photography Festival held in 2013. Two of these photographs were on display at the recently concluded Art Bengaluru 2015 as well.

In 2013, New Delhi-based Qashti, then a newly-formed queer collective for Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex/Intergender people assigned the female gender at birth, conducted a workshop on drag kings with Amalina Dave, who began performing as a drag king while studying in Massachusetts, US, from 2008-12. Shalini Krishan, member of Qashti and a participant, described it as a two-way workshop in which Dave offered advice on the ways in which one could “drag it up", using make-up to sharpen the angles of the face and embody certain body postures—and the participants, some of them were transmen, offered suggestions based on how they presented their masculine gender.

In April, Qashti held a drag-themed house party for its members and Dave assisted many with their costumes and make-up. Dave, whose experience as a drag king performer has its roots in collegian Shakespearean theatre—she is a graduate of the all-women Wellesley College—says she offered more than make-up tips at the 2013 workshop. “It’s not just about make-up. It’s about light and space and the way the body moves, all of which is gendered. This is not about teaching someone about how to be masculine," she says. “Some people might want to do drag with make-up and facial hair and have a blast and that’s great. But drag identity cannot be reduced to just that," she adds. In a non-Western paradigm, Dave supposes that all-girl school plays, nukkad nataks and other such culturally indigenous spaces might offer a better understanding of what “drag and gender may mean for someone who doesn’t always perform or identify with gender binaries in India".

Rohini Malur, who dressed up as Sherlock Holmes for the MAN-i-FEST calendar, says she found it interesting, especially since her personal style is “very girlie". But what she got from the experience was a deeper understanding of masculinity. “A drag king doesn’t show man as ‘default’ in the sense that we talk of man as representative of humanity, such as, ‘Man went to the moon’, ‘Man is destroying the planet’. In a drag king performance, you’re paying attention to the person. Masculinity is not monolithic. Masculinity is not enough to make up a whole person."

Tape hopes to present the diversity of the experience. The play will have snapshots of conversations between drag kings, testimonials, and will try and show the flesh and blood person behind the performer. The playwright hopes to make a larger point about an India where alternative modes of expressions are being increasingly outlawed. They also hope, says Khalid, to celebrate life. “I am very interested and intrigued by any sort of performance that celebrates, whether masculinity or the feminine. In that sense, I love the world of drag because essentially that’s what it is: a celebration."

Tape will be performed on 12 September, 4.30pm and 8pm, at Tilt All Day, Kamala Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai. Tickets, 400. To book, email gaysifamily@gmail.com.

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Published: 05 Sep 2015, 12:07 AM IST
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