![]() ![]() In Britain, meanwhile, Dr Bloomfield explains that women actors started to become more common by the 1660s, “displacing the boy players who had commonly played women’s roles in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods”. This form of theatre was known as the c ommedia dell'arte, an improvised version of comedy. Even before this, there are records of female cross-dressers dating back thousands of years, such as women who performed in male roles during the Tang Dynasty (618–907AD) in China.Īccording to Dr Jacob Bloomfield, an honorary research fellow at the University of Kent who teaches gender studies, it was “common” for women to play male roles throughout the 17th century in France and Italy. Loosely speaking, their history can be traced back hundreds of years, their beginnings stemming from the legacies of male impersonators in the 1600s onwards. But there is a great deal of fluidity in terms of how drag performance is defined and how performers define themselves. Lesser known than their drag queen counterparts, drag kings often tackle problematic male stereotypes, such as toxic masculinity, with the aim of challenging the patriarchy through singing, comedy, and dance. A drag king is typically (though not always) an AFAB (assigned female at birth) performer dressing and creatively expressing themselves in an exaggerated masculine style. Today, drag kings are generally women, transgender men or non-binary people performing in male drag on stage. ![]()
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