![]() ![]() At the end, the "one girl" was revealed to be the dashing young "man" in dinner clothes - Stormé DeLarverie - the MC who had been introducing each of the evening's acts. For most of the performance, the "girls" were men in glamorous drag. ![]() ĭrag shows were popular night club entertainment in New York in the 1920s, then were forced underground, until the " Jewel Box Revue" played Harlem's Apollo Theater in the 1950s with their show, "49 Men and a Girl". In the 1890s the slapstick drag traditions of undergraduate productions (notably Hasty Pudding Theatricals at Harvard College, annually since 1891, and at other Ivy League schools like Princeton University's Triangle Club or the University of Pennsylvania's Mask and Wig Club), and many other universities in which women were not permitted admission, were permissible fare to the same upper-class American audiences that were scandalized to hear that in New York City, rouged young men in skirts were standing on tables to dance the can-can in Bowery dives like The Slide. During the reign of Charles II of England (latter 1600s) the rules were relaxed to allow women to play female roles on the London stage, reflecting the French fashion, and the convention of men routinely playing female roles consequently disappeared. Shakespeare used the conventions to enrich the gender confusions of As You Like It, and Ben Jonson manipulated the same conventions in Epicœne, or The Silent Woman (1609). In England, actors in Shakespearean plays, and all Elizabethan theatre (in the 1500s and 1600s), were all male female parts were played by young men in drag because women were banned from performing publicly. Do I look the part?" Peniculus responds: "What in the world have you got on?!" Menaechmus says: "Tell me I am gorgeous." 254 – 184 BCE) Menaechmi includes a scene in which Menaechmus I puts on his wife's dress, then wears a cloak over it, intending to remove the dress from the house and deliver it to his mistress. The ancient Roman playwright Plautus' ( c. See also: History of cross-dressing § On stage and on the screenĬross-dressing elements of performance traditions are a widespread and longstanding cultural phenomena. The "consort" of the Castleton Garland King was traditionally a man (until 1956, when a woman took over the role) and was originally simply referred to as "The Woman". "Maid Marian" of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is played by a man, and the Maid Marians referred to in old documents as having taken part in May Games and other festivals with Morris dancers would most probably also have been men. A character called Bessy also accompanied the Plough Jags (also known as Plough Jacks, Plough Stots, Plough Bullocks, etc.) even in places where no play was performed: "she" was a man dressed in women's clothes, who carried a collecting box for money and other largesse. The variant performed around Plough Monday in Eastern England is known as the Plough Play (also Wooing Play or Bridal Play) and usually involves two female characters, the young "Lady Bright and Gay" and "Old Dame Jane" and a dispute about a bastard child. For example, the characters of some regional variants of the traditional mummers' play, which were traditionally always performed by men, include Besom Bet(ty) numerous variations on Bessy or Betsy Bucksome Nell Mrs Clagdarse Dame Dolly Dame Dorothy Mrs Finney Mrs Frail and many others. Men dressed as women have been featured in certain traditional customs for centuries. Some have suggested that drag stands for "dressed as a girl". It may have been based on the term "grand rag" which was historically used for a masquerade ball. One suggested etymological root is 19th-century theatre slang, from the sensation of long skirts trailing on the floor. The use of "drag" in this sense appeared in print as early as 1870 but its origin is uncertain. Participants of the High Heel Drag Race in Washington, D.C. ![]()
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