I'VE GOT YOU, BABE. Drag kings Gumbo and Suzy Richter, as Sonny And Cher, were part of a successful, dildo-packin' Canadian invasion of New York City last week.(Image by Paula Wilson)     THE PERSONAL MEMOIR OF A SIZE KING   Long live the King On Stage / Canuck lesbos avenge US war of independence story by Marie Caloz / Xtra  Jul 28 1999 Astonished New Yorkers learned why Canadians are the reigning kings of drag when they took centre stage for two sold-out, jam-packed shows on the Manhattan dyke-bar circuit last weekend. "We've never seen anything like this," shrieked one woman who saw the opening show at Crazy Nanny's. "You Canadians are so cool." The Drag King show was brought to Gotham City by Toronto expatriate and drag king impresario, Joy Lachica. It featured the stable of 1970s pop characters - The Village People, the Bee Gees, ELO, Abba - that Canadians will remember from the shows of The Greater Toronto Area Drag Kings. (The group had numerous gigs in 1995 but is now defunct). Veteran Canadian drag king Gumbo made the trip to New York to strut her stuff along with Suzy Richter (who performs in TO with a newer group, The Fabulous Drag Kings) as Sonny And Cher and Captain And Denial. Others in the cast included Bee Gee Lynn Crawford, yours truly as Charlie and Nathalie Osadchy as one of Charlie's Angels. Though the show was touted as "The Canadian Invasion" in the local press, it also showcased well-known New York performance artist Reno as MC and the grand daddy of drag kings, Shelly Mars. Just as she did in Toronto, Lachica recruited a handful of promising but untried drag performers. They are what Lachica likes to think of as The Full Monty element. She says that's what makes her show more than an impersonation act. "I always thought of the Drag Kings as an empowering experience for women," says Lachica. "These '70s characters are much-loved icons. But just as we jump into their skins we also find them loathsome for the gender stereotypes they express. When I moved to New York I found lots of drag queens and, yes, some solo drag king acts, but nothing you could call a drag king community. I figured it was time." New York wasn't quite ready for what Lachica had in mind. She initially approached well-established drag queen venues with her pitch and a slick press kit well padded with Canadian critical applause. The response was luke-warm. Finally two women's bars - Meow Mix and Crazy Nanny's - agreed to host, but they lacked facilities that could accommodate a production the size of the Drag Kings. Lachica decided to go ahead anyway. The results were unexpectedly hilarious. At Crazy Nanny's the stage was so small the Kings were forced to choreograph their many costume changes in such cramped quarters that dildos and wigs went astray. Things got even worse at Meow Mix. The club DJ accidentally substituted "Sesame Street" for the Charlie's Angels theme in the opening act. Temperatures in the tiny change room got so unbearable that the King's spilled out of a nearby emergency exit onto the street for costume changes. Passersby were treated to a sweat-drenched Lachica sporting a frizzy black wig, polka dot shirt and an enormous black dildo yelling: "I need facial hair. Now!" "In spite of the few hitches I'm very pleased with the outcome," says Lachica. "The shows were sold out and we got a lot of good press. The club owners were just thrilled." At the end of each show, Lachica was deluged by filmmakers and writers interested in working with the Drag Kings. She's already got plans to mount another show and shop some of the acts around to more established drag queen shows. "New York has never seen drag done this way and so well," says Shelly Mars. "Years ago, I was doing a performance at Buddies [In Bad Times] in Toronto. I saw the Drag Kings then and I said come to New York, they'll love you. "What took you so long?"

THE PERSONAL MEMOIR OF A SIZE KING

Daniel Paquette When The Greater Drag King Society performed "The Village Peep-Hole" at Woody's way back in 1995, I saw dozens of other men in the audience getting off on what I thought was my secret fantasy - a strap-on swinging, uniformed, butch lesbian. I no longer felt alone. DK was founded in 1995 by Rose Perri and Joy Lachica in Toronto. (Last week, Lachica re-united many of the original members for two New York City performances.) The group was composed of women who perform drag, female-to-male and female-to-female. I was unofficially the only male in the troupe, probably because they mistook me for a lesbian. I was at the very first meeting and at their final performance. My job was to PR them into household names. For a budding publicist it was a huge job, but for a size queen, I was creaming with excitement at the prospect of their massive dildo collection. Within months, DK did become household names: Articles in Maclean's magazine stated that DK were "taking their place in the cultural landscape of Canada;" Much Music VJ Monika Deol gushed over them on national TV; the Toronto Sun ran a photo, twice, of DK in the men's washroom at Maple Leaf Gardens; and then there was the infamous Breakfast Television appearance that was almost cancelled when the producer worried for the children in the audience after seeing that Lachica was packin' a rather large dildo. With sold out live performances at El Convento Rico and the Opera House, a number of film appearances and numerous media gigs, success helped break up the troupe of strong personalities - just like the Spice Girls. After only six months, DK disbanded. But why did it take until 1995 for drag kings to finally hit the mainstream when drag queens have enjoyed the spotlight for so long? I asked Romy Shiller, a former DK member who wrote her doctoral dissertation on exploring cross-dressing, drag, gender performance and camp and is currently teaching a course on the subject at the University Of Western Ontario. "There has been a demonization of woman performing female-to-male drag, which includes the notion of lesbians wanting to be like men," says Shiller. "When 'Lesbian Chic' surfaced in the mid '90s, the media finally latched onto the gender play that was already being experimented with in queer culture. "But most people still have ambivalent reactions to female gender play." More theatrical and critical, DK was different from most drag king performances of today. At their first meeting, amid moustache and wig horror stories, the drag kings constructed their mission statement. It read: "DK was founded to mobilize women with an interest in drag, to perform within the context of camp and humour in masquerade. Through the medium of drag, be they female-female, or female-male caricatures, DK attempts to deconstruct gender and satirize extremes in male and female gender roles, behaviour and stereotypes." "DK was not about cross-dressing or putting on the clothes of what is perceived to be the opposite gender," Shiller explains. "It was about exploding the myths associated around femininity and masculinity. Even ideas about butch and femme are no longer adequate to signify what DK did. The fluidity of gender and sexuality in their performance was evident. " Usually, people don't realize the difference between cross-dressing and drag. "Cross-dressing relates more to traditional forms of parody; ie, Tootsie or Pepsi. While drag involves layering the codes for gender in a more complex fashion; ie, Priscilla or Mama Dominatrix." Most would agree that drag king performance, and certainly DK, represents a theoretical re-visioning by highlighting what used to be the hidden queer subtext in TV and films that we all watched as kids and related to. What can we expect next in the evolution of drag? "I am interested in the different ways that human, animal and technology intersect, connect and combine to create new forms and ideas about identity such as cyborg drag and cross-species-dressing," says Dr Shiller.

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