Beyond The Slap: Reflections on Drag.

We are a group of performers, producers, academics and teachers who want to present a panel discussion circulating around some questions about drag, its traditions and how new practitioners learn about it. We are interested in the ways that drag serves as a means of communicating and generating queer culture and constantly evolves by taking on elements of pop culture as it develops. At once drag appears to be very contemporary and yet steeped in history. We want to structure this discussion around a series of short provocations, readings and thoughts that look to these ideas in critical ways. The discussion will circulate around the ways in which drag continues to reproduce itself and is becoming ever more present in mass pop culture. We are keen to make clear that drag is a wide set of practices related to performance. By looking to the local conditions of the performance, we can see how drag relates to specific geographical traditions. We seek in the discussion to think and talk about how drag on the one hand connects across continents, but on the other, typically, stays stubbornly local. By bringing together the discussion through a group that comprises performers, teachers, producers and academic researchers, we expect that the discussion will be lively and wide ranging and, we think, not everyone will agree. We are keen in this discussion that we also touch on some of the more difficult aspects and histories of the form and to wrap that into our reflections. So, we would want to address some of the misogyny and racism we have seen in some work, whilst also talking about how work that we make, produce and study has worked against some of these difficulties. And alongside this we will want to introduce other pertinent issues related to drag that perhaps do not get as much air-time, in particular touching on class in relation to drag performances.