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Over the last 15 years, there has been a significant increase in the promotion and integration of drag culture into mainstream society. Drag events have the ability to create a safe place for people from diverse backgrounds to celebrate and gather. What were once underground expressions of gender and political protest for the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus other identities) community, drag events have now transcended into a modern-day phenomenon, bringing people together to participate and feel a sense of enjoyment and well-being. The current literature on drag culture focuses on the performers' perspective rather than the audiences. This study aims to explore the diverse nature of attendees at UK drag events and to demonstrate how these events create a sense of inclusivity and impact the well-being of those attending. An online qualitative survey of respondents (N = 248) who had attended at least one drag event in the UK was carried out. This was a UK study that encompassed experiences from across the country. This focus on the UK is justified due to the dearth of literature in this geographical area. The results indicate that drag events in the UK have become more mainstream, with the audience demographic becoming more diverse and inclusive. Drag events were considered by the attendees as a safe space, where they seek escapism from everyday life by immersing themselves in the drag experience. This enhanced their mental and emotional well-being. The study demonstrated that drag events provide an exciting, stimulating, and novel experience where individuals have a place for self-expression, can socialize, have fun, be accepted, and feel a sense of freedom and happiness in a nonjudgmental environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use and purpose of the nostalgic interventions in the latest Royal Shakespeare musical, The Boy in the Dress, and considers the implications of utilizing a mythologized, rose-tinted past on the creative production of national identity. It questions the meanings which are produced when a government subsidized, national theatre company with an international reputation eliminates the female voice from the stage and represents the United Kingdom as English, predominantly white and middle class. In addition, this article deconstructs the performances of gender fluidity depicted in the show and widens the acknowledged interpretation of cultural appropriation, when applied to race, to include gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crime film Murder! (1930), directed by Alfred Hitchcock for British International Pictures and based on the novel Enter Sir John (1929) by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson, has long been cited in debates about the treatment of queer sexuality in Hitchcock's films. Central to these debates is the character of Handel Fane and the depiction of his cross-dressed appearances as a theatre and circus performer, which many critics have understood as a coded reference to homosexuality. This article explores such critical interpretations by situating Murder! more firmly in its historical context. In particular, it examines Fane's cross-dressed performances in relation to other cultural representations of men's cross-dressing in interwar Britain. These include examples from other British and American films, stories in the popular press and the publicity surrounding the aerial performer and female impersonator Barbette (Vander Clyde). The article argues that Murder! reflects and exploits a broader fascination with gender ambiguity in British popular culture, and that it anticipates the more insistent vilification of queer men in the decades after the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds upon the first UK pantomime training survey conducted in 2013 which saw 50 practitioners participate in an online questionnaire about their personal training route into the industry and pantomime career to date. Using data from the survey, as well as interviews with pantomime practitioners and performer training institutes, the article seeks to identify the industry's formal and informal training routes and thereby explore the transmission of genre conventions through pantomime’s complex network of practitioners. Paying particular attention to the role of pantomime Dame, this article also seeks to examine the ways in which training and practitioners contribute to and influence the genre’s evolutionary course. By tracking and tracing performers’ career trajectories via the genealogical tool of the family tree, key practitioners will be identified and their influence and influences explored in an examination of the apprentice‒master‒expert relationship. The inheritance, adaptation and adoption of practices combined with its embracing of new trends, forms and fashions makes pantomime a multi-layered performance genre. That this can be traced through the industry's networks of knowledge transfer and in performance via inherited and influenced practice not only allows us to excavate pantomime's past, but also experience it in contemporary performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]