ABSTRACT
This chapter shares ethnographic research on leisure, gender, and sexualities in relation to drag and drag performance spaces. There is a rich history and increasing popular media attention to drag performers, whom Rupp and Taylor define as “people who create their own authentic genders” by blurring the lines between masculine and feminine, often in theatre, film, music, comedy, and television. The Showbar is a drag venue in a northern English city. It occupies a two-story building under a rainbow-painted railway bridge at the southern edge of the city centre known locally, yet unofficially, as the city’s Gay Quarter. Drag has deep roots in theatre. Romaya argues that drag, in distant Western history, originated in ancient Greece where young men would play women’s roles when performing theatrical tragedies. Drag is challenging to articulate because it encompasses a vast range of gendered and sexual performances and signifiers.
