The Drag is a play about queer futurity and the opportunity to one speak for oneself. Produced by EgoPo Classic Theater I was brought in to co-adapt (with AZ Espinoza) a new adaptation of Mae West's "The Drag" (1927). The West play boldly shares the perspective of gay allies and features gay voices. Radical for its time and also problematic to today with its limited, binary, and lack of queer vocabulary. This new adaptation breaks open her version- not in shaming it- but in acknowledging our history and transforming it for a contemporary audience. There is a lot of shade in this play.
Flexible casting, minimum cast is 12 with doubling. Contact me for a copy of the script.
An excerpt from the beginning of the play:
PROLOGUE
(Lights for a drag ball. All enter as audience runway for the show. They will all perform tonight. There is sound and they are a part of the rabble. Then:
C.BARBARA enters making a scene getting full attention and spot on C.BARBARA.)
C.BARBARA
Calling all pansies! Calling all pansies! Keep this off the socials. We are here to gather our energy together. Those tracking our movements want to keep us divided. Turn off your cell phones! They’re listening in. At least put it on silent girlfriend because you are a distraction. And what we value is your attention and your presence. Because we have a drag tonight. So, there are people out there who want to hide our knowledge, our strength. They don’t want us banding together. They want to keep us on the margins. They tell us we’re the margin and we repeat it back. But what if the margin is really a horizon?
C.MARION
A limitless expanse towards the future?
C.CLAIR
A Margin is only a frame. And we can reorient it.
C.GRAYSON
It’s like a rebrand, but this isn’t a marketing scheme.
C.JUDGE
Our frame can change again and again until there are no margins.
C.BARBARA
Us pansies are perennial creatures darling. Well, most certainly we aren’t all pansies as I see some tulips and lavender and sunflowers among us.
C.TAXI DRIVER
Me me me!
C.BARBARA
But for a moment, what if we were all pansies…how could that change things?
C.MARION
Envision it. Picture it.
C.ROLLY
Picture being a big beautiful pansy
C.CLEM
A full pansy self
C JUDGE
Growing unencumbered.
C.DUCHESS
Gossiping all I want.
C.CLEM
Delighting in my softness
C.CLAIR
Breaking the form.
C.BARBARA
We have the ability to reframe the past. Tonight we perform The Drag - one of the earliest modern gay plays. Written in the 1920s by a straight white woman, who attempted–
C.GRAYSON
–with her limited viewpoint–
C.BARBARA
–to flamboyantly celebrate the queer and drag culture of that time.
C.PARSONS
This is a time where drag balls were selling out Madison Square Garden–
C.BARBARA
–a garden full of pansies and other flowers.
C.DAVID
I’m a pansy
C.DUCHESS
Me too.
C.MARION
Pansies for all of us.
C.BARBARA
This is where we can be unashamed and completely us.
C.DAVID
Which can be a challenge when so many of us are barely surviving the present.
C.TAXI
But here the past and the future can belong to us.
C.DUCHESS
Because we belong to us.
C.DOCTOR
In this place we can transform.
C.MARION
And give feedback when necessary.
C.BARBARA
Queer past is alive in The Drag. Queer present is alive in us. And we breathe life into a queer future.
C.CLEM
(sings) “Being Alive..” Just kidding. Different play…from the past.
C.BARBARA
Now pansies. Behold our petally, colorful, brilliant collective. Together we’ll collapse all the margins. We’ll respond and reclaim our past. And we’ll shape the future we want. Let’s get to work!
(A rabble of excitement as they get ready)
C.GRAYSON (amidst the rabble)
We might interrupt now and again too.
C.CLAIR
Permission to go back over parts we may want to redo?
C.DUCHESS
Oh yeah, and gossip too.
C.CLEM
Oh, i love to interject.
("Of course you do" from the group and Mae West's scene is set.)
End of excerpt