A Brief History of Drag Performance

What is Drag?

Local Berkshire drag performers Bella Santarella, Poppy DaBubbly, Vuronika Baked and Sativo Green at Berkshire Pride, 2025.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, drag is “a performance art that uses costumes, makeup and other tools to present exaggerated forms of gender expression to critique gender inequalities and imagine a transformational future where people are truly free in how they express themselves. Drag uses clothes and other aspects of performance to create heightened versions of masculinity, femininity and other forms of gender expression.” Rooted in acceptance and resilience, drag can be an expression of freedom, resistance and profound joy.

Drag’s cultural influence has grown enormously over the last decade, despite having roots where the performance art was driven underground due to anti-LGBTQ+ persecution. Because of the unfortunate stigma surrounding drag, much of its history is muddled, but its origins can be traced to Ancient Greece and Rome with the beginning of crossdressing.

Joan Jett Blakk, the first drag queen to run for president of the United States in 1992.

Divine, an iconic drag queen who dominated counterculture in director John Waters’s films. Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid was inspired by her.

Darcelle XV, who holds the Guinness World Record for being the oldest working drag queen, which was earned in 2016 at age 85. She continued to perform until her death at age 92. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian via AP)

Cross-Dressing: Drag’s Theatrical Foundation

An illustration by Utagawa Toyokuni I of a Kabuki scene with an actor and an onnagata, or male actor in female role, ca. 1800-1820s.

In Ancient Greek and Roman theatre, male actors performed in all roles, including female characters, because women were often barred from the stage. Roman pantomime in particular featured actors donning feminine attire with exaggerated expressions and details, setting the stage for what we now recognize as gender performance.

In Shakespearean England in the late 16th and 17th centuries, the same traditions endured, with male actors portraying female roles such as Juliet, Ophelia and Lady Macbeth. Also, in Kabuki theatre, which emerged in the early 17th century, women were eventually banned from performing. Male actors performing female roles, known as “onnagata,” developed highly stylized ways of embodying femininity through movement, voice and costume.

While these performances are more in line with cross-dressing and are not necessarily in the spirit of drag as we know it today, they were highly stylized performances that laid the groundwork for the theatricality of drag.

A Roman mosiac depicting a scene between two women and a witch, all three wearing masks.

Drag in the Early 1900s: Silent Films, Vaudeville & Burlesque

Female impersonator Tommy Martelle.

As performance traditions expanded into the modern world, drag found a home in Vaudeville, burlesque and silent films during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this era, drag performers, or “female impersonators” as they were often called, even became household names. Changing social norms and anti-cross-dressing laws led to drag becoming a private activity, but during Prohibition, underground clubs, already breaking the law, led to more opportunities for drag performances in what was known as “The Pansy Craze.”

Female impersonators during this time even performed here at The Colonial Theatre, including Tommy Martelle, one of the most successful female impersonators of the 1920s. His career began by 1911, when he was billed as “The Boy With the Pretty Gowns,” and continued to build by the end of the decade, when he was in a production of Julian Eltinge’s famous musical The Fascinating Widow in 1922. He returned to the Colonial stage several times in the 1920s, in Some Girl, The Gay Bride and Glorious Annabelle.

A collection of show posters of Tommy Martelle’s performances at The Colonial Theatre.

Female impersonator Julian Eltinge posing in feminine attire.

Julian Eltinge, one of the most famous “female impersonators” from 1904 until his death in 1941, starred on Broadway and in countless silent films in female roles, becoming one of the highest-paid actors on the American stage at the time. Whereas many drag queens advertised that they were men in women’s clothing, Eltinge had many fans convinced she was not a character, but a genuine actress, only to surprise audiences at the end of his performances when he removed his wig.

After the Second World War, although homosexuality was still frowned upon by society as a whole—even illegal in some cases—there were still drag acts who broke through the negativity and had successful careers. These include Danny La Rue in the UK, who made his name in the 1950s, and Dame Edna Everage, the flamboyant creation of comedian Barry Humphries, who first appeared in the 1960s.

Drag Balls: The Beginning of Drag Competitions

A Black drag performer in the early 1900s. Although no photos of William Dorsey Swann survived, this type of dress may have been similar to the ones he wore at drag balls.

Many modern drag queens credit drag balls as the true origin of their art form. Held in secret, these competitions were pioneered by Black and Latino performers—including William Dorsey Swann, widely recognized as the first self-proclaimed “queen of drag.”

William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved man in the United States, set the foundation for modern drag with courage and defiance. In the 1880s in Washington D.C., Swann hosted private drag balls known as “drags,” which involved dancing and competitions similar to a pageant. As authorities increasingly policed gender expression, Swann’s drags caught the attention of law enforcement. Swann and caught participants were often arrested for being “suspicious characters” and committing “evil acts” despite Swann’s best efforts to protect those who attended his balls by attempting to bar police entry. Many drag queens credit William Dorsey Swann as the pioneer of modern drag, giving his self-proclaimed title of the “queen of drag” true meaning.

A drag ball in the 1920s, which was organized covertly in an underground ballroom.

Drag Kings

Drag kings are generally women, transgender men or non-binary people performing in male characters on stage. Often lesser known than their drag queen counterparts, drag kings often tackle problematic male stereotypes, such as toxic masculinity, with the aim of challenging the patriarchy through singing, comedy and dance.

Stormé DeLarverie, center, surrounded by two drag queens from the Jewel Box Revue.

Famous male impersonators of the late 19th and 20th centuries include Annie Hindle, who is widely considered to be one of the first popular male impersonators; Winifred Emms, known by her stage name Hetty King; and Ella Shields.

Drag kings began to truly emerge in the LGBTQ+ scene in the 1920s, becoming even more prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. One of the most notable drag kings is Stormé DeLarverie, who was a drag performer at the Jewel Box Revue, America’s longest running touring drag cabaret, from 1955 through to 1969. DeLarverie is believed to have thrown the first punch that ignited the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which paved the way for the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

House Ballroom: An Underground Drag Community

Octavia St. Laurent attends a drag ball in New York, 1988. Photo by Catherine McGann.

In the early 1970s in the years following the Stonewall uprising and the growing gay rights movement, Black and Latino gay, trans and queer people developed a thriving subculture in “house balls,” where they could express themselves freely and find acceptance within a marginalized community. It was here where the world of drag pageantry, which often favored white contestants, evolved into competitions that spanned a variety of categories, including “vogue” battles. As these balls continued for decades, they grew in popularity—and notoriety. Unfortunately, drag balls were considered illegal and taboo to the outside world, which drove the competitions underground.

Although drag balls were interracial, prejudices were still at play. When a white contestant, Miss Philadelphia Rachel Harlow, took the crown in the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant at Town Hall in New York City, Black contestant Crystal LaBeija claimed the judges had discriminated against Black and Latinx contestants. LaBeija refused to participate in other drag pageants, but did not leave the ballroom scene altogether. In the early 1970s, she created the House of LaBeija—the first ballroom “house”—with Crystal at the helm as its “mother.”

These houses became more like families than teams, led by house “mothers” or house “fathers” to guide and support their house “children”, offering security for Black and Latinx queer, gay and trans people. Instead of the pageant-style of competition in drag balls, house balls held competitions between houses by categories. Categories range from face (the judging of a house members’ beauty) to body (the appreciation of a house members’ curves), to runway, to performances including vogue.

The members of House of LaBeija posing for the camera, 1989. Photo by Chantal Regnault.

People dressed in drag celebrate Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1980. Photo By Bruno Barbey/Magnum.

Drag in Mainstream Culture: A Path to Acceptance

The Season 1 cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race, 2009.

A couple of the first references to drag culture in mainstream media were Madonna’s song “Vogue” in 1990 and the documentary, Paris is Burning, which was released in 1991. Despite accusations of cultural appropriation, “Vogue” and Paris is Burning are often referenced within the LGBTQ+ community and beyond.

Drag and ballroom culture became increasingly visible in mainstream media after the early 1990s through television series such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, which premiered in 2009 and catapulted drag’s popularity and visibility in pop culture; the MTV series America’s Best Dance Crew, featuring trans Black voguer Leiomy Maldonado in 2009; and Ryan Murphy’s Pose in 2018, which featured a scripted take on the house ballroom scene and included the most trans actors in television history.

Pose, which ran from 2018 through 2021, highlighted the 1980s NYC ballroom scene.

The visibility of drag is important because it promotes visibility of LGBTQ+ people to wider audiences and inspires those who see it to express themselves more freely as well. The Legend of Georgia McBride celebrates that same spirit, using humor, heart and the transformative power of performance to remind us that identity can be discovered in the most unexpected places.