Drag King - Drag Community

Drag Community

Unlike drag queens, who pride themselves on making individual names for themselves and creating a "lineage," drag kings tend to form troupes or performance groups. While they may join houses and maintain a solo persona, this is increasingly rare in the drag king community. Many troupes are created out of the desire to forge a cohesive unit in order to book shows and performances.

Although, there are more and more drag kings now branching away from the troupe stereotypes, and performing individually. Drag king shows are becoming easier to find in this century and individual kings are getting bookings outside of the 'king shows' and finally sharing the stages with their male counterparts, the queens.

In the last two years, a British Lesbian Cabaret organisation called Lesburlesque have made it part of their mission to promote drag kings on the wider British Cabaret circuit. Their founder Pixie Truffle gave an interview to the Guardian Newspaper in the United Kingdom on her desire for drag kings to close the gap with queens and with male stand up comedians.

Similar to some drag queens who prefer to be seen as actors—like Justin Bond and Lypsinka—some drag kings prefer not to be pigeon-holed by the drag king label. "I think when people assume that somebody is queer, or different, or trans, they always want to put something before their name," said Murray Hill in an interview. "And that is what drag king has been. Why can’t you just call me a comedian like Jerry Seinfeld is called a comedian?"

The International Drag King Community Extravaganza (IDKE) is the largest yearly gatherings of drag performers aimed at celebrating gender performance and exploration of gender issues, now in its ninth year. Delegates from various troupes throughout America, Canada and Europe congregate at IDKE to perform and engage in discussion and debate at a series of workshops organized by the host city under the guidance of the IDKE Board. A different city hosts this event each year, selected by the board. It is city's responsibility to create a website.

The oldest and possibly largest drag king contest in the world takes place in San Francisco, California. The San Francisco Drag King Contest has been called "A parade of gender-bending eye candy" by SF Weekly and the producer of the show is community activist and performer Lu Read, a.k.a. Fudgie Frottage. The SFDK has the fortunate luck to have the Drag King Sensations, Momma's Boyz, perform every year while judges deliberate. The Momma's Boyz always ensure they are not on the road at that time so they can donate their talent to this critical event. Another yearly gathering was the now defunct, or at least temporarily so, The Great Big International Drag King Show in Washington, D.C., created by Ken Vegas, who is also founder of the DC Kings