WDrag kings are mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of an individual or group routine. A typical drag show may incorporate dancing, acting, stand-up comedy and singing, either live or lip-synching to pre-recorded tracks. Drag kings often perform as exaggeratedly macho male characters, portray marginalized masculinities such as construction workers and rappers or they will impersonate male celebrities like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Tim McGraw.
WGladys Alberta Bentley was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance.
WLillyn Brown, sometimes credited as Lillyan Brown, was an American singer, vaudeville entertainer and teacher who claimed to have been "the first professional vocalist to sing the blues in front of the public", in 1908. She was billed as "The Kate Smith of Harlem" and "The Original Gay 90's Gal".
WRachel Carns is an American musician, composer, artist and performer living in Olympia, Washington, U.S.. Raised in small-town Wisconsin, she went on to study painting and drawing at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where she completed her B.F.A. in 1991. Carns began her career as drummer for Kicking Giant, later collaborating with several bands, including The Need. She is a celebrated graphic designer, working under the name System Lux, and plays drums and percussion with experimental performance art group Cloud Eye Control.
WNathalie Claude is a self-described "actress, director, dancer, choreographer, writer, and a sometimes MC, Drag King, clown, artistic coach and musician" from Montreal. She works in French and in English and sometimes creates bilingual performances.
WStormé DeLarverie was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to Stormé and many eyewitnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action. She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who performed and hosted at the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker, the "guardian of lesbians in the Village." She is known as "the Rosa Parks of the gay community."
WJack Halberstam, also known as Judith Halberstam, is a tenured Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University. Prior to this appointment in 2017, Halberstam was a Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature and the Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. Halberstam is a gender and queer theorist and author.
WElvis Herselvis is the stage name of the American actor and singer Leigh Crow, whose rise to international exposure was performing as a female Elvis Presley impersonator. Crow still performs as Elvis Herselvis on occasion as well as sings, acts and performs regularly; including performing with the all female rockabilly band called The Mighty Slim Pickins.
WMurray Hill is a New York City comedian and drag king entertainer. He is the entertainer persona of Busby Murray Gallagher, although this persona is maintained even in private settings. Murray Hill is the self-proclaimed "hardest-working middle-aged man in show business".
WAnnie Hindle was the first popular male impersonator performer in the United States. Born in the 1840s in England, she and her adoptive mother, Ann Hindle, migrated to New York City in 1868. Hall performed as a male impersonator in solo acts and in minstrel shows from 1868 to 1886.
WWinifred Emms, best known by her stage name Hetty King, was an English entertainer who played in the music halls over a period of 70 years.
WLesburlesque is a British troupe of over thirty burlesque performers that perform on the cabaret circuit. They are notable for being the first and only burlesque troupe in the UK that performs lesbian burlesque. Following on from the success of Los Angeles-based girl band and dance troupe, the Pin Up Girls, Lesburlesque appeared on the burlesque scene in September 2010. They came to wider public attention in 2012 for having performed at a former church and continue to incorporate traditionally lesbian specific cabaret entertainment, such as drag kinging to broadening its appeal to the wider cabaret circuit.
WElla Shields was a music hall singer and male-impersonator. Her famous signature song, "Burlington Bertie from Bow", a parody of Vesta Tilley's Burlington Bertie, written by her manager and first husband, William Hargreaves, was an immediate hit. Though American-born, Shields achieved her greatest success in England.
WMatilda Alice Powles, was a popular English music hall performer. She adopted the stage name Vesta Tilley and became one of the most famous male impersonators of her era. Her career lasted from 1869 until 1920. Starting in provincial theatres with her father as manager, she performed her first season in London in 1874. She typically performed as a dandy or fop, also playing other roles. She found additional success as a principal boy in pantomime.
WMinnie Tittell Brune (1875–1974) was an American actress. Although little known in her own country, she became a major figure in the history of the Australian stage, achieving the peak of her career during an Antipodean tour from 1904 to 1909. She is also notable for being the only known link between two notable acting families of different centuries, having worked in 19th-century America with Junius Brutus Booth Jr. of the Booth family, and in 20th century Australia with Roy Redgrave, founder of the Redgrave family. Although having no previous family acting background, Minnie's own two sisters Esther and Charlotte also pursued careers on the stage.
WElla Wesner was the most celebrated male impersonator of the Gilded Age Vaudeville circuit. Wesner began her career at the age of nine as part of a family of vaudeville and musical-stage dancers. By her mid-twenties, she was playing both male and female roles, at some point meeting and working as a "dresser" for the most notorious, and perhaps the earliest Vaudeville male impersonator of the time, Annie Hindle.