The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre
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The First Major history of cross-dressing in theatreWhether it's Ziggie Stardust strutting the stage in a white satin gown or a troupe of Kabuki actors masquerading as women to a mesmerized male audience, the evocative transvestite performer offers a subliminal homoerotic fantasy and provides the lasting image of the show long after its closing night. Award-winning theater historian and critic Laurence Senelick synthesizes a vast array of material from archival research and a lifetime of theater-going to provide a monumental record of cross-dressing on the stage. Pantomimists, dame comedians, principal boys, glamour drag artistes, androgyne rock stars, and male impersonators are traced from their roots in tribal ritual and Christian pageantry to today's forms -- the dandyism of Little Richard, the queer sensibility of Sylvester and the Coquettes, the thrift-shop drag of Boy George -- capturing the allure and excitement of gender-bending performance: its rebellion, it's public spectacle, its amusements, its tragedies, its escapism. Senelick brilliantly elucidates the dynamic between the theater as both mainstream forum and anti-establishment haven for misfits, ravers, radical activists, and outcasts. With 100 rare photographs, The Changing Room offers a voyeuristic vision of a lifestyle watched by many, but lived by few, and a compulsively readable, authoritative account of the theater at its most sexual and effective. Library Journal The research behind this substantial work is exceptionally impressive. It spans ancient times to modern ones, exploring cross-dressing and drag culture in theater and performance practice, with related references to art and world traditions. Senelick (drama, Tufts Univ.) presents hundreds of examples that dissect the subject with its various underlying myths, meanings, and customs, studying the historical significance and sexual implications of each. From the Greeks and Shakespeare to the lineage of female impersonators to the more current M. Butterfly, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Barry Humphries's most popular Dame Edna Everage, Senelick studies so many facets of the topic that many readers will be startled by its enormity. Despite such eye-catching chapter/section titles as "Skirting Christ," "Stages of Sodomy," "Putting on the Drag," and "Queens of Clubs," as well as the provocative nature of the subject matter itself, this is definitely a serious scholarly work with all of the trimmings and should be of prime interest to large academic, theater, and entertainment history collections.--Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\\
List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1Pt. IActing out151The sham in shaman172The Greek for it is 'Gynaikiseos'393Skirting Christ56Pt. IIStages of sodomy774Orientations795China trade1066Playboys and boy players127Pt. IIIThe mannish and the unmanned1577Arms and the woman1598Monstrous pleasures of the baroque1799Breeches birth20610Beldames sans merci22811The prince, the pauper and the pan258Pt. IVSubcultures surface29312Putting on the drag29513The imp(ersonator) of the perverse32614Amateur hour350Pt. VChildren of the ghetto37515Queens of clubs37716Alternatives40917Sex, drags and rock 'n' roll44418Glad ragging the Establishment45919A gender of their own481Afterword: from dressing up to dressing down501Index512
