Drag shows are a hoot and it’s fun to see drag kings beginning to take themselves more (un)seriously in the local context. Jozi Kings and Things Part.2 was a repeat performance by Johannesburg’s first drag king collective, Jozi Kings and Things. For those who’d missed out on the sold out tickets for the first show, another one was held at The Bioscope on the 20th of September, and it was lit! The 90-minute show featured a lineup of drag kings, queens and things in solo and group acts, doing lip-syncing, dance, singing, magic, and comedy.
Despite the widespread narrative, drag kings are nothing new. If anything, it’s their marginalization that’s new and has resulted in a form of erasure. But the art form has a centuries-old legacy, with records of male impersonation in Chinese opera dating back to the Tang Dynasty. The tradition went west, with figures like Annie Hindle and Vesta Tilly. Gawango Mohawk is the first recorded Indigenous male impersonator and in the 1920s, Gladys Bentley was performing during the Harlem Renaissance.
The term “drag king” emerged in 1972, gaining traction in the 1990s in cities like New York, San Francisco, and London. Being a form of male impersonation, most drag kings are AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth), but the art form includes AMAB (Assigned Male at Birth) and trans performers who challenge and subvert masculinity through their performances. Despite this growth, drag kings are still underrepresented in mainstream media compared to drag queens, often facing barriers due to misogyny and societal discomfort with fluid masculinity.
Performers Angelo, Big, Brucifer, Dank Sinatra, Ethan Smoke, Frikkie Dell, Neyitsha Bhoyi, Ntate Lapse, and Salty Crax were the proverbial stars of the night. Brucifer is a charismatic bad boy, with looks that could kill, sashaying across that stage like a predator after prey. Salty Crax stunned the audience as a rather convincing magician. Big was BIG! Ntate brought a sultry Lesotho vibe and Frikkie Dell embodied Pretoria’s finest. The entire show was unapologetically amateurish but the audience were here for it and no one took themselves too seriously. That is of course, expect if you count that one act.
While the whole show was consistently filled with laughs and audience participation, it was Ethan Thulani Smoke who stood out with his conceptual comedy, categorized under the “Things” segment. He had a surprisingly sharp sense of comedic timing. His act, a blend of perplexing stupidity and cerebral humor, resembled a tech presentation, akin to a CEO launching a new product. But the product was a crypto scheme, cleverly presented as part of his self-help memoir, The Afterverses. In a hilarious deviation from the normal programming, Smoke dryly invited the audience to join his dubious yet “exciting” business venture.
The show included a segment expressing solidarity with Palestine and Congo, reminding us that drag is political in nature after all. The sombre segment was quickly followed by more shenanigans. On top of being a damn good time, the show allowed the performers and the audience a space to challenge patriarchal norms and explore, transform, and redefine gender in a way we seldom get to experience even in this city of everything. If this is where we are during the infancy of drag kings in Joburg, then I shudder to think how far the legacy could go.
