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"Few books blend the critical and creative approaches to drag performance this provocatively and engagingly, and none provides both the historical and the personal perspectives so effectively. Torr and Bottoms fundamentally challenge many long-standing ideas about drag kings and the performance of masculinity."
---Sarah Bay-Cheng, University at Buffalo

"This book brings the reader inside an artist's creative imagination and intellect, showing us Diane Torr's work in a detailed, thoughtful, and engaging way. We discover how Torr uses different physical disciplines to explore how gender is constructed, interpreted, and expressed. Along the way---by taking us into various venues in which she performed---she evokes the lively, dynamic scene in New York in the '80s and '90s."
---Alisa Solomon, Columbia University

Why would women want to perform as men? Why is gender crossing so compelling, whether it happens onstage or in everyday life? What can drag performance teach, and what aesthetic, political, and personal questions does it raise?

Performance artist Diane Torr has been experimenting with the performance of gender for thirty years---exploring everything from feminist go-go dancing to masculine power play. One of the key pioneers of "drag king" performance, Torr has been celebrated internationally for her gender transformation workshops, in which she has taught hundreds of ordinary women how to pass as men on city streets around the world. This cultural subterfuge appeals to participants for many different reasons: personal confidence-building, sexual frisson, gender subversion, trans-curiosity, or simply the appeal of disguise and role play.

Sex, Drag, and Male Roles documents the evolution of Torr's work by blending first-person memoir and commentary from Torr with critical reflections and contextualization from leading performance critic Stephen J. Bottoms. The book includes a consideration of the long cultural history of female-to-male cross-dressing and concludes with Torr's "Do-It-Yourself" guide to becoming a "Man for a Day."

Diane Torr developed her cross-disciplinary art in the downtown New York art scene from 1976 to 2002. Now living in Scotland, Torr has earned an international reputation for her performances and gender transformation workshops (featured on HBO, BBC, and This American Life on NPR, among others). Her work is the focus of a feature film, Man for a Day. 

Stephen J. Bottoms is Wole Soyinka Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds. His books include Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement and Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology, and Goat Island.

Cover: Diane Torr walks the streets of London, 1995. Photo by Debbie Humphreys.

Peng Xu’s The Courtesan’s Memory, Voice, and Late Ming Drama argues that courtesans of the era played an active role in the theater and their impact manifested in Chinese literary history, albeit concealed or erased. In the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644), theater was dominated by male performers with professional actresses largely absent from the stage, unlike in the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), where women performed without restriction in theater troupes. Despite the prevailing assumption that women played no part in the theatrical movement, The Courtesan’s Memory, Voice, and Late Ming Drama illuminates how courtesans, as serious theater artists and playwrights, left a significant mark on the male-dominated dramatic and literary landscapes.

This study profoundly remaps the textbook narratives of gender bias, challenges modern prejudices prevalent in the literary history of Chinese drama, and reveals how theatrical conditions and writing styles shifted to accommodate courtesan performances. Utilizing a wide range of sources such as scripts, city guides, biographies, diaries, letters, wood-block illustrations, and paintings, this study distinguishes itself from earlier studies of Chinese courtesans by not thematizing courtesans for their allegorical values, but rather pinpointing their agency in shaping the features of Chinese theater and recognizing courtesans as a source of creativity and development in the medium. Xu’s focus on courtesan performance culture allows for fresh readings of canonical Chinese plays, opening up new ways of understanding the history of Chinese drama written by women, thus deviating from standard historiography based solely on the writings of men.