Drag, resistance and joy: A conversation with Dr. Joe Parslow

Dr. Joe Parslow is Head of Research and Postgraduate Provision at Rose Bruford College. In this interview, Joe reflects on their book Their Majesty: Drag Performance and Queer Community in London, discussing the evolving role of drag as both a cultural and political force and its relationship to activism and resistance. They also explore the impact of professionalisation within drag, the challenges of visibility and backlash and the continued power of performance to respond to social crisis with imagination, joy, and collective care. 

Your book, Their Majesty, explores the significance of drag performance in London’s queer communities. What initially drew you to this subject?

I was drawn to look at drag in the first instance because my boyfriend was a drag queen and so I was seeing lots of drag and feeling stuff. This sounds simple, but really this is where it started – watching drag and feeling like something was happening. The last 15 years of research have been about trying to work out what that something is. 

Over the course of your research, how has your understanding of drag evolved – as both a cultural and political force? 

From reading, watching as much drag as I could, producing drag performance events and just generally hanging around as many shows as I could, I learned that drag is both a form of entertainment and a form of doing politics – and that these aren’t mutually exclusive. Some of the most political work I see is often some of the silliest drag – and for me, calling an act silly or stupid is the highest compliment. These works offer flashes of joyful futures, ways of imagining alternatives and bring about the possibility of queer politics. 

How do you see contemporary drag performers engaging with activism today? 

There is a deep activist angle to contemporary drag, although sometimes I think you have to scratch the surface or look at work sideways to find it. Over the last 15 years, we have seen the closure of LGBTQ+ bars at an alarming rate, whilst there have been regular increases in reported hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people. Drag, as something deeply connected to LGBTQ+ communities, cannot ignore these contexts or the wider context of queer lives at a transnational level. The activism we might see in drag sometimes responds directly to this (I’m thinking here of events such as Drag Down The Borders) but alongside this, performances might offer important modes of community belonging and joy despite (or, as I talk about it in my book, to spite) the very conditions which can make queer lives feel so unliveable. 

Do you think drag’s rising popularity today is linked to the current political and social climate? 

Forms such as drag and cabaret often see a rise in popularity at times of economic and social precarity – recessions, global catastrophe, turns to the political (far) right. It is no surprise, then, that in 2025 these forms are not only alive and well, but thriving – there’s more drag than can possibly go around. This comes with challenges: an overexposure of the form, too many performers and not enough shows, too many shows and not enough of an economy to support everyone. Drag, however, makes community work – as in, it makes work for the communities it is connected to, but it also does the work of community. I am, perhaps, naively hopeful, but I see this as vital for the future of queer communities, and society more generally. If, as I argued in a chapter about drag performance and queer failure in 2018, life is a cabaret, then sometimes we need to be reminded of the importance of getting out of our rooms and hearing the music play – after all, we might not be here for that long, so we may as well dance whilst we are! 

While drag has arguably never been more visible in mainstream culture than it is today, it has also faced growing backlash and increased targeting of events. How do you interpret that? 

I’ve been thinking about drag a lot with Professor Stephen Farrier, our Deputy Principal at Rose Bruford College, and we’ve talked a lot about how drag is often the canary in the mine for contemporary politics – it starts singing (or lip syncing) when the atmosphere gets toxic. I’m thinking here specifically of several high-profile Drag Story Time events, where drag performers have led events reading stories to children and have been targeted by far-right organisations in the UK and the USA, who claim it is exposing children to obscene work. I wrote about this in the last chapter of my book, but what is clear is that both the reactions to drag performers doing this and the reactions of drag performers themselves tell us something more broadly about the direction that society is heading – a direction in which the rights of the family and the desire to “protect children” becomes a ruse through which old-school homophobic and transphobic views are allowed to spread unchecked. Drag performers continuing to work in these settings – standing up and staying in their eyeline – offers one possibility for resistance against these troubling times. 

Have you observed a professionalisation of drag over the years—and what impact has that had on artistry and opportunity? 

I think I would sometimes resist the word “professionalisation” and sometimes want to embrace it. What is so attractive to me about drag is its anarchism and its place on the outside, and yet as a producer, I am drawn to those acts who take the work seriously (whilst also being deeply silly). My wariness about the word “professionalisation” is that it can sometimes be used as a stand-in for “sanitisation,” for removing the sharp edges and smoothing over the difficult bits. I would like to think that this wasn’t the case, although arguably with the huge mainstream success of RuPaul’s Drag Race there is a sense of what “professional” looks like which, when explored in depth, is restricted to certain forms of drag and types of bodies. However, not all forms of becoming professional need to look like this. 

In some ways, rather than the professionalisation of drag, I would want to think that we’ve seen a democratisation of drag, where drag is seen as a viable option for many. For example, having an MA Queer Performance at the College and huge amounts of research into queer performance, demonstrates the importance and rigour of these forms. Doing drag is not just an experiment for Halloween but is a career choice that students and graduates can make. 

How has your work producing shows shaped your view of drag as a craft and profession? 

In my work with my husband, Me the Drag Queen, we have been producing a competition called Not Another Drag Competition since 2016. We have done 10 series and two series of “All Stars,” and it has become known as a rigorous, if challenging, training ground. The competition has supported the development of acts who have since appeared on the aforementioned Drag Race, but it has also given rise to superstars such as WET MESS, Rhys’s Pieces, Mark Anthony, BiCurious George, Chiyo and That Girl, to name just a few (I’ll definitely be offending some of them by not naming them all here, but there simply wasn’t space, as we’ve had over 110 contestants!).

At the heart of the competition is a deep care for the craft and practice of drag – for taking the form seriously as a thing which can be trained and learned, if you apply yourself, if you put in the work. 

Me the Drag Queen works as a mentor and host and works hard to stretch and develop each performer. This includes not just the work of drag, but also the work around the edges, where drag performers are necessarily producers, bookers, promoters, and so much more. 

Drag has long been linked to resistance and community-building. Why do you think performance is such a powerful tool in this regard? 

Performance is a powerful tool because it often brings about other worlds. Drag, as a popular performance form that often happens in bars and clubs – where the audience is visible to those on stage and to each other – offers immediate and visceral engagements with the present. It asks us, or demands us, as an audience, to be here, to be present. I’ve been writing recently about several performers whose work talks about the end of the world – from Charlie Wood to The Public Universal Friends (aka The PUF) to Dreamboat (look them all up!). I’m fascinated that we are seeing a lot of work about this, which reflects the ongoing climate catastrophe but also reflects a desire to find hope in alternative futures. 

The works are diverse: long-form spoken word stories, interactive fortune telling, solo songs, and more – and they don’t imagine one vision of a future, but a multitude of diverse ones. Drag, and queer popular performance forms like drag, are so powerful because they are located on the ground, as it were, close to the communities and within them, able to feel the tremors and respond to them. 

Want to know more?

• Find out more about research at Rose Bruford College and your options for Postgraduate studies.
• Sign up to our Queer Performance MA/MFA webinar on 15 April 2025.
• Their Majesty: Drag Performance and Queer Communities in London is published by Routledge.