Transgender Drag, Transgender Joy: A Non-Binary Approach to Creating Joy Through Drag Performance

This thesis explores the potential for drag performance to be a tool for trans performers to create and amplify joy in embodying drag characters and developing them as practices over time. In this inquiry, I centre my own drag practice in order to engage in an autoethnographic perspective on drag performance that draws from both my lived experience and practice. Grounded in a performance creation component, this research uses my experience as a non-binary, trans drag performer to depart from analyzing drag performance solely within the realm of gender, and instead considering how it is situated in relation to joy. I contextualise the performance creation component with theoretical works on gaiety, utopia, failure, Camp, gender, and drag, in addition to drawing from my lived experience. I articulate how my lived experiences are intertwined with my drag practice, through an illustrated notebook component which builds towards the creation of a drag costume, which I then wear in a documented rehearsal that tests the effects of the costume. Through this work, I aim to expand notions of what drag can be for trans performers as both artists and individuals, and attempt to understand how its effects can be a means for creating joy outside of drag