Crowning Glory: Scotland’s drag kings on the rise

Drag performer Dom Perignon is doing his makeup. Luscious blonde hair flows down his back as he meticulously draws on thick eyebrows and a beard. His grip is steady, precise and practised. He’s leaning over a sink in the bathroom of Leith bar, the Arches. 

Tonight’s punters aren’t the regulars, but instead attendees of bi-monthly drag king night the Bro Code. Started two years ago it is one of very few drag king nights in Scotland. The layman's understanding of drag is where an individual ‘switches’ from one gender to another with the purpose of entertaining an audience. However, speak to anyone involved in the scene and a more complex definition emerges. To Perignon, who identifies as gender queer in his day to day life, it is a way of broadening his gender exploration.

“Whenever I query my gender, it feels like something very stressful where I need to have answers or I need to decide on pronouns,” Perignon says. “This is the opposite of that: it's fun, it's playful.”

Under the flicker of fluorescent lights Perignon’s delicate features transform into those of an 80s rockstar sex god. Not yet on stage, he fluctuates between persona and person. In his lilting soft voice, he elaborates: “[Perignon] is just this like sexy, gay-leaning pansexual who wants to sleaze up the scene.” 

A balcony overlooks the stage where a makeshift greenroom has been devised. It’s hot, sticky and humid. The other half of the Bro Code, Jack the Strapper, is tall, dark and ‘strapping’. “It’s a way of exploring masculinity,” Strapper says. “Outside of drag the only time you'll get a compliment will be like the one day a year you’re wearing a dress and lipstick, whereas in drag, you actually get socially valued for being masculine.”

Nearby, king Phil Herrin wears a polo shirt mini dress. A Leith local, he’s been in the scene for 11 years. He recalls seeing drag queens burst into the mainstream with the airing of RuPaul’s Drag Race: “I just thought, why is no one doing that the other way? So I googled: ‘What is the opposite of a drag queen?’”

According to Herrin, a slew of American drag kings appeared; they were “too glamorous”. He wanted to encapsulate the kind of men he knew. “I used to sit in beer gardens in Leith and watch people go by,” Herrin says. “I'd study their walks and like their mannerisms and just started observing what masculinity was in my, like, local area.”

Unlike their queen counterparts who regularly book out gay bars and bingo halls, king-specific events and opportunities are few and far between in Scotland. “ It tends to be a one king per show sort of situation,” Perignon says. “You have a sexy queen, you have a dance queen, you have a comedy queen, and then you have a king.”

While not at Bro Code tonight, one name repeatedly comes up: Dorian T. Fisk. The English-born king – who spent several years in Shanghai’s glitzy drag scene – is behind a drag king course called Shut Up and King. Teaching wannabe kings how to bind, stuff and perform, it is the 'kingcubator' for the fledgling scene in Scotland. Shut Up and King is Fisk’s passion project, aiming to foster more opportunities for those starting out. 

According to Fisk, patriarchy and misogyny are often to blame for the lack of opportunity in the scene. Although dressed as men, drag kings still come face to face with misogyny. Fisk says that a large number of showrunners are “cis white gay men” or people who only view drag as being that which features on mainstream platforms like RuPaul’s Drag Race: kings do not factor into this.

Many performers at the Bro Code tonight have taken part in Shut Up and King. Perignon and Strapper met through the course; the Bro Code grew from a desire to create a platform for all the talent that wasn’t getting booked. “The workshops kept producing new kings and then those kings were struggling to get booked ‘cause all the shows at the time were run by Queens,” says Strapper. “We figured it would probably be easier to just create a show than to get booked like five times.”

At the Bro Code it is clear that kings don’t struggle to fill a room. There’s an anticipation that bubbles and spills over as the hosts take to the stage. The show begins with a list of ‘Bromandments’. Number one: “consent is mandatory”. Baguettes, carrots and graters form part of props for a show that is lively and full of heart, wit and humour.

“You know, we're very much bros in life as well as in business,” says Perignon. “ We didn't know each other before the Bro Code, but it’s now been two years of hanging out planning and writing scripts; Jack's now one of my closest friends.” The two even went cycling in France over the summer. This sense of camaraderie is commonplace in the scene, says Perignon.

"I love watching the variety of acts kings come up with. From traditional male impersonation to experimental drag clowns; from hand sewn costumes to live vocals,” says Strapper. “It's a space for protest as much as for creative expression. As an art form, drag is as weird, wonderful and varied as the performers who make it."

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The Bro Code, Leith Arches, 10 Sep, 7pm - find out more via Instagram @brocode.drag