Re-scripting the Monstrous
This drag performance explores masculinity as a constructed spectacle rather than a natural authority. Performing as a drag king, I inhabit an exaggerated masculine presence to reveal how power is worn, rehearsed, and sustained through performance.
The costume is deliberately excessive and unstable. Textiles, colour, and ornamentation shift the body between seduction, humour, and threat. At the centre of the work is a symbolic gesture in which the phallic form is staged, displayed, and ultimately removed. This act turns a dominant symbol into something temporary, fragile, and absurd.
Rather than reproducing masculine power, the performance dismantles it from within. The removal is not violent but theatrical, using humour and exaggeration to expose how authority depends on belief, repetition, and collective agreement.
By reclaiming the figure of the “monstrous” through drag, the work treats excess, failure, and transformation as feminist tools. Gender mimicry becomes a method of critique, and the body becomes a site where inherited scripts of power can be undone and rewritten.
