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I'm Jonathan O'Brien, and I guess I got into drag about six years ago. Um, it had been something that I was kind of interested in from a young age. I sort of first got interested in it in high school when we were studying feminist art, and I felt like I connected with a lot of what the feminist artists were trying to say in the seventies. So I decided that if I was ever going to be a drag queen, my name would be Judy Chicago, [00:00:30] after the feminist artist who did the dinner party, that's probably one of her most famous pieces. What were some of the things that you keyed into at high school? What were they saying? The feminists, you know, anyone can be anyone. So like Cindy Sherman posing and a lot of her self portraits as all these different stereotypes of women and sort of deconstructing them and reconstructing them. And [00:01:00] so if you're able to deconstruct an identity, you can create a new one out of anything, and that's kind of what drag is like for me. So what age were you thinking? Those thoughts, um, they were, well, I had sort of gender sexuality issues in high school, where I was sort of thinking about you know, what it means to be gay [00:01:30] and what it means to be gay. If you were raised Catholic, what it means to be a boy like I'd wear pigtails to school and see what people, how people reacted like. And so I just tried to like, you know, destabilise boundaries that I found quite restrictive and growing up in white middle class papakura and just started, you know, playing around with how I dressed [00:02:00] and how I thought. And it wasn't really until I went to university and moved into Auckland City that I met other people who were gay and were queer and were performers. And I figured that drag was the kind of performance direction that I wanted to go in. Just going back to your high school days. How did other people react to what you were [00:02:30] doing? Um, my teachers all thought that I was lovely and troubled and most of, like, other guys at school were just like, Oh, you're a fag. And I was like, Yes, but what does that mean? And so I was kind of trying to get more out of them, and it didn't really work. But, um, I had a fairly supportive school counsellor who was like, Don't worry, you [00:03:00] know, things will sort themselves out when you leave high school. And now the college that I was at was Rosa College, and now they have a really good queer sexuality support system in place. So at that age, how do you have that kind of inner strength to kind of challenge stereotypes? I don't know. Where does anyone get their inner strength from really Mum? I had a pretty fierce mother and a fierce grandmother. I had lots of really strong [00:03:30] female role models, So I lived with my mum for a long time after she kicked dad out. And then I lived with my grandmother and grandfather for a while, and my grandmother was this bolshy Jewish holocaust survivor who was Yeah, she probably taught she lived in a strength. So I was probably a lot from watching people like her. And so, from those high school experiences, what did you take out of the that, uh, that [00:04:00] people react to difference in different ways, and I guess I learned more about how I responded to their reactions. So if their negative react, if their reactions were negative, did it actually affect me? And by the time I was finishing high school, it didn't and sort of set me up for just being comfortable with doing whatever I felt like doing, I guess. How [00:04:30] did your family react? When I first came out to my dad, I was probably 18, and he said to me like he was all fine with that. He was like, Yes, we we've sort of, you know, known that for a while. But do you want to be a woman? And I was like, No, Dad, I'm gay I. I like the idea of two cocks together. That's the point. And then, um, [00:05:00] two years later, I started doing drag, and I didn't really know how he'd react to that because of the question he'd asked when I first came out. So one night I was living with him at the time, and one night he and my stepmother had gone out. So I was just, you know, practising makeup at home and just got into full drag. And then I was just sitting in the lounge watching TV and they came home from being out and I was just in there with a big blonde wig and bright blue dress, and they just walked in and looked at me and said, [00:05:30] Hi, son. So will we be seeing you like this more often? And I just said yes. And it was fun. So how do you see drag? Is it a performance thing, or is it something more? Uh, originally when I first started doing it, I guess it was something more. I wasn't really sure of my own gender situation and what being male or female really meant for me, [00:06:00] And I've been doing lots of theatre as well. So I sort of mixed the the issues together and found myself a drag mother and started doing drag regularly. And then it kind of became, um, a shield or a sort of armour. And I think that's something for a lot of drag queens is that being in drag is kind of like, you know, putting up a defence almost or a mask that affords you a lot of confidence [00:06:30] and distance from people. So, you know, I didn't have to worry about whether or not a guy liked me because I wasn't out looking for sex. I was out being glamorous and tragic and outrageous. And at that point in the early point when I was first doing drag like my drag character was quite distinct from me as Jonathan. And [00:07:00] I guess I wasn't sure who I wanted to be. And so sometimes I'd spend a lot of time in drag and maybe go to university in drag. And then as my life progressed and I got more experience with relationships and with sex, I kind of realised that, you know, being male was what I wanted to be. And being a man with a man was where I was most comfortable [00:07:30] and drag just became more of a a performance space, uh, hobby, something fun to do, something to entertain people with, something to entertain myself with and didn't really. I didn't really need to hold it as that sort of magic feather. I didn't need to, you know, hold on, to drag, to be able to fly. I'm wondering if you could define [00:08:00] drag. How would you define drag? I guess drag to me would mean a member of one sex performing and presenting themselves in an over the top manner representative of the gender, traditionally recognised as the opposite to what they were born into. [00:08:30] But there's an element of performance. Is is that Is that the key thing? Is it? Yeah, and definitely perform well. I mean, even if you're not on stage, it's still a performance. Like you don't just go out as a drag king or a drag queen. You go out and you are performing. You're performing in a character. Really? How long did it take for [00:09:00] you to find your drag character? Well, I found three, but, um, it didn't take long at all. Really. Like I had a really good drag mother who Her name was C, and she was very good makeup artist and very confident and very camp and very hilarious and witty. [00:09:30] And I just emulated a lot of her behaviours in styles and sort of found myself quite quickly and ended up winning Miss Drag Auckland about eight months after I started doing drag. So that was a lot and yeah, II. I found that my interests and, you know, like high camp and old Broadway musicals and catch [00:10:00] glamour and tragic heroes and all the sorts of like, gay, archetypal kind of characters that a lot of the nightclub scene were unfamiliar with or weren't into. Um, sort of fell into all those things fell into my basket, and nobody else was really doing them at the time. So it, yeah, firmed up a character for me quite nicely. And then, as [00:10:30] I just experimented with different looks and different styles of music and different styles of makeup and different eras and different aspects of performance and personality, I found other people to be Judy Chicago's alter egos. Just before we get on to a description of the personas, can you tell me how you go about finding a drag mother? So I'd been on the gay scene in [00:11:00] Auckland for about two years before I started doing drag, and I'd seen all the drag queens around, and I had no idea how to sort of get into doing that. I didn't just want to turn up in a wig and an ugly dress made of curtains with a bit of makeup smeared on my face because you just, you know, get laughed out of town. So, um, one of my friends was friends with a couple of drag queens, and I met them at her 21st birthday and she introduced me to them [00:11:30] and I got their number and then hung out with them and then, you know, just said, Yeah, I'd love for you to put me in drag. And so she did You just find someone and latch yourself to them. What was that first experience like, um, it was heady. It was mixed with a lot of drugs and alcohol [00:12:00] and heels that I couldn't walk in properly and address from an op shop, but amazing hair and makeup. And I just felt like a movie star and felt like I had access to anywhere. I wanted to go and could get away with anything. So, um, describe for me the, um your personas OK, uh, Judy Chicago [00:12:30] is sort of my like base character, and she is more or less mean now, really in drag, but, you know, exaggerated. So she's a lot camper, and she's a bit fruity. And she likes jazz and Judy Garland and floral and big hair, Big, big hair. And Gertrude Stein is [00:13:00] quite ugly but clever and interested in cooking and hideous seventies prints and curly hair and glasses and nylon polymer is kind of a bit of a trip, and it's just usually in white face and bizarre postmodern blends of things like laundry Baskets and [00:13:30] Marie Antoinette Here and KBS and the three of them get along well in my head. Do you ever find the taking you over? No, not at all. I did used to feel that Judy Chicago was taking over when I was, you know, going through a bit of an identity crisis. And, you know, if I was feeling down or whatever, I would fall back into that confident persona that I had constructed [00:14:00] and that confident persona just happened to be a drag queen. So sometimes, you know, I not feel like I could go out to a club not in drag, because I didn't feel confident enough or I didn't feel pretty enough or whatever. So talk to me about identity crises. I guess for a while I was living with my parents who lived or I was living with my father, who lived on the shore, so [00:14:30] I had to come into town to socialise with anyone and I had a lot of different groups of friends, and I felt like I was a different person with each of these different groups of friends. And I was trying to work out who I was without them and who I felt comfortable being and who I wanted to be and who I wanted to be seen as being. And at that point, I just didn't [00:15:00] really feel like being Jonathan. I guess I didn't really know who he was, but I had a more definite idea of who Judy Chicago was. So she yeah, she kind of took over. And yeah, for a lot of other drag queens I've spoken to, they feel like their drag personas can take over a lot as well. And sometimes you just got to put the drag in a bag and hide her. Now, drag wasn't confined to those personas because you were also doing some study [00:15:30] around that area as well, weren't you? Yeah, I was. Well, I was doing a degree in psychology and linguistics, so I was quite interested in gender and language. And I was also, um, the cultural affairs officer for the Students Association. I got Judy Chicago to run as that position, which just made it a little bit more fun for me and for anyone else, really. And I did a research project [00:16:00] on how drag queens in Auckland spoke and how that differed from how they would speak as gay men, or how they would speak as men in general and just looked at the intersectionality of the different cultural groups around Auckland and the influences that they all had on drag culture. So, like there's a strong Polynesian and Maori influence [00:16:30] on a lot of just some of the phrases that people say. And that's probably because there's, uh, a high population of Polynesian and Maori people who are involved in the queer community in Auckland, especially in the performance industry as well. And that's where a lot of drag queen, like some of the best drag queens in New Zealand, uh, Polynesian and Maori, and just also looking at, like the influence of African American drag on or African American gay culture [00:17:00] on gay culture in New Zealand and how that affects the way drag queens speak and act and the looks that they adopt as well, and then looking at sort of our trans Tasman relationship with Sydney and Sydney has a very sort of polished, glamorous drag image. And at the moment, Auckland's looking a lot more like Sydney drag wise. So can you give me some examples In terms of speech or looks? [00:17:30] I guess there's just all sorts of little things, like a lot of drag, Queens will say instead of girl. And it's a gay thing as well and killed her sister and talking about someone being like, Oh, is she is she gay? Is he gay? Is he family and little polari phrases like and uber when you're talking about a wig [00:18:00] and and trolling and there's just lots of like little, there's lots of little idiosyncrasies that strong personalities have that rub off on others as well. Like I know Robin has a way of talking that is very loud and scary and powerful, and a lot of people put that on. Sometimes, just for the uninitiated, could you go back through some of those words and define what they are? [00:18:30] So I put a I put a as a drag queens pussy, and it's usually covered up by three pairs of stockings. Um, an uber is a lace front wig trolling, you know, trolling for trade, stalking for boys to have sex with or John's clients. Whatever, um, cracking it. Basically, prostitution [00:19:00] Is prostitution a big thing in the in the drug scene? Not really. No, I don't know many drag queens who actually work as prostitutes in drag just because it's so much effort to get in drag. You don't want it to all, you know, get smudged off by some big eager man. Um, it's probably not really worth the trouble. I mean, doing drag is relatively expensive. If you're doing it [00:19:30] well, I suppose, although in saying that you can actually do drag really cheaply and amazingly, it just depends on what look you're going for, really. The $2 shop in the warehouse that I most drag queen's favourite shops, I think, um, but yeah, no, I know a few girls who do it sometimes, maybe for a new week or whatever, but I don't think it's AAA large aspect [00:20:00] of drag culture. So what were your findings in your research? I guess I just found the importance of understanding the the way other drag queens spoke so that you could speak their language and be part of the community and so reinforcing solidarity through this stylized form of discourse. Um, and you know, it's [00:20:30] a sense of belonging. It's a sense of exclusivity, almost and a sense of family. And I think, you know, for a lot of young gay men coming into the gay scene, they're kind of lost. And you see this sort of drag sisterhood as a ready made group that you can be adopted into. And you just learn the customs and the practises and you have a family, so it's quite friendly. There's there's not a competitive [00:21:00] edge. It's it's I'd say it's very competitive. But that competition in itself reinforces the friendships. So you know you're constantly trying to make yourself better, and your friends are trying to make you better and make themselves better, and you give each other a hard time to make each other try harder so it can be really bitchy. But it's ingested most of the time, and [00:21:30] you know you can rely on your sisters if you need to. Have you found that it's mostly gay men that do drag or do you do do straight men do drag as well. Well, uh, yeah, a lot of straight men do do drag. I mean, with the queen of the whole universe in New Zealand, that kind of presents an opportunity for a whole lot of people to do drag in a really structured and safe environment. So, you know, they go through rehearsals, [00:22:00] they get told how to dress or what style to dress. They have someone else doing their makeup for them and I. I guess people who do drag occasionally aren't really drag queens as such, because they're not immersed in the culture and the practise. But that's something they can do for fun. And like I know with Queen of the whole universe, we've had large numbers of straight men and straight women and gay women and mostly gay men come through [00:22:30] and perform as Queens every year. And the whole bio queen movement is growing all over the world. So a bio queen is a woman who dresses up as a drag queen. So, you know, you could almost say Lady Gaga is a bio queen. But, um, my favourite bio queen would be Nique, who's an amazing performance artist. Um, she's involved in the Tranny Shack group in the States, and she's [00:23:00] just fierce. Um, and we've also got a few bio queens in New Zealand as well. You know, it's just girls kind of seeing that hyper femininity is this arena that isn't really open to them very often anymore. And they want to, you know, draw their eyebrows up high and put ridiculous amounts of eyeshadow on and giant wigs and [00:23:30] of Why have an excuse to do it when you can just go out and be a queen? What do you think is the biggest thrill for you doing drag? I have the most fun in drag when I'm hanging, when I'm with other drag queens and performing. So getting the buzz of you know of rehearsing and putting together a show and then being on stage with the people you've been working with or in front of people and [00:24:00] being a spectacle Yeah, a lot of it is just about making something fabulous and having a good time doing it is drag all about the kind of present in the now. Or does it have a A history? Are people aware of a history in drag? Yeah, definitely. There's a long, long history. I've done a lot of research on the history of drag and looked into different forms of drag all around the world and different [00:24:30] forms of, you know, gender transgression or subversion or whatever. And I find all of that really interesting, whereas other drag queens are just like Brittany is so fucking hot. I want to look like her right now, and that's cool. You know, you don't need the history to be amazing, but it's cool to know it. It's fantastic to know that it, like even in New Zealand, we have a strong local history of drag going back about 50 years. And [00:25:00] how is that passed down if you hadn't gone researched? I mean, is it in within the community within drag queens themselves that are passing that history down in in Wellington? We lack a lot of drag history now because most of the older drag queens have moved on, and so we've got a lot of orphan drag queens or motherless drag queens. But, um, like in Auckland, there's a fairly steady generational handing down of the knowledge of drag [00:25:30] and knowledge of the girls who came before and you know, we have things like the trust and that sort of thing that recognised that. You know, these people have been pretty fabulous and they've been around for a while. And the knowledge of who these people are is Yeah, it's definitely around, like most of the drag queens around today would know about performances in the early nineties and eighties, the studio and staircase [00:26:00] and things like that. And how is that history seen? Uh, are those older drag queens and their memories that they celebrated? Or is it are they set up as as something that was kind of weird or Yeah, again, it all depends on which drag Queen is around like some older drag queens are just seen as a bit weird. And then some of them are celebrated for being completely outrageous and of [00:26:30] their time or before their time. And some of them are still the most fierce bitches around. Yeah, Do you think there's any kind of age limit, uh, for people in doing drag? Definitely not. No, Peter Taylor is still doing drag, and he's probably, like 100 years old by now. Um, and he's still fabulous. And the youngest person I know who started doing drag was probably about 14. [00:27:00] But there's also, you know, blurry lines with transgender issues as well. You know, like some people start out as a drag queen or doing drag and or cross dressing or whatever, and then they start doing it more often, and then that person becomes who they are and who they want to be or who they've always wanted to be. So there's Yeah, there are strong links between drag communities and transgender [00:27:30] communities and people and individuals. What do you think the hardest part of of doing drag is, um, for me, probably the hardest part has been juggling drag with a partner. Um, you know, gay men are gay men because they're attracted to men, and my partner is not attracted to drag queens. Even though he met me when I was in drag, he was, [00:28:00] you know, just keen to see me as a boy, and that's who he likes. And so when I'm in drag, he kind of feels like I'm a different person and not the person that he's in love with, but he understands that I'm still there. I'm just playing, so yeah, ju. Juggling my sisters with my boyfriend has probably been the trickiest part of being a drag queen. And the funniest part, the funnest part is stumbling [00:28:30] down to a kebab shop with a bunch of drag queens whose lips have been getting bigger and bigger all night and gorging yourself before getting a taxi home and just the looks on everyone's faces around you with these three tragic queens or four tragic queens or two or five whatever, just looking completely and completely conspicuous and out of place. So talk to me about reactions like when you're walking around in town. [00:29:00] Do they vary from city to city? Uh, yeah. Reactions definitely vary from city to city and street to street as well. Like if you're going down K Road, it's kind of knowing that that's where drag queens live. And if you're going to, if you're going to K Road on a weekend night, you're going to bump into a drag queen. So you're on the turf pretty much and oh yeah, I never really had [00:29:30] it. I think once somebody said to me, What makes you think you can get away with wearing that? And I just said, because I can, and they were like, Oh, OK, and that was fine. And then in Palmerston North, I did a gig with a friend, and the gig was at I think it was at Club Q. I think that's what it's called there. And so when we finished our gig, we were like, Right, let's go hit the town And we were denied from about four [00:30:00] or five different clubs because we didn't meet the dress code and we weren't even wearing anything particularly outrageous or skimpy. And, yeah, it was just clear that we weren't welcome there, and we find that we ended up finding one place that would let us in. But the reactions weren't particularly positive. And then in Wellington, like on Cuba Street, pretty much everything's fine. And then you walk down Courtney Place [00:30:30] and you get called faggot by a bunch of guys and beautiful by their girlfriends. So, yeah, it just depends on who you bump into and who's out at the time. Do you get more reaction in drag or or just, um, as a boy, definitely get more reactions and drag? I mean, as a boy, I I mostly just wear black and grey and blue, Um, and [00:31:00] and drag. I mostly wear purple and fu and lime and bright colours. And yeah, people really like people really appreciate it in most places that I end up in like a lot of people just come up to me like, you know, thank you for just adding a little bit of colour, and that's really nice, because that's kind of a big part of the reason why drag queens do it is because they want to bring a bit of colour to something and make people [00:31:30] happy and make sure that people are having fun. Sometimes that fun isn't welcome, and that's fine, too. In in Wellington, there's not much of a drag scene and the comm, the gay community isn't really that keen on drag and drag performances. And I just think that's because there's no real like strong drag coordinator, [00:32:00] like we used to have poly filler living in Wellington and she was great at holding a drag community together and organising events and being a great role model for people. And when she left, I think a lot of that just dissipated. And so Wellington, I guess, is waiting for its next true diva to stand up and unite the queens. So we were talking just before about, uh, drag mothers. [00:32:30] And I'm wondering, are you now a drag mother? Do you have drag Children? Well, now that I'm an elderly six year old drag queen, Um, yeah, I have I do have drag Children. I I didn't for a long time because I didn't really know anyone who sort of fitted what I would want in a daughter. But, um, one of my dear friends who shared a lot of my interests and gender and performance and colour [00:33:00] and film and theatre and music um, I she he he he she he had, you know, watched me do drag for about two years. And I sort of suggested that maybe he would be interested. And I was living with him at the time, and he was just like, Oh, yes, yes. Oh, God, yes. I want to be your drag daughter, please. And you know, I wanted someone I could share my style with and share [00:33:30] the the films and history that had sort of inspired me like a lot of John Waters films and Andy Warhol's films and the drag queens of New York that I was really interested in. And the coquettes And, um So, yeah, I just showed him all of that. And then one night, we just I was like, Right here's a bunch of old costumes that you can have and did his face and showed him how to do her face and put [00:34:00] her in a few weeks and started taking her out. So yeah, I have my own little daughter and her name is GAA Octavia seizure. And she's very much an Earth mother and sequence. And I also have a step drag daughter as well, whose own mother passed away. And so I sort of adopted her. Um, I guess [00:34:30] for me being a drag queen has been really useful and finding out who I am and finding out what I can do and who I can be. And I made a lot of really, really, really good friends through drag, whereas sometimes all we have in common to begin with is the fact that we want to dress up in ridiculous costumes and run around town screaming and progress from there. So, yeah, I just really appreciate everything that I've got from my involvement with drag [00:35:00] and drag performers and the performers associated with that culture. What's your ultimate drag act? I really like drag and theatre and acting and comedy like I really like the drag that happens in New York. A lot of it's a little bit itchy, and it's less defined in its boundaries of what is drag Like. Some drag queens will say that you know, to [00:35:30] be a drag queen, you've got to be wearing a wig or you've got to be wearing heels or whatever and then others will be like All you need is some lip gloss and some bright eye shadow. And who gives a fuck about wearing tits? Whatever. And yeah, II. I like those de destabilised performance types. Yeah, but I also really like the high glamour that happens in [00:36:00] kind of female impersonator shows where people dress up as li or share or anything like that. One of my one of my favourite shows that I ever did was I did a half male, half female, half man, half woman cabaret act for the Auckland Festival in 2005, and that was a lot of fun because it it was quite challenging, actually creating a male character who had [00:36:30] to be just as extreme as the drag side. And so, you know, I already had Judy Chicago established as a persona, but Jack London needed to find himself, and so he just became this revolting, sort of sleazy, Jewish used car salesman wannabe stand up comedian. And so, for that show, Judy Sang and Jack interrupted her and kept trying to tell jokes. And [00:37:00] it was in a really intimate space in the, um, the Winter Garden in the Civic, and I just Yeah, I really enjoyed being involved in something like a cabaret like that.
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