Tessa Parr and Han Whyte chat to DIVA about why they started drag ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe
WORDS BY TESSA PARR (I AM JOHNNY) AND HAN WHYTE (ROGER PRICK), IMAGES BY STANLEY GREENGRASS AND ELLY WEL PHOTOGRAPHY
I’ve been performing Johnny, aka Johnny the Biblical Rapper, since 2016 in cabaret and LGBTQIA+ spaces. He was nurtured on the northern queer DIY scene, and I AM JOHNNY has grown out of years of playing, testing and experimenting with the character.
As a northern female actor, I spent much of my early career cast as servants, nurses or the heterosexual girlfriend. Johnny emerged from a need to feel empowered — to be bigger, louder, and take up space I felt I wasn’t being invited to take up.
At first, I liked the idea of being a strange, mischievous ghostwriter for a white cisgender spoken word poet. I started writing poems for this imaginary man to perform because I felt there were things men needed to be talking about, and too few were saying them.
While living in London in 2007, I was sexually assaulted. Anger is a powerful force if you can learn how to direct it. At the time, I couldn’t. Then, in 2017, Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement went viral, forcing ghosts out of the past and intensifying conversations around power, consent and masculinity.
Johnny was activated! He became my obsession, a conduit for my anger. The first time I performed his poetry, it felt like lifting the lid off a screaming kettle.
London became too expensive to live in, and I wanted to make work. Many of my artist loved ones lived in Newcastle, so I moved there. It was then, supported by the city’s queer DIY scene, that I really began flexing Johnny’s muscles (shout out to Newcastle’s DGA and Curious Festival).
I’m not interested in reinforcing toxic ideas of masculinity — we already have more than enough examples of that. I’m interested in a man who is trying, really, really trying, to be better.
Kinging is intrinsically connected to the performer’s most intimate sense of self and therefore their sexuality. Performing drag is an act of defiance; it is a beautiful self-expression that asks questions and doesn’t insist on answers. It invites you to live in a way that is authentic to you, outside of the suffocating confines of hetero-normativity. It is a celebration and a constant redefining of resilience and softness. And I’d never know any of this without Johnny. As a result, he is the only man I’ll ever love!
You can see I AM JOHNNY at Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre) from 6–31 August (not 17, 24) at 18:15 (60 mins).
I love being a drag king. From the moment I don my sharpie-pen sideburns, any expectation of femininity goes out the window. All the baggage of being perceived as a woman vanishes into thin air, and I am a bawdy, ridiculous, cartoon man ready to take on anything.
Roger Prick: SEXOPOLIS is a send-up of sexist old men, but it’s also my chance to be one for a bit. I get to be sleazy, grotesque and completely entitled. Roger Prick believes he’s right all the time, and it’s dizzying to taste a little bit of that confidence. I love getting to have the audacity of a dirty old man. Even if it is just for an hour.
I do comedy drag, which sits more in the world of alternative stand-up, character comics and clowns than of latex and feather boas. But I’ve always felt like Roger Prick is a male equivalent of an old-school cabaret Queen. More Dame Edna than RuPaul. I flirt with the women in the audience, berate the boyfriends avoiding my gaze, and get pally with the blokes in a way I’d never get to as myself.
Being a bisexual woman, I’ve always felt at home in queer spaces. I was first welcomed into the drag world by kings and things, and I owe a lot to the trans and nonbinary people who make up a lot of the scene. I’ve always been around people who play with gender or want to make fun of it. I’ve seen my dad in drag. So donning sideburns and strutting around the stage was bound to happen. What excites me about SEXOPOLIS is the chance to bring together my community – the girls, gays and theys, with Roger’s community, pub men and old geezers, in a space that’s welcoming and fun for all of us.
Drag is an expression of gender. Warts and all. But it’s also a place to explore the inner parts of ourselves – Roger Prick is all my pervertedness, horniness, and ego made physical. If there’s one thing drag can do, it’s to turn us inside out, and pour out the grossest parts of ourselves in the name of being silly.
You can see Roger Prick: Sexopolis at Underbelly Cowgate (Jelly Belly) from 5–30 Aug (not 18) at 18:55 (60 mins).
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