Dix Artiste, a king from Philadelphia, traveled to Des Moines for the annual awards.
Writer: Dan Ray
Photographer: Joelle Blanchard
Fifteen years ago, Jen Carruthers wanted to produce a drag king show, but she had a problem: She couldn’t find any drag kings. So she enlisted some of her thespian friends and put on a show at the old Garden, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in the East Village.
Since then, the show has grown into an annual tradition that draws talent from around town and across the country. Now, as Drag King DSM prepares to celebrate its 15th anniversary on Oct. 11, Carruthers credits at least part of its success to people like her theater friends who didn’t initially know that drag kings even existed.
Raygun owner “Mike Draper wrote me a check the first year,” Carruthers said. “He didn’t know what a drag king was but thought it was cool I was trying to do something different for the community.”
She started DKDSM because she saw an opportunity to elevate an underrepresented queer art form, which spotlights female and transgender artists who perform as men. While drag queens have won over huge audiences thanks to media coverage and TV shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Carruthers decided kings needed their own space — their own kingdom, so to speak.
“There was no representation of that type of performance artistry in Des Moines, that left-of-center masculinity,” she said. “We needed that type of space for female-identifying folk.”
The space was, and is, so disparate from the queens that some of the Drag King DSM artists request only $25 for their entire performance, an amount that Carruthers said wouldn’t even entice her to step out of her front door. She pays them more than that per song and covers travel expenses for out-of-town performers. For a while, she even lined up Airbnb sponsors to house them for free. The kings also get to keep their tips. By offering them fair pay and a place to perform, Carruthers hopes to even the playing field for kings and queens alike.
“Women perform these masculine sets, what they interpret masculinity to be, through their artistry,” she said. “But they’re still the second-class citizens of the drag community.” She said it’s ironic that in the drag world, patriarchal influences still let queens reign supreme.
Carruthers and co-producer Vivette Perry, who joined DKDSM 10 years ago, have steadily built it into one of the biggest all-drag-king shows in the country. Out-of-state kings like New York’s Dr. Wang Newton and Florida’s Spikey Van Dykey regularly travel to Iowa because they don’t get such big crowds anywhere else. The annual DKDSM show draws crowds of 300 to 700 people and often features nearly a dozen kings who perform two or three songs apiece.
While most drag shows take place in gay bars, DKDSM very intentionally takes place at Wooly’s, an identity-neutral music venue in the East Village. Carruthers and Perry aim to draw a broader audience, including but not limited to LGBTQ fans.
“People may not necessarily dig the vibe of the Saddle or the Garden,” Perry said. At Wooly’s, “all of that is stripped away, and you’re just walking into a performance space where you’re going to see some killer art.”
That killer art features performers who interpret masculinity by singing and dancing to a playlist of tracks. But according to Carruthers, you’ll see a lot more gender fluidity than you’ll see from most drag queens, who tend to stick to standard displays of over-the-top femininity. One year, a DKDSM performer didn’t want to bind her chest for medical reasons, so she performed in a beard, masculine attire and a bra. Another performer, Kat, stepped on stage in traditional men’s clothing but changed into stilettos and a leotard halfway through the song.
This year’s 15th anniversary show will feature local performers from each of DKDSM’s three five-year eras of the show so far, along with national talent. The organizers invite regular fans and newcomers alike to see the show and celebrate its joy and creative self-expression.
“You have two hours to live your best life: to sing along to the songs, to dance with the kings, to just forget everything and be in the moment,” Perry said. “Let it all go. Melt away. There’s so much trash in this world. Why not just come and be free and enjoy something new?”
So what’s a drag king?
You’ve probably heard of drag queens. They’re typically male or male-identifying artists who dress and perform in their own stylized interpretation of femininity. Drag kings are the opposite: They’re female or female-identifying artists who dress and perform in traditionally masculine attire as a form of gender expression. Kings can be women, nonbinary folks, transgender men and other AFAB artists (assigned female at birth).
The origins of the art form can be traced at least as far back as China’s Tang dynasty, from about 600 to 900 C.E., when women portrayed male characters on stage. Today, there are active king scenes in New York, San Francisco, London — and Des Moines.
For tickets to the Drag King DSM show on Oct. 11, visit firstfleetconcerts.com. To see drag kings year-round, head to the Garden on the second Thursday of every month.
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