​Starring: Emily Heyworth, Dan Wallace, Ciaran Wilson
Written & Directed by Stephen M Hornby

​It’s a truth universally acknowledged that even now, twenty years on, we’re still fascinated by Princess Diana. Her life and death captured the hearts and imaginations of the world; the fairytale bride, the painful marriage, the messy divorce and ultimately, her tragic demise. Sometimes you wonder how the Daily Mail could possibly find anything else to write about the People’s Princess, but when you have such a guaranteed readership when you do, there’s ALWAYS something else to say. Whether it’s rumour or supposition, fact or clear make-believe, the British public will lap up every morsel and Stephen M Hornby’s new play Die Diana exploits this for all it’s worth. Because while we’ve heard all the facts a hundred times before, it’s the conspiracy theories that this play buys into; the “What REALLY happened” revelations and the unsubstantiated rumours floating around to this day. Because what if Diana was still alive? What if she had faked her own death? What if even the Royal Family doesn’t know the real truth? 

Die Diana cuts into the Diana narrative from multiple angles. With three performers examining the princess pre, mid and post-crash, the story pendulums back and forth between fact and fiction, rumour and theory, to create stories that interlink, overlap and contradict each other, in some ways amusing, but in others confounding the audience. Beginning with an unnervingly accurate Diana impersonation from Heyworth, the narrative is linear at first, exploring the events we already know but in a first-person monologue from beyond the grave. Or is it? Wallace takes over as a drag impersonation of Diana - or rather Diana performing a drag impersonation of Diana - but while the narrative seems to follow on, holes begin to appear. Talk of the enigmatic “stillness” that drives her to behave the way she does lead eventually to Wilson’s Diana, a male Diana, a schizophrenic contradictory Diana, whose existence and story challenges the previous Dianas, whose Diana in a tracksuit is as convincing as Heyworth’s Diana in a trouser suit.

Twenty years on, you would think that everything there is to say about Diana has been said, but somehow Hornby has found a new angle. Because twenty years on, Diana is more than just a celebrity. She has become mythologised, almost deified, by a public who share the guilt for her destruction. They cling onto any shred of vindication and for them, Die Diana is exactly that. Similarly, there are those who see this deification as exploitative and unimportant and for them, this play also serves to unpick the cult surrounding her. Whether a conspiracy theory, an impersonation or a reincarnation, these narratives cannot all exist without undermining each other, but here they sit side by side, contradicting, disputing and damaging one another’s validity.
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Structurally, Die Diana is a set of three monologues, linked by thoroughly meta conversations between the multiple Dianas. Each could exist as a performance piece by itself, but together they deliver a smorgasbord of delightful trivia, underpinned by three accomplished performances. Wallace (also known as Anna Phylactic when in drag) gives a bubbly performance, skipping through the lighter parts of the story. However, whilst delivering a stand-up routine of Diana jokes, his performance finds a darker poignancy as he momentarily exposes an angle on the princess very rarely discussed since her death: the establishment’s opinion that she was incredibly shallow. Meanwhile, Wilson explores Diana’s anger, even personifying it as a track-suited hoodlum in a hoody. While little is known of Diana’s rages, reports have surfaced over the years of her furious temper and here, the actor skips backwards and forwards between her poised façade and something darker, lurking behind those doe eyes. And Heyworth, whose performance as the Diana we all knew and recognise was captivating, effervesced with the mischief and vim that the public loved about the princess. As the play goes on, Diana becomes less and less like we remember her, but with Heyworth at the start, this is the Diana where the Myth began. But just like this Myth, so too has “Diana” as we know her morphed and evolved to become an entity far FAR removed from the reality twenty years ago. It’s this that Die Diana really explores; whatever she actually was doesn’t matter anymore, what matters is the Myth that far outlived her, that has become, like all folklore, different depending on who you ask.

​The play is crammed with all sorts of facts, trivia and anecdotes that serve both to delight the audience and anchor the play within reality. But really this play is a fantasy, in which the writer tasked himself with writing three different explanations of what ACTUALLY happened after the crash, albeit linking them beneath a loose but intriguing umbrella. Where this play stands up the most is by slipping in all this truth without sounding like a dramatised Wikipedia article, but where this play falls down is its wasted potential to perform elements of what is otherwise just three monologues. With a cast of three, it’s a shame that the actors didn’t become involved in each other’s performances, giving the actor something to bounce off, or giving the audience physical demonstrations. However, as a new angle on the Diana Myth, this is an accomplished piece of writing that should definitely reach a wider audience. With a little more theatrical vision to complement its literary prowess, this could be a truly great piece of theatre. 

Dear Orlando,
​
It's been three days since the attack. It's been three days of sadness, three days of waiting for new information and three days of feeling like something has changed. But around us, the world is carrying on as usual, as though nothing has happened. The news cycle has moved on, as though Sunday was just another shooting in the trigger-happy US. But it's not, is it? It's so much more than that.

On Monday evening, a vast crowd of people gathered in Manchester's Village to show solidarity with the victims and their families. We joined hands and formed a circle around the Village in a beautiful and sombre display of unity and cohesion. But as we stood there, passers-by looked bemused. A woman approached us and asked what the vigil was for. I felt like shaking her and screaming "What do you MEAN "what is it for?"?" Why wasn't it obvious? Why aren't people outside the LGBT Community paying it more notice? Why wasn't my mother aware it had happened until I told her today? Why wasn't there a minute's silence at my work on Monday? And why are people denying the homophobia behind the attack?
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I feel like I need to spell it out to people. After 9/11, President George W. Bush said that those atrocities were "an attack on the American people. They are an attack on our way of life." This attack is exactly the same for the LGBT Community. This was an act of terror directed against us. Though its motives are not yet clear, whether it was IS-motivated or otherwise, LGBT people were the intended targets of terror and hate. What is unclear about that? A man wanted to send a blood-stained message to the LGBT people and we have been forced to hear it. And now we have no choice but to stand up against it.

I wasn't alive for the Stonewall Riots, nor was I old enough to understand the AIDS crisis at its height, but Sunday was a moment when a LGBT tragedy transcended our community and became the focus of the world. And yet the world seems to be trying to gloss over the community at the tragedy's heart. Homophobia has become an uncomfortable topic because people believe that it has gone away. Gay people can marry now, so homophobia is dead, right? Well this is a painful reminder that nothing is ever that simple. And no amount of shifting the blame toward IS, or debating the gunman's own sexuality, will change that. And for some reason, the mainstream media don't seem to be acknowledging that.
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Vigils took place in cities all across the world. LGBT Communities showed their solidarity with each other by standing together in memory of the victims. Candles were lit, hands were joined and tears were shed as we stood as a whole people, spread across the globe. Banners daubed with messages of defiance and support were held proudly aloft. A list of names was read around the world and for that one moment, we all became that little bit closer together. I didn't know any of the victims, but people I know did. It's said that everyone in the world is only six degrees of separation from each other, but in the LGBT Community I believe it can only be two or three. We're a people who flock together, and for that reason, these victims lost their lives. They wanted to be together. And someone saw this cohesion as opportunity for mass-murder. ​And people wonder why we're still banging on about homophobia.

Barack Obama, in his first public address after the incident, insightfully talked about what gay venues mean to the LGBT Community. They're more than just a bar or a club; they are a communion for people who have struggled. Because there is no LGBT person who has not struggled in some way; whether with ourselves, our families or our communities. We are a group bound together by adversity. And for one such venue to become a place of slaughter is beyond my comprehension. Because it really could have happened anywhere. And people wonder why we're still banging on about homophobia.

Three years ago, my cousin was caught in the siege at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi. Miraculously, he escaped the massacre unscathed, but he is still carrying the trauma he suffered today. For the survivors of an attack, the physical and emotional scars will be carried for the rest of their lives and for those who were present in Pulse on Sunday, there will be shock, grief and guilt. But what can we do to help them?
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The lines of people waiting to donate blood on Sunday showed a sickening irony about still existent institutionalised homophobia. The city temporarily lifted its ban on gay men donating blood, a long-contested ban that remains from the AIDS crisis, but yet it still remains elsewhere. And in Washington, US senators ratified a bill that still maintains some LGBT inequality just two days after the attack. And people wonder why we're still banging on about homophobia.

"The Drag scene is constantly evolving and within the intimate group I have had the pleasure of spending time with, they each have a range of original and innovative ideas. Often making their own garments and creating their own look is extremely inventive and is a form of art in itself.

"Drag is so much more than what observers perceive as “dressing up” It’s also about expression and escapism. When in drag, such ‘weak’ traits become extravagantly, flagrantly fabulous. Former vulnerabilities become sublimated into something glittery and glowing, as the utmost influential Drag Queen I know, Cheddar Gawjus pronounced “I have begun to think of drag as more of a hyper realised metaphor for the forms of presentation people are all the time engaged in. It is a form of creative becoming that forces me to be connected to everyone around me. I like it and it makes me feel powerful.”

"Breaking down the drag wall I found great difficulty in, as it is something that is personal to them and I was often given negative responses. After photographing the Drag Queens transformation behind the scenes, I wanted to understand the process and perception of what it felt like to be them. I felt the only way to comprehend this, was to become a Drag Queen.

"Over the space of twelve weeks, I had each Queen transform me into several of their individual personas using the power of make-up and façade. I wanted to create a body of photographic work that explores the creativity and talent of Drag Queens.

"I created a series of images in the studio where I have turned the camera on myself, I sought to discover not only about identity but the nature of representation. Due to the interesting aspect to the work, I am a biological woman dressing as a man who is dressing as a woman. 

"Developing this concept I spent time out of the studio with the Queens; going out in drag which has supported the understanding of gender expectations and the social understanding of gender difference."

In twenty-first century Britain, Trans* equality seems to be the very last hurdle on the road to Equal Rights For All. It would appear outwardly that much progress has been made in this regard in recent years, but though there is now the option to change your gender legally in the UK (a lengthy and very bureaucratic process), there is still no option to be recognised as anything other than the binaries of male or female. For many, these clearly defined roles simply do not fit their gender identity, regardless of their gender assigned at birth, or how they live now. But in many countries, there are whole communities of people living as third, fourth or even multiple sexes, where gender has never been defined as being something either male or female. And for the western world, that relies so heavily on these roles, this can be something very difficult to comprehend.

The term "third sex" is something that has been frowned upon in Europe post-Stonewall. Often used in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to describe gay people, the term fell out of fashion once psychological theorists determined that gender and sexuality are separate entities. But as society began to recognise and accept transgender people living amongst them just as they had gay men and women, those who do not conform to the idea of changing gender - either by maintaining elements of both genders or positioning themselves somewhere between them - are indefinable in legal terms. They could identify as pangender, bigender, genderqueer, androgyne, intergender, "other gender" or "differently gendered", but they certainly do not fit the box of male or female, either at birth or now. And in many other cultures, these would be what would be defined as their Third Sex.
​
In Thailand, kathoeys (or ladyboys) are a prominent and respected aspect of their culture. Though regarded as "second-category-women", the large portion of public opinion believe that kathoeys are a third sex, rather than women born the incorrect gender. And for many kathoeys, this opinion is agreed with. Though they are unable under Thai law to change their gender or assign themselves as kathoeys legally, this third sex is seen as a positive and progressive facet of twenty-first century Thai culture. In fact, many jobs - especially sales roles - are often deliberately given to kathoeys because of the belief they are more positive and charismatic than their "first-category-women" counterparts.

Similarly, on the Indian subcontinent there is a large group of people living as a third sex. In fact, the hijra are the largest third sex community in the world, with six million living all across the region. In India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, this third sex is protected by law and evidence of their existence dates back to the days of the Kama Sutra. Many hijra-only communities exist across the subcontinent, in which they accept young runaways and are led by a guru. Though the word "hijra" is often equated with eunuchs and hermaphrodites in translation into English, most hijra are physiologically male but do not identify as this. In addition, men who date or marry hijra are still considered to be heterosexual, as their sexuality is not compromised by the same gender categorisation as the west. Essentially, the Indian subcontinent's definitions of sexuality and gender are different from ours and subsequently there is no comparable translation.
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The idea of a Third Sex is, of course, dependant on the society in which it exists. To different people and cultures, a third gender may mean a state between man and woman, or being both, being neither, having the ability to swap genders or a completely different category entirely, which is wholly independent from men and women. Where most people think gender to be a sliding scale between male and female, this latter category transcends this and while kathoeys and hijra are both comparable in many ways to gender identities that are legally recognised in the UK, their insistence that they are not transgender is what makes them unique. They identify as something different, separate and distinctive, deliberately removing themselves from the binaries of male and female.

​In Mexico, there is also a similar three-gender system. In the Zapotec region, the muxe are born male but dress and behave like females. Instead of identifying as transgender, these people are considered a third sex, living openly in their community with very little prejudice or discrimination. This system predates European colonisation and the more rural the region, the less discrimination is suffered by the muxe at the hands of westernised Catholicism. The belief is held in their communities that gender is something assigned by God - male, female or muxe - and therefore cannot be changed. Subsequently, very few muxe seek gender reassignment surgery and there is little pressure for them to "pass" as women.
 
In recent years, some muxe have risen to national prominence in Mexico and in the film Carmin Tropical, which appears at HOME this month as part of the ¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Festival, the muxe are put under the microscope when a murder is committed amongst the community. Winning the Best Original Screenplay award at the Ariels (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars), the film is screening on Monday 18th April (18:30) with a Q&A afterwards with actor José Pecina and on Friday 22nd (20.40). The film brought the muxe to national prominence on its release in Mexcio last year and is now bringing this community to international attention. So while we may struggle to understand the idea of a third sex, this film is giving us the opportunity to glimpse inside a community that we may never be able to experience in any other way. And I can't wait to experience it. 

​When I first moved to Manchester, I declared that I didn't like camp men. Based on a general distaste for their hypervisibility, I felt that camp was something that gave gay men a "bad name" because the feminising of men made straight people feel uncomfortable. Due to growing up in an area where heteronormativity was a virtue, I was unable to separate my own difference from the laden expectation that I should, at least in some ways, conform. But after immersing myself in LGBT culture it became abundantly clear to me that my fear of camp stemmed solely from a socially prescribed ideal of what masculinity should be. And just because this ideal is part of the dominant model around which our western society is based, it doesn't mean that something that challenges this is a bad thing. If gender norms are the social version of realist art, challenges to them are the avant-garde and just as in art, there is room for both to co-exist, compliment and confront each other.

Earlier this year, Daniel May, a contestant on Channel 4's First Dates caused uproar in the gay community by declaring that camp made him "embarrassed to be gay". After his date PauBlo arrived wearing high heels, he could not hide his aversion and has maintained this stance on social media ever since, despite the furore it has created. Since the fight for Gay Liberation began there have always been two school of thought on camp and May is a symptom of this. The aim of equality is essentially assimilation, in which LGBT people are accepted as part of society without a second thought to their difference. But for many, this would mean fading into normalcy without any celebration of this difference and so, counterpoint to this, they trumpet with pride the full extremes of their diversity and acknowledge how it was needed to achieve equality in the first place. Both schools offer the extremes of the spectrum; one like a whitewash and the other like a paint explosion in a florist, but the day-to-day reality is somewhere in the middle, where the two almost fully overlap and only the far extremes regard each other with derision. But these two extremes are usually the most vocal about their opinions on the topic.
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The idea of campness in men depends entirely on the idea of masculinity. Stretching back millennia, the ridicule of feminised men has always been comparative to the norm of what a "man" is. In many cultures, the historic boundaries between gender roles have been closer than they are today, but the dominant model prevalent now stems from cultures who put great emphasis on polarising these differences. But how natural is it to gender conform? According to research in western cultures, only 58% of males gender conform during their formative years and it is only through the growth of social awareness that this begins to change. But lack of gender conformity does not equate campness - just because a man doesn't display all the attributes of a socially prescribed "male", it doesn't make him camp. So what exactly is camp? And where does it come from?

The word "camp" derives from the French term "se camper", meaning "to pose in an exaggerated fashion". Most people might identify camp as being the identifiable social attributes that signify homosexuality; some of these may be assumed like clothing or deliberately exaggerated mannerisms, but some may be completely natural, like intonations in their speech pattern, or particularly expressive hand gestures. While many assume that even the latter must be assumed, albeit unintentionally, the likelihood is that camp and sexuality are wholly separate entities. If camp comes from gender non-conformity survived from childhood, its incidence of coinciding with homosexuality is more evident because through their own self-acceptance, these gay men have accepted and embraced both sexuality and camp. Which would explain both the high-camp of some gay men and the complete opposite end of the spectrum, where gay men gender conformed from birth.

Pre-Stonewall, camp was embraced as a virtue amongst the Gay Community. Known as "nellies" in the UK and "swish" in the US, exhibiting camp was seen as allowing the gay signifier to exist. Butch gay men were regarded as deviant, trying to assimilate and not separate from straight society. Camp then was a way of softening their threat; through embracing effeminacy, there was an element of attempting to appear non-threatening. Post-Stonewall, the prevalence of camp was replaced by the Castro Clone - the hypermasculinised celebration of all things butch at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. This sexual objectification of masculinity was a much bigger threat to gender roles, but at least it resembled a model that straight people recognised in themselves. But for many, camp they could not.
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Even while trends swing the other way, there are countless men who could not assume this masculine facade because, for them, camp is inherent in their nature and while some are able to assume gender roles, others cannot. Or would not. However, many people did indeed embrace this change and alter the way they behaved as a result. In the book 'Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone' by Martin Levine and Michael Kimmel, the opinion of one gay man who had witnessed the change in opinion toward camp in the 1970s is quoted:

Then, as now, the value of camp was at the whim of the society in which it existed. And that will always depend on how much people want to gender conform.
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Camp also relies on an element of humour, as well as bravery in the face of contempt. Where gender definition includes weakness as a feminine trait, camp men stand up to the status quo and declare that they will not conform to the expectation that they wear a masculine facade. Whether it's part of our nature or not, camp is a part of the LGBT Community's past and will continue to be part of its future in perpetuity. So while May, many other gay men and even myself of ten years ago may not identify with the sheer flagrancy of camp, there is a difference between not being attracted to it and being embarrassed by it. Masculinity is not genetic; nor is it inherent to our nature, so let's not be weighed down by difference of opinion of how people "should" behave but instead embrace how people do.

I've struggled with my weight my whole life. Aged 23, I was eighteen stone and miserable. I got out of breath when I walked up stairs, I was always too hot and constantly sweating, plus my thighs chafed when I walked more than about a hundred metres. But the health problems weren't what was making me miserable. I was most concerned about what people thought about me. I'd see myself in a mirror and think "You fat, hideous mess". I was bullied at school for my sexuality, but the taunts got all the worse for changing from "poof" to "fat poof" as I piled on the weight. And this fear of being called fat has remained with me my whole adult life.

When I was bigger, I dreamed of being admired for my body. With images of popstars and actors looking tanned and ripped saturating the media, even in the days before the internet, it became my fantasy to be objectified like them. But it seemed like such an uphill battle. I tried Weight Watchers, suffered my way through Slim Fast and Slimming World, but it wasn't until I addressed the reason I comfort ate in the first place that I was able to actually lose the weight. And then, aged 23, I began 'Operation Beautiful'. With a picture of Clare from Steps stuck above my desk, captioned "No one likes a fat Step" for inspiration, I lost a third of my bodyweight in under twelve months. From a combination of obsessive calorie counting, two hours in the gym every day and T5s in wee fistfuls, I finally managed what I'd always dreamt of... before realising that losing weight wasn't enough. Now I was skinny. Skinny wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be ripped.
​
I had swapped one form of body dysmorphia for another. First I hated myself for being too fat. Now I hated myself for being skinny. And for still having slight love handles. And for the stretch marks that came from losing weight so fast. And for the fact I was always hungry. The problem was, because of the fact I had been fat in the first place, the amount of work it would take me to get to - and maintain - that ideal bodyshape would be enormous. And so, reluctantly, I came to terms with the fact the ideal was unattainable.

As I've got older, I've become a lot more comfortable in my own skin, but I have also worked my ass off at the gym for nearly a decade now. I'd be pretty livid if I'd worked this hard for so long and had nothing to show for it, but there have been times during my twenties that I can look back on and think "I looked GOOD!" But I didn't feel it at the time. The whole while I was staring at my love handles and dreaming of having enough money for liposuction. But I DID look good. And I still do. But I can't help holding myself up against that standard of beauty for gay men so entrenched in our culture that states simply that fat = bad.
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Gay men of my generation have been surrounded by images of the idealised male form our whole adult lives. On the one hand we want that in a boyfriend and on the other, we want it for ourselves. And the two are not mutually exclusive. The assumption is that to get that coveted ripped boyfriend, you have to be ripped yourself and the better you feel about yourself, the more you look down on others who aren't trying as hard as you. It's a constant cycle of placing yourself in a pecking order, surveying the room and thinking "where do I fit here?" I had even come up with a system: Five Leagues of Attractiveness, in which you should aim for a partner within or above your own league. And what was it all based on? Entirely on looks.

In the sitcom Will & Grace, there is a long-running joke that Will would usually be described as slim by straight people, but is considered fat by his gay peers. Similarly, a recent study found that a third of gay men experience an anti-fat bias on a regular basis, even when their BMI is classed as 'normal' or below. Fat-shaming is more prevalent than it's ever been, with countless gay men saying that they have tangible experience of anti-fat prejudice amongst their peers and throughout the Gay Community. And these are just the visible factors. With the gay media drenched with images of the Body Beautiful and laden with articles about how to get there, it feels as though we're being told this is all we should care about. And for many people, it's working. Eating disorders are disproportionately high amongst gay men and I'm not just talking about anorexia or bulimia: the supplement-laden obsessive diet-plans associated with that gym lifestyle can equally develop into eating disorders too. And the toll this fat-shaming has had on gay celebrities has been clear too - just look at Sam Smith's dramatic weight-loss, or Joe McElderry's more recent fat-shaming.
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Of course not everything can be blamed on the media. Walk down Canal Street on a Saturday  night and you'll see men who possess that coveted bodyshape on full display, while those who don't are completely covered up. And even within a relationship, you find men comparing their bodies with each other's; sometimes in a rivalry to look the best, but more often self-conscious because of the issues with own their physique. And that's what I think is the saddest about this culture; the prized goal at the end of all this image-centric body obsession is a relationship that transcends aesthetics... but then people now seem to believe they can't maintain it on love alone. With the assumed probability of a direct body comparison within your own relationship, either by yourself or your partner, how could you ever actually be free of body dysmorphia, even when you've found that boyfriend? Because that was the goal, wasn't it? Or was it?

Of course it's true when people say that looking good makes you feel better about yourself. But where does that satisfaction come from? It doesn't come from just staring in the mirror all day, it comes from acknowledgement of your hard work, care and attention from others. It's external validation. And more weight is given to validation from people who look like that themselves. Suddenly, the hotter you are, the more your opinion means; because you'd trust a doctor's opinion about a medical issue, right? And you'd trust a chef's judgement on food. But does that mean that the lower down you are on this subjective hotness scale, the less your opinion means? And if your feelings of self-worth place you right at the bottom, does that mean your opinions mean nothing at all? And so the downward spiral of self-loathing just gets worse and worse. Whatever happened to a compliment just being a compliment?

Of course fashions change and the idealised body image has swung in different directions even over the course of my lifetime. I see pictures of the boys I fancied in the 90s and their skinny androgyny is far from the bronzed and muscular ideal nowadays. For me, now the popularity of the brawny lumbersexual is in full swing, a bodytype that is both attainable and appealing to me is very much in fashion, but why does that matter? Why is there a changeable ideal for the shape of our bodies when surely fashion is about what we wear on them? So I guess we're right back where we started. We find attractive what the media shows us and for the last few years, brawn is back. But how long before it swings back to the emaciated heroin-chic of the 90s? Or the steroid-culture of the late 80s?
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Now I'm not going to stop going to the gym anytime soon, nor am I going to say that people should live on a diet of Fray Bentos pies and Penguin bars (yes, this was me at 21), but wouldn't it be nice if people began to change the way they look at themselves? "Fat" is a word so laden with stigma that it's almost become a swearword. So let's stop using it and instead start looking at ourselves as healthy or unhealthy. Because to anyone watching Will & Grace, Will looked like a man who took perfect care of his health. The joke was that gay men hold themselves up to such high standards that they become impossible to achieve... sound familiar? I was straight skinny, but gay fat and still am. But to all intents and purposes I lead a very healthy lifestyle and it's time I took my own advice. Our general health is more important than just the way we look and the irony is, the healthier we are, the better we look and the better we look, the happier we feel. If we really are attempting to feel better about ourselves, then surely this is the best way at looking at things, right? Though I'd sincerely love to be able to practice what I preach.

​Starring: The Librarians (Charlie, Anna Phylactic, Narcissa Nightshade & Miss Blair), Meth, Virgin Xtravaganzah, Anna Lies, Boo Sutcliffe, Amber Cadaverous, RuJazzle, Ellis Atlantis

The Library's mission has always been to showcase the very best in drag talent and though it often features RuPaul's Drag Race alumni, its choice of performers has always been a little more leftfield. The Library isn't about the queens who look the fiercest, or featuring the most popular faces; it's about individuality, creativity and personality. With past performers including Amanda Lepore and Milk, the event has brought some of the most unique and avant-garde faces in drag to Manchester from around the world. But for their For The Love Of Drag evening - the closing event of the city-wide Queer Contact festival - The Librarians turned their sights closer to home. Casting their net all over the UK, they summoned some of the UK's finest queens to perform at what felt like a drag marathon: eleven queens in four hours. That's a LOT of hair for a small venue like Taurus

With a brief introduction from Canal Street queen Peggy Wessex, The Librarians opened the show with a group performance as usual, with the queens lipsyncing to a Sex And The City/Aretha Franklin mash-up. You put four drag queens together and it's only a matter of time before they do SATC, I suppose. The impersonations were amusing, but obviously whoever got to be Samantha was always going to steal the show and Miss Blair set the bar high for the night. The problem was that it took a while for any of the queens to live up to it...
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As the first performers gave average lipsyncs to some average songs, someone leaned over to me and said "I think we have higher standards in Manchester if this is the best Birmingham can offer!" But as the night went on, the quality and originality of the performances grew and grew. Teasing us with the first of two numbers from London drag legend Meth early in the night, it was clear that the quality we expect from The Library was definitely going to be delivered. Performing a hilarious version of Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy' peppered with Dowager Countess quotes from Downton Abbey, Meth's expressive face and slick comic timing proved the reason she is one of London's most renowned and popular drag performers. Later, when she returned to the stage, she served a zany mash-up of The Four Non Blondes' 'What's Going On' with the iconic "Hey" moments swapped for other choruses with "Hey" in the title... tenuous maybe, but it worked. And though her look was certainly impressive, it was this mixture of music and comedy that made her (and other queens who followed this formula) the standout of the night.

​RuJazzle was also a highlight, by perfectly embracing this formula. The Scottish queen performed two numbers, including a vagina dentata themed rendition of Lady Gaga's 'Teeth', which saw the performer terrorise her assistant before sweetly declaring that "love hurts". Similarly, The Librarians individually served comedic lipsyncs, with Miss Blair owning the stage as a straight-laced school ma'am with a magnificent pillbox hat, Anna Phylactic hurling herself through a fabulously melodramatic rendition of 'MacArthur Park' and Narcissa Nightshade careening through a quasi-psychotic version of 'Stuck In The Middle With You', complete with ear-slicing. But best of all was Charlie's turn as Veruca Salt, smashing a golden egg on stage and demanding that she be bought a pony. The mash-up was hilarious, the lipsync on point and the performance was probably the strongest of the night.

​Starring: Andrew Pollard, Daniel Wallace
Director: Jez Dolan
Writer: Chris Hoyle

When Pride was released in cinemas two year ago, I declared that if you combine two of the things I love the most, I was hardly going to dislike it. In that case it was Wales and gays, but in the case of Life's A Drag it's Manchester and drag queens. Exploring the city's long and multi-stranded drag past, this play of a dress rehearsal of a play tells the stories of some of Manchester's most lauded queens, alongside some more personal accounts of the evolving gay scene since Victorian times. From Foo Foo Lamar to the Family Gorgeous, the cabaret styled docudrama trumpets both the pioneers and the smaller participants of the city's sequined and be-feathered history. And it's everything as entertaining as it sounds.

Drag queens Crystal, the Queen of Fabularity (Pollard) and Jenna Side Sue (Wallace) are rehearsing a presentation - with showtunes, obviously - about Manchester's drag history. From the infamous Hulme Drag Ball to the Divine David, the pair recreate moments of history through storytelling, drama and song, all the while engaging in their own narrative as the drag of auld clashes with the new generation of queens. Crystal is a classic bawdy queen, with sequins and ruffles aplenty championing live performance, while Jenna is a post-Drag Race genderfuck queen, to whom a lipsync is a definite artform. But as they realise there is more that binds than separates them, the two begin to melt the bitchy generational barriers that previously towered between them.

As part of a year-long heritage project created by the director Jez Dolan, the stage show epitomises what is surely the scheme's mission. It often seems that the modern incarnation of the LGBT Community is a modern entity that lives in isolation from its past, so it's easy to overlook how relevant its history actually is. Drag is at its zenith in Manchester at the moment, but its tradition has been strong for generations. In the city that took Foo Foo Lamar to its heart, Manchester has become a creative hub that breeds artists of every genre and every medium, and the art of drag has been no different. But to learn how drag became so entrenched in the city's DNA is to learn how it can continue to relevant today, daring society to laugh at and appreciate something that does not reflect but exaggerates reality. And in Life's A Drag, by projecting this onto a witty narrative the message is conveyed seemingly incidentally as the play focuses just as much on entertaining its audience through exhibiting the medium it is studying. Because at the end of the day, performative drag exists solely to entertain.

Pollard and Wallace are superb as the queens. Lively, bitchy but reflective, the chemistry between them is what drives the show forward. Their versatility is clear when they assume other roles, especially in a scene demonstrating the use of Polari in the 50s and 60s. Seesawing between brash and vulnerable, trashy and refined, they construct and deconstruct their outfits on stage, shattering and then rebuilding the illusion of drag visually as they put its very existence under the microscope. Though this idea isn't exactly original (last year's Uppity did something very similar), its execution here was slick, theatrical and Kneehigh-esque, with its multi-roling and cabaret style as enthralling as its content.
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It's not often that you can say you learned as much as you laughed at a show, but this was a play that insisted on underlining the fun that underpins drag. As they led us through an audience karaoke of 'Around The Old Camp Fire', it was clear that while drag tends to be a temporal art form, its gleeful fun is what makes it live on in people's memories. What will make Life's A Drag live on is its sheer entertainment value alongside its more serious purpose. And as meta as it was to hear Wallace talk objectively of the Family Gorgeous on-stage (he is also Anna Phylactic of the Family Gorgeous off-stage), casting his very modern drag counterpoint to a much more classic queen underlined that the modern Manchester Drag Explosion is just a very small piece of a very big pie. And what a wonderful pie it is too.

AL and AL are best known for their short films, in which live action combines with computer generated images to create dreamlike and usually futuristic worlds. In Incidents Of Travel In The Multiverse, an exhibition at HOME staged to coincide with the live performance of their film Icarus At The Edge Of Time (a collaboration with composer Philip Glass and physicist Brian Greene) at the RNCM Concert Hall and part Queer Contact, the artists exhibit visual art alongside a handful of their short films in an almost pitch black space, lit only with small pools of light that appear fittingly like stars in the blacked out space.

The vestibule of the exhibition is hung with a series of drawings etched in white on black note paper. Inspired by the notations of Glass, the images explore their subverted version of the Greek myth, where Icarus does not travel to the sun, but instead to a black hole on the edge of the universe. With sketches that dredge through his journey - both spiritual and literal - these multifarious images deconstruct his odyssey. The link between science and spirituality is blatant here as images of deities sit alongside mathematical equations, with the drawings sometimes like blueprints, sometimes cartoonish, but all the while stylishly abstract. 

The whole exhibition is slick with its own distinctive style. Black, white and neon, the experience itself is a crisp one, with art spaced with restraint around the cinemas' entrances. With a vast neon sign that spells "I Love You" in binary as you enter, the whole experience feels as simple and restrained as though it were presented by Apple. So it hardly comes as a surprise to see its logo pop up in the drawings. And in an exhibition that explores the origins of computing, it seems only natural that the modern corporate monolith should feature alongside Turing and the abstract beginnings of computing. 

The irony of course is that computing is far from abstract. Mathematic and definite, its logic is mused upon across the exhibition, albeit subverted, dissected and exhibited alongside human imagination. For this is what Turing's computers could not do; creation and innovation remain a wholly human possibility. AL and AL were greatly inspired by Turing's life and works in these artworks, but especially by his reaction to the loss of a young lover. Combining his own mourning with quantum mechanics, he said "I think spirit is eternally connected with matter but not always by the same kind of body", a phrase that inspired the artists to explore Turing's life and legacy. Commissioned by Cornerhouse to make a film about Turing, the pair made the two films that form The Creator installation. With one film set in 2054 in which Superstitious Thinking Machines consult the Tarot as they contemplate marriage, the other is set in 1954 and shows machines from the future travelling back in time to meet their creator. Though grand in both ambition and execution, the scope of the films are somewhat lost within the context of the exhibition where it was only possible to dip an isolated toe into a project that should clearly be seen in its entirety.
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In the Divination Room, the RoboTarot cards from the film are displayed alongside a deciphering of the method in which they should be read. The cards are vivid CGI which, when viewed alongside AL and AL's films, appear like a couture computer game; half SFX porn, half editorial chic. However, there is a disconnect that runs between the fascinating freestyle drawings of the vestibule and the rest of the exhibition. In addition, the display boasts the world premiere of the artists' new film The Demiurge and though these pieces are all linked thematically, their execution is at odds with one another. With The Demiurge appearing like a sci-fi but non-committal Crimewatch reconstruction, the exhibition's slick presentation upstages its own content. Though a delight for anyone intent on decoding the works' semiotics, Incidents Of Travel In The Multiverse is a deceptively dense and annoyingly indecipherable body of work that seems to have chapters and connectives missing. 

Karen Little is an artiste with many strings to her bow. Last featured on Haus of Phag for her visual artwork, Karen has since released the episodic novella Filled With Ghosts, which follows a group of British ex-pats and natives in an area of rural Spain. Their lives interwoven, the book gives each character their own voice as they lead you through their lives in first person narrative, hopping backwards and forth in time as they speak unabashedly about each other.

​Diana and Miguel have a violent past, but while Diana wants to put it all behind her, Miguel is far from repentant for his crimes. His mother, Pilar, sees only the good in her son and does not understand why Diana might want to get away from him. Catalina, Miguel's mistress, is more open to his fiery nature, but both she and his wife know they must protect his fifteen-year-old daughter, Heena. His anger is most visible through his homophobia; he has murdered a gay couple before, so as the life of Aaron gets closer to his - who has just married his partner Ashish - it's only a matter of time before conflict appears.

The story is told in episodic form, flitting between the characters as they slowly reveal their interconnected lives. At times frustrating as the action cuts away just as the story picks up pace, this varied perspective gives a rounded insight into the thoughts and interactions of the characters. The book sticks two fingers up at a linear narrative, choosing instead to be fractured and give only brief insight into motivations and personalities. Despite the book's short length, this draws out the pace to make the plot almost subsidiary to the handful of voices who do not realise their significance to one another. By choosing a multi-first person structure, Karen has subsequently divided the emotional centre to create a distance between the story and the reader to varying levels of success.
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The characters are vivid however. Miguel is a detestable central figure, but makes for a suitably compelling antagonist. But for what is seemingly such a feminist book, it speaks volumes that his is the voice that resounds the most. The female characters, despite their differences, seem to form a united front against this vicious man. Even Diana and Catalina, although opposed as love rivals, cannot seem to bear to dislike one another when they both hate the man they love so much. As such, this is a fascinating commentary on how people can become trapped in abusive relationships, controlled by the grip of an all-powerful monster. Though reprehensible in his actions, Miguel holds a certain charm as well, which is probably what makes him all the more terrifying.

Karen's real skill comes in the voices of her characters however. Each is given a realistic but poetic voice, musing on their own mortality and passing almost unseeing between fantasy and reality. Tila, the friend that links Diana and Aaron, has probably the most interesting voice of all. Teetering on the edge of some kind of breakdown, she is convinced that her disturbing dreams are actually visions of the future, putting weight in the ramblings of her addled mind. Though it's clear that her mind is clouded, her observations and fantastical commentary are sharp and almost witty. Lyrical in their form, she basks in the poetry of her own madness, which sometimes gives her even more clarity than her more astute counterparts.
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Thematically, Filled With Ghosts is a veiled study of guilt. Diana is riddled with it, whilst Miguel refuses to accept it. Heena is oblivious to it, while Tila has absorbed it. Pilar is in denial of it, while Aaron is in danger from it. And Catalina is the victim who cannot escape its effects. Vividly portraying a group of women living in fear of the dominant man, the novella is also a study of the damage masculinity can cause. Miguel is terrified of letting his machismo slip, the threat of that which undermines it is too much for him to bear. Surrounded by women, he refuses to be softened by them, instead ploughing forward like a juggernaut to revel in his power and cement his superiority. The final sentence of the book attempts to challenge this, but the preceding chapters suggest there is little that can... so the reader can't help but wonder where Miguel has come from. Because men here seem to be the enemy; dangerous, volatile and fiery. So when the last page is turned with its inevitably ambiguous ending, I couldn't help but wonder: is the only thing that could stop this man an equally dangerous man? One passage explores whether the world would be better run by women, concluding that it is power that corrupts, not gender; but what is it that gave Miguel his power in the first place? His manhood? The weakness of his wife? His charm? It's this question that made me keep turning the page and it's this that goes frustratingly unanswered.