JudeJube (JJ): Your performances on stage challenge common understandings of gender, performance, bodies, and sexuality. Describe your interpretation of drag as it relates to traditional gender performance.
Tran Apus Rex (T Rx): Drag is about fun, performance, and gender and it is both a representation of who you are and not who you are at the same time…Traditionally drag has been about the performance of the opposite gender. This creates a “visual denial” for the audience. When I perform people think they are experiencing a visual denial of my gender and I take off my shirt and somehow it does not confirm anything, this is a powerful moment. I pursue this ambiguity. I love cocks, but if I were to whip out a dildo in a way that revealed a truth about my body, it wouldn’t be fun for me.
JJ: What has sparked your interest in gender performance
T Rx: Part of the reason I started this project is because I’m becoming man at 30. I had no typical coming of age and now I have to create my own. I’ve been fooling around with the idea of initiation, a rite of passage, liminal stages between male and female. There are normative ideas of what masculinity and femininity are, we cannot escape these, we respond to them. We also disrupt these, everyone does. There are roles that I take on and play with. In all this, I’m trying to figure out what means to be a good man…thankfully, I’ve had a lot of help from women in my life.
JJ: Traditional drag defies gender identity and gender expression, generally from a non-trans perspective. In contrast, what is trans drag?
T Rx: If you’re doing drag and you’re a trans person with a trans body, which mine is, then what does it mean to be opposite? I’ve had other trans identified people assert that I should be a drag queen because that is ‘true drag’ in the sense of my gender. But what is true? My performance of masculinity on stage is very different from my expression of masculinity in my personal life.
JJ: What role does removing clothing play on stage?
T Rx: Going topless is important to my performance. The way that my chest is shaped does not confirm or deny anything… It’s disruptive. After my first few performances I had people coming up to me and not knowing if I was a drag queen with estrogen or king on T or if I identified as a trans man or trans woman. I don’t feel exposed, it’s the audience that is exposed. In terms of trans male bodies or trans bodies in general, taking my shirt off on stage means that other people have to confront their assumptions of what a male body looks like.
JJ: The Glamour Issue features Bloody Betty, a performer you’ve worked with before. What is your experience of her style of drag and performance art?
T Rx: Bloody Betty is a fantastic performer. I am inspired by her. Betty’s performances are characterized by a lot of excess. The blood is so gratuitous it becomes something completely different. In general, I hate gore, I do not watch gory movies, but Betty is changing that for me. She has challenged me because I don’t like a lot of violence on stage. A lot of people in my community are affected by violence and I find it troublesome to have violence on stage, but I’m fascinated by ritual. This is our common ground, where the bodily fluids, milk, hair, power, and gender come together…At the Sad Mag launch I will be disrupting the ideas of what beautiful and what’s glamorous.
Photo by Kale Friesen/ Hair by Amberleigh