Performance artist Diane Torr didn’t have time to change for the opening of the 1989 Whitney Biennial. Wearing a fake mustache and men’s clothes, she had posed as a man for a magazine photo spread that afternoon. Torr had cross-dressed a few times onstage but not on the street. “I thought I would go as this guy and give all my friends a laugh,” she says. But what happened next wasn’t funny. “No one recognized me. I kept waving at friends, and they would just ignore me or walk away.” She stayed incognito and “found a beer and a wall to lean against.”
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Soon a woman began flirting with Torr. “I just stood there, looking dumbfounded. It wasn’t the kind of behavior women do to women, not heterosexual women.” She walked away, but the woman followed. Torr’s only means of escape was the men’s room. “I thought, God, this just proves the adage, Treat them mean, keep them keen. It was at this moment I thought it could be really interesting for women to be able to find out something about their own behavior and also to see what it’s like to go into the world as a man.”
Torr’s male characters are based on famous figures or men she’s met. Her misogynist “Danny King,” a fictional father of four and member of the NRA, evolved from a disastrous experience on the Jerry Springer Show, where she was joined by two of her students opposite a surprise guest claiming to be from a male separatist group. “He was talking about how women were taking over, taking men’s jobs and guys better get in gear.”
The Drag King Workshop (for women only) is held this Saturday from noon to 5 PM at Randolph Street Gallery, 756 N. Milwaukee. The workshop costs $60. Torr will then perform and screen short films at the gallery at 9 PM; tickets are $10, $6 for students and seniors. Call 666-7737 for reservations. Torr will talk about her work at 6 PM Monday in the auditorium of the School of the Art Institute, Columbus and Jackson; admission is $3, free for students and seniors. Call 443-3711 for more.
