Queens “Campin’” Onstage: Performing Queerness in Mae West’s “Gay Plays”

Abstract

Mae West’s brief career as a playwright, mostly of her own star vehicles, led to multiple charges of obscenity and solidified her notoriety. This essay positions West’s “gay plays,” The Drag and The Pleasure Man, as unique instances of queer modes of performance and spectatorship. These productions, although both remarkably short-lived, staged queer communities, embodied in drag balls, that challenged social hierarchies both in- and outside the playhouse. West’s plays were targeted by vice societies and played key roles in both the conception and early implementation of the Wales Act, a New York obscenity law created to restrict representations of homosexuality. The court proceedings of the trial of The Pleasure Man reveal that prosecution of the gay plays was as much about policing implied offstage sexualities as it was about enacted onstage behaviors.

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