Drag Race: Hemsley Winfield’s Black, Queer Salome

This article examines Hemsley Winfield’s 1929 Salome —a production defined by racial and gender drag, Harlem nightlife, queer performance, and emerging Black theatre and modern dance aesthetics. A respected theatre artist, Winfield turned his sights on crafting a New Negro Art Theatre, with Salome as a defining piece. In reexamining his drag Salome I aim to broaden the production’s significance within a larger temporal, theoretical, and cultural performance framework. By deploying both racial and gender drag, Winfield subverted familiar epistemologies, dramaturgies, sexual hierarchies, and performance practices while defining a new Black art theatre with a unique performance style that I am calling “Black, queer art drag.”