Collection of Ephemera Documenting Cross-Dressing, Female Impersonation & Drag in France & Belgium

Eighty-four items of francophone ephemera documenting more than two decades of uses of cross-dressing, drag and female im- personation in cabaret shows, dance clubs, theatrical plays, exhibitions, retail advertising and other settings, largely in Paris, but also with one item from Lille, two from Lyon, one from Marseille and five from Reims—plus one from Belgium and two announcing European travel events.

Much of the material reflects the tradition of drag personalities and performance in gay culture, notably with items promoting La Boîte-à-Frissons/Le Tango, a Paris nightclub that sponsors its own drag troupe, and the comic drag singer Yvette Leglaire, who performs regularly in Paris and elsewhere. Items in the collection also document other uses of cross dressing:

• Thirteen promotional items for stage productions of dramas, comedies and cabaret, most with implicit or explicit queer content.
• Four promotional cards for gallery shows, including two for an exhibition of the collection of historic photographs of gender nonconformity brought together by noted French gay filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz.
• Three brochures, one booklet, one handbill and one information card from Artishow, a long-running dinner theater that presents cross-dressing celebrity impersonations as an attraction pitched to nongay tourists.
• Two postcards from Discothèque La Baronne documenting a Montmartre club where trans women performed in impersonation-style cabaret shows, echoing the overlap between female-impersonation and transgender culture that was common in Paris cabarets such as Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel in the 1960s–1970s.
• The impersonation-trans convergence is likewise represented in a promotional postcard for the 2007 autobiography of Bambi (Marie-Pierre Pruvot), a celebrated transgender elder who started her career as a female impersonator in Paris in 1958, and a promotional card for a concert by Marie France, a transgender singer celebrated since the 1970s whose style echoes that of glamor drag realness.

The collection consists of 41 illustrated quarter-sheet promotional cards and postcards, 18 fliers and half-sheet promotional cards, 14 brochures, six booklets, three tickets, one magazine, one palm card and one coaster.

NOTE: Generally as new; denting to corners of scattered items; one card from DVI (Lyon) includes a handwritten dialog balloon beside the photo of one queen: "Je suis une grosse pute."