Imp Queen: The Lost Boy That Found Herself In Drag

The world of drag is getting more and more visibility and garnering heightened creative appreciation thanks to Instagram, Youtube and RuPaul’s Drag Race television series. Thanks to RuPaul’s show, we now know that the first calling card of a queen, besides her look, is her name. How did you come up with yours and how does it is represent you?

My sibling Deven Casey named me Imp back when we were in college. I was wild back then, and whenever I’d start acting particularly bacchanalian (dancing on tables, climbing fences, drinking my weight in flavored vodka), Deven would yell “Imp!” at me. And it just stuck. After we graduated, Deven, our sister Ariel Zetina, and I started a collaborative art project called WITCH HAZEL. We made a ton of performances and music and installations together, most of which were focused on excavating our childhood trauma and exploring our emerging trans identities. That’s when I started billing myself as Imp Kid, and when I started to go by Imp in my day-to-day life. Then, in 2015, I started doing drag more seriously and it became Imp Queen.

Imp Queen

Not everyone has the personality to be a queen, and some drag queens are not really queens outside their performances. What about you? Do you feel more like a queen or an imp in your everyday life?

There’s a lot of discussion happening in drag circles right now about exactly who or what constitutes a “drag queen”- with most of it focused on defining the word “drag”. People fixate on how a performer’s visual aesthetic, performance style, and gender identity relate to drag as an historical art form. But I find people are much less engaged with interrogating the word “queen”… After all, what does it mean to be a queen? To have subjects? To engage diplomatically with your enemies? To occupy the upper-tier of an established hierarchical society? To inherit titles and power generationally? To produce heirs? To be feared and loved? Personally, I think of “Imp” as who I am, and “Queen” as a role I occupy. So I’m an imp (a small, magical creature that’s here to fuck shit up) who is serving the people as a queen (a matriarchal leader who tempers ferocity with grace).

Queens and fairies are labels that have developed within the queer community throughout the last century, and they always imply some form of effeminacy. So, historically, queens were seen as “passive/female” males, while the more socially acceptable looking were considered as “active/ male” males. How do you feel about this subbinary vision within the community?

People learn how to think about and understand the world in terms of dichotomies — good or evil, hot or cold, yes or no. I suspect it’s because our bodies carry some understanding that they are now alive and once were not. That innate awareness of living versus not living colors our whole experience of the world and wires these binary thought structures into our brains. And then, because we live in a hierarchical culture, we assign value judgements to these binaries based on cultural prejudice (so male is placed above female, masculine above feminine, etcetera). But, at some point, you start to realize how bullshit those hierarchies are, and how much space exists in between these binary ideas. And, if you’re like me, you become obsessed with exploring and articulating that space. Before I had any awareness that gender non binary people existed, I understood myself as non-binary. Not just in terms of gender, but in my whole understanding of and interest in the world.

So, labels are clunky, ill- fitting and divisive, however the queer community themselves invented some sort of labels to stereotypically and vaguely de ne a certain type of character, look and personality. If I say twink, bear, jock, butch or sissy I am inevitably stereotyping that person to fit in that category. Do you believe that, despite being flattening and inaccurate, labels are inevitable for the sake of functionality and briefness?

Labels are inevitable, but so is those labels falling out of fashion and being replaced by new labels. And, ultimately, all labels are seeking (and failing) to describe something ineffable — the subjective experience of living as a human being. I don’t deny that there’s tremendous power in labelling one-self. But people are so much more than any one label. I am a transwoman and I’m gender nonconforming and I’m an incest survivor and I’m a person living with chronic illness and I’m a successful young artist. And more than anything, I’m the result of all of the experiences I’ve had, something complicated and mercurial that exists at the intersection of all of these identities. I think it’s just a matter of respecting people’s right to label themselves as they see fit. And trying not to grow so attached to your own labels that you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Imp Queen

On Twitter you present yourself as “trans fashion icon/pop star.” Trans usually stands for transgender, but actually it is a prefix that implies transit, passage or even transience, in whichever form or manifestation. What does your “trans” stand for?

I’m a non-binary transwoman, so trans definitely stand for transgender. But I’m also obsessed with liminality.

From California to Chicago, from actor to drag queen. Your life looks like the emblem of TRANSformation. Were you ever scared or doubted yourself during these passages?

Every single day. Change is terrifying and exhausting and exhilarating, but it’s also just the fundamental reality of living. My changes may seem more spectacular than most, but we’re all of us changing all the time. Whether that truth registers as tragic or comic is entirely up to you.

Drag originally means “dressed as girl” according to the custom of Shakespearean theatre, when men played as women, too. What is your interpretation of this word?

First of all, the Shakespeare “dressed as a girl” story is apocryphal (not to devalue it — some of my favorite things are apocryphal). Simply put, drag is an art form that engages ideas of gender and performance. It has a long history, both as a state-sanctioned, “legitimate” form (Greek drama, Shakespeare, famous female impersonators like Julian Eltinge) and as an under-ground form practiced by marginalized people who sought to undermine or escape state-control (turn-of-the century Molly houses, the Ballroom scene, the Stonewall Riots).

But the vast majority of what we think of as contemporary drag culture, from slang to dance moves to style trends, arose out of Black and Latinx Ballroom scenes and is primarily the creation of Black and Latinx transwomen and queer people of color. Right now, we’re living in a moment where a lot of people think of drag as “a man in a wig,” and a majority of the most successful drag queens are white cisgender gay men.