Kate aka Frank Lee Madir on Asexual Drag King Performance

What if the way you've been allowed to play with gender has been smaller than you realised?

Not because you lacked imagination. Because the options around you were narrow, repeated, and quietly enforced.

That's part of what makes this conversation with Kate aka Frank Lee Madir so powerful. It's not only about becoming a Drag King. It's about discovering that there was more room all along, and then learning how to move inside it.

Watch or Listen

You can listen to the full episode here 

Chapters

Chapters in this episode:

00:00 Welcome to The Kings of Joy Show
01:02 Kate's Drag King origin story
03:08 Creating Frank Lee Madir
06:08 Body freedom, kilts, boots, and movement
09:14 Taping and discovering a new centre of gravity
11:01 Costuming, sewing, and queer craft
15:18 First solo work and finding a performance language
18:25 Asexuality and being an ace Drag King
24:06 Audience response, stage codes, and Drag King culture
29:38 Political performance and protest on stage
35:10 What aspiring Drag Kings should know
38:31 Building a thriving Drag King scene

What You'll Hear

• Seeing Queers of Joy and realising this was possible
• Creating Frank Lee Madir from comic, costume, and memory
• Belly freedom, kilts, and stompy boots
• Taping and moving through the world differently
• What it means to be an ace Drag King
• Stage presence without sexual cues
• Political protest as Drag King performance
• Why permanent space matters for community

The Story

Kate aka Frank Lee Madir brings a kind of depth to Drag Kinging that I find very moving.

Not because the conversation is solemn. It's not. There's delight here, humour, sharp observation, and a lot of costume joy. But underneath all of that is something serious and generous: an inquiry into what gender expression can become when you're finally not limited to the usual options.

Kate says something in this conversation that feels central to the whole episode: she didn't realise quite how much the way she could play with gender had been restricted by the people around her and their expectations.

That lands.

Because many of us assume gender exploration is simply about courage. That if you're brave enough, you can just do whatever you want. But that's not really how most of us live. We're shaped by what's visible, what's rewarded, what bodies are welcomed into certain aesthetics, what styles are treated as legible, and what forms of masculinity or femininity get read as acceptable.

Kate came into Kings of Joy already identifying as genderqueer. This wasn't a story of first discovering gender complexity from scratch. It was something subtler and, in many ways, just as important. It was about discovering that even a life already lived with some queer and political awareness could still be more open, more embodied, and more playful than it had been.

That's one of the reasons this episode matters so much.

Seeing Possibility

Kate first found Kings of Joy after a friend brought her to a Queers of Joy show. She watched a group of people on stage doing something spectacular, and she was told they were new. That it was achievable.

That detail matters. Sometimes what changes everything isn't seeing perfection. It's seeing possibility.

From there, Frank Lee Madir began to emerge.

Frank started partly through an older queer cultural reference point - Stuart from Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel - but he quickly became much more than a reference. He became a way to grapple with masculinity, with ageing, with body shape, with style, and with what it might mean to inhabit a more male presentation without having to squeeze into whatever look happened to be popular or approved.

Clothing Is Architecture

There's a lot in this episode about clothes, and rightly so.

Kate has a long background in sewing, costuming, and making. That knowledge isn't decorative here. It's part of how she understands self-presentation and transformation. Clothing isn't just surface. It's architecture. History. Story. Politics. Access. Constraint. Invitation.

So when Kate talks about finding a kilt for Frank, or choosing stompy boots, or working with vintage tails, or making giant sculptural headdresses out of foam, it's never only about getting dressed. It's about building a way in.

Body Revelations

One of the most powerful parts of the episode is Kate's description of what changed physically through Drag Kinging.

She talks about letting her belly hang out. About not having to apologise for boots. About wearing the belt lower. About finding a different centre of gravity. About taping and the sheer freedom of moving without bits moving.

These aren't small things.

They're body revelations. The kind that can sound practical on paper and feel life-changing in the body. That's one of the gifts of Drag Kinging. It lets people learn movement from the inside out. Not only how they want to look, but how they want to occupy space.

What It Means to Be an Ace Drag King

This episode also opens up a conversation that's still far too rare in Drag King spaces and queer performance more broadly: what it means to be an ace Drag King.

Kate and I have had many conversations over time about asexuality and Drag Kinging, and I was so glad to hear some of that reflected here. Because so much stage language - not just in Drag, but in performance generally - relies on sexual cues. The reveal. The tease. The flirtation. The strip. The audience knowing exactly when to holler because something's been framed as hot, suggestive, or explicit.

Kate doesn't reject performance. She doesn't reject bodies. She doesn't reject skin. In fact, she's very clear that she's all for people showing skin and all for loosening the social panic around nudity.

What she's doing is something far more interesting. She's asking: what else is possible on stage? What other emotional beats can create tension, connection, power, delight, and applause?

That question is incredibly generative.

In one of her solos, Frank performs in a layered vintage top hat and tails look, gradually removing garments, but not in a stripping way. Not in a sexual way. Instead, the performance explores affection, kinship, objects, gesture, and mood. It asks the audience to read intimacy differently.

That's sophisticated work.

It's also profoundly useful, because it broadens what Drag King performance can be for everyone. Not only for ace people. Once you loosen the assumption that charisma must always pass through sexuality, you open up a much bigger terrain of expression.

Building Audience Culture

Kate also reflects beautifully on audience literacy. On how Drag King audiences learn when to cheer, when to laugh, when to respond. On how those codes are collectively built. On how different it felt performing in a room that didn't yet share that same language, and what that revealed about the culture Kings have created together.

That part of the conversation really stayed with me.

Because Kings of Joy isn't only producing performers. We're also building an audience culture. A set of shared understandings. A sense of what kinds of masculinity, what kinds of queerness, and what kinds of performance matter here.

Politics on Stage

Kate's later solo takes all of that in another direction again: politics.

Her protest-based piece, built around slogans, placards, movement, and a Freddie Mercury-inspired jacket found in the Kings of Joy wardrobe, isn't interested in seducing the room in a conventional sense. It's interested in strength, urgency, solidarity, and systemic change. It begins with Block 13 and expands outward into the structures that produce harm again and again.

This is another thing I love about Frank Lee Madir. He reminds us that a Drag King can be dapper, historical, ace, affectionate, political, theatrical, and still deeply compelling. There's no one model to copy. There are many ways in.

That line from Kate is one of my favourites in the whole episode: "There are many ways in."

It's true for newcomers. It's true for seasoned Kings. It's true for people who think they're "not performers." It's true for people whose gender journey has been long, interrupted, messy, or private. It's true for people who want one five-week burst of transformation and for those who want to stay and keep unravelling the thread for years.

Needing Infrastructure

At the end of the conversation, Kate speaks about wanting permanent space. A more integrated scene. A Sydney that's less dispersed. A community with more room to gather, think, create, and build together beyond the bursts of rehearsals and performances.

That longing feels very real to me.

Because Drag Kinging changes people. But it also needs infrastructure. It needs continuity. It needs places where queer and gender-diverse people can keep meeting one another outside the scarcity logic of one event, one show, one rehearsal, one borrowed room.

Kate's episode makes that clear.

This isn't only a story about one person's persona. It's a story about what becomes possible when embodiment, politics, craft, and community all meet on stage at once.

The Movement

Season 2 of The Kings of Joy Show is documenting the growth of a global Drag King movement through conversations that go beyond surface-level transformation. These are stories about performance, yes, but also about bodies, politics, community, and the possibilities that open when gender is no longer treated as fixed.

Kings of Joy is a global Drag King community helping LGBTQIA+ people break free from constraints around gender, sexuality, and self-expression so we can be 100% at home in our own skin. Kate's story reminds us that there are many ways in, and many more ways to keep growing once you arrive.

Start Your Own Drag King Journey

If you're feeling the pull to explore Drag Kinging yourself, start here:
danicalani.com/dragkingname

About Danica Lani, The King Coach

Hey you 👋 I'm Danica Lani - also known as The King Coach. I've mentored over 150 first-time Drag Kings since 2020, and I'm here to say: if you're feeling the pull to explore gender through performance, you're not alone - and you're not too late.

Whether you're new to this world or quietly dreaming of stepping into your masculine side on stage, there's space for you here.

Kings of Joy is a global Drag King community helping LGBTQIA+ people break free from constraints around gender, sexuality, and self-expression - so we can be 100% at home in our own skin.

✨ Ready to name your King? Download Claim Your Drag King Name in 4 Simple Steps - a free guide to choosing your Drag King name.

About Kate aka Frank Lee Madir

Kate aka Frank Lee Madir is an activist, educator, archivist, and community builder working across queerness, neurodivergence, informal education, unemployment, and community housing. As Frank Lee, he enjoys having something meaningful to say, experimenting with how others read him, and exploring what it means to be an ace Drag King.

In this episode, Kate shares how Kings of Joy opened up new possibilities in gender expression, embodiment, costuming, and performance. Frank Lee Madir brings together dapper style, political commentary, queer craft, and a thoughtful challenge to the assumptions many people make about what a Drag King performance is meant to be.

Production Credit

The Kings of Joy Show is produced by Bambuddha Studios. Their support has made it possible to document and share these conversations with care and cultural integrity. Learn more.