For over the thirty years, drag performance has been examined for its utility to subvert or reinforce traditional gender roles. Many of these examinations have focused on performances that emphasize subversion and separated drag into two categories: the progressive drag that subverts, and the regressive drag that reinforces. While this approach has provided a wealth of understanding about drag performance and gender roles, drag can be examined without separating its subverting/reinforcing aspects. If drag is seen as the consideration of a given gender performing the not given gender, then another consideration can be made to the subverting performing the reinforcing. This new consideration, referred to here as the divine, can provide new utility for drag performance and its role in understanding gender.

My first semester pursuing my MFA in Voice and Speech Pedagogy I vocal-coached an openly gay student playing a straight character who would mask his sexual identity in such a manner that his performance became stiff and uninteresting. Rather than using his personal identity as an asset in the pursuit of a successful performance, his chosen vocal tactics removed any sense of theatricality from his performance. I confronted the student and suggested such extreme vocal suppression diminished the quality of his overall performance. He replied, "So you want me to get the gay out."His use of the phrase, "get the gay out" to describe a fuller adaptation of his sexual identity to suit the character fascinated me and led to me to create a performance seminar course that used open acknowledgment of Camp performance styles as a valuable way to prepare students, gay or straight, for careers on the stage and screen. This thesis is a record of the course taught in the spring of 2007; CAMP: RIDICULOUS THEATRE AS SERIOUS DRAMA.