A new festival celebrating the legacy of Worcester born Music Hall legend Vesta Tilley will take place this May.

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK's Ginny Lemon will be starring amongst many other renowned queer performance artists. The event hopes to establish Worcester as the ‘spiritual home of Drag Kings’, according to Worcester Theatres.

The Arts Council England supported inaugural event will take place at the Vesta Tilley Studio at The Swan Theatre in Worcester and will take place on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd of May 2022.

The festival will feature local and nationally recognised drag kings including West Midlands’ Don One who hosts the national drag king competition, Man Up.

Over two days, Worcester Theatres’ Saucy: Queer Performance Worcester Style will present local, national and international theatre, dance, art and cabaret that explores male impersonation, trans and non-binary identity and expansive ideas of gender.

Producer of Saucy, Daniel Somerville said; “We are so thrilled to have put together a festival that truly honours the legacy of Vesta Tilley by celebrating male impersonation and Drag Kings. I see Worcester becoming the spiritual home of Drag Kings. The festival is also a chance to put gender expression and identity under the microscope.

Though it may have been so for Vesta Tilley, now-a-days it is not just a case of Drag Kings being women who impersonate men. Many Drag Kings identify as non-binary and the intersection with trans masculine identity and female masculinity are aspects of performance that no other festival brings together in quite the same way. It will be a fun weekend that also provokes and questions.”

Tickets are available through the Worcester Theatres website worcestertheatres.co.uk, where you can purchase tickets for individual events (£8/£6) or buy day (£10) or weekend passes (£16).