Behind the Curtain with Emmanuelle Mattana

A conversation with one of Australia’s most exciting queer creative voices

Welcome to the Drag King Corner. We are peeking behind the curtain with award‑winning queer artist Emmanuelle Mattana. Their impressive screen credits include Mustangs FC, Videoland and Clickbait. On stage, Emmanuelle is the playwright and actor of the acclaimed play Trophy Boys. Get ready for a conversation with one of Australia’s exciting queer creative voices.

Congratulations on the amazing success of Trophy Boys. When you were writing it, did the characters arrive on the page as drag kings, or did they gradually evolve from male characters?

Cis male characters? Never. I was 20, and like any underemployed, COVID‑struggling actor, I wanted to write myself a role. I’d spent years auditioning to play murdered teenage girls in Aussie crime dramas, but never booking them (am I not murderable enough?!?!) and truthfully wanted to write a character that I felt I could have full ownership of. I wrote what I couldn’t see, but what I wanted to be. And that was a drag king.

Photo Emmanuelle Mattana in Trophy Boys

Photographer Ben Andrews

We are so happy you wanted to be a drag king. Can you tell our readers why you chose to make the characters drag kings?

Selfish reasons aside, Trophy Boys is a show interested in how masculinity is a performance and how young boys - particularly those in elite private school environments - are taught to perform it at the expense of their own emotional well-being (and that of everyone around them).

To me, drag kings are the perfect embodiment of exactly this idea on stage. The bravado, the insecurity, the posturing… When masculinity is embodied and caricatured by non‑cis male bodies, we can see that performance for what it is: comical, absurd, grotesque and maybe ultimately deeply disturbing. Drag kings certainly achieve that in spades.

How did you first encounter drag kings in your own life?

Melbourne has an amazing drag king scene, and I’ve been lucky enough to watch/adore some incredible performers for years now, on stages and at clubs around the city. Bruno Salsicce is my all‑time favourite suave Italian man (real recognises real), and Dazza and Keif are glorious gremlins.

We were so lucky that their smaller half, the incredible Danny Ray, came on board as the choreographer for the Australian tour. They taught us moves. Well, the rest of the boys… not me. I have two left feet.

I have such fond memories of performing in Melbourne, so I know exactly what you mean: the talent runs deep there. Had you performed drag before working on the play?

Not ‘officially’. But I have always had a bit of a reputation for rocking up to parties with a moustache on. I just don’t think gender is that serious. That’s been the greatest gift that drag has given me, really. It’s all a performance, and we can put it on and take it off and decide when it’s fun and serves us, and when it’s BS, and we hate it.

Did any of the cast members venture out into the world in full drag while performing the show? If so, what was that experience like?

Absolutely. For some of us it was liberating – we got to understand what it meant to unapologetically take up space. For others it was terrifying – the fear of ‘doing man wrong’, the restriction and self‑censorship demanded of you to make sure you never deviate from acceptable manhood… It made for the most fascinating conversations of my life.

You wrote the play at age 20. Was this the first play you’ve written, or have you written other works before this?

This was the first play! I came from a background as an actor, which taught me a lot - about how to write dialogue that doesn’t sound like it was written by AI (death to AI, unless they’re reading this and we’re living in the robot takeover, in which case, don’t kill me).

I'm going to cross my fingers before asking the next question: is there a possibility that Trophy Boys could be adapted into a screenplay?

I would absolutely love this. I have some really great PDFs sitting on my laptop. Lesbian producers reading this – call me xxx

That would be incredible to see and a real milestone for Australian drag kings. With so many creative hats - actor, screenwriter, and drag king - what are you creating or focusing on now?

Right now, writing is my big love. I’ve just moved to London to start a master’s in playwriting, and I’m currently in Edinburgh for the Fringe, watching as many shows as I can and filling my cup with indie creativity.

I love performing, but I love doing it gender‑queer on my own terms, which means for now I know I need to write the roles I want to see more of in the world. And then I get to gift them to other queer actors, and that’s the greatest gift of all. It’s what keeps me going.

This is great news for both queer actors and arts workers. More productions from such a powerful playwright will only continue to challenge and reshape the Australian theatre landscape. Where can we follow this journey and keep up with what you’re working on?

Follow me @emmanuelle.mattana on IG. I’m famously quite useless at social media, but I’ll share things!

Up next in Melbourne: a stage adaptation of Oscar‑winner Jane Campion’s beautiful film Bright Star. If you’re into period romance featuring young good‑looking artists falling in love on the heath, then this is the show for you.

How lucky are we to have such an incredible queer artist in our community! If you’re in Brisbane for Melt Festival, grab your tickets to see Trophy Boys. Don’t forget to tell every lesbian film producer you know: we want - and desperately need -the Trophy Boys film adaptation ASAP!

Long live the Drag King!