Joe E. Jeffreys

Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian, dramaturge, and video artist whose work has received funding from the Jerome Foundation.

He has published in academic journals including The Drama Review, Theatre History Studies, and Women & Performance, essay anthologies including We Will Be Citizens: New Essays on Gay and Lesbian Theatre and Art, Glitter and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America, encyclopedias and in the popular press including The Village Voice, Out, and The Advocate. Jeffreys has been interviewed about the art of drag by a wide range of media outlets including Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC, Entertainment Tonight, L’Obs, Vice and Food and Wine and featured as a talking head on the subject in documentaries including P.S. Burn This Letter Please, Ruminations and Miss Rose Wood.

Jeffreys teaches a wide range of Major Playwrights courses for the Drama Department including ones on Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, and Samuel Beckett and the Absurdists. He has led the department’s LGBTQ+ performance class for many years including a full semester devoted to examining RuPaul’s Drag Race and its Impact.

As a dramaturge Jeffreys worked on the world premiere of Tennessee William’s last full-length play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, the NYC premiere of William’s Green Eyes, and Michael Baron’s Charles Ludlam bio inspired play The Whore of Sheridan Square. Recently Jeffreys served as a research consultant to Tina Landau and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Steppenwolf production of their original work Ms. Blakk for President.

For the past decade Jeffreys has actively video documented the NYC drag scene and this work has screened internationally at festivals, museums and galleries including The Museum of Arts and Design and The Tate Modern. Samples of his video work can be seen at https://vimeo.com/joejeffreys

Joe E. Jeffreys is a multi-platform performance scholar. Internationally recognized as a drag historian, he has been interviewed for features on the subject by media outlets including Time, Vice, The New York Times, Time Out New York, Food and Wine and Popsugar.com.

Jeffreys has published in book anthologies, encyclopedias, academic journals, including The Drama Review and Theatre History Studies. as well as the popular press including The Village Voice. His scholarship also encompasses video essays screened at galleries, museums, including the Tate Modern, performance spaces, including P.S. 122, Dixon Place, La Mama and The Brooklyn Academy of Music, and film festivals internationally.

Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian. He produces Drag Show Video Verite, a multi-platform project capturing, preserving and screening the moving image record of the faces and places of NYC’s vibrant drag scenes past and present, famous and forgotten. He has published in book anthologies, encyclopedias, the popular press and academic journals from Time Out New York and The Village Voice to The Drama Review, Theatre History Studies and Women & Performance. His video work has been awarded funding from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Jerome Foundation and screened at museums, galleries and festivals worldwide including the Tate Modern in London, the Façade Video Festival in Bulgaria, MOMA, The Museum of Arts and Design and as part of the opening of the new Whitney Museum of American Art. Jeffreys has taught theatre studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Drama Department, Purchase and Stony Brook University. He has served on the board of directors for Dirty Looks, the committee for PS 122’s Ethyl Eichelberger Award and worked as dramaturg for numerous downtown and off-Broadway productions including the world premiere of Tennessee Willam’s last full length play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere.