Photos by Keith Johnson

It’s time for the “No Kings But Drag Kings” sign-holders to put their dollar bills where the boys are: Seattle’s international Emerald City Kings Ball is coming back this month.

It started with a passing comment in a greenroom between drag kings Faberg’ee Greg and Sherwood Ryder. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had something like a players ball but for drag kings and super safe?” Faberg’ee Greg recalls saying to Sherwood Ryder. 

It seemed like a good idea. At the time, there was only one local king show. They’d put on a two-day showcase of kings and “beings,” a gender-neutral term for performers, and “everybody’s feedback was that they wanted more of it.”

Now in its fourth year, the festival has expanded from its home at the Skylark Cafe into the much larger Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. 

“Each night we have close to 20 performers,” Ryder says. “It is going to be a show for the masses.” More than 160 people applied for this year’s ball. The festival also has a spectacular list of headliners and featured guests, including King Molasses (winner of King of Drag season 1), Throb Zombie (runner-up of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula season 5), a number of local favorites, and surprises to be announced on the Emerald City Kings Ball Instagram. 

On Saturday night, performers will compete for the title of High King Supreme, currently held by the incomparable Velvet Ryder of Vancouver, Canada. An Imperial Duke and a Grand Marquis are crowned as well. Last year, those titles went to Seattle’s locally beloved Sid Seedy and Chance Hazard. Each of them will perform a stepdown, allowing you to see the talents that brought them their wins. Velvet Ryder has a perfect combination of sexy swagger, rhinestones, and camp that won him the big crown with a literal panty-dropping performance. Seedy’s score of the Duke title came from a truly impressive and ferocious lip sync, and Hazard took the crown for his signature brand of absurd props and cheeky humor.

With escalating transphobia, the terror of ICE, local performers being doxxed by conservative media, and sweeping cuts to arts funding, it’s notable that an international drag king festival is succeeding at all. 

“The world is very hard right now. I want us to understand that without each other, we wouldn’t really have anything,” says Ryder. “It’s important that we see each other and support each other.” 

Greg says they’ve “thankfully weathered the storm” and that they are receiving “tons of support from the community and different sponsors.” He notes that “we all need a collective breath. I think the fantasy and the opulence of the Emerald City Kings Ball will make some things feel okay for a while.” 

The team is committed to inspiring and collaborating with other producers, as well. A recent success, Thrust Fest held its first year in Boston, produced by Krēme Inakuchi, Riley Poppyseed, and Throb Zombie. “They actually got the idea to produce together at our festival last year,” Ryder says. “Now there’s going to be another king festival happening in Charlotte, North Carolina. We want to continue to build this platform and have this space for all of the kings throughout the country who aren’t in a safe space to be able to be who they are and to perform their art.”

“To be in an event where there’s 50 other kings all in one space, you get to see how diverse everybody’s talents are,” Harley Sayne says. “We try really hard to curate our lineups every night to show the range of different types of performers.”

Sayne started as an audience member, then began assisting with the festival and formally became a coproducer in 2024. “Drag has been an impactful way for me to move through life more authentically to myself,” Sayne says. “I’ve had a hard time throughout my life finding a lot of meaningful connections with people, and I always felt like the odd person out. When I found drag, I found so many people who felt the same way I did. Getting to be a part of the festival, getting to feel that atmosphere, was something that I had never experienced before. It was like an instant friendship with everybody.” 

These festivals address a significant need, as kings have had to advocate for respect, representation, and even equal pay within broader drag spaces. “I would love for there to be kings on the main stages everywhere,” says Ryder. “I would love for there to be no more ‘token king on a cast.’ I would love for there to be representation in which when there is a cast that is deemed diverse that it shows the diversity. I want to see equal pay—kings deserve more than getting half of what the queens are making.” 

Greg says when they were initially developing the festival, “drag kings weren’t really taken seriously as drag artists. I felt like that wasn’t fair, because I know so many dynamic, amazing people that are drag kings, but because they’re drag kings they get ignored, or there’s that one or two in the community that fill a hole in a show so that it can say it’s inclusive.” 

Sayne points out, “We’ve had Drag Race on TV for two decades now without having a drag king [competition]. It’s pretty normal for us to be the only king booked in a lineup of otherwise queens. This is the first year with the King of Drag that there’s ever been a drag king competition show on TV. So that’s been massive for representation.”

This year, King of Drag aired its first season and has become a partner of Emerald City Kings Ball. “When we got the email, we were like, ‘Is this happening? Do we need to pinch each other?’” Ryder says. “The partnership has been great. It’s unreal to have this platform that has started with Murray Hill, who has been fighting the good fight for us for a very long time. To see kings now on a platform, to be loved and respected, and for people internationally to witness the camaraderie and the brotherhood that exists in king spaces, makes my heart happy. The fact that we got to be part of the prize package, I couldn’t be more proud.”

Sayne expressed his appreciation that King of Drag also honors the work of existing king legends, such as the show’s host, Murray Hill. It’s important to note that drag kings are by no means a new phenomenon. As part of the festival’s workshop portion, king icon Mo B. Dick will be giving his lecture on drag king history. Workshops are a new element of the Kings Ball and will be ticketed separately. They’ll include things like how to paint and clowning in drag, among other skill shares. 

The festival does its own work to represent a strong spectrum of styles and talents. Ryder uses the phrase “kings and beings” to be inclusive of the performers that they book. “When people talk about drag kings, they’re often talking about masculine-identifying individuals, but there is so much more to drag and art, especially when it comes to nonbinary or gender-diverse people in how they define their art. Not all of them identify as a king, but some of them identify as a thing or a being or an entity or an alien. I feel that it’s important to include that representation.”

“I would love to see people forget about what’s under the makeup and what’s under the art and who is wearing the art,” Greg says. “I would love to see people stop going, ‘Oh, well, how can you be this if you’re this?’ or ‘How can you be this if you’re that?’ There’s so much more to it, and if we allow ourselves to fall into those boxes, we’ll never get out.”

It all aligns with the mission statement of the Emerald City Kings Ball: “to celebrate and highlight Kings and Beings of Drag. We hope to inspire, offer representation, and shine a spotlight on the creativity and talent in this often-overlooked section of the drag community.”

The Emerald City Kings Ball is at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute Sept. 25–27, 18+. It will be ASL interpreted and masks are encouraged.