Despite the hardship and violence of war, personnel across the armed forces created pockets of joy and camaraderie that lightened spirits and offered brief respite from anxiety. Theatre, dance, and song were vital to sustaining morale during even the toughest periods of conflict. Comedy routines, celebrity impressions, and musical and dance performances were central to regular programming. These were often accompanied by the age-old art of female impersonation.

Although subject to censorship, female impersonation remained a consistent feature of military life throughout World War I and II. Its presence left a legacy that influenced public perceptions of the military and carved a unique space, however limited, for ambiguity and queerness within the rigidity of military life.

This is the first of two Cenotaph Stories exploring the history and legacy of female impersonation in the military. Part I covers the introduction of the tradition and World War I, discussing the enormous success of the Digger Pierrots, before concluding with an analysis of the place of female impersonation in interwar society. Part II focuses on the reemergence of the art during World War II and Compulsory Military Service, and the space this inadvertently carved for queer personnel within the ranks.

It is important to note that although the terms overlap, “female impersonation” and “drag” have distinct histories and different relationships to heteronormativity and gender expression. Each performer mentioned in this article has their own relationship to gender identity and sexuality, which these blogs do not seek to speculate on.

The history of female impersonation

Female impersonation can be traced to some of the earliest forms of entertainment. From China and Japan to Ancient Greece, men portrayed female roles, often because women were prohibited from performing.¹ In the ancient western world, men not only played women on stage but also wore women’s clothing for religious ceremonies, sporting events, or rituals.² This tradition continued in the 16th and 17th century Shakespearean theatre and later influenced the development of minstrel shows, which shaped the culture of female impersonation in the United States and beyond.³

In minstrel shows, female impersonation was combined with blackface and bawdy humour, relying on sexist and racist stereotypes, particularly those targeting African American women.⁴ These performances reinforced harmful ideas, portraying femininity as exaggerated and absurd. The comedic style established by minstrelsy fed directly into vaudeville, which flourished in the early 1900s, and overlapped with the long-running tradition of pantomime, where the ‘pantomime dame’ and other cross-dressed roles were a staple of family entertainment.⁵ Vaudeville shows combined disparate acts including comedy, juggling, singing, dancing, with circus elements such as acrobatics, and trained animals.⁶ During the early 20th century two strands of female impersonation thrived: broad caricatures rooted in minstrel traditions, and polished portrayals of vaudeville inspired by European theatre.⁷ The vaudevillian actors were beautifully costumed and prided themselves on performing femininity and seduction so accurately that they were indistinguishable from ‘real women.’⁸

These forms remained popular through the 18th and 19th centuries, adapting to the social and political climates of each era. Rooted in the exclusion of women from the stage, female impersonation carried a tension, both reinforcing and challenging ideas about gender. In all-male settings, where roles could shift more freely, female impersonation found fertile ground—helping to explain its enduring place in military life.

Many credit the naval tradition of “crossing the line”, which has been prevalent since the 18th century, as the start of ritualised drag and gender reversal within the military.⁹ The initiation ritual for sailors crossing the equator for the first time often involved role reversal, costuming, and public performance.¹⁰ Outside of the Navy, the first soldier-led shows featuring female impersonators appeared in the United States in the late 1800s, quickly cementing itself in military routine and entertainment.¹¹ The global mobilisation of World War I accelerated the spread of the practice to other national forces, including New Zealand's. 

On troopships, this became an elaborate initiation involving role reversal, costumes, and staged humour. A vivid 1917 account from the New Zealand troopship Waitemata describes “Father Neptune’s Day,” in which the god of the sea, his red-haired consort, court officials, and “bears” (enforcers) arrived in full costume to “try” and “sentence” select crew and soldiers.¹²

The ceremony blended pageantry and slapstick. Offenders were charged with comic “crimes,” such as sporting an inadequate moustache or changing clothes too often. Sentences included being lathered by the ship’s barber, dosed with dubious “medicine,” and unceremoniously dropped into a canvas pool. The Waitemata’s programme lists dozens of named roles, many in wigs, gowns, or exaggerated garb, echoing pantomime traditions familiar to New Zealand audiences.

While the official purpose was to welcome novices into Neptune’s realm, these events also created sanctioned spaces for theatrical performance, costuming, and occasional gender impersonation, as illustrated. Such shipboard entertainments were part of the social fabric of the voyage, shaping the performance culture New Zealand soldiers brought with them to camps and theatres ashore.

Digger Pierrots

World War I brought New Zealand service personnel into close contact with a far wider range of people than most had ever encountered. Removed from the routines of civilian life, both experienced personnel and unwilling conscripts found themselves coexisting under the tense conditions of warfare. While dominant narratives emphasise the unrelenting violence, the daily reality was often punctuated by long stretches of monotony and boredom.¹³

On the European Front these extended periods of inactivity prompted military authorities to recognise the need to maintain morale. In 1917, at the northern French base camp of Étaples, a group of soldiers formed the Digger Pierrots,¹⁴ named after the Italian pantomime tradition. These amateur performers staged concert nights filled with dances, well-known musical numbers, sketches, and comedic routines. Throughout the course of the war, their shows evolved into “polished and highly entertaining revues” and their troupe began to tour through camps and hospitals in wider regions of France, Belgium, and England.¹⁵

The Digger Pierrots’ programmes, “with song and dance, quip and joke, and much diverting by-play” kept audience entertained for up to two and a half hours.”¹⁶ The exceptional success was due in no small part to the extraordinary talent of one of their founding members Stanley Lawson. A trained musician from Dunedin,¹⁷ Stanley had extensive experience in Shakespearen productions, musicals, and costume recitals. Initially performing light comedy, he soon introduced a female impersonation act that drew widespread acclaim.¹⁸

Reviewers noted that “very few in the audience could distinguish him as any other but a real lady, his actions and voice being so true to life – feminine life.”¹⁹ Comparisons were frequently made to American female impersonator Julian Eltinge, who was widely heralded as the best of the profession in the 1910s. In 1919, the Hawke’s Bay Tribune declared him “easily the best female impersonator ever seen in this country.”²⁰ One reviewer described,

“Mr Lawson’s Pierrette is quite a charming girl, refined, coquettish, and with just that trace of affectation in speech that bespeaks “the perfect lady.” … Her daintiness in dress, movement, and figure was all part of exceedingly clever impersonations – so real that many would not be convinced that it was not a young lady.”²¹

Praise for Stanley’s art intentionally emphasised the ambiguity and complexity of his performance, often switching between pronouns to blur the lines of identity and attraction. In the context of an all-male audience, this ambiguity resonated strongly. Removed from family life, soldiers were often more open to exploring new ideas of gender and sexuality, despite their repressive environment. Military service, particularly under conscription, forced a degree of passivity and powerlessness, prompting “a series of disjunctions and rapid changes to the emotional and sexual worlds of men and women.”²² Female impersonation provided a means to “think through performance about masculinity, femininity, mothers, lovers, sexuality, and pleasure,” offering an escape from war through playful transgression.²³

When these soldiers finally returned home, they were reabsorbed into a society that focused on pre-war morals and traditionalism. The Digger Pierrots continued to tour by popular demand, but without the protective veil of military life, public perceptions shifted.

The sexual undertones of Stanley’s performances, and the attraction some men had felt towards him, were downplayed. Instead, the press highlighted his appeal to fashionable women, as the Oamaru Mail noted that, “ladies will be interested in the dresses which Private Stan Lawson, the female impersonator of the Digger Pierrots, is to wear at the performance to be given in the Opera House next Wednesday.”²⁴

With the end of war came the loss of small freedoms military life had unexpectedly afforded, closing the space for service men to explore queerness, gender, and power structures. Returning men were expected to reintegrate seamlessly into the family, the workforce, and the pre-war social order. 

Inter war years

Despite the continued success of the Digger Perriots and other wartime troupes, the inter-war years saw a dramatic decline in the popularity of female impersonation.²⁵ The “golden age” of the art, which ran from 1900 to the 1920s, had presented it as a mainstream form of family entertainment largely free from “perceived sexual deviance.”²⁶ 

The vaudeville style personified by Stanley Lawson and Julian Eltinge faded with the arrival of the first sound films (“talkies”) in 1927.²⁷ The shows that survived into the 1930s were often labelled “pansy” acts, explicitly caricaturing the effeminate homosexual men who had originally popularised the craft.²⁸ As one commentator noted, “female impersonation is no longer confined to the delicate, sly satire of a Julian Eltinge… The stage is full of chorus men, with all the symptoms of homosexuality worn on the sleeve.”²⁹

The shift in tone reflected rising homophobia and coincided with the growing visibility of contemporary drag. In the 1930s, men and women who would now be recognised as part of queer communities began to establish social spaces through gala balls and other forms of nightlife.³⁰ Drag presented a different relationship to sexuality and gender than traditional female impersonation. By discarding the protections previously afforded to the art, drag explicitly disrupted the heterosexual gaze and made the subtext of queerness far more overt.

The story continues in Part II, which explores the Kiwi Concert Party in World War II, post-war decline, Māori performance traditions, and the legacy of Carmen Rupe—highlighting how these shaped queer resilience and connect wartime entertainment with today’s more inclusive defence force.

REFERENCES

¹ The Different Level, “History of Drag: From Antic Greece to RuPaul’s Drag Race”, 1 September 2021.

² Spencer McDaniel, “In Ancient Greece, Children Wearing Drag Was a Religious Obligation!”, Tales of Times Forgotten, July 10, 2022.

³ The Different Level, “History of Drag: From Antic Greece to RuPaul’s Drag Race”, 1 September 2021.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Britannica, “vaudeville”, last updated 17 July 2025.

⁷ The Different Level, “History of Drag: From Antic Greece to RuPaul’s Drag Race”, 1 September 2021.

⁸ Bean, Annemarie (2001), Female Impersonation in Nineteenth-Century American Blackface Minstrelsy, New York University, ProQuest 304709304

⁹ The National Museum Royal Navy, “Pride Month 2023 – What are ‘Crossing the Line’ ceremonies”, 13 June 2023.

¹⁰ The National WWII Museum New Orleans, “GIs as Dolls: Uncovering the Hidden Histories of Drag Entertainment During Wartime”, June 15 2021.

¹¹ Eddie Kim, “The Show Must Go On”, Slate, 10 September 2023.

¹² 1NZEF: 21st Reinforcements. (1917). Father Neptune’s day on the New Zealand transport 75, “S.S. Waitemata” and other items of interest. St. Clements Press. Auckland War Memorial Museum. 

¹³ G. Bolton. Warrior entertainers: the story of the "Digger Pierrots" of the New Zealand Army in World War I (Syndey: Robyn Ianssen Productions, 1997), p3.

¹⁴ National Army Museum, “Boosting Morale on the Western Front: The Digger Pierrots”.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ ‘The Digger Pierrots’, Waikato Times, Volume 91, Issue 14217, 18 November 1919, p7.

¹⁷ Lost Christchurch, “The Misleading Lady”, October 12, 2022.

¹⁸ George Clyne Lyttleton, Pierrots in Picardy: A Khaki Chronicle, (1916-1918).

¹⁹ “Theatre Royal”, Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 16869, 29 July 1919, p2.

²⁰ “Entertainers”, Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume IX, Issue 173, 8 July 1919, p3.

21 Ibid.

²² Lisa Z Sigel, “Best love’: Female impersonation in the Great War”, Sexualities, Volume 19, Issue 1-2, (24 January 2016), p101

²³ Ibid, p100.

²⁴ “Amusements”, Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13820, 28 July 1919, p4.

²⁵ Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two, (America: The University of North Carolina Press, 7 September 2010), p6.

²⁶ Ibid, p72. 

27 Ibid, p73.

28 Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Darryl W Bullock, “Pansy Craze: the wild 1930s drag parties that kickstarted gay nightlife”, The Guardian, 14 September 2017.

Further readings

Burns, C. (2012). Taste of Civvy Street: Heroic adventure and domesticity in the soldier concert parties of the first and second world wars. Journal of New Zealand Studies, (13), 115-127. 

Sophie Elborough & Victoria Passau. Female Impersonation in WWII and beyond. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira.