Diane Torr

Who is Diane Torr?

Diane Marian Torr is an artist, writer and educator, particularly known as a male impersonator and for her drag king, man-for-a-day and gender-as-performance workshops. Torr currently lives and works in Glasgow where she is Visiting Lecturer at Glasgow School of Art.

Diane Torr grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland and later attended Dartington College of Arts, England, where she studied with dance luminaries Mary Fulkerson and Steve Paxton, art pioneer Paul Oliver, and theatre innovators, Peter Hulton and Peter Feldman. She graduated in 1976 and arrived in New York that same year. Her first dance performances in New York were in downtown loft spaces in 1978. Diane Torr took class at the Cunningham Studios, and began her practice of the Japanese martial art of Aikido at New York Aikikai in 1977 and in 2003 achieved the rank of sandan. Torr received her MFA degree from Bard College, New York in 2004. From the onset of her career in the late 1970s, Diane Torr has been a leading figure in creating performance that challenges contemporary edicts and perceptions of gender and sexuality. With her drag king workshops, which she began teaching in 1990 in New York, with artist Johnny Science, Torr was a pivotal force in the establishment of drag king culture in the US, Europe, Istanbul and New Delhi. In collaboration with performance artist, Bridge Markland, Diane Torr co-directed the highly successful godrag! Festival in Berlin - a one-month long festival of women performing masculinity, femininity, androgyny and drag.