Monique Jenkinson is a storied choreographer, performer, and author of Faux Queen: A Life in Drag. Her alter-ego Fauxnique made herstory as the first cis-woman ever, anywhere, crowned as a pageant-winning drag queen, and her original works have toured nationally and internationally in wide-ranging contexts from nightclubs to museums.
I got to speak with the multi-faceted artist about her work, life, and the world premiere of her solo show Fauxnique: How Do I Look? Running April 17-19 at ODC here in the Mission. You can see it live, tickets are sliding scale, and there will be digital streams of the ODC Theater Spring Season as well.
Fauxnique
Larissa Archer: “With everything going on in America—the assaults on art forms like drag—what do you think the role of your work is right now?”
Fauxnique: “To keep making work. Really, for all of us, it’s about continuing to create—and creating a multiplicity of work. Not everything has to directly address what’s happening in the world all the time.
My work, being contemporary dance that uses drag, sits adjacent to a lot of these issues. Sometimes I’m right in the middle of them, sometimes not. As a cis woman doing drag, I’m both adjacent and centered in different ways. But ultimately, it feels important to just keep making.”
Do you feel welcomed in the larger drag world as a cis woman?
Fauxnique: “Absolutely. I always have.”
Larissa Archer: That’s beautiful.
Fauxnique: “Yeah. My drag persona was really birthed in a very welcoming, generous community—what I’ve called “drag doulas.”
I’ve known about you for many years, even before conversations about gender as a construct were more mainstream. What drew you to playing with gender back when fewer people were doing it?
Fauxnique: “I fell in love with drag.
I was deeply in the world of contemporary dance in the early ’90s—taking Merce Cunningham technique classes at 10 a.m., three times a week. Then a friend—my gay bestie—dragged me to the Stud, to Trannyshack.
I fell in love with the performers. I fell in love with the show. I suddenly understood why girls screamed at the Beatles—I was that screaming fan.
Then I saw Justin Vivian Bond perform and thought, “Oh—they’ll let me perform.” That sense of openness—that all kinds of expression were welcome—pulled me in. From there, people were like, “You’re in. You bring something interesting.”
I never looked back. I also realized I’d always been drawn to drag aesthetics. I grew up doing ballet—and ballet is drag. It really is.
At the time, I was also immersed in a kind of postmodern dance aesthetic—what I call an “aesthetic of refusal.” No spectacle, no acknowledgment of the audience. It was starting to bore me.
I wanted sequins, spectacle, bubbles—fabulousness. And I found that in drag. I also found a performance practice I hadn’t had before. In dance, there’s so much buildup to performance. But here, I was performing every week. That changed everything.
And honestly, what surprised me most was how kind everyone was.”
Is there anything from your dance training that you bring into drag? Any specific warm-ups or ways you center yourself before performing?
Fauxnique: “Not really in a ritual sense. I don’t think of Fauxnique as a different gender—I think of her as an amplification of femininity. My dance training prepared me for that, though some of it has a muscularity that reads as more masculine.
So with Fauxnique, I reconnect to the femininity in ballet and other forms—hands, gestures, stylization. In terms of preparation, I treat lip-syncing like choreography. I rehearse it the same way I would a dance piece. And now I sing, too.”
Monique Jenkinson at rehearsal for Fauxnique: How Do I Look?
Are you singing in this show?
Fauxnique: ”I will—one full song, and then the tail end of another that leads into a different vocal state.”
Are there performers who still inspire you?
Fauxnique: “So many. My fairy drag mother, Glamamore, always inspires me. My friends inspire me. Artists like Justin Vivian Bond, Sandra Bernhard, and Cindy Sherman.
Sometimes I feel like if Cindy Sherman and Sandra Bernhard had a baby—that’s where I sit.”
What would you say to get people in the door?
Fauxnique: “This show exists in a different context for Fauxnique. She lives both in cabaret and in contemporary art spaces. I recently did a cabaret show at Oasis—very accessible, playful. This piece is more like her experimental art-school sister.
It deals with time passing—questions like: Am I a dancer, or was I a dancer? It’s about being a middle-aged performer and navigating that.
I’m also trying to hold two modes at once: loving my audience, while also making work as if I don’t care what anyone thinks. So—it’s a little meaner, sadder, more experimental than my cabaret work. But hopefully it helps people channel what they’re feeling.
The piece revolves around a deceptively simple question: How do I look?
And I go very deep with that.”
Do you think that question lands differently for you as a cis woman than it might for a cis male drag performer?
Fauxnique: “I don’t know. I do think concerns about aging and appearance are very present, especially in queer male communities—but honestly, we all deal with it.
Most of us have been thinking about how we’re perceived since we were 10 or 11. Long before we had the emotional capacity to process it.
That’s one of the feminist undercurrents in this work—the experience of being looked at, being regarded.”
It’s interesting—people don’t always think of drag as engaging with something like aging.
Fauxnique: “Exactly. On the surface, it’s ‘gender this, gender that’. But within gender, there are so many other layers."
I’m an artist who uses drag, dance, and performance to make a very particular kind of work. So yes, you’ll see drag—but it’s not a drag show.”
Not a drag show.
Fauxnique: “Not a drag show. There are songs, a self-roast, some dancing—and moments of deep weirdness.”
I love that.
Fauxnique: “Good. That’s a good sign. The more personal my work gets, the more people respond to it. Even when it feels self-indulgent, it ends up resonating.
Some artists make work about the world directly. Others make self-portraits—and those can invite people to see themselves. We’re always perceiving each other. You can never know the “you” that I know, and I can never know the “me” that you know.”
Is there anything else you want people to know?
Fauxnique: “There will be costumes. There will be drag. There will be laughs.”
And you make your costumes?
Fauxnique: “Some of them. That pleated piece—I made that recently. It’s just two large circles of fabric sewn together.
Other pieces were made by my collaborator, Mr. David—also known as Glamamore—who creates these modular costume elements that transform into multiple forms.”
Amazing. Thank you so much.
Fauxnique: Thank you.
Fauxnique - How Do I Look?
Friday, April 17th @ 7:30pm | ASL Interpretation
Saturday, April 18th @ 7:30pm | Post-Show Artist Talk
Sunday, April 19th @ 5:30pm | Additional Wheelchair Seating
ODC Theater's 2026 Spring Season presents experimental and rich dance-based performances from Fauxnique, Fact/SF, and Mariana Valencia. Curated by ODC Theater Creative Director Chloë L. Zimberg with Resident Curator Zaquia Mahler Salinas, the season embodies ODC's unwavering commitment to stay curious, inspire audiences, and empower innovative artists.
Each work will be available for 1 month after its release. Purchase now and be notified as soon as the newest Digital Encore goes live.
Fauxnique: How Do I Look? Digital Encore Available mid-May
