John Epperson

Epperson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. He took lessons in classical piano from an early age. After high school, he enrolled at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from Belhaven, he got a job playing piano in Colorado, but in 1978 he moved to New York City and became a full-time rehearsal pianist for the American Ballet Theatre in 1980. He began doing drag queen performances at East Village nightspots such as Club 57 and the Pyramid Club. Epperson quit his job with the American Ballet Theatre in 1991 to perform full-time as Lypsinka. He returned to his position at American Ballet Theatre on a part-time basis. ==Work==

Lypsinka first appeared in 1982, and for the first time Off Broadway in September 1988 when Epperson's act was a late-night addition to the bill of Charles Busch's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. She has appeared in evening-length solo shows Off-Broadway, including Lypsinka! The Boxed Set and Lypsinka! As I Lay Lip-Synching, However, both those named shows were first produced by Epperson in San Francisco, and Lypsinka! The Boxed Set was titled ''Lypsinka's Greatest Hits'' in San Francisco. According to Epperson, the prototype for Lypsinka was singer Dolores Gray. Epperson was a frequent performer at Wigstock. At Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. Epperson performed an autobiographical theatrical solo show, Show Trash (2004), out of drag, talking, playing the piano and singing in his own voice. In Winter 2004, in a different drag role, Epperson played the Wicked Stepmother in the New York City Opera's revival of Rodgers-Hammerstein's Cinderella in a cast with Eartha Kitt, Dick Van Patten and Renée Taylor. Epperson appears in a speaking role in the 2010 film Black Swan as a rehearsal pianist for a fictional New York City ballet company. More recently in New York in 2014 he appeared in the Off Broadway event Lypsinka! The Trilogy, a production that included three of his shows: revivals of Lypsinka! The Boxed Set and The Passion of the Crawford and John Epperson: Show Trash. The latter production is autobiographical and in it Epperson tells of growing up in Mississippi, moving to New York, working at the ballet, creating Lypsinka, etc. In 2015 he played Queen Aggravain in the Off Broadway revival of the musical Once Upon a Mattress. In 2016 he appeared at Feinstein's/54 Below and Joe's Pub in his cabaret show John Epperson: The Artist Principally Known As Lypsinka. In early 2017 he acted a male role in a play by Wallace Shawn Evening at the Talk House. The Shawn play was produced Off Broadway by The New Group, and included in the cast were Shawn, Matthew Broderick, Larry Pine and Jill Eikenberry. In 2001 he posed for a PETA ad campaign promoting vegetarianism. ==Awards==

For his show Lypsinka! The Boxed Set Epperson won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Sound Design, the LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Solo Performance, and the Helen Hayes Award for Best Non-resident Production in 2003. ==Quotes==

• "I don't like the term 'drag queen,' because it describes an amateur. Why not call me an actor? I suppose drag artist would be okay." • Epperson has commented that, 'It's so easy to do misogynistic drag humor' but that he has 'deliberately tried to avoid that'. He adds that, 'A lot of women, when they see the show, felt liberated and empowered.' (...) He intends his own work as 'a commentary of performance in general and drag performance specifically.' However outrageous Lypsinka may be, she is always at heart affectionate toward the women to whose work she performs." ==See also==