Bette Bourne

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Biography

Bette Bourne born Peter Bourne was a British actor, drag queen, and activist. His theatrical career spanned six decades. He came to prominence in the mid-1970s when he adopted the name "Bette" and a radical posture on gay liberation. He joined the New York-based alternative gay cabaret troupe Hot Peaches on a tour of Europe and then founded his own alternative London-based gay theatrical company, Bloolips, which lasted until 1994. Beginning in the 1990s, Bourne took on more traditional acting assignments in both male and female roles, sometimes in fringe theatres and campy new dramas, but also in classics by Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Noel Coward. He toured widely in one-man biographical shows playing Quentin Crisp and as himself. He generally eschewed such labels as drag queen or female impersonator, preferring to describe himself as "a gay man in a frock". Rather than "mimic a male stereotypical conception of womanhood", wrote one theatre journalist, Bourne sought "to find a different way of being a man". Asked in 2010 if he had left his radical politics behind he said: "One doesn't just stop being what one is. I'm still out there, still full of fury and rage, but on the whole I do try to keep up a very pleasant façade." Peter Bourne was born in Hackney, East London, into a working-class family. He had two sisters and a brother (actor and singer Mike Berry). His mother was an amateur actress.