Abstract
Theatre and live performance experiences can, if they are powerful, move an audience — to emotion, to thought, even (on rare occasions) to action. Like many theatre experiences, the moments described above ‘moved’ us when we saw them. We were aware that they resonated in a particularly profound way for us, in a way that was different from what we had otherwise experienced in our personal theatre-going histories. We recognised that these moments were transgressive, and that something was happening that felt out of place with our expectations. We were each moved to question what exactly had caused such a profound affective connection with the work. This ‘something’, we realised, was queer. For both of us, the search for an answer led us (eventually) to queer theory. But before we got to theory, we started with performance — as makers and spectators and, eventually, as academic researchers and teachers. In particular we recognised that our encounters with the spaces of theatres, gay/lesbian bars and queer cabarets, the performances we saw in them and the people we saw them with, were about us experiencing something on a corporeal, gut level in a specific location at a particular time and being attracted to it. We knew something had happened to us, and the people around us, and we understood that it was connected to sexuality, community and identity.
Pearls coming out of a vagina (whose?) at Duckie in a ballroom in north London (which?); mid 1990s?
A body squatting on a stage with legs stuck out — gender unrecognisable. National Theatre, London. Early 1990s?
A chorus line of 9 naked men and one woman dressed as Elsa Lanchester’s Bride of Frankenstein tap dancing in clogs to the sound of Ministry (or the Butthole Surfers?). Los Angeles, 1991.
A body bleeding on a studio floor (mid 1990s).
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Campbell, A., Farrier, S. (2016). Introduction: Queer Dramaturgies. In: Campbell, A., Farrier, S. (eds) Queer Dramaturgies. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411846_1
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