The purpose of this Handbook is to provide students with an overview of key developments in queer and trans feminist theories and their significance to the field of contemporary performance studies. It presents new insights highlighting the ways in which rigid or punishing notions of gender, sexuality and race continue to flourish in systems of knowledge, faith and power which are relevant to a new generation of queer and trans feminist performers today.
The guiding question for the Handbook is: How do queer and trans feminist theories enhance our understanding of developments in feminist performance today, and will this discussion give rise to new ways of theorizing contemporary performance? As such, the volume will survey a new generation of performers and theorists, as well as senior scholars, who engage and redefine the limits of performance. The chapters will demonstrate how intersectional, queer and trans feminist theoretical tools support new analyses of performance with a global focus.
The primary audience will be students of theatre/ performance studies as well as queer /gender studies. The volumes contents suggest close links between the formation of queer feminist identities alongside recent key political developments with transnational resonances. Furthermore, the emergence of new queer and trans feminist epistemologies prompts a reorientation regarding performance and identities in a 21st-century context.
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1 Introduction: Queer and Trans Feminist Performance |
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1 | (26) |
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Part I Subversive Performance: Breaking Through Codes of (Un)Intelhgibility |
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2 Butch Woman: A Meditation |
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27 | (14) |
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3 The Butch Monologues: Performance as a Bridge from "Border Wars" to "Playground" |
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41 | (22) |
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4 On Translation: "Homo Incorporated: The Triangle and the Farting Unicorn" |
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63 | (16) |
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5 The Undisciplined Body: Phia Menard and Her Experience of Organic Performance |
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79 | (20) |
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6 Performing Improper Desires: The Unintelligibility of Convert Black Muslim Women |
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99 | (14) |
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7 Im/Possible Un/Veilings: Asifa Lahore and British-Asian Muslim Drag Performance |
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113 | (20) |
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8 Alienated Flesh at the Place of Trauma and Death: Unearthing the Black (Queered) In-Human in Suzan-Lori Parks' One-Character Short Play Pickling |
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133 | (28) |
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Part II Whose Queer Currency? Ex/Changing CIS White Fragility |
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9 You Can't Hold My Baby: An Open Letter to Predominant White Institutions of Theatre Arts |
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161 | (6) |
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10 Activating Cis-White Fragility: The Oppositional Gaze in Travis Alabanza's Left Outside Alone |
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167 | (24) |
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11 Between Mess and Method: Performance Art Economix/tures |
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191 | (12) |
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12 Whose Pride Is This Anyway? The Quare Performance ofthe#BlackPride4 |
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203 | (20) |
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13 It Happened to #Metoo: Queer Feminist Critique of Cisgender White Feminism |
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223 | (20) |
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14 Lip-Syncing for Our Lives: Queering Dissent in Queer & Now a Lip-Sync Spectacular |
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243 | (22) |
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Part III Queer Crossings and Transformations |
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15 The Case of Deborah de Robertis's Performance Art, Nudity, and Institutional Reprisal |
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265 | (18) |
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16 Deviants, Queers, or Scissoring Sisters of Men?: Translating and Locating Queer and Trans Feminisms in the Contemporary Arabic-Speaking World |
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283 | (20) |
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17 (Trans-)Forming Gender Ideologies Through Performance in Russia: Cyberfeminist Somatexts of the Maailmanloppu Theatre |
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303 | (22) |
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18 I am Nepantla: The Bodies that Matter in Chicana/o and Mexican Art |
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325 | (22) |
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19 Queerings and Crossings: The Post Natyam Collective's "The Sins of Such Wonderful Flesh" |
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347 | (22) |
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20 Performing the `Pleasure in the Poetic' |
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369 | (12) |
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21 Towards a Queer Laboratory |
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381 | (18) |
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Part IV Healing and Revolution: Activism as/in Healing |
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22 Healing Chaos in Motion |
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399 | (6) |
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23 Adrian Piper's Psychedelic Drag |
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405 | (14) |
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24 Narcissism and Healing in Queer Feminist Cabaret in Australia |
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419 | (10) |
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25 Discursive Contortion and Healing Inhabiting Yoga Bodies Queerly |
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429 | (18) |
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26 Witnessing Rawness: Community & Healing |
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447 | (8) |
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27 Cuir Sudak Transpossessions and Other Magical Mutations (or, About the Practice of Healing the-Selves Otherwise) |
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455 | (14) |
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28 Decolonizing the University with Dark Matter's Healing of/in Failure |
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469 | (30) |
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29 Healing Through Art and Activism |
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499 | (6) |
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30 Conclusion: Towards Queer and Trans Feminist Solidarity |
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505 | (14) |
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Index |
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519 | |
Sandra DUrso (she/her) is an Australia-based performance and theatre studies researcher and critic, who has published on feminist performance art and performance art under legal states of exception. She has also published work on Australian theatrical modernism and contemporary Australian poetry. Her co-authored monograph with Denise Varney, Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White: Governing Culture was published in 2018. Tiina Rosenberg (she/her) is Professor of Performance Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden, and has previously been Professor of Gender Studies at Stockholm University and at Lund University, Sweden. Rosenberg has written extensively on performing arts, feminism, and queer theory. Her most recent books include Dont Be Quiet, Start a Riot. Essays on Feminism and Performance (2016), Mästerregissören: När Ludvig Josephson tog Europa till Sverige (The Master Director: Bringing Europe to Sweden, 2017),and HBTQ Spelar Roll Mellan Garderob Och Kanon (LGBTQ Plays a Role Between the Canon and the Closet, 2018). Anna Renée Winget (they/them) is currently a guest lecturer at Stockholm University, Sweden, and a mental health project manager at RFSL, Swedens national organization for LGBTQI rights. They hold a doctorate in drama and theatre from the Universities of California at Irvine (UCI), USA, and at San Diego (UCSD), USA, where they completed their dissertation, Performing Possibilities: Trans-Healing in Activist Performance. They received their MFA in Playwriting from Boston University, USA. Their newest play, Grand Canyon Pussy, presented by Sorority Productions, was performed in Los Angeles in 2018.