List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Theorising Queer Performance -- Claiming Representation: The Performance Politics of Gay Sweatshop -- Community and Nation: Staging Queer Histories -- Legitimately Queer: Identity Claims in Theatre-In-Education -- Pride and Shame: Developments in the Performance of Queer Protest -- Staging Difference: The Rise of Queer Arts Festivals -- Networked Identities -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Introduction -- Theorising Queer Performance. Claiming Representation: The Performance Politics of Gay Sweatshop -- Community and Nation: Staging Queer Histories. Legitimately Queer: Identity Claims in Theatre-In-Education -- Pride and Shame: Developments in the Performance of Queer Protest -- Staging Difference: The Rise of Queer Arts Festivals -- Networked Identities
Summary
If the 1970s saw the first appearance of lesbian and gay dramas, the 1990s have seen the rise of a broader but more troublesome claim on queer performance. If no longer tied to the politics of 'coming out' and the question of visibility, for whom and how does queer performance act? Drawing on queer theory's questioning of identity, representation and authenticity, this volume presents a genealogy of performance practice which begins in discussion of Gay Sweatshop (the UK's first openly lesbian and gay theatre company) before turning to examine where its foundational priorities and aspirations have been transformed in works and practice of the last twenty years. Grounded in practitioner and audience accounts of performance, this book examines works produced in a range of new contexts to argue for the significance of collaborative practices across Britain: as national and community histories; as protest and activism; as theatre-in-education and applied theatre; and within the UK's queer arts festivals
