1. INTRODUCTION: QUEER AND TRANS FEMINIST PERFORMANCE; Sandra D’Urso, Tiina Rosenberg, and Anna Renée Winget.- 2. BUTCH WOMAN: A MEDITATION; Sue-Ellen Case.- 3.THE BUTCH MONOLOGUES: PERFORMANCE AS A BRIDGE FROM “BORDER WARS” TO “PLAYGROUND”; Alyson Campbell.- 4. ON TRANSLATION: GAY INC.ORPORATED THE TRIANGLE AND THE FARTING UNICORN; Sam Bourcier.- 5. THE UNDISCIPLINED BODY: PHIA MÉNARD AND HER EXPERIENCE OF ORGANIC PERFORMANCE; Stefania Lodi Rizzini.- 6. PERFORMING IMPROPER DESIRES: THE UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF CONVERT BLACK MUSLIM WOMEN; Jan Mendes.- 7. IM/POSSIBLE UN/VEILINGS: ASIFA LAHORE AND BRITISH-ASIAN MUSLIM DRAG PERFORMANCE; Claire Pamment.- 8. ALIENATED FLESH AT THE PLACE OF TRAUMA AND DEATH: UNEARTHING THE BLACK (QUEERED) UN-HUMAN IN SUZAN-LORI PARKS’ ONE CHARACTER PLAY PICKLING; Jaye Austin Williams.- 9. YOU CAN’T HOLD MY BABY: AN OPEN LETTER TO PREDOMINANT WHITE INSTITUTIONS OF THEATRE ARTS; Leelee Jackson.- 10. ACTIVATING CIS WHITE FRAGILITY: THE OPPOSITIONAL GAZE IN TRAVIS ALABANZA’S LEFT OUTSIDE ALONE; Beck Tadman.- 11. BETWEEN MESS AND METHOD: PERFORMANCE ART ECONOMIX/TURES; Esther Neff.- 12. WHOSE PRIDE IS THIS ANYWAY? THE QUARE PERFORMANCE OF THE #BLACKPRIDE; Zane McNeill and Kyra Smith.- 13. IT HAPPENED TO #METOO: QUEER FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF CISGENDER WHITE FEMINISM; Tiina Rosenberg.- 14. LIP-SYNCING FOR OUR LIVES: QUEERING DISSENT IN QUEER & NOW. A LIP-SYNC SPECTACULAR; Finn Lefevre.- 15. THE CASE OF DEBORAH DE ROBERTIS’S PERFORMANCE ART, NUDITY, AND INSTITUTIONAL REPRISAL; Sandra D’Urso.- 16. DEVIANTS, QUEERS, OR SCISSORING SISTERS OF MEN? TRANSLATING AND LOCATING QUEER AND TRANS FEMINISMS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ARABIC-SPEAKING WORLD; Joel W. Abdelmoez.- 17. (TRANS-)FORMING GENDER IDEOLOGIES THROUGH PERFORMANCE IN RUSSIA: CYBERFEMINIST SOMATEXTS OF THE MAAILMANLOPPU THEATRE; Tatiana Klepikova.- 18. I AM NEPANTLA: THE BODIES THAT MATTER IN CHICANA/O AND MEXICAN ART; Amarilis Pérez Vera.- 19. QUEER CROSSINGS AND TRANSFORMATIONS; Sandra Chatterjee, Cynthia Lee, and Shyamala Moorty.- 20. PERFORMING THE PLEASURE IN THE POETIC; Cassils in dialogue with Sandra D’Urso.- 21. TOWARDS A QUEER LABORATORY; Ben Spatz.- 22. HEALING CHAOS IN MOTION; Sydney Flynn Rogers/ Miss Barbie-Q.- 23. ADRIAN PIPER’S PSYCHEDELIC DRAG; Denise (Deni) Li.- 24. NARCISSISM AND HEALING IN QUEER FEMINIST CABARET IN AUSTRALIA; Sarah French in dialogue with Sarah Ward.- 25. DISCURSIVE CONTORTION AND HEALING: INHABITING YOGA BODIES QUEERLY; Camilla Damkjaer.- 26. WITNESSING RAWNESS: COMMUNITY AND HEALING; D’Lo in dialogue with Anna Renée Winget.- 27. CUIR SUDAK TRANSPOSSESSIONS AND OTHER MAGICAL MUTATIONS (or, about the practice of healing The-selves otherwise); Krizia Puig.- 28. HEALING THROUGH PERFORMANCE AND ACTIVISM (Supplemental to the chapter “Decolonizing the University with DarkMatter’s Healing of/in Failure”); Alok Vaid-Menon in dialogue with Anna Renée Winget.- 29. DECOLONIZING THE UNIVERSITY WITH DARKMATTER’S HEALING OF/IN FAILURE; Anna Renée Winget.- 30. CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF QUEER AND TRANS FEMINIST PERFORMANCE; Sandra D’Urso, Tiina Rosenberg, and Anna Renée Winget in dialogue with Emi Koyama and Eric A. Stanley.
Sandra D’Urso (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 Don’t 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, Sweden’s 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.
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 volume’s 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.