Practising ‘Love & Faith’ when Queering the Early Modern Canon

Abstract

Utilizing a Practice-as-Research methodology (PaR), this article reflects on creative discoveries made in the ‘Queer 4 Shx’ creative development, which was a series a workshops conducted by the author to develop the scripts for a queer early modern adaptation titled Love & Faith ( and something unholy ), which debuted at Qtopia Sydney in 2024. The workshop series engaged a team of LGBTIQ+ actors to explore scenes from John Lyly’s Galatea and William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure , considering how these works might be adapted into a queer split-bill performance the following year. This paper unpacks several creative discoveries made in the workshops, as well as actor insights and reflections, situating the rehearsal room as a central site of knowledge generation. It demonstrates how the adaptation of early modern plays can provide queer artists with the opportunity to locate personal and collective histories that have been lost or erased, and highlights how these histories might allow queer artists to rethink the present and produce positive futures through creative embodiment. Such discoveries draw attention to the reparative function of adaptation: how it might offer LGBTIQ+ creatives the opportunity to renegotiate our relationship with time itself by creatively engaging with the inbuilt queerness of early modern plays.