{"title":"Who Cares?: Ethics and Practices of Care and Making Change in Contemporary Queer Performance Production","authors":"Rebecca Tadman","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2023.2173598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2023.2173598","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Queer performance has historically illuminated an imbalance of care for minoritarian concerns and fostered community connections for collective survival and resistance.1 1. José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). This article interweaves theorisations by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and collaborators in the book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice 2 2. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018). and draws upon interviews with key queer cultural producers, practitioners, scholars, and artists currently working in the UK to identify and theorise contemporary ethics and practices of care in their work. It reveals how queer performance practice attempts to address issues of ethnicity, race, class, disability, gender, and gender identity, tokenism and racial representation, access, class, (dis)ability, and trans-inclusivity in generative ways.3 3. Adam Carver, Queering the Sector: Meaningful Change, Meaningful Care, Conference programme, SHOUT! Festival of Queer Arts and Culture, Birmingham Hippodrome, November 8, 2019. Considering the urgent need for material reconfigurations and diversification of the UK arts sector – both in response to and preceding the global COVID-19 pandemic – I argue that an ethics of care and orientation toward action can address ongoing issues around who and what is ‘made to matter’ in queer arts production. Contemporary queer performance praxis in the UK reaches further toward the margins to find new solutions to embed radical care in production practices. As philosopher Rosi Braidotti suggests, such work ‘is enhanced by the rejection of self-centred individualism … [producing] a new way of combining self-interests with the well-being of an enlarged community’.4 4. Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 48. Through foregrounding collectivity, community, care, and social justice the queer performance sector is well positioned to be at the forefront of wider cultural production trends, creating, and amplifying change throughout the sector and beyond.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"33 1","pages":"61 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45127799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mitigating Anxieties: Cleaving as Queer Becoming","authors":"Supraja R","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2023.2173596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2023.2173596","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cleaving, a principle of theatricality, proposes that a ‘cleft’ or a ‘cleaving’ holds within it the promise and ability to shift, change, alter, and create emergences. I find the instability and transformation that cleaving energises to be resonant with the instability of sexual or gender non-conforming expression. In this essay, I present a rubric of cleaving as queer becoming by bringing together my memories from the production process of the play Yavanavvanam (2018) and a recent photo-performance (2021) of self gesturing at my own trajectory since then. These dynamic fabrics are braided and punctuated by analyses of mitigating anxieties surrounding the abrogation of the anti-sodomy law in India and the legacy of the Rohith Vemula anti-caste movement at the University of Hyderabad.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"33 1","pages":"80 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44084700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alyson Campbell, Stephen Farrier, Manola-Gayatri Kumarswamy
{"title":"What’s Queer about Queer Performance Now?","authors":"Alyson Campbell, Stephen Farrier, Manola-Gayatri Kumarswamy","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2023.2170080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2023.2170080","url":null,"abstract":"When we ask ‘what’s queer about queer performance now’, the question is a nod to the past (and the influential issue of Social Text called ‘What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now’ from 2005) but it is also perpetually in the present: what now? The edition of Social Text explored how queer studies might function in a specific political climate, at that time in response to shifts in identity politics and new approaches to queer epistemologies. We set ourselves and our contributors a similar challenge, but this time with a focus on theatre and performance: what is queer performance now, how do we recognise it, how do we make it, how do we talk and write about it and what might queer performance do? On the one hand we could answer the question of what queer performance is now: ‘the same as ever’. By this we might mean, at its most basic, resistance to the normative, in terms of gender and sexuality and dramaturgy. As part of this resistance, we see how queer performance’s best current manifestations can challenge and question histories (including queer histories), drawing attention to their fluidity and lack of stability, rather than solidifying them and sequestering queer narratives in the past. We might even claim that (in some parts of the world) queer performance’s interventions in gender, sexuality, and dramaturgy have had an impact on popular culture in a way that has queered cultural representation to a certain noticeable extent (we might look here, for example, at the advances around casting and representation across film and television and even awards’ criteria, for instance the well-publicised gender transition of Elliot Page and the television series Pose). However, we would not want to characterise all queer performance as done, perfectly formed, open, and resistive. We note that that queer performance does not appear across the globe in a consistent and coherent fashion, which maintains our position that queer writers, scholars, and performance makers can also fail queer’s resistive drive. This potential for failure can be observed through some queer performances’ hegemonic claims for normalisation and inadvertent or deliberate inequalities in access and representation. There are also some specifics of our recent and 1. David L. Eng, J. Jack Halberstam and José Esteban Muñoz, ‘What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now?’, Social Text 84–85, vol. 23, nos. 3–4 (2005): 1-17.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"33 1","pages":"1 - 13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41797874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Backpages 32.3-4","authors":"Caridad Svich","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2117901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2117901","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight, and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and reflectively on their work and the work of their peers.</p>","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"98 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Looking onto the Boulder","authors":"Geddy Aniksdal","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2118729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2118729","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Geddy Aniksdal has been a core member of Grenland Friteater, Norway, since the early 1980s. She is an actress, director, and writer and runs the annual Stedsans (Sense of Place) Festival and, along with other company members, the Porsgrunn International Theater Festival. She is also a founder member of the Magdalena Project. In this contemplative essay, Aniksdal reflects poetically on what COVID-induced theatre and festival closure has meant for her as an artist and curator, whose everyday practice normally involves working on the international festival circuit, making performances, and running her own festival in Norway.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"32 1","pages":"342 - 346"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46294111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Publics and Their Health: La Grande Manifestive, Aurillac, 2021","authors":"David Calder","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2118725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2118725","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 2021, the International Festival of Street Theatre in Aurillac, France, was cancelled for the second consecutive summer. Amidst the ensuing furore, street theatre artists and their advocates risked conflating public health measures with the oppressive policies of the security state. This essay critically examines the underlying assumptions at work in these arguments and insists on the importance of public health to the defence of public space.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"32 1","pages":"276 - 280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43622934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To Expand the Possibilities of Performance: Laura Nanni on SummerWorks","authors":"Karen Fricker, Melissa Poll","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2119964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2119964","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In her interview with Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll, the artistic director of Tkaronto/Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, Laura Nanni, discusses how the festival responded to COVID-19 and calls for racial justice in 2020 and beyond.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"32 1","pages":"270 - 275"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42055212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On GIFT (Gateshead International Festival of Theatre) 2022","authors":"H. Freshwater","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2118731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2118731","url":null,"abstract":"The Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (GIFT) has been running since 2011. It is an annual opportunity for audiences and artists to gather and share experimental work with a strong focus on collaboration and conversation. As noted in my interview with the Festival’s Director, Kate Craddock (which is also published in this special issue of CTR), it went online for 2020 and 2021. 2022 marked its return to in-person activity. I attended almost all of the events in the programme, which stretched across three days from Friday 30 April to Sunday 2 May 2022.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"32 1","pages":"347 - 352"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46471817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"GIFT: Developing New Communities of Work","authors":"Kate Craddock, H. Freshwater","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2117801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2117801","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (GIFT) is an annual festival of contemporary performance in Gateshead, in the North East of England. It was founded in 2011 to provide a platform for contemporary performance in the region and as a creative response to Gateshead town centre’s redevelopment. It includes performances, workshops, discussions, and other informal ways for artists and audiences to come together.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"32 1","pages":"323 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43075857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Festivals in the COVID Age of Crisis","authors":"R. Ali, Christopher Balme","doi":"10.1080/10486801.2022.2117804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2022.2117804","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the impact of COVID on festivals and the future of the industry. Analysing more than 50 items of online news, scholarly reviews and reports, and governmental guidance, this article examines the immediate effects of COVID in the industry as a whole, and particularly on its precarious artists and workforce. It also explores the changing behavioural attitudes towards festivals. Importantly, the article looks at the long-term institutional changes that might emerge in the festival industry including the future of collaborative working, artistic support, precarious working, and diversity.","PeriodicalId":43835,"journal":{"name":"CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW","volume":"32 1","pages":"336 - 341"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46963864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}