Mitigating Anxieties: Cleaving as Queer Becoming

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.