Queer Embodied Absence: HIV/AIDS and the Creation of Cultural Memory in Gordon Armstrong’s Blue Dragons and Daniel Maclvor’s The Soldier Dreams

Abstract

Following Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed’s warning against the gradual disappearance of HIV/AIDS from cultural and political agendas, this essay directs its attention to two Canadian plays that are concerned with the formation of memories at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis: the late Gordon Armstrong’s Blue Dragons (1993) and Daniel MacIvor’s The Soldier Dreams (1997). Both plays feature dead characters that make unexpected appearances on stage as living ghosts and active participants in the respective plots. What is the dramaturgical effect of these embodied shadow characters, and what are the political implications of these dead queer bodies coming alive on stage? Using the concept of ghosting as a theoretical guideline, the essay analyzes how the strategy of granting the dead person with HIV/AIDS a queer embodied absence on stage marks a dramaturgical and historiographical paradigm shift for queer theatre in Canada.