Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists

Abstract

This issue emerges from my personal experience as an artist and curator. I have had the privilege of collaborating and performing with, as well as curating and directing, a number of the artists featured here. As the director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s Hysteria Festival (2003–2009), founder and director of Cheap Queers (a three-day Pride performance festival), co-director of the Rhubarb! Festival, and producer of a number of independent alternative cabaret and performance events, I have had a privileged glimpse into the challenges of creating and presenting alternative and queer performance. This research project began with a paper I wrote in 2010 entitled ‘‘The Foster Children of Buddies,’’ which looked at the role of queer women at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre since its move to the prominent 12 Alexander Street address. This issue of CTR expands the scope of my inquiry as I seek to examine the contributions of queer women and trans artists on a national level. Furthermore, this issue shares some of the work that has most inspired and emboldened me as a curator and as an artist. These artists have led the way in Canadian performance innovation with multidisciplinary and theatrical experimentation while drawing, in many cases, substantial audiences and dedicated fans. The queer artists represented here are experimental both in their presentation of self and in their exploration of theatrical form and content. For them, identity and desire are always in flux. By naming these artists—and by giving the issue the subtitle of ‘‘women and trans artists’’—we reveal the tensions between this fluid understanding of self and codified gender binaries. I risk this naming and classification in order to look at the material conditions of theatrical production in Canada at the present moment, and in particular the experiences of women and trans artists in environments that increasingly want to declare themselves post-queer and post-feminist. There is no theatre or performance venue