Theorising Queer Performance

Abstract

This introductory chapter seeks to examine the agenda of queer theory in the context of contemporary performance practice: for whom does such a critical discourse advocate? What questions for representational practice might be inferred by such thinking? Beginning with a brief account of queer theory’s deconstructive critique of sex, gender and sexuality, the following discussion considers the fault lines between different logics of identity, visibility and representation. More precisely, this chapter begins to think through the consequences of queer theory’s deconstruction of identity for individuals and groups within performance practice. That is to say, if queer theory’s broad project can be characterised as the troubling of known and stable terms of reference for identity — and a suspicion of the kinds of regulation described by dominant cultural discourses — on what terms might queer practitioners and audiences come together in and through performance? What kinds of identity are possible or desirable in queer performance, and on what logics of representation do they depend?