“I think theater is primarily a big mirror that can be held up to the community. In that reflection we can see a set of potential road maps to new sites where liberation stories yet-to-be-told can flourish” (xvii).
-Tim Miller, Introduction to Body Blows: Six Performances
My task in this first blog post is to introduce myself as a scholar of queer performance: a not uncomplicated task. What do I know about this topic, anyway? What do I think I know? As I grapple with how to approach this question, I find myself wondering if queer drama really exists as a monolithic, recognizable thing. Perhaps what can be said to be universal about queer drama is actually that which is universal about drama.
First some background, and then an example. When I was an undergraduate in Madison, Wisconsin, I spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. It was a perfect storm, really. I was immersed in a dynamic gender and women's studies department and had recently learned what a dramaturg was.
My senior year I worked as a dramaturg for an MFA acting candidate on his thesis project, a one man show about gay male identity. We created the show together from fragments of existing plays, texts, and monologues. The idea was that by piecing together these moments, some of them quite famous (Shakespearean sonnets, text from the Oscar Wilde obscenity trials, The Laramie Project, etc.) into something resembling an arc, we could say something about this particular actor’s experience as a gay man, and also gesture towards something universal about the gay male experience.
One thing I think I now know, in retrospect, is that there is no such thing as a universal gay male experience. (Duh.) On the other hand, I think I know that there is something universal about fear, and also about hope, two emotions that seem to undergird a lot of the queer theatre that I am familiar with.
My MFA actor was amazing to work with, generous and open to collaboration. We generated a preliminary reading list, and I dove in. I started with plays that he considered classics of his generation; plays that were important to him when he came out; plays I had never heard of. I got a crash course in Harvey Firestein, Paul Rudnick, and Terrence McNally, to name a few.
This is one version of queer theatre that I think I know: realist dramatic comedies (comedic dramas?) concerning the trials and tribulations of (mostly white) (all male) queer folks in the large urban centers of the 80s and 90s.
From the film adaptation of McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)
These powerful plays felt almost like artifacts to me. There was a certain sense of nostalgia as I read them, I suppose for an imagined past, both familiar and distant. This imagined past seemed to me to be filled with fear (of isolation, of violence, of AIDS) but also with hope (for change, for visibility, for community.)
Sometimes I would suggest material too. One of my contributions to the show was Tim Miller (of NEA 4 fame.) I can't remember where I "got" Miller, but by this time I already loved him... His solo performance pieces were funny and heartbreaking and sexy and weird. The piece we ended up using was from Buddy Systems. It's called "Liebestod on Hollywood Boulevard." In the piece Miller describes an early sexual experience that leaves him feeling depressed and alone. He finds himself wandering the streets, eventually following a crowd into the Hollywood Bowl and watching a Wagner opera...
He describes being a part of this huge crowd, watching the soprano sing. I love this section from the end:
And this thing started to happen-- this inspirational art-changes-life-thing. Which later, when you get older and become too smart for your own good, you start to think is some kind of big joke. But then it had form and craft and power. It had a role to play in the universe and it was gonna happen to me!
Tim Miller (left) and John Bernd in Live Boys (1981)
Maybe this quote feels relevant because it continues to hint at what might be “universal” in queer theatre. Even in a piece markedly different in tone and form from those described above (although I should note still white and male in perspective…) the magnetic poles of hope and fear still make the world of Buddy Systems turn. The physical movement on stage, the move away from fear and isolation is the movement of an individual, but also the movement of a crowd filing into the Hollywood Bowl. It is the space created by art, the transcendent experience of this opera, the “form and craft and power” that makes Tim Miller feel like he is a vital part of the universe. And maybe we can say the same thing about the experience of watching Tim Miller perform, or watching a play by Firestein, Rudnick, or McNally...
In other words, change, visibility, community, hope can all be functions of (queer) theatre, and that is something I am happy to know.
Works Cited
Miller, Tim. Body Blows: Six Performances. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
MIller, Tim. “Buddy Systems.” 1001 Beds: Performance, Essays, and Travels. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
