Writing Queer Performance

This anthology documents a decade of some of the UK's most exciting queer performances, through a combination of retrospective scripts, development material and visual documentation.
Queer performances are expected to live a brief, bright life without leaving any textual record. Indeed, they rarely begin with complete scripts at all, being often developed instead by performance practices designed to fill noisy bars, clinking cabaret venues and fringe theatres, typically for short runs. This lack of textual documentation underplays the importance of writing to contemporary queer performances, while rendering them vulnerable to disappearance in the diaphanous archives of memory.
Writing Queer Performance: Contemporary Texts and Documents features eight seminal works, captured though performance texts and visual documentation, that ensures their accessibility long after the event of live performance. Supported by a contextualizing introduction, the anthology provides a panoramic view of contemporary preoccupations, processes and practices.
The works include:
Black (2013), Le Gateau Chocolat
Pull the Trigger (2016), Vijay Patel
Re-Member Me (2017), Dickie Beau
DollyWould (2017), Sh!t Theatre
NIGHTCLUBBING (2018), Ray Young
Pleasure Seekers (2022), Bourgeois & Maurice
The Making of Pinocchio (2022), Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill
Ten Commandments (2022), David Hoyle

Fintan Walsh is Professor of Performing Arts and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, where he is Head of the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication and Director of Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre.