It’s hard for me not to fall for the writings of Don Shewey, he is an eloquent, easy to follow writer whose vocabulary is filled with passion, reason, and well-balanced keen observations delivered with sublime moments of import. He brings the reader right up against the historic past of queer theater and nudges us along into the near present, circa 2002. We ride alongside its players, writers, producers, director, cultural makers, and extraneous doers that are and were. As we journey along with them in their shaky, messy, lusty – sweaty, dusty, parched, tormented stagecoach it feels and reads like jostle of the traveling circus troupe of the not so distant past.
The author also recognizes the plentiful histories and losses of queer theater and of theater as a whole of which collectively, are parts numerous. From the raging health crisis of AIDS that was and is, to the lack thereof or delayed recognition to its formidable contributions to both the mainstream theater and Off-Off Broadway productions. All the while plugging along with its partner, known with familiarity as vast machinations of underwhelming funding sources that choke its existence. Nothing much has changed here.
The ambitions of Charles Ludlam being of particular significance to the article, here we find a certainly palpable sense of deep respect and tragic loss of this formidable artist, a man, who made numerous works, shared incredible ambitions, writings and inspired a timeless legacy of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. He and his amalgam finding refuge for themselves in the arts, a type of religious practice, with sacred ritual and particulars of the most methodical assembly of various elements that make theater. Queer theater, is birthed from a raw belief in the power of truth, honesty, and allowing the best parts of anyone have the opportunity to exist freely and with abandon. Guided by passion into a place of full exposure, chance, connection, challenge and little if any monetary remuneration but a wealth of possibility. Born from the promise of, if you can conceive it you can achieve it. As Shewey contends, “…the pioneers adhered to no coherent aesthetic, form, style, or content. They made theater that was outrageous and artistically ambitious…nowadays virtually all pop culture quotes other pop culture. Then it was a subversive strategy, cultural critique, and identity formation disguised as child’s play” (p. 129).
The ways of queer culture seem to be existing and constantly changing, as does everything, in relation not necessarily as a reaction to the world. The art of theater making as important, respected, and accepted as means of understanding our journey here as humans in a place we must share, like it not. Shewey mentions that great queer theater has at times been known to be antagonistic, opposing, but that it does can exist as harmonious and even consensual. And that when it is all over, just like any journey, we are deeply engaged in and transformed by its truths. Yet the author remains true to his wish of being sensitively aware of tendencies to romanticize or idealize queer theater as but he also succeeds in not portraying exclusivity in practice.
This is evidenced for me personally by the way I was transported into a familiar and comforting world that is the art of theater and more. To a place that feels somewhere along the lines of longing for what childhood is, now long passed. A kind of nostalgia, and sense of belonging, yet for some of us, just on the periphery. It feels, sounds and smells of that longed affirmation of near totality in experiencing life. Mired in a universe of emotion, physicality, guiding in part by our mind heart engines, and in part by our desires, sexual and otherwise in a raging, stretching, seeking, pulsating rhythm that drives us onwards and upwards into the vast galaxies of imagination. Practicing a craft, of any kind but especially theater, of any genre, hurtles us constantly towards meaning, self-expression, acceptance, family, community and, at times serenity and escape from the blundering pain of life in the normal grind of everydayness.
It is for me about acceptance and community. Queer theater is that too, without consciously attempting to make itself other than that, an alive presence. Not only a political tool, antagonist to the norms, or as some would like to justify, an outlier of any human spirit and sociopolitical statement or situation. More to exist as an utopia performative, and to captivate and empower, as Jill Dolan contends, “…through the power of the performers’ presence, not to insist on authentic experience, or pre-modern primitivism, but to see, for a moment, how we might engage one anothers differences, and our mutual human-ness, constructed as it is in these brief moments together” (p.31). The queer theater and the essence of humanity comes out of a raw belief in the power of truth, honesty and allowing the best of anyone to shine through. Leaving room for the spaces between what is seen and not. Making places where the light can come through.
References:
Dolan, J. (2005),”Introduction: Feeling the Potential of Everywhere.” Utopia In Performance. University of Michigan Press: p. 1-34.
Shewey, D. (2002),“Be True to Yearning”, The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater. NY: p. 124 – 34.