Trans/Queer representation and drama: engendering new forms of empathy and relationality

ABSTRACT A dialogue between Taylor, a trans male Turkish-Canadian theatre student and Kathleen, a queer, cis-gendered female Scottish-Canadian theatre researcher considers some questions that queerness and trans identities in the drama classroom invite. Based on their mutual engagement in a virtual drama club in a Toronto high school in the 2020–2021 school year, they recall together experiences of performance, performative writing, and the strangely intimate relationality provoked by a global health pandemic. They are interested in the possibility of distinct individuals forming powerful collectives in art-making and in life through a reconsideration of the idea of ‘empathy’ newly imagined as relational.