On the Edge: Straddling (Anti)normativity in Queer Performance

Abstract

In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed explains that precarity is akin to a vase on the mantelpiece. If it were pushed even slightly, it would fall off the edge. Existence on that edge, Ahmed explains, is what we allude to when we discuss precarious populations. Patriarchy, racism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia are violent forces. They threaten to push us over the edge. Queer performance often begins in this in-between state on the mantelpiece, not quite fallen, not quite stable, negotiating, and straddling a balance between holding on to a fragile state and falling off the mantle entirely. In this article, I analyze the Queer Pride Inside Cabaret (June 2020), the first official partnership between Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, the largest and longest running queer theatre in the world, and the CBC, a Canadian federal Crown corporation and national public broadcaster. In considering the mainstream producers and the radical queer artists showcased, I refuse a simplistic antinormative/normative binary in queer performance in Canada and make space for accessing resources from the mainstream, while rejecting inequitable systems of oppression. If queer theatre is intended to break down ingrained static and naturalized assumptions of everyday practices, how do we understand queer performance through contradictions and incoherence? Can we simultaneously fuck the system and accept our complicity within it? Complicating the unique and diverse ways artists opt-in and out of mainstream queer presence, this article looks at creative practices that challenge and promote continuing legacies and failures of queer performance in Canada.