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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Lesbian Theater and Queer Performance Art

I recently read a myspace bulletin from Curve Magazine in which they asked for lesbian theater critics or actresses involved in lesbian theater. If you happen to be either, please respond to them.

But the posting made me consider whether I would call myself a lesbian theater critic or not. It's a loaded question, regardless of the identity issues. I write about queer performance art, and as a result, I see quite a bit of performance by lesbians and other queer women, but it's been a long time since I've seen anything that could strictly be called be called lesbian theater. I tend to know things about lesbian performance art, music, spoken word, film, and sometimes even burlesque, but what exactly qualifies as a lesbian play? And have I been ignoring them in favor of other forms of performance?

Is there lesbian theater here in LA that I'm missing? I tend to skip a lot of the performances at the Celebration Theater and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center as too expensive and usually gay male focused. Theatre Out is a newish gay theater in Orange County that I have yet to check out and Rude Guerilla also in Orange County often has interesting gay [male] programming while not strictly a gay theater. The LA Women's Shakespeare Company is a theater company that may be of interest to lesbians, but isn't strictly lesbian theater as far as I know.

And that made me think about gay and lesbian theaters elsewhere. I'm certainly familiar with Theatre Rhinoceros and Brava! Theater Center in San Francisco and the WOW Cafe in New York (Shakespeare in the Nude on Sept. 8 sounds awesome!) as likely places to find lesbian theater, but I can't say I've spent much time at any of these. Are ther other lesbian or gay and lesbian theaters I don't know about? What makes lesbian theater?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your mention of Theatre Out in your blog. We hope that you are able to come out and see one of our shows. Our 1st ever Christmas extravaganza begins performances December 7th. We would also be interested in hearing from you about lesbian-centered programing.

Dee Jae said...

Hi. I know this blog entry is a few months old, but I wanted to respond. I agree that there is not much to offer in Los Angeles when it comes to Lesbian Theatre. Do Lesbian support theatre is the question that I am always asked? I believe they do when they have an offering. Unfortunately most of the offerings do tend to be male focused.

I want to mention a new play that I have running right now. It's called "PROVE IT ON ME"--- You can check it out at www.Proveitonme.com

The Los Angles Women's Theatre Project is a new organization founded by my partner, Michele Weiss, and myself to promote, produce and support theatre that is of interest and/or benefit to women.
Come see our show. Support Lesbian Theatre.
Dee Jae Cox
www.proveitonme.com

sissy said...

Hey, thanks for your thoughts. Being part of a queer performance group i wonder too, whats lesbian performance or why and when is it a queer performance: identity of the performers? format? intentions? the group just published a book, maybe that could be interesting for you, too: "Sissy Boyz. Queer Performance." http://www.thealit.de/en/sissyboyz