doi:10.3138/ctr.163.004 19ctr 163 summer 2015

Archiving Queer Women’s Performance Futurities | FEATURES

Absent, Invisible, and Incoherent: Archiving Queer Women’s Performance Futurities

by Laine Zisman Newman

Cris Derksen, award-winning Aboriginal cellist.Photo by Nadya Kwandibens, Red Works Photography, courtesy of Cris Derksen

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Brescia Bloodbeard, Drawing with Knives, 2015.Photo by Chris Hutcheson, 4thwallimages.com

In his chapter “Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling,” José Esteban Muñoz considers the relationship between queerness, documentation, and evidence. He writes, “[W]hen the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper, representing a straight present, who will labor to invalidate the historical fact of queer lives—present, past, and future” (Cruising Utopia 65). Here, Muñoz’s sentiment demon-strates how the shaping of marginalized communities’ histories is more than simple recollection and documentation. The con-struction of dominant histories does not simply minimize how queerness is remembered but also how it is experienced in the moment, and how we imagine and move toward potential futuri-ties. In this way, how we recall what has been will shape what can be. We can apply such a consideration to the theatre, where traces of transient performances trail behind each production, paving paths for future seasons and artistic mandates. The expectations for a theatre and the possibilities open to its future are determined in part by how past work is documented and remembered. With this in mind, how we view and understand any single production in a performance space is more than a result of our immediate experience in the theatre. Our perception of a given production is

mediated in part by a performance space’s history and the way we anticipate its future.

Before even entering a performance, we get a sense of the neighbourhood and geography of the theatre space itself. The park outside, busy traffic, and pedestrians start to shape our expecta-tions for what we are about to see. When we enter the theatre space, the walls are covered with headshots, old posters, and mar-keting material. The past of the theatre is constantly looming on the walls, creating a history and lens through which we experience the event. The ways a theatre space is used, the kinds of perfor-mances it produces, and the audiences the performance space at-tracts strategically invoke particular ghosts to establish a history of norms and future expectations. As Michel de Certeau notes, “There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can ‘invoke’ or not” (108). The question, then, that needs to be asked of performance spaces is, whose spirits and ghosts are most readily invoked, almost visible in the historiography of the performance, and whose ghosts are excluded, erased, or unknown? How do spaces, and the histories we create around them, perpetuate constructions of belonging and solidify notions of citizenship and ownership? In this article, I consider these questions in relation to the past and current tran-sience of queer women’s performance spaces and examine the par-

The question, then, that needs to be asked of performance spaces is, whose spirits and ghosts are most readily invoked, almost vis-ible in the historiography of the performance, and whose ghosts are excluded, erased, or unknown?

ticular challenges their spatial experiences pose in documenting and archiving their artistic works. Ultimately, alongside Muñoz and other scholars, I assert that mainstream performance archives, which isolate the past from the present and the future, might not be an ideal or appropriate space for historicizing and remember-ing queer women’s performance. I argue instead that the messy incoherence of queer temporality might be used productively to generate alternative archives and enable new possibilities for queer women’s performance futures.

While limited comprehensive statistics have been collected on queer women’s performance, valuable research has been presented on gender inequalities in the theatre industry. Rebecca Burton’s 2006 survey found a direct correlation between obtaining ongoing spaces for production and the gender of a company’s artistic di-rector. As Burton notes, while 49 per cent of companies reported possessing “a regular or resident performance space,” only 38 per cent of companies with female artistic directors had such spaces (63). This is in contrast to 57 per cent of companies with male ar-tistic directors (63). These statistics are markedly worse when one considers the performances produced and developed by women of colour. Ric Knowles’ chapter “Multicultural Text, Intercultural Performance,” published in 2009, lists over a dozen inter-cultur-al companies in Toronto and reveals that none of them owned their own spaces and as such were dependent on rental spaces,

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doi:10.3138/ctr.163.004 21ctr 163 summer 2015

Archiving Queer Women’s Performance Futurities | FEATURES

festivals, or co-productions to produce their works (74). Although there was steady progress in the number of plays by women pro-duced on Canadian stages from the 1980s to the early twenty-first century, the most recent statistics (2012/2013 and 2013/2014) compiled by the Playwright’s Guild of Canada show a 5 per cent regression in the number of plays by Canadian women on Ca-nadian stages since the 2006 study. These statistics demonstrate systemic patriarchal inequalities, which one can imagine are only exacerbated by the additional marginalization which comes from inhabiting a queer identity.

In exploring queer women’s performance and the transience that has historically and currently defined it, my aim here is to explore the ways in which the precarity of queer women’s per-formance might affect its perceived history, documentation, and future potentialities. The absence and exclusion of queer- and les-bian-identified women from mainstream archives is apparent. In January 2015, playwright Paula Vogel’s archive was added to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Vogel is not only the first lesbian to be added to the archive but also the first woman ever to be included in the Yale Collection of

Nari, Saga of a War Child, 2015.Photo by Chris Hutcheson, 4thwallimages.com

Catherine Hernandez, The Femme Playlist. Director: Gein Wong. A co-production with b current theatre, Sulong Theatre Company, and Eventual Ashes. Presented as part of the Buddies in Bad Times The-atre 2014/2015 season.Photo by Alex Felipe, courtesy of Catherine Hernandez

American Literature (“Beinecke”). Such a milestone demonstrates the ways in which queer women’s histories have been largely erased from theatre pasts until this point.

It is not merely that lesbian and queer women’s performance must be documented and recorded for archival purposes, but, fol-lowing documentation, these works must also be valued as history. If a performance occurs in a rented space that does not have an archival practice, it is not only the performer’s responsibility to organize their own videography or documentation but also their job to ensure that the work is then valued as a historical record.

The question, then, that needs to be asked of performance spaces is, whose spirits and ghosts are most readily invoked, almost vis-ible in the historiography of the performance, and whose ghosts are excluded, erased, or unknown?

My aim here is to explore the ways in which the precarity of queer women’s performance might affect its perceived history, documentation, and future potentialities.

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FEATURES | Archiving Queer Women’s Performance Futurities

Ultimately, with so much effort put into seeking a space for pro-duction and securing funding, and with no ongoing structure of support, this kind of preservation of the performance becomes a secondary concern. Furthermore, archiving requires not only documentation and records but also a space in which they can be stored and accessed. The very act of collecting and document-ing necessitates a physical archival space, as well as resources and expertise to store and preserve records, which marginalized com-munities are less likely to possess. Although virtual and digital archives might provide some avenues to address these obstacles, artists may struggle to secure the funding and expertise required to properly archive in online environments.

History is not merely stored in the archive; it is created through the archive. As Elin Diamond notes, there is a clear link between memory, power, and archives (20). It is not simply that all queer women performers are completely forgotten, or absent from archives; certainly there are works by queer women that have been recorded and archived. But experiences of archives, time, and history are contingent on privilege. Lisa Duggan’s notion of homonormativity and Jasbir Puar’s concept of homonationalism offer useful entry points into an analysis of the ways in which institutional or state-funded archives include particular norma-tive queer histories in order to conceal or justify the erasure of more deviant identities. Where the subversive queer subject might question dominant ideologies and norms, Duggan notes that

the homonormative subject “upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (179). The homonormative subject is thus the pro-ductive citizen, able to be included within mainstream culture and to fit in. In a Western context, the homonormative subject is the subject for whom things might “get better” through the adoption of normalized practices. Puar applies such inclusion to the state, explaining that homonationalism addresses why a nation would desire to present itself as “gay-friendly” and describing the ways in which the inclusion of certain LGBT subjects in the nation can be used to exclude others (336). Whereas the homonorma-tive subject might seek inclusion, ease, and access, homonational-ism is the historical and political shift that enables such inclusion through a “fundamental reorientation of the relationship between the state, capitalism, and sexuality” (337). Applying Puar’s and Duggan’s concepts to theatre historicization demonstrates how the presence of the white homonormative queer woman in a main-stream archive might work to perpetuate and naturalize systems of privilege. To be sure, the inclusion of any queer woman per-former within a mainstream archive is worthy, to a certain degree, of celebration. As she has fought for and won a position within history, the victory of her presence is in some ways a step toward more inclusive histories. However, at the same time, her very pres-ence within the mainstream archive erases the complexity of his-

The Yes-Men, Come with Me Now, 2015.Photo by Chris Hutcheson, 4thwallimages.com

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Archiving Queer Women’s Performance Futurities | FEATURES

experience time differently than normative bodies do. If queer temporality results in unconventional experiences of the past, then perhaps there are methods more appropriate for documenting and disseminating queer performance histories.

Normative experiences of temporality are constructed to validate and maintain particular narratives and to naturalize a particular future. As Andrea Smith contends in her discus-sion of colonization and settler narratives, “[N]ormative futu-rity depends on an ‘origin story.’ The future is legitimated as a continuation of the past” (47). The stories we tell about the past inform power and privilege in the present and future by making dominant ideologies appear natural and inherent. In a white Western context this is accomplished in part by uni-versalizing a specific life course through coming-of-age rituals and milestones. As members of the mainstream, we are taught to dream of living “normal lives” in which we are born, grow up, get married, have children and grandchildren, and die peacefully in our sleep. Certainly, the construction of archives is attached to this preoccupation with a linear life course, influencing how we memorialize and disseminate pasts and envision futures. But a queer temporality cannot exist in parallel to a normative het-erosexual temporality. To queer time is to mark one’s life with entirely different milestones (Halberstam in Dinshaw et al. 182); it is to feel strange within the timeline ascribed to you in child-hood. A queer temporality challenges a false universal desire to follow social scripts by constantly recreating a past of oppres-sion and silence in the present, while imagining a utopic future. Queerness, as Muñoz asserts, is “always in the horizon” (Cruis-

tories, the multiplicity of identities, and the patriarchal and colo-nial systems that construct the narrative she is permitted to exist within. The queer woman’s space within the archive—and here I am speaking specifically about white middle-class cisgender able-bodied women—might come at the expense and with the erasure of diversely marginalized queer women: women of colour, trans women, and disabled women, whose own complex identities may reflect a diversity of lived experiences of privilege, underinclusion, and subordination. As Lynne Huffer notes, “many liberal feminist successes have been achieved at the expense of the other, less privi-leged women” (147). Thus, while privileged queer women might now possess increased visibility in the Western archive, the ques-tions must be asked: How does the presence of these women act as a justification for the erasure of other women’s performances? And how can we confront this inequity?

These questions, along with the challenges that arise in at-tempting to penetrate a mainstream or institutional archive, might compel us to seek alternative forms of documentation and historicization. This is by no means a new idea, nor is it exclusively LGBT. Grassroots and queer archives do already exist and imple-ment queer methodologies in archival practice, which offer a sub-versive approach to history. These queer archival methodologies do not necessarily reject a practical need for documentation but instead may focus on challenging conventional archival practices that historically and currently limit the access that marginalized performers have to space and history. Keeping in mind the po-tential benefits of alternative forms of archival practice, I want to briefly shift focus to examine how queer women performers might

Jess Dobkin, Flowers, 2012.Photo by Tania Anderson

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FEATURES | Archiving Queer Women’s Performance Futurities

ing Utopia 11). Slightly out of reach, queerness always lives the future and the past in the present. With this queer experience of temporality and spatiality in mind, a queer archive of women’s performance might not attempt to isolate the past from the pres-ent but acknowledge the ways in which the past is constantly changing and reconstructing a future.

Rather than merely writing queer histories into traditional archives, feigning a linear historical trajectory, alternative queer women’s performance archives might find joy in the multiplic-ity and contradictions of oral stories, personal archives, and text- and video-based documentation. Mainstream archives might be perceived as an inadequate means of historicizing queer perfor-mance—unable to preserve an artistic culture so steeped in queer histories. As both Muñoz and Ann Cvetkovich argue, memories, emotion, and ephemera might be more productive markers of queer performance history. Not relying exclusively on a particular image or medium of documentation, such an archive might in-tentionally shift over time and offer different standpoints and re-flections. One example of radical archival practice is performance artist Jess Dobkin’s 2012 video Flowers. Dobkin invited the public to act both as film crew and live audience at a 2011 performance at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Spectators were asked to shoot her performance on their cameras and phones. Their footage was then cut together to make a final film entitled Flowers. The event provided the spectators with the means to document a perfor-mance from their own unique standpoints. Each sequence and scene becomes a record and at the same time subverts the temporal logic of live performance. The artwork is simultaneously a tran-sient live production experienced in the present and a film shoot to produce the completed artistic work, documenting a collective past. The mode of production compels the spectators to ask what the performance itself is and what their role is in its construction. Though a final edited video was cut, multiple distinct records of the event remain.

Through this article I have argued that the absence of spaces for queer women’s performance, and the struggle to secure such spaces, often results in a precarious relationship to history and ar-chives. I end by advocating archival diversities that refuse singular narratives and opt for messy and tangled temporalities, never striv-ing for coherence. This is a performance archive that indulges in contradiction and never feigns objective truth. This is an archive that is immersed in queer acts and queer performances, which, as Muñoz notes, “stand as evidence of queer lives, powers, and possibilities” (“Ephemera as Evidence” 6). This is a queer archive that revels in valuing personal stories as much as legal documents and national records, seeking the spectators’ response alongside the performers’, and recognizing not only the constructedness of history and its relationship to power but also the ways in which it can be subverted and reclaimed. Such an archive refuses the sepa-ration of past, present, and future and explores the ways in which these temporalities are in constant shifting dialogue. Archiving performance in this way is a form of activism and protest as much as it is scholarship.

Works Cited“Beinecke Acquires Archive of Acclaimed Playwright Paula Vogel.”

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University, 7 Jan. 2015. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.

Burton, Rebecca. Adding It Up: The Status of Women in Canadian Theatre—a Report on the Phase One Findings of Equity in Canadian Theatre: The Women’s Initiative. Playwrights Guild of Canada, Oct. 2006. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822384434.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of Cali-fornia P, 1984. Print.

Diamond, Elin. “Performance in the Archives.” Theatre History Studies 28.1 (2008): 20–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ths.2008.0001.

Dinshaw, Carolyn, Lee Edelman, Roderick A. Ferguson, Carla Frec-cero, Elizabeth Freeman, Judith Halberstam, Annamarie Jagose, Christopher S. Nealon, and Nguyen Tan Hoang. “Theorizing Queer Temporalities: A Roundtable Discussion.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13.2–3 (2007): 177–195. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2006-030.

Duggan, Lisa. The Incredible Shrinking Public: Sexual Politics and the Decline of Democracy. Boston: Beacon, 2002. Print.

Huffer, Lynne. Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex. New York: Columbia UP, 2013. Print.

Knowles, Ric. “Multicultural Text, Intercultural Performance: The Performance Ecology of Contemporary Toronto.” Performance and the City. Ed. D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, and Kim Solga. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 73–92. Print.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.

Muñoz, José Esteban. “Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts.” Queer Acts. Ed. José E. Muñoz and Amanda Barrett. Spec. issue of Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 8.2 (1996): 5–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07407709608571228.

Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC). PGC’s Annual Theatre Survey for 2013/14—Breakdown by Budget Size. 2014. 1–3. Unpublished report.

Playwright’s Guild of Canada (PGC). “PGC’s Survey of the 2012/13 Theatre Season.” PGC Women’s Caucus Newsletter, Sept. 2013: n.p. Print.

Puar, Jasbir. “Rethinking Homonationalism.” International Jour-nal of Middle East Studies 45.2 (2013): 336–339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S002074381300007X.

Smith, Andrea. “Queer Theory and Native Studies: The Heteronorma-tivity of Settler Colonialism.” Sexuality, Nationality, Indigeneity. Ed. Daniel Heath Justice, Mark Rifkin, and Bethany Schneider. Spec. issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16.1–2 (2010): 41–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-012.

About the AuthorLaine Zisman Newman is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and the collabora-tive program in sexual diversity studies. She received her MA in drama in 2010 and her MFA in documentary media in 2013. Alongside Rebecca Burton, Zisman Newman is co-organizer of a national initiative called Equity in Theatre.

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