Staging Discomfort
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A01=Bretton White
affect
AIDS
audience
audience reception
Author_Bretton White
beauty
Category=ATD
Category=JBFW
Category=JBSJ
Category=JHB
Category=NHK
Censorship
citizenship
Cuba
Cuban Theatre
discomfort
embodiment
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Gays in the performing arts
Government
heteronormativity
homosexuality
illness
intimacy
negative affect
performance
proximity
Queer Theory
queerness
sexuality
shame
Special Period
theater
theatrical performance
unification
Product details
- ISBN 9781683401544
- Weight: 535g
- Dimensions: 151 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jun 2020
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This visionary volume examines how queer bodies are theatrically represented on the Cuban stage in ways that challenge one of the state's primary revolutionary tools, the categorization and homogenization of individuals. Bretton White critically analyzes contemporary performances that upset traditional understandings of performer and spectator, as well as what constitutes the ideal Cuban citizenry.Following the 1959 revolution, nonconformists were monitored and reported by local committees and punished or reformed by the government. Censorship was rampant, and Cuban art suffered as the state tried to control the national message. Through the lens of queer theory, White explores how the body has been central to the state's fear-based marginalization of gay life and looks at the ways these theatrical performances defuse that fear. She highlights the revolutionary model of masculinity and the role it plays in excluding people based upon visible queer difference. White finds that, through experimental performances of sexuality, actors create connections with audiences to evoke shared feelings of discomfort, intimacy, shame, longing, frustration, and failure, which echo the prevalence of these feelings in other Cuban spaces. By performing queerness, these plays question the state's narrative of heteronormativity and empower citizens to negotiate alternative understandings of Cuban identity.
Bretton White is assistant professor of Spanish at Colby College.
