Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 [Review] Staging Queer Feminisms : Sexuality and Gender in Australian Performance, 2005-2015
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'In this way, the book brings together theory and practice in an intersectional and situated manner, providing the reader with all the tools they need to comprehend the complexity of each case study and simultaneously demonstrating through the discussion how art and performance synthesises knowledge and enables embodied understandings. Sisters Grimm critically engage with cinematic texts to 'challenge certain filmic inscriptions of history and their basis in heteronormative, patriarchal, colonial and racist ideologies' (116), responding with what Stuart Hall (1980) describes as oppositional reception or oppositional reading which occurs when the person watching the film interprets it in a different way than what the author of the film intended (which French also describes as 'queering the text' (118)). Hot Brown Honey's tagline, 'Fighting the power never tasted so sweet' (2015), is the title of the concluding chapter, and sums up one of the central themes of the book: that queer feminist performance can function simultaneously as a political platform and an engaging form of entertainment. Combining collaborative and solo vignettes, Hot Brown Honey weaves together a variety of performance styles such as an aerial ribbon dance that deals with the theme of domestic violence, a burlesque 'strip' which metaphorically performs the removal of colonisation from the body of the performer and an exhilarating beatbox performance.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon Australasian Drama Studies Regional Theatre in Australia no. 77 October 2020 21039143 2020 periodical issue

    'The inquiry came on the back of an effective shutdown of most work in the creative sector as a result of social distancing restrictions and lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March, and of extensive debate about the Australian Government's reluctance to offer a dedicated financial support package to an industry that, by the government's own estimates, contributed $111.7 billion in 2016/17, or 6.4 per cent of GDP. The terms of reference for the inquiry appeared accordingly broad: 'The Committee will inquire into Australia's creative and cultural industries and institutions including, but not limited to, Indigenous, regional, rural and community based organisations'. More broadly, the frustrations of lockdown, a newfound capacity to work remotely, loss of income, and the more general reassessment of life choices and lifestyle that COVID-19 provoked all resulted in an unprecedented net population loss in Australia's big cities, with an October 2020 Ipsos poll finding that one in ten Melburnians were considering a move to regional Victoria. Meanwhile, among the very limited federal stimulus offered to the arts in the early months of the pandemic was a $27 million 'Targeted Support' package in April, which directed $10 million to the music industry, $7 million to Indigenous arts, and $10 million 'to help regional artists and organisations develop new work and explore new delivery models'. In short, while COVID-19 has arguably reconfigured the Australian arts landscape, and the ways in which we understand where arts happens, it also made visible changes that were already occurring, particularly outside major metropolitan centres. Recommendation 1 was that 'the Federal Government increase its investment in building enabling infrastructure to improve connectivity, key services and amenity through coordinated regional plans', while Recommendation 13 anticipated further work on 'the cultivation of social, cultural and community capital'.5 This initiative built in turn on existing trends. Australia's enormous size continues to present major practical challenges when it comes to touring on the one hand, or building and sustaining arts infrastructure on the other. [...]the high-profile shift in the funding narrative over 2020 towards the regions, as well as the obligatory pivot towards the digital environment, has not entirely done away with a metropolitan funding bias, which is most apparent in the fact that the city-based Major Performing Arts organisations receive a disproportionate amount of the federal funding pie.' (Editorial introduction)

    2020
    pg. 361-368.
Last amended 2 Feb 2021 10:04:08
361-368. [Review] Staging Queer Feminisms : Sexuality and Gender in Australian Performance, 2005-2015small AustLit logo Australasian Drama Studies
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