CLAGS’s Performing Que(e)ries is a series that will take
place over the 2012/13 academic year and will explore LGBTQ
performance in the 21st century, particularly the ways
in which contemporary queer performance is tied to past,
present, and future possibilities for queer identity exploration,
transformation, and affirmation. The series will include
performers, scholars, and writers of diverse backgrounds
and styles coming together to discuss their work in multiple
formats, including roundtables, interviews, discussions,
lectures, readings, and/or performances.
Performances and discussions will track the legacy of queer
performance and the shifting act(s) of the queer performer onstage
and off, querying the efficacy and vitality of live queer performance
in the age of media-based and digitized communication.
EVENTS
PART I: NINA ARSENAULT WITH J. PAUL HALFERTY
10/26/2012 7–9pm Segal Theatre
Trans performer, playwright, and writer Nina Arsenault, along with
queer performance scholar J. Paul Halferty (University of Toronto) will
discuss the development of Arsenault’s bodily and performance aesthetics
in the Canadian queer perfo`rmance landscape. Arsenault will
perform excerpts from her repertoire of critically acclaimed artistic
works as well as showcase some of her new performance projects.
Nina Arsenault is a critically acclaimed interdisciplinary artist who
has worked in live performance, photography, video art, writing and
popular national media to document and explore her continuing
psychic and physical transformations. Nina’s gender transformation,
her cosmetic metamorphosis through over sixty surgical procedures,
and her personal life have been the subject of numerous national and
international documentary television programs, radio interviews, and
print articles.
PART II: CHARLES BUSCH WITH JAMES WILSON
11/13/2012 7–9pm Segal Theatre
Charles Busch, renowned New York performer, playwright, director, and
drag extraordinaire, discusses his astonishing career in the theatre
and on film, as well as the changes he has seen in LGBTQ performance
over the last four decades. Moderated by CLAGS Executive Director and
Professor of theatre, James Wilson (The Graduate Center, CUNY, LaGuardia
Community College).
Charles Busch is the author and star of such plays as The Divine Sister,
The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset and Vampire Lesbians
of Sodom, which ran five years and is one of the longest running plays
in Off-Broadway history. His play The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife ran
for 777 performances on Broadway and won Mr. Busch the Outer Circle
Critics John Gassner Award and received a Tony nomination for Best
Play. He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho
Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best
Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2003, Mr. Busch
received a special Drama Desk Award for career achievement as both
performer and playwright. Mr. Busch made his directorial debut with
the film A Very Serious Person, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca
Film Festival, where it won an honorable mention. He is also the subject
of the documentary film The Lady in Question is Charles Busch.
