Articulating the inarticulate: Performance and intervention in masculine gender (re)presentation

There is an increasingly accepted connection between issues surrounding male identity and destructive and anti-social behaviours. These expressions of unhealthy notions of masculinity have been the focus of various initiatives and investigations into contemporary male health and wellbeing. Issues such as alcohol and drug abuse, violence against others, self-harm and suicide have been the subjects of official reports, research projects, social welfare campaigns and even television shows. The theatre, as a site for social intervention, can thus contribute to this increasing focus on, and attempts to shift, outdated and unhealthy understandings of 'what it means to be a man'.\ud \ud This paper examines the interventionist nature of theatre to explore, unpack and attempt to alter perceptions of the contemporary Australian male identity through the fusing of Ethnotheatre, Ethnodrama and Theatre of Tensions. As a result, theatre can intercept long-held, traditional (re)presentations of masculinity in order to reinvent them, thereby offering perceptibly healthier alternatives to masculine ways of being