Placefull Spaces: Queer Women and Non-Binary Artists Resisting an Emptied Stage

For marginalized queer artists, inequitable distribution of and access to performance space impact both the development process and production of artistic works. While a lack of ongoing or resident performance space for women’s productions in Canada has been documented (see, for example, Rina Fraticelli; Rebecca Burton; and Michelle MacArthur), less research has been conducted on queer women’s and non-binary artists’ experience of space in the industry. Theatre and performance scholars (see, for example, Gay McAuley, Una Chaudhuri, Jill Dolan, and Laura Levin) have provided the groundwork for exploring the relationship among theatre sites, identities, and productions; and queer geographers such as Natalie Oswin, Julie Podmore, Catherine Nash, and Kath Browne have developed invaluable theories and methodologies to unsettle the assumed neutrality of space. However, few scholars have brought these fields together, particularly in the context of performance in Canada. This doctoral project applies queer and feminist theories of geography to queer women’s and non-binary artists’ performance to explore how insecure and inequitable access to physical space affects both experiences of finding one’s place in the theatre industry and articulations of an imagined place on stage. The germinal Western conceptions of the stage as placeless or “empty” (Brook) work to neutralize the theatre space by assuming all creators, performers, and audience members are easily oriented within it. For marginalized bodies, which are simultaneously hyper-visualized and unseen in dominant cultural spaces, the necessary conditions to access placelessness may be unobtainable, or may be experienced as a form of violent erasure of histories. Through a process of “unmapping” venues and close description and analysis of performances, this doctoral study questions how an intentional engagement with space and place on stage can actively destabilize the presumed universality and neutrality of performance space and combat broader gendered spatial inequities. Focusing on performances and events in Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, British Columbia, this project develops a theory of “placefullness” as a means of understanding how artists actively resist spatial inequities in the theatre and performance industry in Canada.Ph.D