Transforming and Transgressing - VAC AUDITORIUM
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Start Date
7-5-2022 4:00 PM
End Date
7-5-2022 4:50 PM
Description
VAC Auditorium
Deirdre Price, Towards an Embodied Queer Dramaturgy
As an undergraduate developing my own theatre-making practice, I view all art-making in the educational space I occupy as research; messy, squishy, unbalanced, practice-as-research, or PaR. In their article “Queer Practice as Research,” Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier state that: “queer PaR is a lived experience that exceeds binary thinking, upsets unitary subjects and presents identities expressed in non-normative sexualities. Researchers take these identity positions to the heart of their research fields, studios and stages – and in doing so bring a fluid knowing, or a messy existence, to the kinds of knowledges those research projects produce” (3). The queering of research practice as described here by Campbell and Farrier is fundamental to my approach to theatre-making, particularly because of how queer theatre and performance art processes occupy that fundamental intersection of “lived experience” and “fluid knowing.” This research project chronicles my approach to developing my own methodology of theatre-making and the development of my play The Jupiter Bird, resulting in what I refer to as embodied queer dramaturgy or EQD. This methodology is not my own invention, but rather my own vocabulary for a phenomenon occurring all across the landscape of queer research-practice. EQD seeks to acknowledge the multitudinous nature of dramaturgy and revel in the space in-between blurred lines. This project outlines the approach to such work through a case-study model and offers alternate and queered methods of new play development.
Tyler Sesker, Who Are You Protecting? A Feminist Analysis of Gay and Trans Panic Defense Bans, How They Are Defined, and Who They Serve
As of April 2022, sixteen U.S. states ban gay panic and trans panic criminal defenses. These state-law prohibitions stemmed from several high-profile murder trials, focusing on the identity of the decedent, including the killings of Matthew Shepard and Latisha King. Between 1970 and 2020 criminal defenses interrogating the gender identity or sexual identity of victims of violence, were used at least 104 times, with nearly a third of those cases resulting in reduced criminal charges and penalties (Williams Institute, 2021). Today, in thirty-four states, the same tactics remain legal. Applying a feminist and outsider legal lens, this study engages in a textual analysis of state legislative ban language and trial orders to explore how identity is defined and conflated in existing state bans and their legal consequences, to frame an argument for novel, comprehensive federal legislation. This study critically challenges ubiquitous conflations of sex and gender in codified state bans, which miss subtly implied gay panic or trans panic defenses in practice. Through this examination, the paper isolates and remedies these gaps in legislation. Recommendations include amending existing state bans to more accurately reflect distinctions between sexual identity and gender identity, as well as propose language creating an effective federal ban.
Transforming and Transgressing - VAC AUDITORIUM
VAC Auditorium
VAC Auditorium
Deirdre Price, Towards an Embodied Queer Dramaturgy
As an undergraduate developing my own theatre-making practice, I view all art-making in the educational space I occupy as research; messy, squishy, unbalanced, practice-as-research, or PaR. In their article “Queer Practice as Research,” Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier state that: “queer PaR is a lived experience that exceeds binary thinking, upsets unitary subjects and presents identities expressed in non-normative sexualities. Researchers take these identity positions to the heart of their research fields, studios and stages – and in doing so bring a fluid knowing, or a messy existence, to the kinds of knowledges those research projects produce” (3). The queering of research practice as described here by Campbell and Farrier is fundamental to my approach to theatre-making, particularly because of how queer theatre and performance art processes occupy that fundamental intersection of “lived experience” and “fluid knowing.” This research project chronicles my approach to developing my own methodology of theatre-making and the development of my play The Jupiter Bird, resulting in what I refer to as embodied queer dramaturgy or EQD. This methodology is not my own invention, but rather my own vocabulary for a phenomenon occurring all across the landscape of queer research-practice. EQD seeks to acknowledge the multitudinous nature of dramaturgy and revel in the space in-between blurred lines. This project outlines the approach to such work through a case-study model and offers alternate and queered methods of new play development.
Tyler Sesker, Who Are You Protecting? A Feminist Analysis of Gay and Trans Panic Defense Bans, How They Are Defined, and Who They Serve
As of April 2022, sixteen U.S. states ban gay panic and trans panic criminal defenses. These state-law prohibitions stemmed from several high-profile murder trials, focusing on the identity of the decedent, including the killings of Matthew Shepard and Latisha King. Between 1970 and 2020 criminal defenses interrogating the gender identity or sexual identity of victims of violence, were used at least 104 times, with nearly a third of those cases resulting in reduced criminal charges and penalties (Williams Institute, 2021). Today, in thirty-four states, the same tactics remain legal. Applying a feminist and outsider legal lens, this study engages in a textual analysis of state legislative ban language and trial orders to explore how identity is defined and conflated in existing state bans and their legal consequences, to frame an argument for novel, comprehensive federal legislation. This study critically challenges ubiquitous conflations of sex and gender in codified state bans, which miss subtly implied gay panic or trans panic defenses in practice. Through this examination, the paper isolates and remedies these gaps in legislation. Recommendations include amending existing state bans to more accurately reflect distinctions between sexual identity and gender identity, as well as propose language creating an effective federal ban.