In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Performance Anxiety: "Identity," "Community," and Tim Miller's My Queer Body ROBERT WALLACE For Kathleen Martindale 1947-1995 In an article published in Theatre Journal, Reid Gilbert argues that "when it is put on view as sexual object, the male body is invariably punished.'" To illustrate his argument, Gilbert considers three plays (Robert Lepage's Polygraph, Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart, and David Drake's The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me), specifically analyzing scenes in which the body of a male character is positioned as an erotic object usually, but not exclusively, by being nude. Two of these scenes focus on gay male characters - Fran~ois in Polygraph and the unnamed persona adopted by Drake in his solo show who , in Gilbert's reading of these plays, seek and receive masochistic treatment . In McNally's play, Gilbert argues, this "punishment'" is exercised not on the character who appears nude but on the only other male character - his brother-in-law, who watches him take a shower. Though both are heterosexual , the character who views the other's nudity "is punished for having broken the taboo, for having viewed another male body" (482). Gilbert's thesis deserves attention, for it invokes anxieties that attend the convergence of performance, critical theory, and lesbian and gay studies. In the following essay, I address Gilbert:s argument by considering My Queer Body, a monologue written and performed by Tim Miller, an American performance artist best known, perhaps, as a member of "the NEA Four.'" David Roman points out that "[tlhe short history of gay drama in the age of AIDS has already demonstrated how one type of drama intended as political intervention - the humanist depiction of suffering and loss - can have problematic ramifications when mainstreamed:"4 Thus he advises critics concerned with the theatrical representation of gay men to examine alternative as well as mainstream productions - in particular, performance art which, "although not theater proper, holds the capacity to provide a radical critique of precisely the Modern Drama, 39 (1996) 97 ROBERT WALLACE issues of representation, subject position, and perfonner-audience dynamics which are staged in the theater" (21 I). In this regard, Roman urges gay male critics to utilize lesbian feminist criticism that already has produced sophisticated analyses of the representation and reception of lesbian subjects in mainstream and alternative venues (213). In the following I heed Romans's advice by applying performance theories developed by American lesbian feminists to Gilbert's article and to My Queer Body. Peggy Phelan, one of the critics I will consider, begins a commentary on Miller's text by noting that "Tim Miller is not a lesbian. Nor is he a woman. (Or at least not in public.) As far as I know, he is not a transsexual or a hermaphrodite. The body performed and displayed in Miller's My Queer Body is what would have been formerly called a young-white-gay-man's body."5 My choice of Miller's work signals that representation of the male body is my primary concern here; because I frequently cite lesbian feminist theory, I feel obliged to emphasize that I write as an "older-white-gay-man" committed to what used to be called the politics of lesbian and gay Iiberation.6 These investments rely on assumptions of identity and visibility that are ontologically questionable and politically volatile. By foregrounding them now, I attempt to initiate what Jill Dolan calls "a reconstructive moment," one that requires the '''risk of essentialism,' to image identities that must be seen, both to be subversive and to survive."7 My anxiety at this enterprise is similar to that experienced by lesbians and gay men for whom conflicting ideas about the constitution of the body remain an issue. Lynda Hart, in Acting Out: Feminist Performances, explains that "gays and lesbians are caught in the dilemma of having to maintain a coherent , albeit fictive, identity, while simultaneously striving to undo the binary distinction [of heterosexuality and homosexuality].'" She elaborates: Whereas political essentialisms of race and gender may resort to color or sex to ground their strategies (not, of course, without their attendant risks), sexual identities would seem to rely not on some...

pdf

Share