Playing in the Dark: Staging Lesbian Blues, Questioning Gendered Belonging

In this article I discuss a collective theater performance called Lesbian Blues that took place in Athens, Greece in 1998. It was an experimental performance, directed by feminist director Christiana Lambrinidis. The piece was devised collaboratively with the women who took part in the project, through improvisation drawing on their lives, bodies, and writings. Drawing on Judith Butler’s framework (1993, 1997), and on scenes from Lesbian Blues, I argue that this performance was staging a melancholic landscape in a (national) Greek imaginary, i.e., “workings of gender that do not ‘show’ in what is performed as gender” (Butler 1997:144). I examine how the women were writing and performing their queer selves, bodies, and desires, making rifts in the silence. I explore the atmosphere of embattlement, conflict, and the “blues” that informs the theatrical images. I argue that, drawing on their lives, bodies, and experiences, the women were questioning and contesting a Greek order of gendered belonging.