Staging Discomfort

Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba

Bretton White

• Publisher: University of Florida Press
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781683401810
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: Social Sciences

This visionary volume examines how queer bodies are theatrically represented on the Cuban stage in ways that challenge one of the state's primary revolutionary tools, the categorization and homogenization of individuals. Bretton White critically analyzes contemporary performances that upset traditional understandings of performer and spectator, as well as what constitutes the ideal Cuban citizenry. Following the 1959 revolution, nonconformists were monitored and reported by local committees and punished or reformed by the government. Censorship was rampant, and Cuban art suffered as the state tried to control the national message. Through the lens of queer theory, White explores how the body has been central to the state's fear-based marginalization of gay life and looks at the ways these theatrical performances defuse that fear. She highlights the revolutionary model of masculinity and the role it plays in excluding people based upon visible queer difference. White finds that, through experimental performances of sexuality, actors create connections with audiences to evoke shared feelings of discomfort, intimacy, shame, longing, frustration, and failure, which echo the prevalence of these feelings in other Cuban spaces. By performing queerness, these plays question the state's narrative of heteronormativity and empower citizens to negotiate alternative understandings of Cuban identity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• STAGING DISCOMFORT
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Dramatic Discomforts
• 1. Instigating Intimacies: Las relaciones de Clara and Uncomfortable Closeness
• 2. Sharing Shame: Reimagining Entrepreneurship in Baños públicos, S.A.
• 3. Frustrating Futurity: Beauty and Pain in Pájaros de la playa
• 4. Vexing Visibilities: Space and Queerness in Chamaco
• 5. Fronting Failure: Testing Continuity in Perros que jamás ladraron
• Conclusion: Contrary to Community
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index