Contemporary Theatre Review

Hongwei Bao imagines an evocative monologue for the fictional clerk Hu Tianbao, who appears in a short story of Qing Dynasty Chinese scholar Yuan Mei

Hongwei Bao problematises the umbrella term of “drag” by discussing two categories of drag in contemporary China: fanchuan, drawn from traditional and historical Chinese theatre and bianzhuang, influenced by “global drag culture.”

The performance text for Andrew Sutherland’s Swan Twink subversively uses the iconic, almost mythical, status of the classic Swan Lake to create a queerly intimate, personal and vulnerable performance.

Lighting designer Emma Lockhart-Wilson posits strategies of subversion, fluidity and drawing attention to bodily labour as ways to explore queerness in three performances.

Ibrahim Halaçoglu’s decolonial performative text invokes the idea of the meddah, or a traditional storyteller and mimic, for a self-reflexive critical monologue on migration, freedom and identity.

Gemma Hutton and Greg Thorpe, interviewed by Alyson Campbell, Meta Cohen and Stephen Farrier.