| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores the transformative and queer healing potential of queer contemporary
performance and artworks with Ophelia’s Got Talent as a focal point. In Ophelia's Got Talent,
Austrian-born theatermaker and choreographer Florentina Holzinger reimagines
Shakespeare's Ophelia as an empowerment symbol, interpreting her death as an act of
agency. The performance, rich with water-themed imagery, features an all-female cast
reclaiming trauma through daring acts in a talent show format. In 21st century Western
society, one could argue we are experiencing a collapse in imagination, leading to a constant
state of collective trauma. Lauren Berlant’s notion that normativity is violent is used to
elucidate ways in which queer contemporary art can prompt queer healing. Drawing on
Berlant’s “cruel optimism” and “crisis ordinariness”, six elements of queer healing are
defined: community care, alternative kinship, Jack Halberstam’s “queer failure”, José Esteban
Munoz’ “disidentification”, subjugated healing knowledges and Tony Wells’ “imagination”.
Through a dramaturgical analysis of Ophelia’s Got Talent along the planes of spectatorship
and statement it was found that the performance keeps the spectator suspended and in a state
of what Victor Turner calls betwixt and between. Through the compositional element of
watery imagery the performance produces a spectatorship of porosity. The ways trauma is
represented in the performance aligns with Berlant’s concept of crisis ordinariness as the
traumatic stories that are reclaimed are clearly embedded in societal systems of power and
oppression. The performance Ophelia’s Got Talent strategically uses water to both engage
with and subvert traditional gendered representations of water, thereby disidentifying with the
passive victimhood often associated with femininity. From the analysis four paired
dramaturgical strategies are identified and applied to three other queer contemporary
artworks. The dramaturgical strategies are: ebbing, flooding, crystallizing and dissolving. In
applying these dramaturgical strategies to the other case studies within a contextual analysis,
it was found that they emphasized change, fluidity, and repetition. These strategies facilitated
the undoing or dismantling of certain frameworks, systems, or worlds, thereby creating space
for new possibilities and alternative modes of interaction and existence. In conclusion, this
thesis | |
