Expanding Queer Narratives in Theatre

by Robbie Taylor Hunt

Director of ERIS running at The Bunker Theatre, 11 – 28 September

We’re often led to believe in theatre that the lives of queer people only consist of painful narratives around coming out, abuse and illness. These are essential stories to tell and are major difficulties in many queer people’s lives. However, we have to be careful about who is framing the communication of these stories and how they are being conveyed. What’s more, reinforcing these same narratives limits representation, and the arts have tended to avoid deeper exploration of the complexities of queer existence.

This is partly down to age-old stereotyping; straight audiences can understand seeing a promiscuous gay man, a sexualized lesbian, a conflicted bisexual or a troubled trans person. It’s considered much more difficult for directors, writers, and theatre buildings to break the narrative and represent the unheard voices of queerness. But it needn’t be that hard. There are fantastic queer theatre-makers out there, if we put in a bit more effort to find them. We have to represent their experiences, even if they seem unlike queer narratives we’ve heard before. We must also approach storytelling through the framework of intersectionality, recognising how the systems that give us our identities overlap and how this creates unique narratives.

Similar to how female playwrights have been underrepresented and considered a ‘financial risk’, queer plays should not just be programmed as the ‘risky’, ‘edgy’ studio theatre pieces. If we put bold, honest queer stories centre stage, audiences will come.

Even incidentally queer characters are meaningful. Namely, a play follows a woman meeting her estranged brother, and she happens to be asexual. Or the cousin in a family drama is trans, which is never problematised. For straight and cisgender playwrights and directors, sensitively making these choices makes a difference: queer people can exist in the world beyond difficulty, scrutiny and hardship.

In ERIS by John King, running at the Bunker Theatre, a gay guy’s family don’t let him bring his boyfriend to his sister’s wedding back home in Ireland. They are accepting of his gayness, but struggle to accept his femme, fabulous, queer boyfriend. It contains a more nuanced queer plot, which is set against what is otherwise a comedy-filled play about disconnection, rebellion, and family problems.

Visibility is a powerful thing. If we only see queer life represented as one-dimensional and miserable, then what does that do to our self-perception? Seeing diverse queer stories on stage can change social awareness and make huge impacts on audiences – straight, cisgender and queer.

ERIS runs at the Bunker Theatre from 11 – 28 September (7.30pm, Sat matinee 3pm) £10/12 Concessions, £16