Queer exceptions: Solo performance in neoliberal times

A major study of solo performance in the UK and Europe that examines the significance of exceptional lives in neoliberal times. With case studies drawn from theatre, comedy and live art, it combines insights from gender studies, politics and sociology to present a new queer account of subjectivity at the start of the twenty-first century. This book is a study of post-millennial solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. Featuring artists as varied as La Ribot, David Hoyle, Neil Bartlett, Bridget Christie, Rosana Cade and Tanja Ostojic, it provides an essential account of the diverse practices which characterise contemporary solo performance, and their significance to debates concerning equality, community and social participation. By moving between the practices and traditions of theatrical monologue, stand-up comedy, cabaret and live art, it identifies vulnerability, complicity and optimism as key responses to neoliberalism’s preference – if not demand – for self-made subjects. Beginning in a study of the arts festivals which characterise the economies in which solo performance circulates, each chapter animates a different cultural trope – including the martyr, the killjoy, the invalid and the stranger – to explore the significance of ‘exceptional’ subjects whose precarious social status challenges assumed notions of communal sociability. These figures invite us to re-examine theatre’s attachment to singular lives and experiences, and provide a new account of the role of autobiographical performance and the explicit body in negotiating the relationship between the personal and the political. Informed by the work of scholars including Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman and Giorgio Agamben – and located at the intersection of queer and performance studies – this interdisciplinary text offers an incisive analysis of the cultural significance of solo performance for students and scholars across the fields of theatre studies, sociology, gender studies and political philosophy. Queer exceptions is a study of contemporary solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. With diverse case studies featuring the work of La Ribot, David Hoyle, Oreet Ashery, Bridget Christie, Tanja Ostojic, Adrian Howells and Nassim Soleimanpour, the book examines the role of singular or ‘exceptional’ subjects in constructing and challenging assumed notions of communal sociability and togetherness, while drawing fresh insight from the fields of sociology, gender studies and political philosophy to reconsider theatre’s attachment to singular lives and experiences. Framed by a detailed exploration of arts festivals as encapsulating the material, entrepreneurial circumstances of contemporary performance-making, this is the first major critical study of solo work since the millennium.