Acting Queer

Conrad Alexandrowicz is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria, Canada. He is a director, writer and choreographer, and the artistic director of Wild Excursions Performance. To date he has created over fifty choreographies, dance- and physical-theatre pieces, plays and performance works, some of which have been presented across Canada, in New York City, France and the U.K. He specializes in movement for actors and physical theatre creation, directs mainstage productions, and continues his explorations into that mysterious territory where dance and theatre overlap. He recently completed an extensive research project on the staging of poetry with actors and dancers funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. His work has been published in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, the Canadian Journal for Practice-Based Research in Theatre and Studies in Theatre and Performance.

“Acting Queer was written for post-secondary theatre educators, especially practitioners, but I would suggest sharing it with department and college administrators also. … he also intends the book for ‘students themselves who may be asking troubling though perhaps productive questions … who is teaching them? What are they being taught and why?’ … . I look forward to asking these questions alongside students and discovering what may be possible when heteronormative gender roles are actively subverted in our pedagogy.” (Emily Finck, Theatre Topics, Vol. 32 (1), March, 2022)

• 1. Introduction: ‘Straight-looking, Straight-acting’.- 2. ‘You’re Soaking in It’: the Influence of Hollywood.- 3. Gender Dissidence and Its Prohibitions.- 4. Gendered Movement and “Physical’ Acting.- 5. The Subversion of Realism.- 6. Queer-looking, Queer-acting.- 7. Extensions and Excursions: Acting Queer Ecology.