Blacktino Queer Performance

Staging an important new conversation between performers and critics, Blacktino Queer Performance approaches the interrelations of blackness and Latinidad through a stimulating mix of theory and art. The collection contains nine performance scripts by established and emerging black and Latina/o queer playwrights and performance artists, each accompanied by an interview and critical essay conducted or written by leading scholars of black, Latina/o, and queer expressive practices. As the volume's framing device, "blacktino" grounds the specificities of black and brown social and political relations while allowing the contributors to maintain the goals of queer-of-color critique. Whether interrogating constructions of Latino masculinity, theorizing the black queer male experience, or examining black lesbian relationships, the contributors present blacktino queer performance as an artistic, critical, political, and collaborative practice. These scripts, interviews, and essays not only accentuate the value of blacktino as a reading device; they radiate the possibilities for thinking through the concepts of blacktino, queer, and performance across several disciplines. Blacktino Queer Performance reveals the inevitable flirtations, frictions, and seductions that mark the contours of any ethnoracial love affair. Contributors. Jossiana Arroyo, Marlon M. Bailey, Pamela Booker, Sharon Bridgforth, Jennifer Devere Brody, Cedric Brown, Bernadette Marie Calafell, Javier Cardona, E. Patrick Johnson, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, John Keene, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, D. Soyini Madison, Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Andreea Micu, Charles I. Nero, Tavia Nyong'o, Paul Outlaw, Coya Paz, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Sandra L. Richards, Matt Richardson, Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, Celiany Rivera-Velazquez, Tamara Roberts, Lisa B. Thompson, Beliza Torres Narvaez, Patricia Ybarra, Vershawn Ashanti Young

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments  ix Introduction: Ethnoracial Intimacies in Blacktino Queer Performance / E. Patrick Johnson and RamÓn H. Rivera-Servera  1 Part I. The love conjure/blues Text Installation / Sharon Bridgforth  21 1. Reinventing the Black Southern Community in Sharon Bridgforth's The love conjure/blues Text Installation / Matt Richardson  62 2. Interview with Sharon Bridgforth / Sandra L. Richards  78 Part II. Machos / Teatro Luna  89 3. Voicing Masculinity / Tamara Roberts  154 4. Interview with Coya Paz / Patricial Ybarra  167 Part III. Strange Fruit: A Performance about Identity Politics / E. Patrick Johnson  179 5. Passing Strange: E. Patrick Johnson's Strange Fruit / Jennifer DeVere Brody  213 6. Interview with E. Patrick Johnson / Bernadette Marie Calafell  229 Part IV. Ah mÉn / Javier Cardona, translated by Micu and RamÓn H. Rivera-Servera  243 7. Homosociality and Its Discontents: Puerto Rican Masculinities in Javier Cardona's Ah mÉn / Celiany Rivera-VelÁzquez and Beliza Torres NarvÁez  264 8. Interview with Javier Cardona / Jossianna Arroyo, translated by RamÓn H. Rivera-Servera  275 Part V. Dancin' the Down Low / Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr.  285 9. Queering Black Identity and Desire: Jeffrey Q. McClune Jr.'s Dancin' the Down Low / Lisa B. Thompson  230 10. Interview with Jeffrey Q. McClune Jr. / John Keene  331 Part VI. Cuban Hustle / Cedric Brown  345 11. Love and Money: Performing Black Queer Diasporic Desire in Cuban Hustle / Marlon M. Bailey  372 12. Interview with Cedric Brown / D. Soyini Madison  387 Part VII. Seens from the Unexpectedness of Love / Pamela Booker  395 13. "Public Intimacy": Women-Loving-Women as Dramaturgical Transgressions / Omi Osun Joni L. Jones  439 14. Interview with Pamela Booker / Tavia Nyong'o  454 Part VIII. Berserker / Paul Outlaw  461 15. What's Nat Turner Doing Up in Here with All These Queers? Paul Outlaw's Beserker; A Black Gay Meditation on Interracial Desire and Disappearing Blackness / Charles I. Nero  486 16. Interview with Paul Outlaw / Vershawn Ashanti Young  498 Part IX. I Just Love Andy Gibb: A Play in One Act / Charles Rice-GonzÁlez  509 17. Learning to Unlove Andy Gibb: Race, Beauty, and the Erotics of Puerto Rican Black Queer Pedagogy / Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes  542 18. Interview with Charles Rice-GonzÁlez / RamÓn H. Rivera-Servera  555 Contributors  563 Index  569

About the Author :
E. Patrick Johnson is Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University and the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, also published by Duke University Press. RamÓn H. Rivera-Servera is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and the author of Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics.

Review :
"[T]he Blacktino works as presented in this collection rankle and disturb, taunt and tantalize, ripping back skin and exposing raw nerves like no other." - Timothy Francis Barry (Brooklyn Rail) "A groundbreaking project...." - Claudia Sofía Garriga-López (TSQ) "It is not only that all these voices matter and deserve to be heard but also (and even more so) that, when these voices are heard together in the space of the same printed text, they mean more-and differently-than they would in the small theatre spaces where they were originally performed." - Shane Breaux (Theatre Survey) "In bringing together the performance scripts of primarily Black and Latina/o queer playwrights and performance artists working in the United States, the book offers a survey of some of the most arresting work in this rising field." - Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez (Chiricú Journal) “This collection is a call for more collections that empower, (re)member, and advocate for queer people of color. It is an excellent choice for artists, activists, and academics interested in the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and sexuality (and more); cultural performances of power and resistance; and the potentiality of queer of color worldmaking.” - Robert Gutierrez-Perez (Text and Performance Quarterly) “Blacktino Queer Performance is an essential read for scholars of performance, queer theory, and critical race studies. Its cross-disciplinary approach provides multiple perspectives through intertextual and intercultural critique.” - Sarah Stefana Smith (CAA Reviews) "Blacktino Queer Performance serves as a timely consideration of the work of contemporary artists identifying as interracial and as queer, and as an interdisciplinary, lyrical imagining of the very notion of intersectionality." - Nevarez Encinias (TDR: The Drama Review) “Blacktino decolonizes queer performance, emancipating it from the homonormative whiteness of mainstream queer theory. The work of Johnson and Rivera-Servera interjects a critical intervention into the fields of racial and queer performance studies…. Johnson and Rivera-Servera offer an in-depth cultural critique that engages a vast array of artists and scholars, and they challenge their readers to seek out queer performance outside of the pages of their volume.” - Kerry L. Goldmann (Ufahamu)