Impertinent Decorum: Gay Theatrical Manoeuvres

Impertinent Decorum examines 'gay theatrical manoeuvres' from a new and exciting perspective which moves beyond the traditional analyses of a 'gay contribution' to mainstream British theatre and looks instead at some of the ways in which gay men in Britain have adopted theatrical manoeuvres to create, affirm and protect sexual identities. The book investigates and celebrates the varied and imaginative uses of drama in gay subculture. Ian Lucas tracks the evolution of these subcultures by focusing on the body as a stage for sexual identity, the appropriation of gay spaces and the use of semiotics as a mechanism for protection. The queer body has become visible and vulnerable through its exposition of drag and cross-dressing and as the stage for theatrical manoeuvres in the face of the AIDS crisis. Changing sexual identities have been accompanied by a changing use of spaces, claimed both legally and illicitly, from the eighteenth-century molly-houses to the annual Lesbian and Gay Pride marches in central London; the use of semiotics has developed from the fusion of languages that created Polari to the use of camp and codes, as demonstrated to great effect by contemporary direct-action groups such as ACT-UP and OutRage!