Unnatural Acts: Theorizing the Performative

1 total work

Acts of Intervention

by David Roman

Published 1 February 1998

From cabarets and candlelight vigils to full-scale Broadway productions such as Angels in America and Rent, over the past 15 years public performances and dramatic texts have shaped, and been shaped by, the history of AIDS. Author David Roman examines the ways that gay men have used alternative, activist, and mainstream theater and performance to intervene in the AIDS crisis. He considers solo performance, community-based projects, mixed-media events, activist demonstrations, and AIDS educational theater initiatives.

Roman shows how performance and theater have participated in the cultural politics of race, sexuality, citizenship, and AIDS in the United States. Not only has the theater provided a forum for gay male response to the epidemic, Roman contends, but it has also determined the degree to which those responses have shaped the ideological formulation of AIDS. Acts of Intervention provides a new method for discussing the relation between AIDS and representation, combining ideas from performance theory, gay and lesbian studies, critical race discourse, and cultural studies.