HIV/AIDS in American theatre :|queerness, spatio-temporalities, and emancipation

Abstract

This thesis examines American HIV/AIDS theater in the context of time and space. Drawing mainly from queer approaches to time and space, it explores the plays of Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz (1990), Cheryl L. West’s Before It Hits Home (1990), and Harry Kondoleon’s Zero Positive (1989), respectively. This study, first and foremost, aims to discover overlooked queer politics and spatio-temporal potentialities embedded in these plays. Torsten Graff suggests that queer theory, especially textually, neglects drama. It would not be wrong to say that, apart from some canonized plays, the potentials of HIV/AIDS theater have been overlooked by queer criticism. For that reason, this study aims to awaken these ostensibly dormant queer potentialities as well as to enhance their (re)visitability. Also catalyzed by Erving Goffman’s influential study on “Stigma,” and offering a concept of the “spatio-temporal stigma,” this study shows how this normative duress exacerbates the extant stigma on queer and black PLHIV. Ultimately, it also argues that theatre intervenes such oppressions, providing a liberating alternative spatio-temporality, and thus, heralding a resistant transformation.