Creating Queer Solo Performance with Nando Messias

This six-day course will culminate in a solo, work-in-progress performance for an invited audience. Our work will be fun, playful and joyous using pop songs and opera, spoken word and movement, high and low culture, disrupting traditional hierarchical values associated with these and creating beautiful pieces of performance. 

This course uses Jack Halberstam’s definition of a queer methodology as a starting point to create solo work. “Queer methodology,” argues Halberstam, “attempts to combine methods that are often cast at odds with each other.” To that end, we will work in a trans-disciplinary manner by blurring the boundaries between performance, theatre, dance, live art, installation and other artistic genres. 

On this course you will explore:

• Movement techniques to generate performance material
• Different approaches of centring the body on stage
• Lyrics of songs as text
• Socially-engaged work
• Offering feedback and reflection on each other’s work
• Piecing together a coherent piece of performance to an invited audience