Blacktino Queer Performance
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.
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.
Part V
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Published:June 2016
In this chapter, Lisa B. Thompson analyzes Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr.’s play Dancin’ the Down Low. She posits that the play queers traditional notions of black masculinity, paying particular attention to the various functions of the play’s dancing metaphor. In the end, Thompson applauds the play’s inclusion of black women but submits that the play could offer more nuanced representations of black female experience, sexuality, and desire.
In this chapter, John Keene interviews Dancin’ the Down Low creator Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr. McCune discusses his intellectual and artistic trajectory and asserts that his performance work is a form of activism. He contends, for example, that DL men being blamed for the rise of new cases of HIV/AIDS among heterosexual black women motivated him to write a play that would counter that discourse.
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