Feeling Queer in Dramatherapy: Transformation, Alice & the Caterpillar

Abstract

First delivered at the BADth Fundraising Event held on 23rd January 1999 at the Central School of Dramatic Art, London. (This paper is based on a lecture that I gave to the Postgraduate Diploma students at the University of Herts in 1998. When the title was first publicized I received a number of telephone calls from people asking me if the word ‘queer’ meant that I would be addressing homosexuality within Dramatherapy. I was, at first, inclined to a negative response to this question but as it was being put forward so often I decided that I would use the apparent misconception and incorporate the sexual/gender implications of the word ‘Queer’ in the paper and see where that would take us, even though I acknowledge that there is no particular connection between Carroll's use of the word ‘queer’ and Queerness as a mode of sexual or gender orientation. I did this, partly because I feel it is always useful to investigate various perceptions of a word, partly because I am both Queer (in the sense of sexual orientation) and ‘out’ (in the socio-political sense) and, partly, because I have found little if any concern or ‘marking’ of the ‘Queer question’ within the literature of Dramatherapy.)