A RAINBOW IN THE AGE OF COVID: CONTEMPORARY QUEER THEATRE IN AOTEAROA

ABSTRACT

The 2022 Festival had been promoted as the 'largest Queer Arts programme in the history of the festival', with arts events (dance, theatre, music, cabaret, comedy, live art, film, drag performances, ballroom, circus, craft, literary events and public art exhibitions) making up ninety out of the Festival's 180 events.1 Auckland Pride framed its decision to cancel the majority of its programming as part of an ethics of care for the rainbow community, deeming that it would be 'irresponsible' to proceed during an Omicron outbreak.2 While Auckland Pride's 2022 Festival had lost the game of live event production pandemic roulette, the size and strength of its planned queer arts programme reflects the prominence of queer performance in Aotearoa's contemporary cultural landscape. Over My Dead Body UNINVITED by Jason Te Mete and Everything After by Shane Bosher ask us to attend to Aotearoa's queer history, by bringing visibility to the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on Aotearoa's rainbow community;Yang/ Young/Ш by Sherry Zhang and Nuanzhi Zheng foregrounds the space of high school and the Chinese family, using the domestic landscape to explore intersectional politics through a narrative of triumph and pride that challenges the limitations of Western notions of 'coming-out'. The only play that Brooks had written at that point that he deemed a 'gay' play was Queen, a stream-of-con- sciousness monologue 'about the young gay guy experience'.13 Queen's April 2013 season at the Basement Theatre coincided with the New Zealand Parliament passing the Marriage Equality Bill. James Wenley quoted the words of queer MP Tamati Coffey in his review of Queen 'This bill will validate my place in society ... it moves mountains for future New Zealanders, who will live in a time where it's normal to be able to love whoever they want to'.14 As recently as 2012, a major plot point of Benjamin Cleaver's musical Day After Night, directed by Wenley and performed at Basement Theatre, was the inability of the central gay couple to become legally married and adopt a baby together.