SPILL: Queer Performance's Messy Leakages

Saturday 4th July – Sunday 5th July 2026

Market Hall, the University of Melbourne (Parkville campus)

Co-Convenors: Triss Niemi (Flinders), Bridget Mac Eochagain (USyd), Ian Ramirez (UniMelb), Andrew Sutherland (VCA)

The Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies welcomes its members and international colleagues to a two-day symposium hosted by The Gender and Sexuality Werking Group.

As we approach 10 years post-publication of Queer Dramaturgies: International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer we think it pertinent to return to Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier's description of queer performance as "excessive, flowing over [with] meaning-making ... both indecipherable and full of meaning at the same time" (2). We continue to reflect "in the hours/days/years after these encounters" with Campbell and Farrier's work on the notion that "performance [allows] for ... a queerly transitory suspension of the regular rules of sociality" (3).

In their 2023 editorial 'What's Queer About Queer Performance Now?', Campbell, Farrier and Kumarswamy point to a trend in the global North where scholars "frequently come up against the idea within and beyond the academy that queer is 'done', 'over'" (3). However, we live in a time where "queer performance does not appear across the globe in a consistent and coherent fashion" and so cannot "characterise all queer performance as done, perfectly formed, open, and resistive" (1).

This is, of course, often a result of the socio-political climates in which Queer art and knowledge workers find themselves. In the short time since this editorial's publication, we have seen an entrenchment and escalation of these tensions. We have seen a down pour of legislation against trans and queer lives in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Hungary. We have seen the floodgates burst open as the international community more-and-more stands against the genocides occurring across the globe. We have seen institutions attempt to drown out these voices as censorship, pinkwashing, and homonationalism become ever-more-visible in Western countries.

Drawing from Campbell & Farrier's practices of queer theory gone 'feral' (see: https://feralqueercamp.com/), we invite thinking on how we might navigate Queer practices within increasingly hostile institutional environments. Who are we doing this work for? Are we fooling ourselves? How can our Queerness and resistance leak out from institutional walls, and how can we consciously turn this leak into a spill?

From our position within Oceania, Queer performance can sit uneasily between the institutional and the radical, slipping from the margins into the walls of the mainstage, the academy, and the state-funded theatre; potentially becoming stuck, co-opted or 'stopped up'. We are moved by Marcus Bell's description, in wrtiing on the genealogies of queer gestures and performances they have missed, of "what happens as performance spills out of the present ... how, like a gesture, ephemeral things can reemerge, reappear, and rework themselves - documenting the ways in which performance slips out of and jumps across different times and spaces in queer studies" (142).

We keep this in mind as we ask what of Campbell and Farrier's initial 'flowing over' or Bell's 'spill' remains with us? How much of it has dried up or slipped away? Where does Queer continue to leak out onto us? We also ask once 'spilled', what messes does Queer performance emerge from? What is its residue? What sticks to us in the befores, the afters, the missed opportunities and the almost-but-not-quites of Queer performance? We ask not just what makes us Queer but what keeps us Queer, and propels us to try and try again?

Throughout this two-day symposium, Queer scholars across continents and practices will gather to share space, thought, and practice. SPILL will also host a keynote session from Professors Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier, with performance from invited artists, the First Nations drag group Motherless Collective. Please see the full schedule HERE.

Payment scale:
$75AUD - fully waged
$40AUD - ADSA members; postgraduate or ECR; unwaged; independent artists

(If you feel you have the funds to pay the full rate, we appreciate this! The registration fees go towards operational costs and payment of our invited artists. We encourage those who are able to afford the higher registration fee to do so, as excess funds will be allocated towards refunding the registration fees of postgraduate delegates experiencing financial hardship.)

The Conference dinner be at 8pm on Saturday 4 July, location TBD but close to the Parkville campus. This will be pay your own way. Due to booking requirements, this is capped at 30, and is currently booked out

Contact the host of SPILL: Queer Performance's Messy Leakages