Intersectionality in performance studies examines how multiple social identities shape performers' experiences and audience reception. It reveals how race, gender, class, and other factors intersect to create unique challenges and opportunities in the performing arts.

Performance can make visible and challenge intersectional oppression. By centering marginalized voices and experiences, performances confront systemic inequalities, foster solidarity across differences, and mobilize resistance against interlocking systems of oppression.

Intersectionality in Performance Studies

Conceptual Framework

• Intersectionality examines how multiple social identities, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability, intersect and shape individuals' experiences, opportunities, and vulnerabilities
• Recognizes that social identities are interconnected and mutually constitutive, creating unique experiences of privilege and oppression (Black women, queer people of color, disabled immigrants)
• Relevant for understanding how performers' identities and social positions shape their creative practices, artistic expressions, and reception by audiences
• Helps analyze how power dynamics and systemic inequalities are reproduced, challenged, or subverted through performance

Applications in Performance Studies

• Illuminates the complex ways in which performers navigate their intersecting identities and social positions within the performing arts industry
• Provides a critical lens for examining the representation and marginalization of diverse identities in performance texts, practices, and institutions
• Enables a nuanced analysis of how audiences' intersectional identities shape their interpretations, reactions, and evaluations of performances
• Highlights the potential of performance to make visible and challenge the intersectional nature of oppression and marginalization

Intersecting Identities in Performance

Shaping Performers' Experiences

• Performers' multiple identities, such as their race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability, intersect to shape their access to resources, opportunities, and networks within the performing arts industry
• The intersection of identities influences performers' artistic choices, such as the roles they take on, the stories they tell, and the aesthetics they employ in their work (casting decisions, character portrayals, narrative themes)
• Performers' intersecting identities can affect their experiences of typecasting, discrimination, and marginalization within the industry
• The intersection of identities also shapes the power dynamics and relationships between performers, directors, producers, and other stakeholders in the creative process

Influencing Audience Reception

• Audiences' intersectional identities and social positions shape their interpretations, reactions, and evaluations of performances, leading to diverse and sometimes conflicting experiences
• Audiences' intersecting identities can influence their identification with or alienation from the characters, stories, and themes presented in performances
• The intersection of identities can shape audiences' expectations, biases, and judgments of performers based on their perceived social positions and cultural identities
• Audiences' intersectional experiences and perspectives can inform their critical engagement with and responses to performances, including their recognition or overlooking of marginalized identities and experiences

Performance and Intersectional Oppression

Making Oppression Visible

• Performance can make visible and critique the intersectional nature of oppression, such as the compounded marginalization experienced by individuals with multiple marginalized identities (Black women, queer people of color, disabled immigrants)
• Through storytelling, embodiment, and symbolic representation, performance exposes the lived realities and struggles of marginalized communities at the intersections of various forms of oppression
• Performance challenges dominant narratives and stereotypes that erase or misrepresent the experiences of intersectionally marginalized groups
• By centering the voices and experiences of marginalized communities, performance contributes to raising awareness, fostering empathy, and mobilizing solidarity against intersectional oppression

Confronting Systemic Inequalities

• Performance can interrogate and confront the systemic inequalities and power structures that perpetuate intersectional oppression
• Through subversive and counter-hegemonic practices, performance can disrupt and destabilize the normative assumptions and ideologies that underpin intersectional marginalization
• Performance can expose the intersectional dimensions of institutional and structural oppression, such as the disproportionate impact of policing, incarceration, and state violence on marginalized communities
• By enacting alternative possibilities and imagining transformative futures, performance can inspire critical consciousness and collective action towards dismantling intersectional oppression

Intersectionality for Social Change

Fostering Solidarity and Alliance-Building

• Intersectional approaches to performance recognize the shared struggles and interconnected nature of various forms of oppression, fostering solidarity among marginalized communities
• By bringing together performers and audiences from diverse backgrounds and social positions, intersectional performances create spaces for dialogue, understanding, and alliance-building across differences
• Intersectional performances facilitate the recognition of common experiences of marginalization and the need for collective resistance against interlocking systems of oppression
• Through the embodied and affective power of performance, intersectional approaches cultivate empathy, compassion, and a sense of shared humanity across intersectional divides

Mobilizing Resistance and Advocacy

• Intersectional performances serve as a form of resistance by challenging dominant power structures, confronting oppressive norms, and imagining alternative possibilities for social relations
• Through the creative and expressive capacities of performance, intersectional approaches amplify marginalized voices, experiences, and perspectives that are often silenced or excluded from mainstream discourse
• Intersectional performances contribute to social movements by mobilizing communities, raising critical awareness, and advocating for systemic transformations that address the root causes of intersectional oppression
• By engaging audiences in critical reflection, dialogue, and action, intersectional performances inspire a sense of collective responsibility and commitment to social change that transcends individual identities and experiences