Collective community performance can shape new counter-hegemonic narratives, perform practices of care and mutual aid, and form resistance movements. I am exploring the characteristics of Black men’s contributions to these practices. Identifying the role of gender and race in the formulation of collective resistance strategies, I ask how Black men use masculinist, feminist and/or protective, patriarchal methods, and how may these be unlearned or re-shaped within the progressive resistance movements of collective community performance. I examine how and if the wake work of community theatre and community resistance performance is an enabler of progressive forms of Black male resistance.
Identity – seen as external to the self and moulded by sociopolitical environments - will be viewed as a factor that can enable strategies of particular resistance in the pursuit of universal emancipation. The meanings assigned to Black male identity stem from persistent reproductions of the UK's dominant and hierarchical sociocultural narratives, which portray Black men as existential threats, objects of desire, and disposable entities. How Black men perform their sense of identity and positively contribute to community action through resistance – using theatre and non-theatre modes – will be explored as subversions of identitarian presumption.
I consider constructions of Black male identity with reference to hegemonic masculinities, intersecting identity markers and theories emanating from Black Male Studies. Perceived as consumable, disposable, to be feared and surveilled, the Black male body is socially produced and visible within a racist frame. He is seen as inherently dominating and patriarchal, making his appearance outside of this framing illegible. I therefore read the targeting and subordination of Black men as gendered.
In contestation of the view that Black men perform social action in a way that is masculinist, exclusionary and mimetic of white male dominance, I explore the range of social action undertaken by Black men to demonstrate the extent to which the resistance of subjugation is both identitarian and contributes to a broad emancipatory project. I aim to uncover the methods and effectiveness of contestations and subversions of hegemonic narratives that Black male performance brings. I seek an original view, therefore, of how Black men form and use resistance practices through collective, community practices that position them as progressive, creative and intellectual participant-leaders.
Community theatre is frequently used as a forum to address social issues and can be a powerful tool to unsettle hegemonic narratives. In all-male environments like prisons, it has been successful in enabling experimentation with masculine identities, challenging patriarchal beliefs and improving openness and self-expression, contributing to improved wellbeing. It has also been used to enable young men to explore and contest masculinities through dialogue and play. Apart from a few studies, there is a dearth of data on how community theatre has been used for the benefit of men. In particular, existing studies on Black men have tended to focus on incarcerated men, limiting exploration of community leadership and potential.
To uncover the effectiveness of community theatre, I make a comparison with Black male performances of identity and resistance in non-theatre spaces. By analysing the influence of Black men within community-based social action groups, I will reveal how different processes shape identity and resistance formation, how non-theatre practices compare with the imaginative, protected sites of community theatre and how these different environments influence Black male leadership.
Community theatre provides creative protected spaces for rehearsing, devising, thinking and imagining that enable the building of homosocial solidarity through shared space and experience. I argue that the use of creative protected spaces – the means by which participants imagine and strategise - cultivates a protective membrane that enables both the development of new narratives of resistance and explorations of identity. This is an important process that can support the unlearning of patriarchal practices and hegemonic narratives. By analysing the characteristics and functions of community-based protected space, I will identify to what extent the influence of a community theatre practice is or may be used to confront and contest patriarchal social norms.
If the protected space nurtures ideas and expression, the public performance space is where these ideas are communicated: it is the terrain in which struggle, resistance and performance acts take place. I analyse how and why devised, accidental and responsive performances take place in public or semi-public spaces, and how these spaces of contestation, confinement and surveillance may be used imaginatively to communicate ideas of resistance and identity.
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