Click to open Queer Art in Austin in Google Maps
Each year, the LGBTQ+ Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education hosts the Doric Wilson Panel, featuring queer artists local to the conference’s host city. For the 2023 conference in Austin, Texas, Melissa Sturges (LGBTQ+ Focus Group, Grad. Student Rep.) has curated an event featuring playwright Sam Mayer and performer/electronic pop superstar P1nkstar. The Doric Wilson Panel, this year titled “Queer Art in Austin/Queer Art in Action” will take place on Saturday, July 29, 2023 from 3:00-4:30 (cst). Immediately following the panel, attendees will be invited to participate in a “Virtual Self-Guided Tour of Historical and Contemporary Queer Performance in Austin.” My hope is that this will offer a creative way of contextualizing P1nkstar and Sam Mayer’s work within the broader landscape of queer performance in the city. At the same time, I hope it can provide a variety of entry points for deeper engagement with Austin’s queer community, history, and arts scene beyond the conference hotel.
An Orientation:
On this Google map, I have marked out a few dozen sites of queer performance, gathering spots, popular drag and burlesque venues. The markers are color coded by decade and the icons indicate what type of event/space they represent. The stars are a small number of the places where our guest artists have performed and/or had their work produced. If you click on a marker, a small window will pop up with a link to an external site. On the map I’ve curated links to images, texts, websites, and other digital archival ephemera each a piece of local queer performance, art, history.
Take some time to explore, to get a lay of the land. You might choose to linger in a particular neighborhood, or even in a single building. Follow the links out of the map. Dive down rabbit holes. Follow the stories of the people who’ve inhabited these spaces.
We’ll reconvene after about 45 minutes.
Tell us about the spaces that drew you in.
Where did you wander and what did you find there?
Whose stories did you follow to a conclusion? Whose appear to be documented only in fragments, snapshots of a single moment in time?
Whose made you want to linger in that moment?
What did you get curious about?
What questions are you left with?