Fat Dramaturgies: Strategies and methodologies in staging Australian fat performance

This project investigates the dramaturgical strategies used in recent Australian fat performance works (2023-2025). Analysing select examples from independent artists in the local industry, the research investigates how queer strategies can subvert societal urges to pathologize fatness. It asks: what dramaturgical strategies do these artists employ, and how do fatness and queerness function as identity positions and aesthetic influences? In doing so, the project uncovers how performance disrupts the negative framing of fat body-subjects, reconfiguring them as powerful, strong, and—most radically—sexual. The study draws on fat studies, feminist and queer theory, gender studies and performance studies.