Baking Cake Daddy: transforming fat-phobia to fat-positivity with a slice of fat-queer subversive fun to fatten the stage

ABSTRACT

This article examines the genesis, making processes and performance choices of Cake Daddy, a queer and fat-positive live performance work (Belfast, Melbourne, Sydney, 2018–19). The show was made in response to performer-creator Ross Anderson-Doherty’s experience of shock and fatphobia in the audience’s reaction to his naked fat body in a previous production. This experience – and the unpacking of it – proved a catalyst for Anderson-Doherty to respond in the best way he knows: through performance and his own form of queer performance pedagogy. Through a Practice as Research methodology we, who are also members of the Cake Daddy creative team, trace the queer and “fat” dramaturgical choices within the creation and staging of this fat-positive and celebratory production. This includes the hybrid cabaret-theater form of the production, its (at times) conversational/dialogic mode, the visibility and participation of audiences, the virtuosity of Anderson-Doherty’s singing and hosting, the sharing of deeply personal material, the flaunting of fat/ness and fat sexuality onstage and the shared act of committing to a fat-positive community pledge: all of these, we assert, lead to a fat-queer utopian performative moment. Borrowing from queer theory’s move to see queer as a verb, rather than a noun, Anderson-Doherty’s co-option of fat as a verb has brought this forth: Anderson-Doherty “fattens” the space – and in the performance’s final moments he teaches audiences to conjugate that verb together as a temporary community.

KEYWORDS:

• Fat dramaturgy
• emotional dramaturgy
• fat and queer performance pedagogy

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Cake Daddy team for their insights throughout the process of making and the production. Thank you to The Australia Council for the Arts, the British Council, Creative Ireland, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Theatre Works Melbourne, Outburst Festival, Midsumma Festival and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for production funding and support. Thanks also to the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, for funding Campbell’s time on this work, and Campbell and Graffam’s travel.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Interview

Byrne, Martin. 2021. Recorded voice messages to Ross Anderson-Doherty. March 4, 2021.

Notes

1. Ethics approval for this research from the University of Melbourne, ID: 1750448.1. The responsible researcher is Alyson Campbell, [email protected].

2. Tea (Cell) Dance (GL RY) was produced by wreckedallprods and TheatreofplucK, directed by Alyson Campbell, and featured in the Outburst Queer Arts Festival (Belfast, 2016). For more on the trio of GL RY works staged in Belfast, see Campbell (2018).

3. Campbell (director) and Philpott (writer) share a twenty-year collaborative relationship, working together with an “assemblage” of queer-identifying performance-makers under the banner of wreckedAllprods: https://wreckedallprods.com.

4. Anderson-Doherty and Campbell have worked together for over ten years, always seeking to develop queer methods and processes and contribute to the queer community. Anderson-Doherty’s work has been crucial in queering panto and cabaret in Belfast/Ireland, bringing his political and fat-femme sensibility to mainstream modes as well as LGBTQIA+ events and venues.

5. Audio recording of “Cake Daddy’s Recipe” available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvlj3hOtjXA.

6. It is notoriously difficult to claim “impact” on audiences. A normatively-sized reviewer may not share the experience of fat audience members. Fat-identifying reviewer Shirley-Anne McMillan in Belfast writes, “For an audience to move from laughter to tears and back to laughter again is a pretty intense journey in the space of just over an hour. But it’s a wonderful intensity, and there is cake, which there always should be when emotions are high.” (2018) Additionally, audience questionnaire responses point to the resonance of the work on fat community. Possibly what was most notable, however, were the nightly conversations Ross would have with audience members, keen to share with him their experiences of fatphobia and what the work had meant for them. These were often emotional sharings, which speaks to the emotional labor that Ross was undertaking through this public performance, particularly over the two-week run in Australia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ross Anderson-Doherty

Ross Anderson-Doherty (he/they) is an actor, singer and theatre-maker based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They hold an MA in Drama and Performance from Queen’s University, Belfast. Ross is known for their work with Outburst Queer Arts Festival, most recently producing the theatre/cabaret piece Biscuit Granny in 2021. They’re the creative director of Belfast’s Cabaret Supperclub, Ireland’s longest running dedicated cabaret venue.

Alyson Campbell

Dr Alyson Campbell (she/her) is a theatre director whose work mainly sits within the LGBTQI+ community and she has a long-time interest in performance and HIV and AIDS. She is Professor in Theatre at the VCA, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, specialising in gender and sexuality and is editor of two collections: Queer Dramaturgies (Palgrave, 2015, with Stephen Farrier) and Viral Dramaturgies: HIV and AIDS in Performance in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave, 2018, with Dirk Gindt).

Jonathan Graffam

Jonathan Graffam (he/him) is a Melbourne-based performer, dramaturg and researcher. He recently completed a Master of Fine Arts (Theatre) at the University of Melbourne, examining the dramaturgical strategies used in staging Cake Daddy (2018/19). Jonno extends this research in his PhD project at Monash University, “Fat Dramaturgies: (queer) strategies and methodologies in staging fat activist performance.