“To those who choose to follow in our footsteps”: making women/LGBT+ soldiers (in)visible through feminist “her-story” theater

ABSTRACT

Building on Judith Butler’s understanding of visibility as “the object of continuous regulation and contestation,” art/aesthetics studies in international relations, and feminist theater studies, we identify feminist “her-story” theater as a unique site where Western “gender-/sexuality-inclusive” soldiering is visibilized, contested, and subverted. Drawing on ethnographic observations of two award-winning dramas, interviews with artists and military hosts, and findings from a wider research project on contemporary British military culture, we reveal the key role of heteronormative and patriarchal cultural discourses in reproducing the ambivalent positionalities of women/LGBT+ soldiers. We argue that the very visibility of women/LGBT+ soldiers on the stage paradoxically operates to make the complexities of – and struggles against – masculinized heteronormative military cultures invisible. Furthermore, despite artists’ attempts to dissociate empowerment through soldiering from the problematic context of modern conflicts, “her-story” theater ultimately entrenches gendered/racialized hierarchies that normalize Western military interventions. We conclude that only through sustained feminist reflection on the contours of “imagined” futures of female/LGBT+ soldiering can this persistently problematic (in)visibility be productively disrupted.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• feminism
• LGBT+
• military
• theater

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sarah Liu and the members of Scotland Feminist PIR Network, as well as attendees of BISA’s Critical Military Studies panel in October 2020, for constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Both productions received glowing reviews; Hallowed Ground was awarded the Summerhall Lustrum Award for Best Drama, and Dead Equal received the Summerhall Lustrum Award for Best Festival Moments of the 2019 Fringe. This article does not discuss the productions’ success or failure as works of art.

2 This article focuses on the 2017, 2018, and 2019 programs. 2020’s program continued online (https://www.armyatthefringe.org/).

3 We excluded from our sample one short production: This Is My Life, by Hopscotch Theatre Company, supported by RCET and Scotland’s Armed Forces Children’s Charity. It was performed three times during the 2017 Army at the Fringe.

4 UK government Covenant funding was awarded to four productions: 5 Soldiers, by the Rosie Kay Dance Company; Shell Shock, by Smokescreen Productions; The Troth, by Akademi South Asian Dance UK, and Bomb Happy, by Everwitch Theatre Company (Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust 2016, 2017, 2019; Gov.uk 2018).

5 The Army offered a festival stage free of charge, an extremely attractive offer for many artists. Dead Equal’s cast and producers met 25–30 serving women at Aldershot Garrison. 5 Soldiers by the Rosie Kay Dance Company was also performed at Aldershot Garrison, among other military settings.

6 The term “BAME” (Black and minority ethnic) is commonly used in UK-based diversity policies, including those of the military (see, for example, MoD 2018). The term has been criticized for its homogenizing effects; however, we use it in this article to highlight the context of military inclusion within which the productions operate.

7 The script of Hallowed Ground was inspired by the memoir of the colonel of the Australian Medical Corps, Susan Neuhaus (Neuhaus and Mascall-Dare 2014), as well as artists’ interviews with women soldiers.

8 This metaphor of “half-way to equal” echoes the title of the 1992 “Half-Way to Equal report” (Report of the Inquiry into Equal Opportunity and Equal Status for Women in Australia) (Wadham et al. 2018, 267).

9 Women who joined the SWH came from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, which allowed them to pay for their uniforms and other expenses associated with wartime service (Danilova and Dolan 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland: [Grant Number RG13890/70560].

Notes on contributors

Emma Dolan

Emma Dolan is Lecturer below the bar in Peace and Development Studies at the University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland. She recently completed her PhD in International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and her research interests include feminist international relations and gender studies, specifically political apologies as redress for conflict-related sexual violence. Her work has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics and the Journal of Human Rights, and her first book Gender and Political Apology: When the Patriarchal State Says “Sorry” is now available within Routledge’s Gender and Global Politics series.

Nataliya Danilova

Nataliya Danilova is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, UK. She has published in the fields of critical military studies, feminist international relations/gender studies, art/aesthetics, and the politics of war memory. Her latest book, The Politics of War Commemoration in the UK and Russia (Palgrave, 2015), explores the instrumentalization of war through commemorative media coverage, memorials, and rituals.