Joe Orton: Special Issue of Studies in Theatre & Performance
- Submitting institution
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The University of Manchester
: A - Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 186297167
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- ISBN
- 0000000000
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- August
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - SALC: Drama
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This special issue was conceived as a means of reappraising the life, work and legacy of Joe Orton on the 50th anniversary of his death and fifty years after the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised homosexual acts. The volume seeks to draw attention to little known aspects of Orton’s work and working processes and to challenge the received account of his life, death and relationship with his partner through detailed engagement with archival materials, queer theory and recent work on life writing and the writing of queer history. Dorney invited contributors who had worked on Orton in the past, or were working on him then to create the first new scholarly collection in the playwright since 2002. ‘Introducing Orton’ outlines the agenda for the volume and the approaches taken by the contributors, reviews the construction of the ‘Orton industry’ and Orton’s status as a queer martyr and press coverage and events prepared for the anniversary before positing a different way of reading Orton’s life and work. The article ‘Through the Closet with Ken and Joe’ uses detailed analysis of Orton’s published and unpublished diaries, correspondence and interviews as well as close study of photographs of him to explore his Orton’s self-presentation through clothing, his understanding of the politics of dress and the invitation and challenge this offered to audiences of his work and interviews. The article also offers the first detailed consideration of Orton’s partner Kenneth Halliwell’s clothing and challenges the pervasive view of him as a middle aged nonentity’. Developing Simon Shepherd’s work on Orton in 'Because We’re Queers' (1989) into the realm of material culture Dorney suggests that, like the collages they produced, Orton and Halliwell’s self-presentation offered an invitation and challenge to look again at their work and the queer challenge it presents
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
