A queer performance new wave in Sydney: inside cLUB bENT 1995–1998 – exploring hybridity and community

Taking a documentary approach in this essay, I will explore a defining moment in 1990s LGBQTI+ performance: the four years during the infamous cLUB bENT. cLUB bENT played a vital part of the Sydney Contemporary Performance scene from 1995 to 1998, taking place at the Performance Space, Redfern, over four consecutive Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG) festivals. cLUB bENT represented a ‘queer performance new wave’ of defining LGBTQIA+ performances, exploring identity, new and old performance forms, gender diversity, abject sexuality, and sex positivism. Presented by performance artists from a range of fields including strippers, drag queens and drag kings, contemporary performance artists, as well as emerging and established cabaret artists. cLUB bENT and its tours to Its Queer Up North in Warwickshire, London, Glasgow and Manchester, became sites where performance ‘forms’ and ‘elements’ were hybridised over time and new reference points for style and form were created amongst a broad community of performers and activists. This hybridisation occurred within a vital social community of artists and activists during the 1990s AIDS crisis, of which SGLMG was a central driver. By creating current day recollections in the form of first-person accounts, as well as reflections on my experiences as an emerging queer performance writer/ maker and activist, occasional thick descriptions, short histories of social contexts and images of events. As well I will bring the time into focus via short case studies of my solo cLUB bENT performances - The Love Addict (1995) and Sugar Sugar (1997). These are accompanied by analysis and reflection on the ‘hybridisation of elements and form’ within my own works, and a short reflection on influence of community based social capital in the context of the 1990s LGBQTIA+ communities.