The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. By Laurence Senelick. New York: Routledge, 2000; pp. 540. $29.95 paperback.

Extract

Scholars attempting to define the myriad meanings and purposes of the theatre across the centuries have tended to avoid issues of sexuality, particularly those aspects of it that seem to veer from the generally accepted norm. In The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theatre, Laurence Senelick makes a compelling and persuasive case for understanding the centrality of sexuality in all aspects of performance, in all its confusing complexity and glory. In this, the first major cross-cultural study of theatrical transvestism, the theatre is “the changing room,” in its acknowledgment of “the essential queerness of its nature” (509). In over five hundred pages of copiously researched, cogently argued analysis, Senelick charts the role of drag in theatre from its origins to the present, shifting effortlessly through a broad range of cultures and eras. Along with the opportunity of viewing theatre history through a unique lens, drag provides an opportunity for the exploding of familiar stereotypes of gender—and Senelick comes armed with dynamite.