TOWARDS A THEATRE OF THE FABULOUS - 

INFORMED BY A PERFORMATIVE QUEER AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ON THE STAGE OF 

AN ALL-BOYS’ SCHOOL 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By 

SOPHOCLES KOTZE 

 

PERSON NUMBER: 815930 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF WITWATERSRAND IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE FIELD OF DRAMA 

UNIVERSITY OF WITWATERSRAND 

 

15 February 2023  



2 

DECLARATION 

I hereby declare that the dissertation entitled “Towards a Theatre of the Fabulous – Informed 

by a performative queer autoethnography on the stage of an all-boys’ school” is my own, 

unassisted work. It is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master 

of Arts (in the field of Drama) in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South 

Africa. It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other University 

in and outside South Africa. 

 

 

_________________________     15 FEBRUARY 2023 

SOPHOCLES KOTZE      DATE  



3 

UNIVERSITY OF WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG, 

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES 

 

SENATE PLAGIARISM POLICY 

 

Declaration by Students 

 

I, Sophocles Kotze (Person number: 815930), am a student registered for Master of Arts in 

Drama in the year 2023. 

 

 I hereby declare the following: 

• I am aware that plagiarism (the use of someone else’s work without their permission 

and/or without acknowledging the original source) is wrong.  

• I confirm that ALL the work submitted for assessment for the above course is my own 

unaided work except where I have explicitly indicated otherwise.  

• I have followed the required conventions in referencing the thoughts and ideas of 

others.  

• I understand that the University of the Witwatersrand may take disciplinary action 

against me if there is a belief that this is not my own unaided work or that I have failed 

to acknowledge the source of the ideas or words in my writing. 

 

Signature: Sophocles Kotze       Date: 15 February 2023 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2023 SOPHOCLES KOTZE 

  



4 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

This paper is dedicated to my extraordinary mother, Androulla, and my heroic brother, Gerald. 

Thank you for being a part of my life and part of my story. 

I further dedicate this paper to and thank my partner in life, Francois. You hold, support, and 

save my life every day. 

To Storm: Thank you for always holding my hand.  

I also thank my dearest and most special colleagues: Rachael and Matthew. You are a daily 

blessing. Thank you for all the laughs, smiles, conversations and listening to me, even when 

you probably didn’t want to.  

Thank you to my supervisors, Dr Manola-Gayatri Kumarswamy and Prof. Hazel Barnes, for 

your wisdom and your patience.  

I also thank all the students that I have taught over the years. You are the true teachers. Thank 

you for your fabulousness. 

Thank you, Faith. You are an inspiration to so many and a guiding light in my life.  



5 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

AN ABSTRACT PROLOGUE ............................................................................................... 7 

ACT I – EXPOSITION - A FABULOUS SPOTLIGHT ...................................................... 9 

Scene 1 – Am I fabulous? ..................................................................................................... 9 

Scene 2 – Come out, come out, wherever you are? ......................................................... 10 

Scene 3 – Shame on me ...................................................................................................... 12 

Scene 4 – Colourless rainbows .......................................................................................... 13 

Scene 5 – And … action! .................................................................................................... 17 

ACT II – INITIAL INCIDENT – A FABULOUS LITERATURE REVIEW ................. 19 

Scene 1 – A queer title and the ambivalent genre ........................................................... 19 

1.1 The tension between queer theory and the masculine performance of “doing 

boy” .................................................................................................................................. 19 

Scene 2 – A queer setting, no matter how you slice the tension ..................................... 23 

2.1 Heteronormativity and its deviant “brother” .............................................................. 23 

2.2 Straightening the line: Taking pride in universal truths and queer prejudice ............. 26 

Scene 3 – Queer characters in a foreign land .................................................................. 29 

3.1 A family of brothers having dinner at a “wonky table” ............................................. 29 

3.2 Queer student identities and strange disguises (perfectionism and failure) ............... 30 

3.3 Queer teachers as strange characters at the other end of the “wonky table” .............. 31 

Scene 4 – Queer words and strange silences .................................................................... 33 

4.1 Bullying words ........................................................................................................... 33 

4.2 “No Homo”– Everyone and everything is queer … if you are not............................. 35 

4.3 Silence is the golden rule of … hegemonic masculinity ............................................ 37 

ACT III – RISING ACTION – A FABULOUS METHODOLOGY, DATA 

COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 39 

Scene 1 – Queering education ........................................................................................... 39 

1.1 Queering ..................................................................................................................... 40 

1.2 Queer pedagogy .......................................................................................................... 41 

Scene 2 – Queer mapping and queer stories of self ......................................................... 43 

2.1 Queer performance as research................................................................................... 44 

2.2 Queer performative autoethnography ......................................................................... 45 

2.3 Queer theory to queer performance ............................................................................ 46 

Scene 3 – Queer Ridiculousness ........................................................................................ 49 

3.1 Theatre of the Ridiculous ........................................................................................... 49 

Scene 4 – Messy, unruly, and leaky data .......................................................................... 56 

4.1 The “performative-I” fucking it up? ........................................................................... 56 



6 

4.2 Journaling a queer power trip ..................................................................................... 58 

4.3 A queer collection ....................................................................................................... 59 

ACT IV – CLIMAX – THE FABULOUS PERFORMANCE ........................................... 62 

Scene 1 – Memory Theatre – A queer performance in the then and there ................... 62 

1.1 A queer birth, a fabulously theatrical baptism and a misshapen childhood ............... 65 

1.2 A crybaby on the playground ..................................................................................... 70 

1.3 Brothers and heroes .................................................................................................... 75 

1.4 A queer rebel in high school, fabulous Bible stories, secret trysts and a 

suicide attempt .................................................................................................................. 80 

1.5 The Big Bad Wolf and the queer who upset the apple cart ........................................ 84 

1.6 Becoming a queer teacher with a purpose .................................................................. 97 

Scene 2 - The refle[ct]xive theatre – queer performance monologues in the 

here and now ..................................................................................................................... 110 

2.1 Queering a boys’ school ........................................................................................... 112 

ACT V – DENOUEMENT – A THEATRE OF THE FABULOUS ................................ 145 

Scene 1 - Queer reflections .............................................................................................. 145 

1.1 The queer of then and there and the queer of here and now calls for 

resistance ........................................................................................................................ 146 

1.2 Queer conditions of freedom under a queer spotlight .............................................. 146 

1.3 Queer change in the classroom will do you good ..................................................... 148 

1.4 Authentic teachers and queer role models in the theatre .......................................... 149 

Scene 2 - Queer reflexivity ............................................................................................... 150 

2.1 Queer performance writing ....................................................................................... 151 

ACT VI – CONCLUSION – A FABULOUS CURTAIN CALL ..................................... 176 

Scene 1 – Limitations ....................................................................................................... 176 

Scene 2 - Next fabulous queer steps and thinking about a queering future ............... 176 

Scene 3 – Final queer thoughts........................................................................................ 178 

LIST OF REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 180 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .............................................................................................. 193 

 

  



7 

AN ABSTRACT PROLOGUE 

Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it’s a good place to start. It all 

comes down to education.  – Jason Collins1 

Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and 

minds of the community, where it really counts.  – Barbara Gittings2 

As a queer teacher who felt discomfort in the homogeneousness of a traditional 

heteronormative space of an all-boys’ school, in this research, I explore the extent to which a 

performative queer autoethnography can inform the creation of a Theatre of the Fabulous (an 

embodied queer pedagogy), what it could look like and how it could be used as a queer 

pedagogical tool in the classroom through which to identify heteronormative practices and, 

ultimately, move towards a space which is safe for queerness. 

My strategy was to draw on queer theory and thinking about queer pedagogical writing. I 

hypothesised that heteronormativity, patriarchal and colonial practices are evident in all-boys’ 

schools (Connell, 2000; Pollack, 2006; Sullivan, 1995) and that, as a queer teacher, my 

movements are made queer.  

I used performance as research (PaR) as a methodology, with performative writing, in this 

work. Deeply exploring the personal, theoretical and practitioner’s journey, and understanding 

the narration itself as performance as research, this research report is structured through six 

acts and different scenes rather than the traditional chapters and sections. As a Dramatic Arts 

teacher, I am programmed to see “all the [world as] a stage, and all the men and women [sic] 

merely players”3 and my queer reality as a linear theatre text filled with plot and intrigue. This 

format allowed me to express myself, stylistically and typographically, through not only 

academic/scholarly reading and writing, but also through the inclusion of interesting quotes I 

came across in my journey towards a Theatre of the Fabulous, musings and asides about my 

 
1 Land (2019)  

2 Blehm (2020)  

3 From As you like it by William Shakespeare. Act 2, Scene 7.  



8 

own assumptions and suspicions, and reflections on mini-narratives which offers a broader 

societal visibility/invisibility of experiences in the form of blogs, online articles, social media 

commentary, images, prose, song lyrics and so forth. My personal writing, asides and musings 

are set in a typewriter font (like this). For me, this form of writing represents my personal 

journey reflected by my many voices (some speak more informally and colloquially than 

others) and roles as a queer cis male, a researcher, a theatre practitioner and Dramatic Arts 

teacher. Moreover, it underscores my investigation into the fluidity of and the potential for 

fabulousness and playfulness of queer methods. 

In my exposition I contextualise the research problem and its possibilities for both formal and 

informal inquiry. I contemplate what it means to be fabulous and how reclaiming fabulousness 

has the potential to empower. I “unpick” myself and consider how my performances in various 

roles could possibly converge into a Theatre of the Fabulous and what this means for me as a 

queer teacher in an all-boys’ school. In the second act (chapter), the discourse in current 

literature about the setting/environment, characters and language in an all-boys’ school is 

framed as the inciting or initial incident in the text. I continue with my methodology in the 

rising action of the script as I queer education, explore queer ridiculousness and various theatre 

and performance praxis as a possible methodological framework for a Theatre of the Fabulous 

and reflect on my “messy, unruly, and leaky” data. I consider the next act as the climax of the 

research. I write auto-ethnographically about the “then and there” of my personal queer 

journey, which has culminated in my queer self in the “here and now” of an all-boys’ school. I 

then continue with the denouement as I reflect on my queer findings and present a queer 

performance writing in the form of a one-act play. The play, Toy Soldiers, fictionalises my 

account of the different voices in a private all-boys’ school setting and suggests that work still 

needs to be done to explain how bodies are made queer in traditionally patriarchal spaces to 

create a queer-inclusive environment. 

I conclude that a Theatre of the Fabulous holds possibilities not only to create spaces of what I 

propose as “(un)comfortable” discourse of our own and others’ lived experiences in the here 

and now, but it also holds promise for queer teachers – and teachers who do not identify as 

queer – to experience more openly and, ultimately, to teach more authentically.   



9 

ACT I 

– 

EXPOSITION - A FABULOUS SPOTLIGHT 

Scene 1 – Am I fabulous? 

I am a queer man. I am a queer Dramatic Arts teacher. I am a queer artist. After too many years 

of struggling with my identity, I have come to embrace my queerness as colourful and as 

fabulous. There is still struggle.  

In a 1994 interview with the LA Times, Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright 

of Angels in America (1991), referred to theatre for and by queer individuals as a Theatre of 

the Fabulous (Pacheco, 1994: para. 5). My performance, then, of different roles of self, as a 

queer man, a queer teacher and a queer artist, is a form of this theatre. I create my own theatre 

through performance. Schechner (2003: 184) validates this when he extends the concept of 

performance as  

the art of actualizing [and] turning possibilities into action, into performances, [where] 

whole worlds otherwise not lived are born. Theatre doesn’t arrive suddenly and stay 

fixed either in its cultural or individual manifestations. It is insinuated along a web of 

associations spun from play, games, hunting, slaughter and distribution of meat, 

ceremonial centres, trials, rites of passage, and storytelling. Rehearsals and 

recollections pre-play and afterplay - converge in the theatrical event.  

All of these different roles that I perform then “converge in the theatrical event” and are then 

my own Theatre of the Fabulous. But to what extent can my own performance of the fabulous 

manifest into a structured pedagogical tool called the Theatre of the Fabulous?  

In his 2018 article in the Pacific Standard, Brandon Tensley further clarifies that, in the queer 

community, the word fabulous, “as a queer aesthetic, allows queer people not only to achieve 

greater visibility, but also to reclaim that flamboyance as a means of empowerment” (Tensley, 

2018: para. 2) in an oppressive heteronormative society. However, as liberating4 as this greater 

 
4 I have learnt that it is liberating because it allows one to teach authentically. I refer to this experience later in 

this paper.  



10 

visibility is, the article also suggests that fabulousness is “dangerous, political, confrontational, 

[and] risky” (Tensley, 2018: para. 3). This is true in so many communities, but in the daily 

blinding visibility of the spotlight on the school stage, danger lurks in the shadows of the 

audience, the corners of the stage and the emptiness of the wings. It seems that there is nowhere 

to disappear in this theatre game of hide and seek. It feels as if you just never feel safe.  

Scene 2 – Come out, come out, wherever you are? 

Come/ing Out 

Watch out! 

Here I come… 

To where?  

And why?  

How? 

Come/ing… 

– S. Kotze (2021) 

After years of teaching as openly queer in co-educational schools, I did not feel “safe” when I 

joined the staff of a private all-boys’ school in Johannesburg in 2019. Suddenly, the audience 

that I had learnt to embrace, beyond the spotlight, became alien and foreign. It felt as though I 

was forced to start my performance from scratch: from those scenes in my life when I was a 

scared little boy. It was contemplating those painful moments of coming out all over again. It 

reminded me of a line in a Washington Post article by Julia Carpenter (2016: para. 10): “I’ve 

never come out, and I’m always coming out [and it is] not safe … you’re never off the hook 

for the rest of your life.” In this private boys’ school, it once again felt as if I was not “off the 

hook”.  

Jumping out and in – and in and out – of my closet – any closet – is just like this sentence: 

tiring. Or, as one of my colleagues labelled it, “exhausting”.5 It is a perpetual running from the 

wings into the spotlight and then back again. The shift in focus between the suffocating 

darkness of the wings and the blinding light of the spotlight leaves one’s vision blurry. To 

 
5 Here I refer to an informal conversation with a colleague about our individual queer journeys. 



11 

compound the confusion even further, the audience is present, watching and judging, wide-

eyed, as the suspense builds like a psychological thriller on stage. 

But what does it really mean to come out? To make visible = out. To make invisible = in. I 

suppose it depends on where you stand. Are you the performer? Or are you the audience? 

Queer? Man? Teacher? Artist? Researcher? Which one must be made visible? Or all? Or just 

that which is hidden? The one which I feel my body responds to the most awkwardly; the most 

uncomfortably? The one that is both the most difficult and the easiest to write when I perform 

it? The one with the loudest voice? That is the one! The one that wants to teach (passionately), 

sing (terribly), act (angrily), write (healingly) and direct (flamboyantly). The one that responds 

to queer not as being strange, although that is what it feels like, mostly, but the one that 

responds to queer as being colourful, exotic, experimental, disruptive, expressive, or just 

fabulous. It is the unending putting on and taking off of masks. Many masks. Some drab and 

sans colour, and others sparkling with fabulousness. It is all very theatrical, isn’t 

it? Perhaps a Theatre of the Fabulous as a method to make visible? And theatre, after all, is 

making the invisible, visible – “the art of actualizing [and] turning possibilities into action, into 

performances, [where] whole worlds otherwise not lived are born” (Schechner, 2003: 184).  

And making visible is not always safe. It is the double-edged sword of coming out, both sides 

being a sharp reminder of insecurity, vulnerability, danger, fear, disconnection and suffocation. 

In an online commentary piece for Pink News in 2013, Olly Hudson related his experiences as 

a gay student in a private all-boys’ school. He recalled:  

So conscious are most of the boys in my school of the abundance of males (and rarity 

of females), not to mention the homosexual stereotype, that they go over and above to 

assert their masculinity, an apparently quintessential aspect of which is to see whose 

‘banter’ can descend to the deepest depths of homophobic, inane, misogynistic abuse. 

(Hudson, 2013: para. 5)  

My queerness, which I thought was fabulous and had become my most positive performative 

attribute as a teacher in the co-ed (mixed-sex) schools I used to teach at before, was 

unexpectedly (perhaps a naïve description), in this all-boys’ school environment, made visible 

as my queer “strangeness” once again. In this space, it was yet another mask that I had to wear. 

In a homogeneous student environment of all boys, I once again felt like the “other”, ironically, 

and involuntarily pushed into the spotlight where my muscle and mind memory dragged me 

back toward the path that Sarah Ahmed (2006: 554) calls the “straight and narrow”. 



12 

Instinctively my body wanted to perform “toward … straight culture” (Ahmed, 2006: 554) and, 

familiarly, this caused me to feel “socially present as a deviant” (Ahmed, 2006: 554). As in the 

past, I wanted to retreat from the spotlight, and with a manly stride, join the closeted audience 

of hyper-masculine bodies where I could become my grey invisible self again: a Theatre of the 

Unfabulous. An image of Hue the Pride Turtle hiding their fabulousness comes 

to mind. 

 

Hue the Pride Turtle6 

Scene 3 – Shame on me 

The memory of being outed, without my permission, when I was 18 years old, still resides 

shamefully in my body. In their explanation of the psychology of oppression, Leonard et al. 

(2019: 165) suggest that the oppressed “initially adopt ‘avoidance reactions’ which are 

responses that prevent adverse outcomes from occurring”. I transitioned from someone in 

hiding who consciously lied to myself, to someone in hiding who consciously lied and was 

found out and exposed to the whole world. Even my subsequent gay mask felt artificial and 

incomplete, even though I had no option, as I never wanted to meet that self again. He was 

such a sad, deceitful little person (bullied emotionally and physically) hiding in a closet of 

invisibility. He was the stranger that I was forced to create through a wrestling and making 

sense of degrading performative language that bullied me into what Judith Butler (1999: 43) 

calls a “stylization of the body” and the mind. Words such as “moffie” (Afrikaans for “faggot”) 

and “sissy” aimed at making my “stranger” visible had me retreat out of the spotlight, away 

from the stage, into an invisible closet of safety – an “avoidance”. Here, in the invisibility of 

my closet, I had to refashion and stylise my body and my mind into another “stranger” – a 

straight-acting alter ego.  

 
6 Moncrief (2019) 



13 

So, I found myself in a private boys’ school steeped in a colonial, Christian, patriarchal and 

heteronormative hegemony. For the first time in many years, I heard “moffie” and “sissy” and 

“that’s so gay”, and I was jumping in and out and in and out of the spotlight again. I had to 

make space for that almost-forgotten straight-acting stranger after spending many years trying 

to get rid of him. I felt a profound sense of homophobia whispered under the breaths of an 

audience, comprising students and teachers, who, to me, all looked threateningly alike. My 

immediate assumptions about this phenomenon that I saw, felt, and heard were informed by 

my experiences as a queer student schooled in a colonial, patriarchal, Christian and 

heteronormative environment. In my mind, I put the settings of these two worlds alongside one 

another on stage. I noticed the similarities of this place to that place, and all those shaded and 

dulled emotions, past and present, enveloped my body. This place was not a setting conducive 

to inclusivity and belonging, despite its best efforts to promote its motto that everyone was 

included. It brought my identity as a queer man, queer Dramatic Arts teacher and queer artist 

sharply into the spotlight. And through each of these lenses I saw different colours.  

My further assumptions were also informed by my own experiences as a queer student and a 

queer teacher. If I felt uncomfortable coming out to my own students, my colleagues and the 

parent body, then there must be other students and staff alike, who not only chose to 

surreptitiously move out of the spotlight, and instead chose to move beyond the wings of the 

stage into the darkest parts backstage. Could this apply to gender, culture, race, language and 

whatever else they choose to hide, because in the facelessness of the audience it will be 

spotlighted like a drag artist on a rugby team? I suspected bullying that I could not see; passive-

aggressive and maybe even active-aggressive. I assumed that some of the noses “broken 

straight” on some of the boys were intentional acts of aggression like my own queer nose that 

was broken (with the intention to straighten, I assume) by a bully. Ironically, my nose never 

straightened. From my own personal experience as a teacher, I further postulated that queer is 

made even more strange in an all-boys’ school as opposed to a co-educational environment.  

Scene 4 – Colourless rainbows 

As a queer teacher who passionately believes in multicultural education towards social justice, 

I had to explore these new but familiar feelings in this new but familiar boys’ school. I asked 

myself whether the picture I saw on the stage was really one that is multicultural and genuinely 



14 

promotes social justice. Does it reflect the Rainbow Nation7 script, which South Africa adds to 

its disclaimer at the start of each show? It is supposedly a vibrant and colourful show, which 

celebrates diversity and in which we all are led to believe that everyone is equal and free from 

prejudice. Could I echo this utopian Rainbow Nation in my own classroom with its 

homogeneous make-up palette? Could my teaching still be colourful? Was it possible to 

imagine that in an all-boys’ school I could teach fabulously? Could a queer teacher, a 

transgendered boy and a cisgender queer boy come out without fear of persecution? However, 

when I heard the stifling language in the fabric of this traditional boys’ school, I became 

despondent. I then became fearful, once again, and felt almost hopeless when the passive-

aggression I sensed around me was mirrored in the national headlines in 2021 (see Heinrich 

Böll Stiftung, 2021; Ntsabo, 2021). I cried for:  

• Bonang Gaelae, 29, whose throat was slashed in Sebokeng on 12 February 2021; 

• Nonhlanhla Kunene, 37, whose body was found half-naked in Edendale, 

Pietermaritzburg, on 5 March 2021; 

• Sphamandla Khoza, 34, who was beaten, stabbed and had his throat slit on 29 March 

2021 in Kwamashu, Durban; 

• Nathaniel ‘Spokgoane’ Mbele, who was stabbed in the chest in Tshirela, 

Vanderbijlpark, on 2 April 2021; 

• Andile ‘Lulu’ Nthuthela, 41, whose mutilated and burned body was found on 10 April 

2021 in KwaNobuhle, Kariega; and 

• Lonwabo Jack, a young LGBTIQ+ individual who had just celebrated his 22nd 

birthday on 17 April 2021. His lifeless body was found on a pavement the next day in 

Nyanga, Cape Town. 

The idea of South Africa as a Rainbow Nation for the LGBTQI+ community has come under 

fire. In his article, Gay rights in name only in the ‘Rainbow Nation’, Tyrone Beason writes that 

“anti-gay violence, including a string of highly publicized killings and ‘corrective rape’ attacks 

in poor, black townships aimed at ‘curing’ lesbians of their homosexuality, has imposed a 

climate of fear in the country” (Beason, 2014: para. 8). The performance of the Rainbow Nation 

 
7 “The term was intended to encapsulate the unity of multi-culturalism and the coming-together of people of 

many different nations, in a country once identified with the strict division of white and black under the 

Apartheid regime,” (“Rainbow Nation”, 2022) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid


15 

was clearly a horror show and it made me feel powerless. I had to ask myself whether this same 

show was mirrored on the stage of my school. What could I then do, on my own stage, to 

untangle the web of tension spun so suffocatingly around me in this microcosm of an infected 

Rainbow Nation?  

A reading of Homophobia and Sexuality Diversity in South African Schools: A review (Francis, 

2017), which includes a multitude of studies that outline the extent of LGBTIQ+ bullying, 

victimisation and discrimination in schools, reveals that South Africa, across the nation, still 

has a long way to go before it can truly and sincerely signal its Rainbow Nation aphorism. 

There are also many articles which outline the ways in which even teachers feel unsafe and 

ask, “how do people know they will be supported – by colleagues, by school leaders, by the 

government?” (Small, 2019: para. 19). In its school safety framework, Challenging 

homophobic bullying in schools, the South African Department of Basic Education (DBE) 

references the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 

stating that “all learners have equal right to quality education in a safe school environment” 

(UNESCO, 2012, as cited in DBE, 2014: 1). I had to ask: Is my own school environment safe? 

Do our students all feel that they are treated equally? Can an all-boys’ school be transformed 

so that students and staff can move in a space free from oppressive heteronormativity which 

forces them to assume toxically masculine identities?  

I am reminded of a character in Sartre’s play, Morts Sans Sepulture (1941) 8, who asks, “Is 

there any meaning in life when men exist who beat people until the bones break in their 

bodies?” I felt again the trauma of violence perpetrated against my own body. It was clear to 

me that our society is not safe. Our schools are not safe. Our students are not safe. Coming out 

is not safe. Our rainbow is leaking colour. 

The DBE (2014: 4) recommends, in its school safety framework, that schools “create more 

opportunities for discussions … to raise awareness about homophobia and its effects”. In 

answering this call, Francis and Kuhl (2020) advocate that schools move beyond mere 

awareness but walk out of the closet with greater “visibility”. As a queer man, as a queer teacher 

of Dramatic Arts, as a queer maker of theatre and as a queer researcher, I needed to “walk out 

 
8 Play: The Victors (but literally, Deaths Without Burial) 



16 

of the closet”, make my queer identity visible and, in this way, interrogate heteronormative 

practices that perpetuate homophobia.  

As one who teaches students in the classroom and has been exposed to the healing and 

transformative power of theatre, I needed to make sense of my own institutional positionality 

as well as that of others. How could I use my own space, my role as a teacher and creator of 

theatre, and my own position as a queer man to raise awareness? To make a difference? To 

help bring back the colour? The fabulousness?  

When I perused the Dramatic Arts Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) 2011 

syllabus (DBE, 2021), approved by the DBE and implemented by government schools and 

Independent Examinations Board (IEB) schools across the country, it was evident that we have 

a long way to go to heed the call of Francis and Kuhl (2020). An interrogation of the prescribed 

Grade 12 Dramatic Arts setworks found that only the IEB have taken up the challenge and 

included two plays with queer themes in their list of prescribed plays for matriculants in 2021: 

Born Naked (2020), by ZikkaZimba Productions and Hijinks Theatre, and The Maids (1947), 

by Jean Genet. I was left with the feeling that the predominance of a machismo culture made 

more evident the fact that although I was “striving for … equity in our classrooms and schools, 

[I was] failing to genuinely interact” (Zacko-Smith & Smith, 2010: 2) within the school culture 

and to embrace my function as a teacher who should “help to define reality for those” (Zacko-

Smith & Smith, 2010: 2) students that I educate.  

Heteronormative values determine and manipulate/define the reality for our students in our 

South African schools, in part, through performative language driven by, created by and 

underscored by curriculum content, dominant in the discourse of not only my current institution 

but schools around the country. I suspected that this performative language and teachers who 

drive the content do not always actively and intentionally work to obliterate, and disrupt these 

heteronormative values. As a result, they do not do enough to stop systemic othering, bullying 

and cancel culture prevalent in these spaces. I suspected that they did not have the tools and 

the vocabulary to do so. It became clear to me that, instead of trying to work from behind the 

keyhole of my safe little closet, I first needed to make myself “visible” – not the stranger that 

I had become, but the true me that I metamorphosed away from when I was a student. Second, 

I – and indeed all teachers – have a responsibility to “immerse [ourselves] in the world as it 

concurrently unfolds and evolves around [us]” (Zacko-Smith & Smith, 2010: 2) and not to 



17 

pretend that our classrooms insulate our students from the realities of their everyday lives. 

There was clearly a problem, but I also realised that there are possibilities for insight, growth, 

development and change.  

The purpose of my research became clear as I asked myself to what extent my lived experience 

(the here and now and the then and there) can inform a Theatre of the Fabulous (a performative 

queer pedagogy), which could be used to make visible heteronormativity and, ultimately, raise 

queer awareness. 

Scene 5 – And … action! 

I wished to develop a Theatre of the Fabulous, that is, the practice of a performance queer 

pedagogy, which could possibly emancipate students and teachers from a toxic9 normative 

culture to a position where we “celebrate differences rather than using them as tools of 

oppression … [and to] accept each other unconditionally and with grace” (Zacko-Smith & 

Smith, 2010: 8).  

While musing about how to go about this, I aimed to:  

• research queer theory and queer pedagogy to: 

o understand identity, not only by examining representation of the queer body in 

existing literature, but instead by going “beyond the text (defined broadly) to 

include reflections on the world, one’s place within it, and how one’s biases and 

preferences are shaped by societal norms” (Pennell, 2019: 2296);  

o discover ways in which I can use these concepts in my own teaching; 

o “unpick” and map my own journey and shaping of my queer identity; 

o interrogate my own lived experiences as a queer teacher in the context of an all-

boys’ school through performance as research; and 

o investigate my assumptions that all-boys’ schools propagate student and staff 

deviancy through a “White, masculine, heterosexual, middle/upper-classed, 

Christian, able-bodied perspective” (Ellis et al., 2010). 

 
9 attempting to disempower and dominate those who are perceived to be “not the same”  



18 

I decided to:  

• write a queer autoethnography using personal reflections from my queer teaching as 

performance in an all-boys’ school to expose heteronormativity. The teaching as 

performance would consist of: 

o the delivery of a queer pedagogy in the form of a prescribed queer text: Born 

Naked; 

o the delivery of a queer pedagogy in the form of practical classes, which involves 

“combining queer bodies with queer pedagogy … both as an example and as 

way for students to confront their own norms” (Pennell, 2019: 2296), which can 

be used to disrupt and, ultimately, transform binary mindsets; and 

o reflections on my movements in this here and now; 

• use the data, obtained from my queer autoethnography, to anticipate what a Theatre of 

the Fabulous might look like and how it could in the future be used by teachers to 

“interrogate systemic heteronormativity and question [their] own place within that 

system” (Pennell, 2019: 2294). It could consist of teaching tools which may include: 

o a written queer text for study and performance, 

o practical exercises/workshops, and 

o structured content delivery. 

  



19 

ACT II 

– 

INITIAL INCIDENT – A FABULOUS LITERATURE REVIEW 

Insofar as my research was situated in the space of an all-boys’ school where I teach Dramatic 

Arts, I decided to approach the socio-cultural-pedagogic landscape as a theatrical backdrop, 

which could be analysed as part of a dramatic text.10 In this respect, my research questions 

guided me towards a queer reading of this “script” written for the “stage” of an all-boys’ school. 

When I considered this script through the lens of the dramatic elements I identified (genre/title, 

setting, characters, dialogue), several themes emerged, which I explore in this chapter.  

Scene 1 – A queer title and the ambivalent genre 

As I navigated my way towards developing a Theatre of the Fabulous (a performative queer 

pedagogy aimed at identifying, interrogating, and disrupting heteronormative mindsets and, 

ultimately, promoting positive transformation), I thought, as a queer teacher, it necessary to 

think of those categories that will guide my journey in this regard. 

1.1 The tension between queer theory and the masculine performance of “doing boy”  

The very idea of teaching in a boys-only school made me uncomfortable and nervous and, to 

some degree, it still does. This is for several reasons: I was bullied by boys; I was abused and 

intimidated by some of the male authority figures in my life; I felt deviant and was made to 

feel “strange” growing up, especially in the company of boys; I felt safe in the presence of 

girls. I associated “boy” with hyper-masculinity, which, in turn, made my body remember 

threat, violence, fear, discomfort, exclusion and so forth. However, when I considered the 

opportunity to teach at this very prestigious boys-only school, a friend suggested that I see the 

boys as students and not to put them in the “boy” box. Easier said than done. However, 

it made me think differently about the problem of teaching only boys in a class. To this end, I 

was also comforted by Jon Swain’s (2006: 333) suggestion that “there are different alternatives, 

 
10 I repurposed the dramatic text as the sum of the socio-political narrative of an all-boys’ school.  



20 

or possibilities, of ‘doing boy’ that are contingent on each setting using the meaning and 

practices available”. I realised then that I was probably thinking about boys (and men, for that 

matter) as “strangers” and “all the same”. Perhaps this was an opportunity to heal myself and 

move away from seeing a class, a theatre, filled with only boys as a potentially hostile army of 

hyper-masculine soldiers ready to attack. Although, the very idea of “boys” in the school’s 

name still makes me feel uncomfortable and still feels wrong to me, I realised that, rather than 

retreating into the wings, I could insert my queer lens, reflect and try to understand my position 

and those of others.  

Why queer? Judith Butler’s (1993: 230) interpretation of queer is valuable to the extent that 

she describes its possibilities as follows:  

 The assertion of “queer” will be necessary as a term of affiliation, but it will not fully 

describe those it purports to represent. As a result, it will be necessary to affirm the 

contingency of the term: to let it be vanquished by those who are excluded by the term 

but who justifiably expect representation by it, to let it take on means that cannot now 

be anticipated by a younger generation whose political vocabulary may well carry a 

very different set of investments. 

I choose to use the word queer to identify myself because to me it is all-inclusive and shows 

solidarity with the entire LGBTQI+ community and its allies. In my writing I use queer as a 

noun and adjective (referring to the LGBTQI+ community and associated concepts) and as a 

verb (to queer) when I have questioned and interrogated my environment. My theories are 

therefore queer, and insofar as “queer theory challenges the normative social ordering of 

identities and subjectivities along the heterosexual/homosexual binary as well as the 

privileging of heterosexuality as ‘natural’ and homosexuality as … deviant” (Brown & Nash, 

2016: 5), it has focused my research on confrontation, disruption and making strange that 

which is perceived to be normative. But to confront, disrupt and make strange that which has 

been normative for decades in this space was a potentially panic-inducing prospect. It was 

frightening because queer theory is deeply personal in that it is “rooted in the subjective 

experiences of queer people” (Grzanka, 2019: 3). For me, it meant the intentional stepping into 

the glaring spotlight, once again, and making myself visible to myself and the popcorn-eating 

audiences. It is what Andrew Sullivan identifies as “moments of ambivalence, … the panic of 

uncontrol … [and] … pathological nervousness” (Sullivan, 1995: 80). He further clarifies:  

The worry that self-identification as a [sic] “homosexual” could obliterate the rest of 

one’s identity, that its culture and moral power could actually limit freedom rather 



21 

than extend it: this merely intensifies the desire to control the moment when that 

identity is revealed. (Sullivan, 1995: 80–81) 

However, after many years of navigating potentially dangerous spaces, along with my 

experience of teaching in the classroom, I understood that in this unexamined text of an all-

boys’ school and my role within it, queering the text could help me not only ensconce myself 

inside the writing, but to step onto the stage, search in the darkness of the wings and beyond 

“to illuminate and critique taken-for-granted concepts and social dynamics, [because] it is 

hardly limited to the study of sexuality and gender” (Brown & Nash, 2016: 2). Stein and 

Plummer (1994: 82) agree, insofar as they theorise that one of the traits of a queer theory is 

being “willing to interrogate areas which normally would not be seen as the terrain of sexuality 

and to conduct queer ‘readings’ of ostensibly heterosexual or nonsexualized texts” and, in so 

doing, “disturb the order of things” (Ahmed, 2006: 565). As a queer man, my queer journey 

has always been overshadowed by thoughts of being a sexual deviant. And glancing at the title 

of the script in which “boys” features so prominently, I kept feeling a sense of “uncontrol”, 

“nervousness” and “ambivalence” when thinking of those boys in the same terms. Sadly, I was 

brainwashed to see those around me as straight and, for me, as a result, Sullivan’s words ring 

true when he suggests that “no homosexual child, surrounded overwhelmingly by 

heterosexuals, will feel at home in his sexual and emotional world, even in the most tolerant of 

cultures” (Sullivan, 1995: 13). So, even my intentional queering was causing tension, fuelled 

by a hegemonic masculinity which oozed from the pages of this script.  

Kriegel (1979: 34) proposed that “to be a man is to carry a tape measure by which you measure 

yourself in relation to the world”. I am sure that Kriegel did not focus his lens exclusively on 

the fraternity of an all-boys’ school, which Zernechel and Perry (2017: 1) refer to as “a haven 

for young men that support[s] the development of hegemonic masculinity and 

hypermasculinity”. But my assumption was that the cancer of male toxicity would be 

immeasurable as it grows unchecked, because in this environment the boys are never “exposed 

to opposing personality traits and challenges to their own idea of masculinity” (Zernechel & 

Perry, 2017: 1). Instead, possibly, their behaviours “include the exploitation of women, hazing, 

alcohol and drug abuse, and homophobia” (Zernechel & Perry, 2017: 1). Adams and Govender 

(2008) agree, as they extend the scope of the toxic masculinity phenomenon to an “ideology 

[which] proposes that men portray and maintain a specific social persona which reflects 



22 

toughness, emotional invulnerability, heterosexual dominance and success, as well as an 

avoidance of anything deemed ‘feminine’” (Adams & Govender, 2008: 552).  

“Doing boy” then takes on a whole other meaning in this fraternal text because it provides a 

great deal of space for the humiliation of the “other” and the “deviant” because “the learning 

of desirable masculinity often succeeds through a created awareness of undesirable male 

figures. For example, boys are told to distance themselves from the ‘class nerds’, the ‘wimps’, 

or the ‘gays’” (Adams & Govender, 2008: 553). These categories are all linked to the feminine, 

in that environment, because the feminine are perceived as “softer”, more “vulnerable” and 

prone to emotions which are seen as weak and “unmasculine”. Being unmasculine is seen as 

failure. In this hyper-masculine environment, where “hyper” is perfection and the pinnacle of 

achievement, failure is not an option. It is an unrealistic goal, and it is easy to imagine that most 

boys will inevitably succumb to diminished self-esteem. But the tape measure never 

disappears. The gaze of their peers, exacerbated by social media, is ever present, and to 

compensate, “the masculine body [feels] pressured to achieve the perfect physique to obtain 

peer approval” (Adams & Govender, 2008: 553). Often, these bodies, in a show of strength and 

power, become the bullies, or what Swain (2006: 337) refers to as a “localised hegemonic mode 

of masculinity [which] serves as an idealised form of behaviour that boys can measure 

themselves against to discover the extent of their ‘boyness’ or manliness”. I assumed, from the 

conversations around me, that many students, even teachers like me, did not feel that their 

boyness measured up. Not doing boy in the right way renders one powerless. It is degrading 

because the boy is made to believe he is the “powerless female”. For example, boys who do 

not play rugby, which is the ultimate measure of masculinity (doing boy) and success, are called 

“pussies”. They feel powerless because it is implied that they are the wrong gender. And to 

gain control, there is the very real possibility that he will exert his masculine body on that 

which he is told is powerless: the female body and even that which is perceived as female. 

Even more sobering is that 

hegemony prefers to work by implicit consent, for after all, the easiest way to exercise 

power, and to gain advantage over others, is for the dominated to be unaware of and 

therefore be complicit in their subordination. In many ways, less resistance leads to 

more effective hegemony. (Swain, 2006: 337) 

The main traits of this fraternal masculinity are then dominance and power. In this script, the 

tension is palpable as queer eyes gaze and queer bodies move among hegemonic masculinity. 

The performance of the hyper-masculine is a priority, necessary even. It is a choice and, 



23 

according to Butler (1999: 140), this hyper-masculine identity will persist because it is a 

continuous “re-enactment and a re-experiencing of a set of meanings already socially 

established”. Connell (2000: 12) supports this notion by contending that “masculinities are 

neither programmed in our genes, nor fixed by social structure, prior to social interaction. They 

come into existence as people act. They are actively produced, using the resources and 

strategies available in a given social setting”.  

Scene 2 – A queer setting, no matter how you slice the tension 

It seems that in the past and, to some degree, in the present, an all-boys’ school society was 

strongly encouraged to promote and cement the idealised masculine – away from the seductive 

gaze of the female temptress and instead under the strict control of the colonial Christian 

patriarchy. It is very convenient and effectively erases the fluidity of gender and non-binary 

identities. However, through a queer lens, it is clear that in a “boy society”, “the sex binary 

(male/female) and the gender binary (masculine/feminine) … plays a part in upholding systems 

of inequality [and magnifies] how power is distributed” (Marnell & Khan, 2016: 12) across the 

pages. It is a society “where boys get their information about how they are supposed to be and 

how they are supposed to act as a boy (and future man), and there are constant pressures on 

individuals to perform and behave to expected group norms” (Swain, 2006: 334). 

2.1 Heteronormativity and its deviant “brother” 

In this male-normative society reminiscent of a colonial past, the default condition for the 

hyper-masculine role model is heterosexuality. It validates his manhood. It consolidates his 

power. The assumption that everyone is heterosexual and should act in this way is known as 

heteronormativity. Marnell and Khan (2016: 12) offer a broadening of the definition and 

propose that  

heteronormativity teaches people to think and behave in particular ways. It is a system 

that regulates how people can dress, act and express desire. In the heteronormative 

worldview, “good” men and “good” women get married to one another, have children, 

and continue to play their “correct” role in society – that is, the good woman will raise 

the children and take care of domestic chores, while the good man will earn money 

and make all decisions relating to the family. Schools, churches, and the media are 

just some of the institutions that teach us these supposedly correct ways of behaving. 



24 

The stage directions are clear. There is a distinct marker: BOYS remain stage right, and GIRLS 

(including EVERYONE ELSE), stage left. There is a further narrowing of the performance space 

in that BOYS WHO LIKE GIRLS remain, and EVERYONE ELSE, exeunt. The heterosexual 

director has spoken and he “always sets the terms for the debate … [and he does not have] to 

explain or detail his existence” (Sullivan, 1995: 67). The narrative gets tense. Very 

tense.  

The negative effects of heteronormativity have been documented as its “re-enactment” and “re-

experiencing” persists. Tomczyk (2020) agrees; he found in his study that “heteronormativity 

and cisnormativity perpetuate systems of oppression, as they are woven into school culture and 

the hidden curriculum” (Tomczyk, 2020: ii). But my assumption was that in an all-boys’ 

environment, the theatre door is left open wider for an audience of toxic men who would 

observe and study deviancy through lenses that compare “gay men and lesbians to straight 

people [and assess that] their behaviours and subcultures represented a form of social disease 

and psychopathology” (Grzanka, 2019: 5). This does not bode well for the “deviant”. Moving 

around in this space becomes a perpetual questioning of self. The reality is that there will never 

be a sense of belonging. The deviant will always feel rejected. And the moments of rejection 

can have devastating effects. In his short story, Dancing Men (2021), Manish Chauhan writes 

of such a moment with heart-breaking clarity: 

Rishi lay down too, until they were beside each other. It felt good, just the two of 

them and from the corner of his eye, he watched as Biggie closed his. He hadn’t seen 

anybody look so comfortable, as though nothing else mattered. He wanted to look 

away but he couldn’t. Then, without giving it too much thought, he moved closer, 

looked at Biggie’s lips and wondered what would happen if he kissed them. He 

moved even closer, until their mouths were centimetres apart but before anything 

more could happen, Biggie opened his eyes. “What the fuck,” he said, shuffling away, 

as though he’d seen a rat. Rishi moved back, lay his head on the grass. “I ain’t a fag,” 

Biggie said. “No way.” “Fuck you. I wasn’t trying anything. I thought I could see 

something on your face. “Like what?” “A spider or something.” But the spell had 

been broken, and before long Biggie said he had to go. Rishi watched him disappear 

down the hill, the lights on his bike growing smaller and smaller until they were 

nothing. Now alone, he wiped his wet eyes with the back of his hands. Beneath the 

black fog, he heard the soft familiar-unfamiliar music float up out of the centre and 

knew exactly what it was. He watched the men, their shoulders, their calves twitching 

in the half-light. Their blurry shadows moving gently across the wall, their hands 

sometimes clasped, sometimes free, like birds traversing the sky. It made him feel 

sick. “Stupid fucking fags,” he shouted as he stood up and walked towards the main 

road. (Chauhan, 2021: 64–65) 



25 

This act of rejection that Rishi experiences in the extract has a clear, devastating effect as he, 

in an effort to protect himself, rejects his own sense of self, his own truth, and perpetrates the 

same intolerance on others.  

Sullivan (1995) captures the essence of this experience in writing that “most people are liable 

to meet emotional rejection by sheer force of circumstance; but for a homosexual, the odds are 

simply far, far higher [because] the heterosexual identity … attempts to judge homosexuality 

by the standards of that norm” (Sullivan, 1995: 13). My assumption was that, for the 

homosexual “deviant”, the “circumstance” of “rejection” in an all-boys’ environment was 

greatly intensified.  

Stevi Jackson’s (2006: 107) explanation that heteronormativity 

should not be thought of as simply a form of sexual expression [and that] it is not only 

a key site of intersection between gender and sexuality, but also one that reveals the 

interconnection between sexual and non-sexual aspects of social life 

is certainly valuable. However, heteronormativity, rooted in gender in this space, is inextricably 

linked to sexuality. One of the main conditions of a hyper-masculinity is a testosterone-fuelled 

heterosexuality. And a discourse about sex and sexuality is carefully guarded, controlled, and 

directed by colonial religiousism. It is an unspoken taboo. The thought of “uncontrol”, of 

“nervousness” and of “ambivalence” is as horrifying to institutional patriarchal power as it is 

to the queer deviant. Well, look at that. They have something in common.  

Michael Warner (1993: xxi) suggests that “het [heteronormative] culture thinks of itself as the 

elemental form of human association, as the very model of intergender relations, as the 

indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society 

wouldn’t exist”. The “boy society” must be protected at all costs because there is the danger of 

losing its very reason for existence. Seeing queer is strange and considered disruptive. The 

heteronormative society is then layered with codes to keep oppressive normative structures in 

place. From the outside, this is no theatre of performance made from straws which can simply 

be dismantled with a breath of defiance. Rather, it is a rigid theatrical institution constructed 

from the brick and mortar of so-called universal truths.  



26 

2.2 Straightening the line: Taking pride in universal truths and queer prejudice 

So, the scene was set a long time ago. Systems and “universal truths” are put in place to ensure 

that every boy remains on the straight and narrow and in line. Even Jane Austen, in the opening 

line of her novel, Pride and Prejudice (1813/2003: 1), cheekily points to one of these truths 

when she suggests that “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession 

of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”. The expectation is that boys must want girlfriends 

and that single men must want wives. It is useful to invite Sara Ahmed into the discussion once 

again, as she calls these master narratives “straightening devices, which keep things in line, in 

part by holding things in place” (Ahmed, 2006: 562). In this way, myriad universal truths are 

embedded in the fabric of the text. In most all-boys’ institutions these commandments are held 

as sacred. They are performed loudly through the whispers of tradition, bellowing religious 

judgements, war cries of legacy, silent codes, faded rules and regulations, rusted symbols, 

outdated curricula, and exclusionary culture. These “devices” are used to straighten the 

pathways around these schools. However, it is more complex than a mere straightening of the 

lines. Ahmed further articulates that the implications of making straight “means not only that 

we have to turn toward the objects given to us by heterosexual culture but also that we must 

turn away from objects that take us off this line” (Ahmed, 2006: 554). It is standing in salute, 

confident and in control, as a collective of brothers, backs turned away from defiant questions, 

frowning faces and confused bodies.  

Historically, all-boys’ schools embarked on a strict regime of straightening the masculine. 

Connell (2000: 155) termed these as “masculinizing practices”. He proposes that these schools 

defined and enforced a suitable masculinity among its boys through rigidly enforced 

conventional dress, discipline (prefects having the authority to beat younger boys), 

academic competition and hierarchy (emphasised by constant testing), team games, 

and gender segregation [and] … laid more emphasis on toughness and physical 

hierarchy among the boys, through masculinizing practices such as initiation, 

‘fagging’, physical punishment and spartan living conditions. This agenda was 

obviously connected with the context of colonial conquest, and the goal of 

maintaining racial power over colonised peoples. (Connell, 2000: 155) 

William Pollack (2006: 190), similarly, calls it “gender straightjacketing”, which he states 

“push[es] many boys to repress their yearnings for love and connection and to build an 

invisible, impenetrable wall of toughness [or disguise] around themselves” (Pollack, 

2006: 191). Sullivan (1995: 15) agrees and explains that, as a result, “many of us also embraced 



27 

those ideologies that seemed most alien to what we feared we might be: of the sports jock, of 

the altar boy, of the young conservative … the ultimate disguises”.  

Newspaper articles still abound with narratives that spotlight the negative press that all-boys’ 

schools receive and decry the hangover of some of their straightening practices. In her 2019 

article for the Daily Maverick, Robyn Vorster wrote that traditions such as fagging11 and 

hazing12 in all-boys’ schools were “reinforced through initiation practices, which can range 

from relatively benign pranks to protracted patterns of behaviour that rise to the level of abuse 

or criminal misconduct [and that] initiation may include physical or psychological abuse, 

nudity, or even sexual assault” (Vorster, 2019, para. 6). There is no doubt that, over time, most 

all-boys’ schools have eased up on many of these “straightjacketing” practices, mainly because 

they are wary of the blinding gaze of the media and its resulting consequences. The legacy, 

however, still echoes in some shape or form. The more covert heteronormative truths continue 

to exist. The theatre of the un-fabulous. However, it is no surprise that many private schools 

that cater only for boys continue to sing, short-sightedly, from the same hymn book in their 

performances towards the benefits of these institutions. Their emphases are mainly on the fact 

that boys and girls have different learning styles and that boys are more comfortable expressing 

their identities next to other boys. But the arguments are tenuous, the tune is off-key, and the 

performance jaded and automated. It is an active and intentional “othering” which serves to 

further make strange and reinforce gender stereotypes. It is exactly this kind of stale and 

outdated narrative that is but only another form of “straightjacketing”. Psychologist and former 

president of the American Psychological Association, Diane Halpern (as cited in Nguyen, 

2016: para. 8), muses over the need for all-boys’ schools, asking, “We don’t have sex-

segregated workplaces so why would we have sex-segregated schools?” The feeling is that 

these institutions are indeed of another time. Sullivan (1995) suggests that “not only is the past 

another country; it is with other beings [and] so, for that matter, is the present” (Sullivan, 

1995: 63).  

 
11 According to Educalingo (n.d.), fagging was a traditional educational practice in British boarding private 

schools and also many other boarding schools, whereby younger pupils were required to act as personal 

servants to the most senior boys.  

12 According to Educalingo (n.d.), hazing is the practice of rituals and other activities involving harassment, 

abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group.  



28 

But in his 2020 online article for the website ThoughtCo., Robert Kennedy disagrees, and 

maintains that all-boys’ schools are still relevant and lists the benefits for boys as follows:  

• There are no gender stereotypes at a single-sex school, allowing the boys to feel free to 

explore subjects such as languages and the arts without fear of ridicule. 

• Boys and girls are quite different people. Educating boys and girls in single-sex settings 

is not an assault on equal rights. Many believe that it is an opportunity that will 

ultimately enhance equality by allowing boys and girls to develop their own unique 

characters. 

• Science has proven that each gender learns in a different manner, accelerating at 

different rates of learning with varying ability to process the information being 

presented. 

• A single-sex school allows boys to explore subjects and activities that they may never 

have considered at a co-ed school. (Kennedy, 2020) 

One can argue, however, that these arguments support a heteronormative narrative that gender 

and sexuality is binary and are therefore yet another form of gender straightjacketing. My 

assumption is that some (e.g. Connell, 2000; Pollack, 2006; Sullivan, 1995) would argue that 

Kennedy’s points are all based on the premise that, with no girls in the environment, there is 

no gender stereotyping, which allow boys to be more authentically “boy” and free to pursue 

interests that they would not consider in a co-educational environment. Kennedy, however, 

forgets that in the absence of diversity, there is only one way to be and that is boy. The 

implication is that boys need to be what girls are not. Kennedy’s arguments then have the 

opposite effect to that which his promulgation of all-boys’ schools intends to do. Boys will 

instead shy away from the arts, as it is traditionally the domain of girls. Boys will only “do 

boy” because they want to conform rather than develop a “unique” character. 

But to be fair to Kennedy, it was necessary for me then to consider the characters written into 

this text. After all, the performance of these characters, by actors who are assigned specific 

roles, must be directed, and blocked, I assumed, in very specific ways.  



29 

Scene 3 – Queer characters in a foreign land 

Insofar as Boswell (1982: 82) claims that “we [homosexuals] are like strangers cut off in a 

foreign land”, I propose that in a fraternity of an all-boys’ school, which promotes the narrative 

of family as a brotherhood, the strangeness of queer is made even more foreign. 

3.1 A family of brothers having dinner at a “wonky table” 

Sullivan (1995: 63) claims that “human beings exist, but what they are and what they mean to 

each other is entirely contingent on the world they find themselves in”. The identities of the 

characters that make their way onto the stage of an all-boys’ school, or any school for that 

matter, are then shaped by their environment. Sullivan (1995: 63) further clarifies this by 

suggesting that “human nature does not exist; it is a spontaneous social creation”. McEachern 

(2014: 152) found that this “spontaneous social creation” of the identities of boys in such an 

environment is driven and shaped by “the idea of a school ‘brotherhood’ and [the boys and 

other community members] did what(ever) they could to gain membership in that fraternity” 

(McEachern, 2014: 152). This family of brotherhood will foster a sense of belonging. 

Belonging to a family is important. Family is synonymous with acceptance, loyalty, support, 

safety, and security. This is ideally what the private all-boys’ school strives for because when 

a student feels safe, cared for, and supported, then the conditions will be optimal for teaching 

and learning. As a result, this community will nurture and educate generations of boys who are 

well-adjusted and ready to conquer the world. However, McEachern found that, ironically, the 

opposite was true and that instead the all-boys’ school that she investigated “fostered 

exclusivity and reinforced stereotypical gender norms that ultimately limited its community 

members [as] not all of the population subscribed to the concept [of a ‘brotherhood’]” 

(McEachern, 2014: 153). Ahmed (2006) sheds further light on the phenomenon, describing it 

as “queer bodies [that] are out of place in certain family gatherings, which is what produces, in 

the first place, a queer effect. The table might even become wonky” (Ahmed, 2006: 568). 

Considering this, many characters that now emerge from the pages of this script stand queerly 

between the lines of the dialogue, waiting for those potentially fearless actors to breathe life 

into those identities. These strangers do not feel that they belong in this now-foreign land. They 

stand outside, beyond the borders, in no-man’s land, like shadows reflected abstractly on the 

back wall of the theatre. And I suspected that in the face of the very real threat of violence, 



30 

very few actors are brave enough to readily grab the script, learn these strange and queer lines 

and step defiantly into the spotlight, undaunted by the hostile gaze of their brothers. 

3.2 Queer student identities and strange disguises (perfectionism and failure) 

Whether we like it or not, our identities, be they comfortably authentic or painfully obscure, 

are always in the spotlight. The audience observing your life will see, in some way, how you 

interpret yourself and your existence. According to Sullivan (1995: 62), “one’s very existence 

depends upon one’s self-understanding”. In a society of boys, the slightest hint of being 

different is immediately visible and seen as strange. At an age when “boy” is most malleable 

and influenced by society, seeing oneself as strange through the eyes of others can be very 

traumatic indeed. It is a defining moment in one’s life when one sees oneself as different to his 

brothers despite his best attempts at ignoring what everyone else can see. Many queer 

individuals find themselves in this position and inevitably scramble for the dark recesses of the 

wings to find a safe costume and props closet in which to disguise themselves into a less visible 

and acceptable character – Perhaps looking for a military uniform and a gun. In 

their minds, if there is no spotlight, there is no need for panic or the feeling of “uncontrol” but 

instead a freedom that you control the narrative. But Sullivan (1995: 81) posits that “the trauma 

is real nonetheless. It is the sense of asphyxiation you feel when someone defines you without 

your consent … it is [instead] unfreedom”. In an ongoing attempt to shake the feeling of 

“unfreedom”, the boy student will often strive for what they can control. They will strive for 

masculine success. Because around the table, sitting down with a family of brothers, nothing 

is more valued, and accepted, than the success of achieving the ideal masculinity.  

Swain (2006: 338) argues that one form of this ideal masculinity is “inextricably linked to the 

body and that physicality and athleticism was the most cherished and extensively used 

resource”. Adams and Govender (2008: 555) agree and suggest that “boys may often engage 

in socially recognised activities, like rugby or water sports, to achieve the recognition they 

desire”. However, Adams and Govender (2008: 553) further postulate that this ideal 

masculinity, which they call “perfectionism”, is also linked to the pursuit of academic success 

as it is “seen as the route to employment, enabling men to fulfil the ‘providing’ aspect of their 

male role”. An additional disguise and another example of “perfectionism” “is young men’s 

repeated engagement in non-relational sex” (Adams & Govender, 2008: 553). This is an 



31 

extension of Robert Brannon’s (1976) claim that the ideal masculine can be summarised as 

follows:  

1. No Sissy Stuff: The stigma of all stereotypical feminine characteristics and 

qualities, including openness and vulnerability. 

2. The Big Wheel: Success, status, and the need to be looked up to. 

3. The Sturdy Oak: A manly air of toughness, confidence, and self-reliance. 

4. Give ’Em Hell!: The aura of aggression, violence, and daring.  

(Brannon, 1976: 12) 

The analysis of this script and the spotlighting of these characters reveal the imagined 

protagonist of the narrative: a hyper-masculine overachieving philandering hero. And if 

masculinity is the successful norm, then failure is equated with femininity, which, in turn, 

equates with vulnerability, weakness, worthlessness, unimportance, cowardice and softness. 

And heroes do not or are not supposed to fail. Failure is not an option because failure only 

serves to make strange, once again, and to make the queer more visible. As previously pointed 

out, this moving in and out of the spotlight is exhausting. Even though Sullivan (1995: 80) 

refers to being queer when he reminds us that “most homosexuals are not, of course, in or out 

the closet; they hover tentatively somewhere in between”, it is still valuable because it 

demonstrates the results of the pathology of perfectionism. Most boys, gay or not, will hover 

precariously between success and failure. The irony, however, is that failure is inevitable. If 

you fail, you are queer. This causes the boys to exist in a perpetual state of nervousness. But 

this nervousness is noticeable not only in the hero but equally evident in the strange supporting 

characters that complete the make-up of this foreign land.  

3.3 Queer teachers as strange characters at the other end of the “wonky table” 

Teachers are also expected to sit around the table with the brotherhood and read from the same 

script. Often the staff member who is expected to participate is what McEachern (2014) labels 

“the school’s ‘preferred’ faculty member … [a] white, heterosexual male wholly supportive of 

the school’s administration and initiatives” (McEachern, 2014: 153). Ferfolja and Hopkins 

(2013: 312) offer research which has shown that, around this table-reading of that script, “many 

lesbian and gay-identified teachers have felt compelled to hide their sexuality for fear of 

discrimination, dismissal, school and/or broader community rejection, and limitations on career 



32 

options and trajectories”. It is worth noting that Ferfolja and Hopkins (2013) found that queer 

teachers, although often not the “preferred” staff members, found greater acceptance in 

culturally diverse school environments. Very little research has been conducted into the 

experiences of queer teachers in all-boys’ schools, but one can easily deduce from Ferfolja and 

Hopkins (2013) that the fear and nervousness for these teachers must be exacerbated in a 

homogeneous environment owing to a lack of diversity. They too are made strange, even in a 

supporting role. At the very least, for queer teachers who find allies in school management, the 

expectation is often that they do not talk about or disclose their sexuality to the staff and 

certainly not to the students. Sullivan’s (1995) comments in this regard are valuable as he 

claims that 

to tell a [sic] homosexual to keep his identity a secret in public is equivalent to telling 

a [sic] heterosexual that she should never mention her husband or children in public or 

relate any stories that might indicate her involvement in a sexual and emotional 

relationship with someone of the opposite sex. (Sullivan, 1995: 125) 

Fredman et al. (2009) clarify the potential consequences of this “don’t ask, don’t tell”13 

mindset. They suggest that if queer educators do not feel that they can talk freely about their 

lives, they “either knowingly or unknowingly, [reproduce] the existence of this 

heteronormative rule, which involve[s] passing the rule of silence on to their students” 

(Freedman et al., 2009: 66). Queer teachers in an all-boys’ school environment, who are 

scripted into a heteronormative text, experience a war on multiple fronts. Not only do they have 

to concern themselves with potentially hostile student and peer reactions, but the stage combat 

extends further: Ann Harding (2019: 14) suggests that “we need more than an army ready to 

battle when homophobic parents and other school leaders challenge LGBTQ teachers who 

choose to live and teach authentically”. Queer teachers simply do not feel safe.  

Simons et al. (2021: 2) shed further light on the problem and indicate that 

educators who are LGB possess multiple identities, so they are susceptible to 

experiencing the compounding effects of minority stress [which] may lead to 

concealment of one’s authentic identity, an increase of prejudice and discrimination, 

and lack of LGB role models. 

 
13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell


33 

This means that queer teachers are not given the space on stage to perform/teach authentically. 

Teaching authentically, according to Harding (2019: 12), “is defined as teaching freely and 

openly inside the classroom and is achieved by creating a space in which LGBTQ lives and 

voices may be freely visible inside the classroom”. Catherine Lee (2020) proposes that there is 

a missed opportunity here if queer teachers are not given the space to teach and serve 

authentically. She argues that queer teachers may have qualities such as “reading people, 

compassion and commitment to the inclusion of others, making connections, managing 

uncertainty, courage and risk-taking” (Lee, 2020: 2) that suggest they will be excellent leaders 

and teachers. But this kind of progress is suffocated because the characters and the space in 

which they move and use words, spoken and unspoken, in this script continues to reinforce the 

oppressive power dynamics at play.  

Scene 4 – Queer words and strange silences 

Words are invariably instruments of power, ways in which the strong control the 

weak, and among the ways in which that control can be temporarily resisted, if never 

ultimately overcome. For these words are embedded in “discourses,” or ways of 

speaking that only serve to strengthen and reinforce the power relations that exist 

discourses of science, of morality, of psychology, of criminology, of sexuality. 

(Sullivan, 1995: 63) 

4.1 Bullying words 

A cursory glance at the website NoHomophobes.com (Institute for Sexual Minority Studies 

and Services, n.d.) starkly demonstrates that homophobic language is a daily reality on social 

media platforms like Twitter. The website tracks the daily, weekly, and all-time use of common 

derogatory words targeting the queer community.  



34 

 

NoHomophobes.com 

Since the website’s inception in July 2012, it has recorded the use of the word “faggot” a 

staggering 44,628,835 times. Although, the daily usage of the word has declined in the last few 

years, Stonewall Cymru in its report, Tackling Homophobic Language (Kibirige & Tryl, 

2017: 6), found the following: 

So gay: used on average over 10,000 times daily 

No homo: used on average over 10,000 times daily 

Faggot: used on average over 45,000 times daily 

Dyke: used on average over 4,000 times daily  

Since social media is a daily reality for so many students, teachers, and parents, it is now the 

manuscript, in the form of a stream of consciousness, which is very hard to avoid and not to 

read. 

The report further postulates that there is a “strong link between failure to tackle homophobic 

language and high levels of homophobic bullying” (Kibirige & Tryl, 2017: 9). Rewriting the 

script to omit such bewildering numbers of homonegative chatter seems insurmountable. 

Kibirige and Tryl (2017: 9) put the problem in perspective and suggest that “homophobic 



35 

language doesn’t just reinforce negative perceptions of gay people but also leads to a general 

intolerance of being different”.  

If social media is a yardstick for the discourse in our society, then our schools, as microcosms, 

inevitably mirror the language being spoken and accepted in our schools. According to Sullivan 

(1995: 81), “the homophobic slur … erases dignity because it denies individuation”. As a 

result, the characters that navigate the stage floor are mere phantoms because “young people, 

gay or straight, feel less able to be themselves or take part in the activities they enjoy because 

they are worried about being labelled gay” (Kibirige & Tryl, 2017: 9). And, as previously 

mentioned, being labelled as anything other than a successful hyper-masculine student is seen 

as failure. In an all-boys’ school, the chances of standing out from the homogeneous crowd is 

almost inevitable. Sullivan also suggests that difference is even further implied as 

the denigration of “fags” is often linked to a denigration of femininity and of women. 

Beating up or ridiculing a “homo” … [is] an activity of an insecure, unstable 

adolescent, who is more often than not equally contemptuous and afraid of women. 

(Sullivan, 1995: 113).  

The reality is that we are working with boys who are intolerant of anyone who is different to 

what they perceive as the norm. Anyone is a target, whether they are queer or not.  

4.2 “No Homo”– Everyone and everything is queer … if you are not  

The article, “Hearing ‘that’s so gay’ and ‘no homo’ on academic outcomes for LGBQ+ college 

students”, published in the Journal of LGBT Youth is valuable insofar as it explains that 

homophobic slurs and “harassment can be overt, including directly targeted derogatory names 

such as ‘dyke’ [but] includes ambient experiences which are not directed at a specific target, 

taking the form of jokes about LGBQ+ people heard by anyone within earshot” (Mathies et al., 

2019: 256). The authors further suggest that subtle heterosexist harassment (microaggressions) 

“are more prevalent than blatant hostility” (Mathies, et al., 2019: 256).  

Sue (2010: 3) defines microaggressions as “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental 

slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, 

derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalised group 

membership”. These microaggressions have an impact on the larger community. Mathies et al. 



36 

(2019) suggest that seemingly harmless or unintentional comments have the power to establish 

and reinforce certain mindsets. Students may readily exclaim, 

the phrase “that’s so gay” … to describe something as stupid and worthless and the 

phrase “no homo” at the end of a statement to affirm heterosexual and masculine 

identity, which both dismiss and problematize being gay. (Mathies et al., 2019: 257) 

My assumption was that perhaps these microaggressions were even more prevalent in an all-

boys’ school, in which the aim, as seen, is to advertise a “successful” masculinity. It is, 

however, interesting to note that Mathies et al. (2019) reported that half of the students who 

used words associated with microaggressions did not realise that their comments might have 

been discriminatory. The report suggests that students often use this type of language to “win 

social approval from peer groups or to assert masculinity” (Mathies et al., 2019: 257). Phrases 

such as “no homo” are now almost expected after a statement which could potentially display 

a sign of vulnerability, weakness, or any interest in something that might be considered outside 

of the norm. In their 2011 song and music video, No Homo, The Lonely Island comedy trio 

parodies individuals in a hyper-masculine industry, such as hip-hop, who frequently 

“straighten” themselves in a public space. They ridicule the compulsion to exclaim “no homo” 

after giving a compliment to a friend, expressing interest in anything feminine, sharing hopes 

and dreams, being their authentic selves, being vulnerable and so on. The following is an extract 

from the lyrics to the song: 

When you want to compliment a friend, no homo 

But you don’t want that friendship to end, no homo 

To tell a dude just how you feel, no homo 

Just say no homo so he knows the deal no homo 

 (Genius.com, n.d.) 

 

It is clear from the lyrics that any utterances which are perceived as echoing homosexuality, 

and by extension gendered female, such as showing vulnerability, sharing feelings, being kind, 

complimenting a friend and expressing interest in what is not considered stereotypically 

masculine, is considered weakness, and qualified as “no homo”. The irony the lyrics express, 

however, is that what is considered feminine are human traits. “No homo” is, instead, a denial 

of their own humanness and used as homonegativity and denies others their humanity as well.  

The song (or rather, the point its artists are trying to make) is yet another example of what 

Swain (2006: 333) calls “masculinizing practices”. It is an ongoing performance in a script and 



37 

on a stage carefully crafted and designed to marginalise and keep the brotherhood walking 

silently in paths which are defensively demarcated along the straight and narrow.  

4.3 Silence is the golden rule of … hegemonic masculinity 

Expanding the performance space and trying to control the text to promote inclusivity and 

combat intolerance of difference, in any shape or form, is generally the mantra of most schools 

in the 21st century. However, in their study, Kibirige and Tryl (2017: 10) found that “despite 

the negative impact of homophobic language, only 10 per cent of teachers challenge it every 

time it occurs … it is rarely treated in the same way as racist or sexist language”. They also 

found that “in schools where teachers never challenge homophobic remarks the rate of 

homophobic bullying is far higher than in schools where teachers always challenge 

homophobic remarks when they hear them (71 per cent compared to 43 per cent)” (Kibirige & 

Tryl, 2017: 9). Similarly, Mayberry et al. (2011) found correlating trends and practices in 

schools. They surmised that 

despite the increase in efforts to provide protection and safety to LGBT students, 

antigay and homophobic sentiments and behaviours of students and teachers endure in 

the country’s schools … and the incidence of bullying and harassment related to 

sexual orientation continues to be high (Mayberry et al., 2011: 2). 

Tomczyk (2020: 4) found that this intentional or intentional silence has 

a consequential negative impact on youth expressing their sexuality and gender in 

non-normative ways, if they are forced to live on the margins, or even worse, if they 

need to silence their sexuality or gender expression for fear of what may result if they 

came out. 

Although some schools have committed to putting strategies in place to negate the problem, 

such as anonymous reporting apps (News24, 2018), the deeply ingrained culture of keeping 

silent remains, especially in all-boys’ schools (Sobuwa, 2020). Another strategy that schools 

are employing is to establish gay–straight alliances (GSAs) to encourage inclusivity and 

awareness. Some research has been conducted into whether GSAs indeed can improve the 

school environment and help to minimise instances of bullying (Marx & Kettrey, 2016). In 

many cases it was found that GSAs indeed make a difference as they contribute to a sense of 

belonging and social integration in the school environment. It was, however, also found that 

the establishment of these GSAs are met with vehement resistance in some instances. Parent 

bodies, and at times, management and some faculty members objected to these societies as they 



38 

deemed them inappropriate for students and were concerned that LGBTQI+ students and 

faculty members were promoting and even imposing their gay agenda on the rest of the school 

body. I suspected that this was even more prevalent in traditional private all-boys’ schools. The 

other problem is that, as previously stated, making visible is also dangerous, and students might 

not feel comfortable exploring GSAs for fear of being spotlighted and bullied. The GSAs are 

therefore avoided and consequently written out of the text. Furthermore, the influence and 

power that alumni associations (old boys’ societies) wield on these campuses might also be an 

obstacle to promoting change. These bodies might traditionally be averse to change as they try 

and hang on to what worked for them and the ways in which they were taught.  

For the heteronormative patriarchy, silence is indeed golden as it ensures the absence of 

resistance. It is the lock to Pandora’s Box. In his article for Psychology Today, 

psychotherapist Mark O’Connell (2016: para. 3) suggests that “silence has been the greatest 

threat to queer lives throughout history”. He further claims: 

Every time we fail to use words to make explicit links between queerphobia and 

attacks on queer people, the hatred, fear, and danger grow stronger. (For example, a 

disturbingly ironic post by a straight woman announcing her engagement popped up 

on my Facebook feed this week, including a photo of her diamond ring and a shot of 

the Orlando14 skyline from the boat on which she and her fiancé were celebrating, 

along with happy, hopeful thoughts about their heteronormative future, yet she wrote 

nothing about the 49 murder victims whose futures were taken from them by an act of 

homophobia only days before in that very city, or about the queer individuals still 

alive whose futures will continue to be plagued by hate, fear, and danger).  

(O’Connell, 2016: para. 7) 

The suggestion is that silence amounts to being complicit. Therefore, silence is a performative 

act that emerges as a destructive weapon to ensure that the status quo remains. It is clear that a 

disruptive and confrontational, fabulous, dialogue needs to be written into the script to 

methodically break down heteronormative systems of oppression on this “unfabulous” stage.   

 
14 The location of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub, Pulse, in Orlando, USA on 12 June 2016.  



39 

ACT III 

– 

RISING ACTION – A FABULOUS METHODOLOGY, DATA COLLECTION AND 

ANALYSIS 

Insofar my aims and objectives were concerned, I wished to use the following theoretical 

frameworks and methodologies to understand my experience and interrogate this private all-

boys’ school as a theatrical space:  

● queer pedagogy and queer theory as methods to serve as a structural guide around which 

to shape a Theatre of the Fabulous 

● queer performative autoethnography and queer performance as research (PaR) to live 

‘inside’ the culture and environment of which I am a part and “to describe and 

systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand 

cultural experience (ethno)” (Ellis et al., 2010: 1); and 

● Theatre of the Ridiculous to serve up queering methods of identification/

disidentification for use in a Theatre of the Fabulous. 

Scene 1 – Queering education 

The homosexual … learns certain rules; and, … later on in life, to unlearn … and 

every homosexual child will learn the rituals of deceit, impersonation, and 

appearance. (Sullivan, 1995: 13) 

this is for the queer kids 

this is for the queer kids 

who are taught their ABC’s 

but not their L’s, G’s, B’s, and T’s 

for the Russian government and the I.O.C 

who deny Russian queers their visibility 

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/440168/this-is-for-the-queer-kids/


40 

to the people who call me “faggot” 

I wear your name-calling like a pink triangle 

stitched to my sleeve 

for the Harvey Milk’s, the Christine Burns’ 

and every queer in between 

to the allies who do more than say 

“your sexuality is okay with me” 

for the Jamaican trans teen 

who was murdered needlessly 

to the television networks 

who portray LGBT individuals positively 

for the radical queers 

the POC queers 

the genderqueers 

the queers who have felt excluded 

this is for you 

for us 

this is a celebration 

and an ultimatum 

we are here 

we are queer 

& we will do more 

than survive. 

– Adam Hicks (2013) 

1.1 Queering 

If I wanted to embark on a journey to disrupt and dismantle hegemony in the classroom and 

beyond, it was necessary to investigate the tenets and framework of existing queer pedagogical 

discussions. To this end, Grzanka’s (2019) summary of what queer theory is and what it aims 

do was helpful. He theorised that queer theory is:  



41 

• a conceptualization of sexuality which sees sexual power embodied in 

different levels of social life, expressed discursively, and enforced through 

boundaries and binary divides;  

• the problematisation of sexual and gender categories and of identities in 

general; identities are always on uncertain ground, entailing displacements of 

identification and knowing;  

• a rejection of civil rights strategies in favour of a politics of carnival, 

transgression, and parody, which leads to deconstruction, decentring, 

revisionist readings, and an anti-assimilationist politics;  

• a willingness to interrogate areas which normally would not be seen as the 

terrain of sexuality and to conduct queer “readings” of ostensibly heterosexual 

or nonsexualized texts (Grzanka, 2019: 5) 

This framework is valuable insofar as it provides a map to orientate the theory and praxis (as 

explored later through a reflection on queer performance styles) of a Theatre of the Fabulous 

as a pedagogy.  

1.2 Queer pedagogy 

According to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, queer pedagogy, “much like the 

queer theory that informs it, draws on the lived experience of the queer, wonky, or non-

normative as a lens through which to consider educational phenomena” (Thomas-Reid, 2018: 

para. 2). 

Pennell (2019: 2294) agrees and extends it to a specific definition in which she proposes that 

queer pedagogy is not merely advocating queer inclusivity but that teachers using a queer 

pedagogy should “interrogate systemic heteronormativity and question their own place within 

that system”. As additional discussants, Zacko-Smith and Smith (2010: 8) ask that teachers 

“transcend themselves and look to affect the larger world [and suggest that] this type of 

education fully implicates educators and administrators in the fight for societal and global 

change”. 

I wanted to be clear about the ideas of a queer pedagogy and how I could shape my own 

teaching performance in line with its tenets and framework to begin the journey towards 

shifting the reality for myself and others. Pennell (2019: 2291) suggests that queer theory “can 

be used to analyse the social and institutional norms in any subject”. Pennell’s (2019) work is 

beneficial insofar as my intention was that my own Theatre of the Fabulous, informed by queer 

theory, can be used to interrogate, and make visible hegemonic heteronormative practices in 



42 

the ontology of my own environment. By using this approach in my classroom, my pedagogy 

would then be queered. The framework and tenets of a queer pedagogy, outlined by Zacko-

Smith and Smith (2010) and Pennell (2019), informed by queer theory, guided my thinking 

towards the Theatre of the Fabulous. According to Pennell’s (2019) suggestions, a queer 

pedagogy should: 

• not merely be queer inclusive but it must interrogate systemic 

heteronormativity and question their own place in the system; 

• focus on identifications [and disidentification] (as fluid ways of naming 

oneself) rather than identities (static categories of naming oneself and others); 

• go beyond the text (defined broadly) to include reflections on the world, one’s 

place within it, and how one’s biases and preferences are shaped by societal 

norms; 

• work in such a way that students gain comfort in being uncomfortable. 

• include group work [as it is] key for student learning [and share the] tenet of 

many critical and social justice pedagogies of dialogue, processing and … 

play; 

• strive for “engaged play, rather than … students playing a teacher-created 

game, [and] play with the material in a way that contributes to their own 

learning”; 

• avoid the danger in creating exclusion in our attempt to include; 

• consider norms that relate to all identities, not just queer individuals; and 

• focus on individual reflection and unlearning, both important concepts in 

social justice pedagogy. (Pennell, 2019: 2295–2304) 

There are many examples of queer performances that have been devised and created while 

working with queer students. Tomczyk (2020: ii) refers to the ethno-drama, Queering High 

School, which highlights “the lived experience of LGBTQ youth in Alberta high schools that 

explored their experiences of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia”. This study, like others of 

this nature, is valuable to the extent that it confirms, as Tomczyk (2020: ii) concludes, 

that heteronormativity and cisnormativity perpetuate systems of oppression, as they 

are woven into school culture and the hidden curriculum. Heteronormativity and 

cisnormativity operate through manifestations of homophobic, biphobic, and 

transphobic bullying and harassment, which have detrimental effects for LGBTQ 

youth. 

However, there are limitations to the existing research studies as they focus broadly on school 

cultures and environments that are co-educational. A single-sex school, in contrast, generally 

explicit in its name, is by its very nature more patriarchal, colonial and heteronormative. Leigh 

Adams and Kaymarlin Govender (2008: 552) surmise that “a traditional masculine ideology 

proposes that men portray and maintain a specific social persona which reflects toughness, 



43 

emotional invulnerability, heterosexual dominance, and success, as well as an avoidance of 

anything deemed ‘feminine’”. 

My assumption was that this “traditional masculine ideology” in an all-boys’ school manifests 

itself as hyper-masculine and is explicitly hegemonic in nature. I have found no research on 

the impact of a queer pedagogy specifically focused on and in a private all-boys’ school 

environment. The Theatre of the Fabulous, with its pedagogical compass aimed at queering the 

structures in this environment, could then function to identify the unique complexities of male 

identities and male performativity in this homogeneous, “masculine” theatre. But this kind of 

pedagogy is what Blignaut and Koopman (2020) call a pedagogy of discomfort, which 

invites students to critique their deeply held assumptions, and to destabilise their 

views of themselves and their worlds’. These authors remind us that this process of 

learning can be painful and traumatic, but in being directed to the future, it gives 

participants an opportunity to revise previously held views and arrive at new 

understandings. (Blignaut & Koopman, 2020: 85–86) 

I had to think of ways to make students comfortable with the uncomfortable and not view them  

simply as consumers of knowledge, but as active participants whose epistemic needs 

should be met as fully as possible in the learning spaces [but rather] they should be 

encouraged to cultivate a critical disposition in discourse and to welcome knowledge 

that unsettles them. (Blignaut & Koopman, 2020: 86) 

Therefore, I had to start from the assumption that I was teaching and performing towards an 

uncomfortable audience who may not have been willing and ready to interrogate their own 

masculine ideologies and to venture into possible moments of vulnerability or 

uncomfortability. What makes boys in this environment uncomfortable? I was uncertain about 

this foreign land, this foreign script, this foreign theatre and how exactly the story was about 

to unfold.  

Scene 2 – Queer mapping and queer stories of self 

The second body of work which informed my conceptual framework is PaR, including a 

performative autoethnography (PA). In his article entitled Performance Studies: Interventions 

and Radical Research, Dwight Conquergood (2002: 145) quotes Michel de Certeau, who 

proposed, “what the map cuts up, the story cuts across”. This is a beneficial reference when I 



44 

consider the all-boys’ school environment that I am working in as “the map” and the lived 

experiences of myself, the students and staff as “the story”. 

2.1 Queer performance as research 

Conquergood (2002: 146) suggests that for research to truly understand and make sense of the 

location and its phenomena, there is a need to move beyond the “knowing that [and] knowing 

about [which merely reflects] a distanced perspective”. He proposes “another way of knowing 

that is grounded in active, intimate, hands-on participation and personal connection: ‘knowing 

how’, and ‘knowing who’” (Conquergood, 2002: 146). He feels that “this is a view from 

ground level, in the thick of things. This is knowledge that is anchored in practice and circulated 

within a performance community but is ephemeral” (Conquergood, 2002: 146).  

My Theatre of the Fabulous had to be guided by PaR if I wanted to understand the “ground 

level”. Norman K. Denzin (2003: 192–193) validated this when he claimed that “as 

pedagogical pr