ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Drama Queens as a kind of synecdoche for this direction of exchange, wherein languages of visual art have influenced the theatre, and its relation to the counterpoint practices central to the project. Drawing on conventions of minimalist work in order, following Peter Bürger, to dispute ‘the possibility of positing aesthetic norms as valid ones’, Drama Queens plays with traditional boundaries in artistic and critical practice and what art historian Hal Foster invokes as minimalism’s move to initiate a ‘redefinition of such aesthetic categories’ and ‘transgress its institutional limits’. By removing sculptural works from conventional contexts of display and presenting them on stage and in performance. Manchester International Festival (MIF) returned, in its second iteration and according to its own online publicity, ‘to the crossroads of visual art and performance. According to the MIF website, this preparation is necessary in order to ‘create room for the unique work to develop and breathe.’
