Inside the world’s first MA in queer performance: An interview with Phoebe Patey-Ferguson

As a creative discipline, queer performance art offers an expansive realm of possibility, and its lineage offers a reflection and documentation of queer history.

At a time when drag queen story-time events are being targeted by right-wing groups and waves of anti-LGBTQIA+ bills, such as recent laws in Uganda, Ghana and states across the US are being passed – not to mention the horrific culture of hostility towards trans identities – queer expression is filled with inherently radical potential. It’s this potential that Rose Bruford College’s new masters in queer performance seeks to honour and nurture.

Announced earlier this year, the course is deemed to be the world’s first masters dedicated to queer performance and the only of its kind. Helmed by academic, producer and artist Dr. Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, the course is set to launch at the London arts institution in the autumn, offering a hybrid learning format for students.

Ahead of time, we caught up with Patey-Ferguson to discuss their background in performance, the process of developing the course and the intersection of academia and queer art.

Firstly, could you tell us who you are and what you do?

I’m Dr. Phoebe Patey-Ferguson. I’m an academic, producer and artist and I’ve just set up the world’s first MA in Queer Performance at Rose Bruford College in London.

How did you first get involved in performance art?

I moved to London in 2012 and was immediately swept up into the incredible queer nightlife scene, particularly around Dalston and Vauxhall. I fell totally in love with performance art watching artists like Scottee, Figs in Wigs and Frank Chickens on stage at Duckie at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern – and then I was lucky enough to do their workshops for emerging artists (Duckie Homosexualist Summer School) and perform on that stage myself, all within a few months of arriving in the city!

When did the idea for the Queer Performance MA come about?

It was inspired by the queer artists I was working with and the queer students I was teaching. At the start of 2018 I was finishing my PhD, teaching undergraduate modules and managing VFD [Vogue Fabrics Dalston] – a queer club and community arts space. We were so lucky at VFD to be able to host and invite so many incredible queer and feminist artists to do really weird, outrageous, anarchic basement shows, including Lucy McCormick, Karen Finley, FAKA, Louise Orwin, Katayoun Jalilipour, Sh!t Theatre, Rodent, Lewis G Burton, DonChristian, Karnage, Tammy Reynolds, FK Alexander, Vijay Patel, Sharon Le Grand, YaYa Bones, FAFSWAG, Tom Rasmussen, Travis Alabanza, Liv Wynter, Rose Wood, Florence Peake and Eve Stainton… the list could go on and on!

It was such a busy time. Some days I would get up to lecture at Goldsmiths at 9 a.m., do a few hours on my thesis, then travel to VFD to reply to emails, help set up for an event, stick around to work the bar or the door, before spending hours on the dancefloor, staying around to clean up and eventually getting home at – or after – sunrise. I don’t want to glamourise that however, as I totally burned out after about 18 months of keeping it up. But I was so completely and deeply in love with the artists I was working with – and quite obsessed with seeing what new, chaotic beauty would be generated each week.

That energy was infectious, and I realised I could bring what I was learning in the club into the classroom. I could explore with students the lineages of where this work was coming from and it made my teaching so much better – but we never ever had enough time. I was only given one module, or guest lecture, to teach on queer performance, and that could never contain the multitudes of what was just happening on the Kingsland Road – let alone the rest of London – and then there was queer performance throughout history from all across the world. So I just really wanted a dedicated space to fully engage with queer performance with all the students who shared that passion; to be able to get stuck into studying it with the real breadth and depth queer artists and queer histories deserve.

How has the process of developing the course been?

I’m a massive nerd so I’ve had so much fun doing it. It’s a really creative process, trying to imagine and build something, approaching it all with integrity, centring access, aligning the form with the content, and embedding queer pedagogy from the outset – rather than having to try and squeeze it in…

I am hugely grateful for all of the support I’ve had throughout the process – it’s been a lot of talking about it at every possible opportunity, I’ve even had to start making notes at 3 a.m. at a party after someone has given me some fantastic advice. All my colleagues at Rose Bruford College have been on board since the first time I proposed it which has been so encouraging, particularly those with their own expertise as queer artists and academics such as Professor Brian Lobel and Professor Steve Farrier. Like queer performance itself, you need that support structure in place to be confident in taking real risks.

As an academic and artist yourself, do you feel there’s a gap between academia and recognition of queer art?

One of my favourite ever performances is Becoming an Image by Cassils. The audience are in total darkness stood around a large column of clay which Cassils begins to punch and kick in a torrent of power and fury. The only glimpses into seeing this action is through the illumination of a photographer’s camera flash which captures a quick fragment and sears it into your retina. You can hear the continued labour, but you’re only given these brief frozen moments in which to see it, you have to construct what’s happening from all these snippets of information.

Cassils conceived the work during a residency at the ONE Archives in Los Angeles – the oldest active LGBTQ archive in the US – and the performance sought to address the missing ‘Ts’ and ‘Qs’ from these historical records. In the work, Cassils explores how we only have these small fragments, scraps, of documentation of queer performances and of queer lives, and it embodies both the experience of violence and erasure, but also of perseverance. Becoming an Image is really visceral, but also rigorous conceptually, with this clear political articulation. Nothing is certain, but we begin to construct something by combining efforts, the delicate intricacies of shared memory, and we have to actively intervene in our obscured or deleted histories.

I think Cassils really demonstrates how thinking about queer art is embodied and so often done through action. In my experience, it’s almost impossible to separate queer theory and practice. There’s a really exciting crossover where queer theory inspires queer art, but queer art is also inspiring queer theory – and all are entangled with calls to action politically. We often understand notions of gender and sexuality at a fundamental level via the explorations of queer performance – with drag being the key example of that – which is also why drag is being considered such a threat by reactionary Conservative and right-wing groups – it really does destabilise these constructed categories through which a patriarchal, heteronormative society exerts its control.

With this being the world’s first Queer Performance MA, what are your hopes for the course?

I really hope it brings people and complex ideas together in a way that is energising and challenging for all of us involved in teaching and learning, but also extends outwards through disseminating new performances, writing, research and other shared adventures to a wider public. I want there to be more and more spaces for queers to meet, share, cooperate, develop consciousness, and expand practice – this MA is just one of those offerings which I hope will continue to proliferate.

Regarding the hybrid format, did it feel important to offer something different to a more traditional learning structure?

Yeah, I’m often thinking about the importance of form as well as the content. Part of queer practice is constantly experimenting with form, not just replicating traditional stories but with more gay characters or whatever. So I really wanted to try to think about a structure, a form that could be more adaptable to how queer artists and practitioners are living their lives. Also, despite London being my home, I didn’t want people to feel like they had to leave their own queer contexts or communities and move to London in order to make queer performance. I’m thinking about how queer performances are being made in all major cities – but also in towns and villages. So the course balances this desire to be together, share space and ideas through the in-person intensives, but also allows people space to respond to their own geographies, communities and culture – via online sessions wherever they are based.

Are there any particular artists or collectives working within queer performance inspiring you righ now?

It always sounds a bit naff, but I genuinely owe my life to queer performance and the community around it, so making this kind of selection is really difficult when it’s the stuff that completely sustains me. Stumbling into Duckie in my early twenties, I just found this whole world that opened up these possibilities of a way of life, a way of loving, a way of being myself so unapologetically and a way of expressing all this rage and desire. And if that’s something you’re looking for you can still stumble into Duckie every Saturday, now in the daytime at The Eagle.

Other things coming up in my diary which I’m really excited about is a screening of a new documentary with the incredible Lavinia Co-op; the legendary Buzzcut festival in Glasgow curated by two of my all-time favourite artists FK Alexander and SERAFINE1369 with a whole load of stunning queer performance; the inimitable Fred Moten as part of an improvising trio at Cafe OTO; there’s STARS: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey by Mojisola Adebayo at the ICA; and DISRUPT festival at Cambridge Junction with a smorgasbord of queer treasures such as Nando Messias and WET MESS.

I’m also lucky enough to be travelling to Ghana in the summer and visiting perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) in Kumasi, hosted by one of my biggest inspirations, the performance artist and activist crazinisT artisT (Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi). pIAR are currently fundraising to save the space due to the horrific new anti-LGBTQIA+ bill, you can donate here.

Applications are open now to study Queer Performance at Rose Bruford College. Find out more here.