POETS THEATRE IN MADRID: NARRATION, QUEER EXPRESSION AND SPANISH VENTRILOQUISM

A few months ago we gave a workshop on the second wave of San Francisco’s Poets Theater (1980-90), relating it to similar episodes in post-Franco Spain that also engaged with narration in order to introduce the personal, intimate and urgent of queer expression, trying to avoid the capture of representation. We discussed the “poetry wars" and talked about Jack Spicer, Kevin Killian and his anthology Stage Fright: Plays from San Francisco Poets Theatre, Kiki gallery and Rick Jacobsen, Nayland Blake, La Ocaña, Kylie Minogue and Jose Luis Moreno and his puppets amongst many others. In the end, all the participants remade a version of Killian’s play Box Rain, updated for Madrid’s artistic context –with its characters, plots and miseries.