Taken from Amelia Jones's book-in-progress, In Between Subjects, this paper examines the concept of "theatricality" as it has haunted the performing and visual arts since the 1960s. Jones explores connections perceived among theatricality, perceived gay subjectivity, queer, camp, and effeminacy in visual and theater arts discourses, from Richard Schechner to Michael Fried, arguing that these discourses thus prepared the ground for the 1990s rise of theories connecting queer to performance or performativity.

Amelia Jones is Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Research, Roski School of Art & Design, USC, and a curator and scholar of contemporary art, performance and feminist/sexuality studies. Recent publications include Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts (2012), co-edited with Erin Silver, Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories (2016) and the edited special issue "On Trans/Performance" of Performance Research (2016). Jones is currently working on a retrospective of the work of Ron Athey with accompanying catalogue (Queer Communion: Ron Athey) and a book entitled In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance is forthcoming from NYU Press.