Taking Over and Taking Up Space: Black Queer and Trans Joy in Travis Alabanza’s Sound of the Underground and Temi Wilkey’s Main Character Energy

This paper examines how millennial and Gen-Z Black and Black mixed race LGBTIQ+ practitioners are responding to the challenge of creating work that promotes expressions of Black, queer, and trans joy over narratives of Black struggle and trauma. I begin with a brief overview of twenty-first century LGBTIQ+ performance, followed by a summary of viewpoints about Black and queer joy as forms of resistance against negative narratives and a close analysis of how joyful aesthetics are used to make politicised commentary in Travis Alabanza’s Sound of the Underground and Temi Wilkey’s Main Character Energy. I argue that Alabanza and Wilkey use cabaret, drag and audience interaction to simultaneously celebrate the talent of queer and trans performers while also providing important reflections on the place of LGBTIQ+ performers in the British theatre and performance industry. Alabanza brings together a group of trans and gender non-conforming performers from the London queer club performance scene, celebrating their talent while critiquing how the mainstreaming of drag imposes limits on their work opportunities. Wilkey’s semi-autobiographical solo performance celebrates her unique fabulousness and explores the struggles that she faces in trying to build a successful career as a Black woman actor.