Schildcrout - Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (Triangulations: Lesbian

The journey of writing Murder Most Queer began during my gay adolescence in the 1980s, which coincided with the emergence of the AIDS crisis and the rise to power of conservative movements that vilified queer people. Throughout my teens and twenties, my anxiety and anger over these circumstances found expression in the political rage of LGBT activism, the robust rebellion of the queer punk subculture, the shimmering darkness of queer goths and new romantics, the vibrant violence and passion of gay novels by authors ranging from James Baldwin to Dennis Cooper, the ironic nihilism of New Queer Cinemaand the surprising number of homicidal homosexuals I found flourishing onstage in the American theater. I continued to stalk these characters into the twenty-first century because I found them beautiful and horrible, abject and empowered, ridiculous and profound, virtuous and sinister. The contradictions and ambiguities intrigued me, and at times frightened me, and this book is the result of my need to peer into the darkness and wrestle with the monstrous and the marvelous.

Many mentors, colleagues, and friends have aided me in my work on Murder Most Queer, and Im especially grateful to professors David Savran, Judith Milhous, and Alisa Solomon, who guided this project through its initial incarnation as a dissertation at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The CUNY Graduate Center provided an excellent home for those of us working at the intersection of theater studies and queer studies, and I consider myself fortunate to have also studied with Jill Dolan and Marvin Carlson, as well as the late George Custen and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The Vera Roberts Dissertation Award, generously endowed by Professor Roberts, offered crucial financial support during the dissertation process. My fellow students at the Graduate Center wereconstantly engaged in the exchange of ideas and perspectives, and being part of this community of emerging scholars was crucial to the creation of this book. The Graduate Center is also the home of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), where I had the good fortune to work for many years under the directorships of Jill Dolan, Alisa Solomon, and Paisley Currah. In addition to much-needed support from the Monette-Horowitz Dissertation Award, CLAGS also offered me a vital home in the field of queer studies, invaluable mentorship and scholarly opportunities, and an incomparable team of coworkers and comrades, including Preston Bautista, Rachel Cohen, Heidi Coleman, Sara Ganter, Claudia Moreno Parsons, and Lavelle Porter.

Portions of Murder Most Queer benefited greatly from being presented in public forums, and Im obliged to the organizations and individuals who invited me to present my work, including the LGBTQ Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE); the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC); the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR); the Queer Matters Conference in London; Sue-Ellen Case, David Romn, and James Schultz at the QGrad Conference at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Paisley Currah at the CLAGS Colloquium Series. The editors and anonymous peer reviewers who guided the development of portions of this book for publication in other venues also played an important role. Thanks to Gretchen Sommerfeld and Amy Dudley for shepherding an early version of as No Tragedy: Queer Evil in the Metaphysical Comedies of Nicky Silver in his edited volume We Will be Citizens: New Essays on Gay and Lesbian Theatre (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008).

Many of my thoughts about the theater in general and queer killers in particular were explored in the vibrant exchange of ideas that occurs in the classroom, and this work would not have been possible without the intelligence, creativity, and engagement of all those who have been my students. Im much obliged to the colleagues who gave me the opportunity to create and teach courses in theater history and dramatic literature duringthe early part of my career: Alisa Solomon (CLAGS Seminars in the City), Mira Felner and Jonathan Kalb (Hunter College), George Custen and Maurya Wickstrom (College of Staten Island), Colette Brooks (Eugene Lang College, The New School), and Mary Fleischer (Marymount Manhattan College).

Much of Murder Most Queer came to fruition during my years at Ohio Universitys School of Theater in Athens, Ohio, and Im deeply indebted to the excellent people who sustain this vibrant artistic and scholarly community, particularly my colleagues in theater history and playwriting, William Condee, Erik Ramsey, and Charles Smith, as well as the schools directors, Robert St. Lawrence, William Fisher, and Madeleine Scott. My scholarship was immensely enriched by working with Merri Biechler, Holly Cole, Shelley Delaney, Dennis Delaney, Daniel Denhart, Brian Evans, Barbara Fiocchi, Tom Fiocchi, Ledger Free, David Haugen, Lowell Jacobs, Kjersten Lester-Moratzka, Michael Lincoln, Treva Nichols, Laura Parotti, C. David Russell, Rebecca VerNooy, and Robert Winters. In addition, Jeanette Buck, Mateo Galvano, Maureen Wagner, and Lorraine Wochna were constant sources of personal and professional support. I completed