Redeeming qualities: state, sexuality and Asian boys

This paper speculates on the pronounced presence of gay representation in Singaporean theatre and how theatre has employed Camp aesthetics as a critical trope for corrupting heterosexual discourse through parody, pastiche and exaggeration.This paper asserts that camp aesthetics in itself is a structural feature of the heterosexual discourse, which provides for resistive and inversionary possibilities; and as such, it does not destabilize the dominant ideology. The dominant ideology pushes the gay agenda to be inventive in order to assert its own stabilization. The recent staging of Asian Boys Vol.1 by closely at how this play engages Camp aesthetics to question and destabilize attributes for its survival when faced with discursive erosion. In the end, both the state and the play enact a cultural charade of sorts.