Tropic spells: The performative encounters colonials and nativized boys in Singapore, Bali and the Asian diaspora

This dissertation explores the performative manifestations of two familiar tropes, queer colonials and nativized boys, on the colonial and global-scapes of Singapore, Bali and the Asian diaspora. I focus on selected, representative theater and performance that are produced by or embroiled in this particular queer coupling as a way to understand how these spellbinding tropes continue to guide cross-cultural understanding of representative peoples, and racialized homoerotics. The nativized boy is a trope ubiquitous and readily recognizable by its race- and class-based markers, and its queerness as a minoritized, sexual "Other." He is always non-white, and deemed lower class (style and social class) or readily queer in terms that may not correspond to his own homoerodic desire or self-image. In some cases, he may not even be queer-identified. Queer colonials refer to gay white men, and other figures of authority that have some kind of contact with nativized boys. Both tropes are dependent on each other for their queer predicament.;The dissertation chapters are structured around tropic encounters at three "sites": a contemporary global city, Singapore; a colonial paradise filled with "traditions," Bali; and the Asian diaspora configured around world cities: London, Bangkok, Beijing, Los Angeles, Paris. In Singapore, we explore a global city-state's "gay" awakening and transfusion of queer capital into its national psyche using theater as a primary site. Singapore's global queer boys emerge in this theatrical framework (English-language theater and public spaces) negotiating the country's ideological matrix and economic exigencies while drawing upon queer resources from the region and the world. In Bali, we examine a "traditional" encounter between white man/brown boys staged around a Balinese ritual, kecak . We will decode the queer, colonial imaginary of kecak as it was inscribed by the ritual's white, gay, male choreographer in the 1930s. By way of a conclusion, we turn to the Asian diaspora to see how the nativized boy manifests in "new" tropic forms, and circulate in the face of new colonials using three representative plays, M. Butterfly, Porcelain, Autumn Tomyam.