Fag on the Dance Floor: De/Reterritorializing through Composing Queer Theatrical and Narrative Music

Bonelli, Devon (2025) Fag on the Dance Floor: De/Reterritorializing through Composing Queer Theatrical and Narrative Music. Doctoral thesis (PhD), The Royal Northern College of Music in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This practice-based submission contains a portfolio of three musical compositions (Discopia, Apollo & Marsyas, and Queen Midas) and a written commentary. Each piece examines how radical queerness shaped the foundations for contemporary queer life, how this frames my experiences as an individual, and why this relates to larger discussions of identity. My music explores the impact and sustained trauma of the AIDS crisis as well as the development and proliferation of queer aesthetics. I engage with these subjects through the lenses of queer relationships, trauma, fear, and hope. Deeply influenced by Gilles Deleuze’s Masochism, Difference and Repetition and his writing with Felix Guattari in Capitalism and Schizophrenia, this commentary explores the philosophical grounding for my portfolio. It proposes a dense web of interlaced ideas where the pieces constitute an interrogation and abstraction of the history, aesthetics, and triumphs of radical queerness and how this concerns my development as an artist. My goal is to show how these pieces express radical queerness, what it is to use this as a compositional process, and why this process is vital to my work and the wider milieu of music. Consequently, my research aims can be summarized in the following questions: How can radical queerness be represented retold through musical drama? How has queer trauma impacted contemporary life, and how can this be documented? How have these experiences informed my work as a musician?