1st Edition

Neil Bartlett Invitations to Speculate

Edited By William McEvoy, Joseph Ronan Copyright 2025
236 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

236 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

236 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores Neil Bartlett’s groundbreaking contributions to queer cultural production in the United Kingdom. It adopts a range of critical perspectives, presenting original scholarship on Bartlett’s fiction, theatre, performance, site-specific work, and adaptations, as well as more personal reflections on Bartlett’s influence and legacy. Charting his emergence as a radical queer artist... Read more

List of Contributors
Acknowledgments


Introduction
William McEvoy and Joseph Ronan


Part I. Time: Archives and history


Chapter 1. ‘What if this was actually happening?’ An Interview with Neil Bartlett
William McEvoy and Joseph Ronan


Chapter 2. Tell Me Who I Am: History, Anachronism, and Resemblance in the Time of AIDS
Dominic Johnson


Chapter 3. ‘All of Me’
Nando Messias

Part II. Space: Sites of performance


Chapter 4. The Boys in the Back Room: Night After Night and The Disappearance Boy
Deborah Philips


Chapter 5. Mostly Glorious: Bartlett’s Adaptive Work with Gloria
Michael Fry


Chapter 6. Site-specific Bartlett
William McEvoy


Chapter 7. Bartlett's ‘Brechtian’ Adaptations: The Plague and Orlando
Alex Watson


Part III. Self: Intimate communities


Chapter 8. Queer Ways of Coming Out in Neil Bartlett’s Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall
Andrés Ibarra Cordero


Chapter 9. The Price of Queer Admission
Joseph Ronan


Chapter 10. ‘Making things mean something’: Allegory and Myth Making in Neil Bartlett’s Skin Lane
Irralie Doel


Chapter 11. Neil Bartlett, out loud
Vincent Quinn


Index

Biography

William McEvoy is Associate Professor in Drama and English in the Faculty of Media, Arts, and Humanities, University of Sussex, UK.


Joseph Ronan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Brighton, UK.