Voiceless but visible: staging queer transgression in postcolonial Taiwan through <i>Our Lady of the Flowers</i> (2018)

Jean Genet’s theatre interrogates power, identity, and sexuality through inversion, ritual, and role-play. This paper examines how these aesthetics translate when his poetic novel becomes physical theatre in postcolonial Taiwan. L’Enfant S. Physical Theatre’s adaptation of Our Lady of the Flowers (2018) foregrounded transgender and queer identities within Taiwan’s colonial history and Confucian cultural framework. Through physical theatre and fragmented narrative structure, the production staged queer resistance against heteronormative and patriarchal values while exposing tensions between individual identity and national belonging. I analyse how the director’s aesthetic strategies of camp and decadence, combined with the performers’ embodied practices created alternative modes of visibility for queer subjects in a society where legal recognition has long been contested. The production demonstrated how Genet’s texts resonate within Taiwan’s sociopolitical landscape, illuminating intersections of queer identity, postcolonial critique, and theatrical innovation.