“I think the law is ghosting me?”
It’s alienating. It’s violent. It’s pretty much incomprehensible. For one queer lawyer, it’s also the ultimate toxic lover.
In this lecture-performance, Danish Sheikh returns to the courtroom that broke his heart, and the play that tried to heal it. Tracing a journey through colonial legacies that refuse to die, legal transcripts that won’t let him move on, and a certain pop star who insists on the redemptive power of shaking it off, this show asks: What’s the point of loving the law when the law won’t love you back?
About the Playwright:
Danish Sheikh is a writer, performer, and legal scholar whose work explores the intersections of law, theatre, and queer storytelling. His previous play, Love and Reparation, restaged the legal battle to decriminalise homosexuality in India and was developed through Melbourne Theatre Company’s Cybec Electric program. In 2023, he premiered an early version of Much to Do with Law, But More to Do with Love at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, supported by a City of Melbourne Arts Grant. The work has since been developed with Aphids and selected for the Queer Playwriting Award. He is currently a participant in the Artist Development program at Malthouse Theatre. Danish’s academic research has been cited by the Supreme Court of India in its decision to decriminalise homosexuality, and has received multiple awards, including the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia’s Early Career Researcher Article Prize (2023) and the Melbourne Law School Graduate Student Research Prize (2022).
