Payne Banister

Payne Banister is a theatre and performance studies scholar, educator, and drag performance artist. They are a PhD candidate in the Theatre and Performance Studies program at the University of Pittsburgh, where they are also pursuing a graduate certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Their research focuses on queer nightlife, performances of queer sexualities, and how they are shaped by the tensions between pleasure and precarity. Drawing on performance (auto)/ethnography and archival research, their dissertation, “Messy Pleasure:  Performances of Sexual Desire at the Gay Bathhouse,” examines public sex and cruising practices as performances that produce and are produced by the gay bathhouse culture and architecture. Their dissertation research and writing are supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Payne teaches courses in performance studies, script analysis, introductory acting, and global perspectives on queer nightlife performance practices. In 2024, their teaching was recognized with the Department of Theatre Arts’ Graduate Teaching Award, and they served as the department’s Graduate Student Teaching Mentor for the 2024-2026 academic years. In 2025, they directed Iphigenia and Other Daughters by Ellen McLaughlin as part of Pitt Stages’ 2025-2026 mainstage season.

Payne has presented their work at national and regional conferences, including the American Society for Theatre Research, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and the Mid America Theatre Conference. Their article, “Masquerading Resistance: The Parasitic Tactics of the Mandrake Ball,” was published in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism’s 2024 special issue on “Drag Vs. The Law.”