Sticky Stories: Joe Orton, Queer History, Queer Dramaturgy

This paper investigates the resonances of Orton’s work for contemporary queer audiences. By presenting potential reasons for the rise and fall in popularity and visibility of Orton’s work for queer and gay audiences through the 1980s and 1990s, this paper looks to the queer context in which Joe Orton’s work developed in order to explore the queer social history into which it fits.  This sense of queer history is linked to contemporary notions of queer theorising about temporalities and queer dramaturgy, which offers potentially novel ways of engaging with Orton’s work queerly without twisting it to fit a ‘neat’ reading, in part because such readings tend to ‘smooth out’ the more difficult elements of the work.  In particular, the paper explores the theatrical form of farce, often articulated as conservative, in relation to queer positions, which are quite the opposite.  In so doing, the paper, by way of queer temporalities and work on queer dramaturgies, sketches out a reading strategy that does not ignore Orton’s more difficult or stickier elements, in particular his treatment of women and race

External validation of the Berlin equations for estimation of GFR in the elderly

Chronic kidney disease prevalence increases markedly with age1 and accurate estimation of GFR is an important issue in older people. The Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration creatinine equation (CKD-EPIcr)2 and variations including cystatin C (CKD-EPIcys) or both creatinine and cystatin C (CKD-EPIcr-cys)3 have been recommended for estimating GFR.4 Recently, the Berlin Initiative Study (BIS) reported 2 GFR equations specifically developed in older people: BIS1, which uses creatinine, and BIS2, which uses both creatinine and cystatin C.5 Here, we compare how the BIS and CKD-EPI equations perform in a large cohort of older people