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Collaborative Research in Theatre and Performance Studies

Collaborative Research in Theatre and Performance Studies

Joint Issue of Global Performance Studies and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 
To be published Fall 2021 (GPS issue 4.2 & JDTC issue 36.1)
 
Issue Editors
Kevin Brown, University of Missouri
Felipe Cervera, LASALLE College of the Arts
Kyoko Iwaki, Waseda University and University of Antwerp
Eero Laine, University of Buffalo, State University of New York
Kristof van Baarle, University of Antwerp
 
Rather, we conceive of our relation to already-authored research as one of adjacency: we work alongside—but also deliberately differently to—existing institutions, epistemologies and investments. We also work adjacently to one another, invoking the practice of ensemble theatre-making as a means of supporting one another’s critical enquiry. (After Performance, 2016:36)
The collaborative turn in labour has, in recent years, reconfigured the workplace and workforce to maximise resources: time, space, and infrastructure are shared in a bid to “humanise profit.” Open offices, cloud documents, multi-tasking, and distributed management: all trademark characteristics of shared labour in the early 21st century. As theatre and performance scholars, we are often incredulous of this turn. Not least because sharing time and space in the act of labouring is, perhaps, an obvious point in any material analysis of performance, but also because our performative analytic tools provide us with the insights necessary to appreciate that collectivity does not necessarily mean solidarity. Artist collectives and collaborative labour frequently function at various points along the spectrum between shared autonomy and unwilling acquiescence. And yet, in the arts there is a persistent tendency to think in terms of genius and singular artistic voice. And, so we should ask again, even when our object of study is—and has historically been—collaborative in nature: why do we remain professionally obsessed with becoming singular voices?
 
Considering the high level of collaboration necessary to produce theatre and performance, why is so much of the scholarship on the subject written by single authors? To what extent might theatre and performance studies, as a practice, be benefited by some of the same conventions that inform the fundamental collaborative know-how of theatre and performance-making? How might collective forms of criticism, scholarship, and theory move us away from images of the individual genius, and develop deeper conceptions of performance and theatre practices as collaborative? That is, by developing collaborative scholarly practices, we might enable a different discourse on performance and theatre—transforming the way we work, create, and critique—while expanding our understanding of the broad network that we call ‘performance.’ In a context where individual erudition and fierce competition for an ever-shrinking labour market are constitutive of the practice of studying performance, are collaborative methodologies an alternative and strategy for collective care and empowerment? 
 
JDTC and GPS invite contributions that are authored by three or more collaborators on any topic related to the purviews of the journals. This call for papers encourages authors to find coauthors and to write together, to think together, to develop theories together, to struggle together. It is an attempt to explicitly open space for collaborative scholarship and to encourage the joint production of academic work. While we may accept articles that consider academic and writerly processes, we are particularly interested in work that advances conversations in performance studies and dramatic theory and criticism while realizing the potential of shared authorship as a methodological approach. The strongest contributions will integrate the various authorial voices rather than using a ranked author format or offering separately authored sections or sub-articles. Co-authors may or may not be at the same institution and may or may not all be theatre and performance scholars. 
 
In addition to scholarly articles, we are interested in works that will make use of the different platforms of the journals in print (JDTC) and online (GPS). We encourage supplementary materials such as video, audio, images, and other scholarly and creative content.
 
To be considered for this special section, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words that describes your contribution along with a brief bio or CV for all authors by August 15th, 2020. Final contributions will be due in early 2021. Send expressions of interest to both the JDTC managing editor (jdtc@ku.edu) and GPS Editorial Team (gpsedits@gmail.com)
 
Timeline
August 15, 2020: Proposals due 
Early 2021: Final papers due for peer review
Fall 2021: Publication
 
The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism was founded in 1986 at the University of Kansas by John Gronbeck-Tedesco and Paul Newell Campbell. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that contribute to the varied conversations in dramatic theory and criticism, explore the relationship between theory and theatre practice, and/or examine recent scholarship by a single author. Recent issues of the journal can be accessed through Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/571
 
Global Performance Studies (https://gps.psi-web.org) is a peer reviewed online academic journal sponsored by Performance Studies international (PSi). Our goal is to provide a resource to scholars and artists who are seeking to publish both traditional articles as well as cross-platform, multimedia content that pushes the boundaries of what we think an academic journal can be. We are also interested in finding ways the journal can serve a truly global audience of performance studies scholars and artists. 

MLA 2021 Special Session – Putting Writing and Performance in Conversation

MLA 2021

Toronto, Jan 7 – 10

Special Session on “Putting Writing and Performance in Conversation”,
 
 
Abstracts due by March 11 2020 to kel.irene.aliano@gmail.com
Kelly I. Aliano, PhD
Dept. of Theatre, Dance, and Arts Management
Long Island University–Post Campus
 
This panel welcomes abstracts (max. 300 words) that explore the intersection between writing instruction and performance/theatre practice, via sample class activities, assignments, etc. What is gained by crossing the disciplinary boundaries?
 
Through our research and teaching practice, we have discovered that Writing Across the Curriculum practices emphasize writing as a process. Thus, WAC pedagogy can be seen as a kind of dialogue between the instructor and the students, both in the classroom and via regular feedback on students’ work.
 
With this dialogic approach in mind, we have come to the discovery that theatrical concepts and terms can be particularly useful to enhancing the instruction of writing. The connection has been made by, for example, Mary Broussard, Jackie Tuck, Shelley Manis, Margaret Werry and Stephanie Walseth, Alisa Roost, and others. For example, in following Broussard, we can see low-stakes writing activities as rehearsals of thoughts and ideas; we aspire to create the classroom as a hospitable “rehearsal” space as Tuck would propose. We can conceptualize the final paper or project as a “performance” of each student’s ideas; even instructor feedback is, in a way, a kind of audience interaction with the student “performance” of writing (and a “performance” of professorial writing as well). We believe there are likely other fruitful intersections of writing and performance in courses beyond our field of Theatre Studies.
 
We are interested in discussing and exploring how, in your own courses, you put writing and performance in conversation:
  • What sorts of writing activities and assignments do you require?
  • Are there any theatrical concepts and terms that are applicable to any of these writing activities and assignments?
  • What do you find useful, in terms of learning outcomes, about conceiving and implementing your writing activities and assignments through this lens?

Theatre Survey – Performance and the Public Good

Theatre Survey

Special Issue: Performance and the Public Good

The words “performance,” “public,” and “good” combine to produce an analytic with the potential to illuminate a wide array of cultural practices. The concept of “public goods” receives its most fulsome treatment in the realm of economic theory, where its defining characteristics are nonexcludability and nonrivalrous consumption, and direct our attention toward infrastructures intended to route material resources expansively throughout our society. However, another permutation, “the public good,” tends toward the immaterial, referencing an ostensibly self-evident public interest. In our neoliberal moment, the values undergirding both of these definitions have a polarizing force, either lionized or demonized. 

Thus, the theme of this special issue centers on the following questions: historically speaking, in what ways and at what times has performance functioned as a public good, or at least attempted to function as such? In what ways has it rejected or failed to live up to this promise? Under what conditions has performance ever contributed to the public good, or undermined it? (Beneath all of these, of course, are the questions, Which public? Whose public?)

We seek essays that will historicize, interrogate, and problematize the notion of performance practices and infrastructures as public goods, or as social practices that support the public good. We especially welcome essays that approach this question from geographic sites and historical periods that center new objects of analysis by deploying interdisciplinary frameworks.

Drafts of 7,000-9,000-word essays (inclusive of footnotes) are welcomed for consideration through May 1, 2020 September 1, 2020. Peer review and editorial revision processes will prepare accepted manuscripts by January 2021 May 2021 for inclusion in the May 2021  September 2021 issue of Theatre Survey.

Please use the Scholar One platform to submit essays for consideration via the Theatre Survey website: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/theatre-survey. Please direct inquiries about this special issue to Brandi Wilkins Catanese, Associate Editor, at catanese@berkeley.edu.

 

ATDS Sponsored Tufts Publication Development Forum

ATDS Sponsored Publication Development Forum at Tufts University

 
From Heather S. Nathans:
A special thanks to our guest speakers, Robin Bernstein, Andrew Sofer, Harvey Young, and Matthew Wittmann—it was wonderful to hear your insights into the publication process.  Barbara Wallace Grossman, Kareem Khubchandani, Lily Mengesha, Noe Montez, and Andrew Sofer joined me in in reading drafts of proposals, chapters, and manuscripts to offer feedback in one-on-one sessions. The biggest thanks are due to our participants for sharing their research—it was such a pleasure to learn more about all the exciting new work happening in Theatre and Performance Studies!
 
Speakers, Readers, and Participant of the Tufts Publication Development Forum

The Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel in Music Theatre/Dance

ATHE’s Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group:
The Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel in Music Theatre/Dance

Deadline: February 15, 2020

The Music Theatre/Dance (MT/D) Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) announces its call for papers for the Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel in Music Theatre/Dance at the 2020 ATHE conference in Detroit, Michigan from July 29-August 2, 2020. Accepted papers will be published in Studies in Musical Theatre, and panelists will receive a complimentary copy of Bruce Kirle’s Unfinished Show Business: Broadway Musicals as Works-in-Process. This annual panel is held in memory of Dr. Bruce Kirle, scholar of musical theatre and longtime member of the Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group. Dr. Kelly Kessler, Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at DePaul University, will serve as this year’s respondent. (Please see below for more on Drs. Kirle and Kessler.)

Paper submissions may concern any area within the purview of the MT/D Focus Group, which encompasses opera, operetta, musical theatre, dance theatre, performance art with music or dance elements, and pedagogy of music theatre and dance. Paper submissions are especially encouraged to address intersections of ability, class, race, gender, nationality, and sexuality with global musical theatre/dance, broadly construed.

Submissions are open to emerging scholars (including graduate students) who have not yet presented at a national conference on a topic related to music theatre or dance, as well as established scholars who have not previously presented or published in the areas of music theatre or dance. Scholars must not be scheduled to present on music theatre or dance topics at any other national conference prior to the submission date, and papers may not be cross-submitted to another ATHE panel for the 2020 conference. Scholars may, however, present or serve on other panels at this conference.

For consideration, please e-mail your paper, 10 to 12 pages in length, as a Microsoft Word attachment to mtdgradrep@gmail.com by February 1, 2020. Please include a cover page with your name, paper title, institutional affiliation, and contact information, but remove your name from the body of the essay.

Three papers will be selected by a blind-review committee for inclusion on this competitive panel. The selected authors will be expected to attend and present their papers at the conference in Detroit. Each panelist will receive a copy of Bruce Kirle’s Unfinished Show Business: Broadway Musicals as Works-in-Process, generously donated by the Kirle family. In addition, panelists will also receive a yearlong subscription to Studies in Musical Theatre (Intellect Books), and their essays will be prepared for publication in that journal.

Please direct any and all questions to the current MT/D Focus Group Graduate Student Representatives, Stephanie Lim and Adrienne Oehlers, at mtdgradrep@gmail.com.

For more information on the ATHE 2020 conference, visit http://www.athe.org.

ATDS at MLA 2021 – “Persistence in American Drama” – EXTENDED DEADLINE

ATDS at MLA
Toronto 7-10 January 2021

Title: “Persistence in American Drama”

This panel will consider how twentieth century American plays, live performances, masters, or movements in American drama and theatre from any period offer strategies for persistence in an age of mechanical reproduction. How do American plays model, operationalize, and/or resist persistence? Why and how do some theatrical voices persist in the national discourse amid marginalization? For example, papers may wish to consider persistence in American drama within Benjaminian, or other, theoretical context(s) regarding the work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction or live performance’s “aura” in a digital age. Research here may also be mindful of how specific American plays, masters, or movements help us to ask persistent questions; such as lines of inquiry that historicize dramatic form(s) and the power relations they encode. This panel will respond to questions at issue for the American Theatre and Drama Society’s discourse community as well as the Modern Language Association’s 2021 Presidential theme: “Judith Butler, the 2020–21 president of the MLA, has chosen Persistence as the presidential theme for the 2021 MLA Annual Convention in Toronto.” Dr. Butler asserts:

“As a collective potential, persistence is not primarily individual heroism. It is a force, figure, and concept bound up with endurance, survival, defiance, resistance, creating, and flourishing.”

More information about the MLA can be found here: https://www.mla.org/. The 2021 Convention will take place 7-10 January in Toronto (The 2022 convention will take place 6-9 January, in Washington D.C.) Please send vita and 250 word abstract by March 15th to Nicole Tabor at taborn@moravian.edu

Authors of accepted abstracts must join or renew membership to both ATDS and MLA by April 5, 2020.

The ATDS statement of purpose: “The American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) is an incorporated organization dedicated to the study of theatre and drama in and of the Americas, its varied histories, traditions, literatures, and performances within its cultural contexts. ATDS also encourages the evolving debate exploring national identities and experiences through research, pedagogy, and practice. ATDS recognizes that notions of America and the US encompass migrations of peoples and cultures that overlap and influence one another. To this end, ATDS welcomes scholars, teachers, and practitioners world-wide.”

PARtake – The Journal of Performance as Research, Special Issue

PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, volume 3, issue 2.

Pedagogies of/and Performance-as-Research 

Special themed issue with guest editor Emily Rollie

 

In its initial issues, PARtake has explored key topics related to the dynamic field of Performance-as-Research, including the modes of performing research, the ethics of participating in research, activism in PAR, and the rich intersections of embodiment and somatic intelligence in PAR. This issue continues in that trend, specifically examining the relationship between PAR and pedagogy – the ways pedagogy intersects with, is influenced by, and is utilized in PAR.

According to Owen Chapman and Kim Sawchuk, Performance-as-Research uses performance to “challenge the normative frameworks that have traditionally structured academic contributions to knowledge” and offer “alternative frameworks for understanding, communicating, and disseminating knowledge” (23). Within these “alternative frameworks” of knowledge and research, how does PAR similarly challenge the normative frameworks of teaching? How does PAR impact performance pedagogy – both how we teach performance as well as how we pedagogically engage with performance research?

By nature of the discipline, there is no singular approach to PAR, which presents a wealth of opportunities but also inherent challenges, especially for those teaching future scholartists and perhaps using pedagogy as part of their PAR work. Further, as a field that is actively growing to embrace alternative technologies and performative frameworks, PAR pedagogies must also expand and assume new forms to support the critical investigations of scholartists.  PAR also seems particularly suited to actively assist scholartists in engaging with current conversations surrounding critical pedagogies and efforts of pedagogical decolonization. Pedagogy, much like PAR, is a performative, dynamic, and evolving practice. They are also public and thus political practices, deeply invested in exploring the intersections of knowledge, culture, understanding, and performance.

In Practice as Research in the Arts, Robin Nelson writes that PAR is “mobilized through a discernable pedagogy” (48, emphasis mine). It is this pedagogical mobilization of PAR that is our focus. This special issue examines the intersections between pedagogy and Performance-as-Research, considering the multiple ways pedagogies and pedagogical approaches influence, are influenced by, and become rigorous sites of mobilizing Performance-as-Research.

We invite scholars, practitioners, scholartists, and educators of diverse backgrounds, practices, and pedagogical approaches to submit critical essays, video and multimedia documentation, manifestos, and critical case studies that explore the ways Performance-as-Research can be taught, as well as how pedagogies include and become Performance-as-Research.

Guiding Questions

  • How does Performance-as-Research serve to mobilize pedagogies in theatre and performance?
  • How does Performance-as-Research open additional doors for, and influence, interdisciplinary collaboration and pedagogies?
  • How does Performance-as-Research serve efforts to decolonize curriculum and teaching approaches?
  • Considering Performance-as-Research’s relatively recent emergence in the US, what global opportunities for pedagogy in PAR currently exist? How might scholartists utilize PAR teaching in global contexts?
  • How do more traditional theatrical or performance-based teaching approaches inform, shape, or influence Performance-as-Research?
  • How, where, to whom, and with whom do we teach Performance-as-Research?
  • What challenges does Performance-as-Research and/or work as a scholartist present for pedagogy?
  • How might a synergy between established protocols in Applied Theatre and “conventional” performance creation be fruitful when implementing Performance-as-Research into training programs?

Submission Guidelines
Please submit 250-word proposal abstracts of your project and a 100-word personal bio to the editors at partakejournal@gmail.com by February 28, 2020.

Authors will be contacted by March 20 for acceptance, with initial submissions due April 15, 2020 for a planned publication timeline in late summer 2020.

Guidelines for submissions can be found here: https://www.partakejournal.org/submission-guidelines

If you have any questions, please email the editors at partakejournal@gmail.com.



The 39th Annual William Inge Theatre Festival and Conference with Honoree Lynn Nottage

The 39th Annual William Inge Theatre Festival and Conference
May 13-16, 2020
Independence, Kansas 

CALL FOR PAPERS 

Papers are invited on the films and plays of William Inge, and/or the works of our 2020 honoree Lynn Nottage, designed for a 20-minute oral presentation at the conference. A wide variety of perspectives and themes are encouraged. Papers selected for presentation at the conference will be deposited in the William Inge Collection at Independence Community College, the major repository of Inge manuscripts, letters, and memorabilia. An online archive of papers is also currently under development. 

The William Inge Theatre Festival and Conference is in its fourth decade of honoring major living playwrights through a wide range of performances, readings, seminars, workshops, lectures, panel discussions and historical activities. For four days this year, the small city of Independence, Kansas, becomes the theatrical center of the universe, with visits from the nation’s greatest playwrights, directors, actors and other theatre practitioners, who all meet to honor a distinguished playwright in a playwright’s town. The 39th Annual Festival and Conference will be held May 13th-16th, 2020.

Past recipients are: Edward Albee, Robert Anderson, Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick, Carlyle Brown, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, William Gibson, John Guare, A. R. Gurney, Tina Howe, David Henry Hwang, Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt, John Kander & Fred Ebb, Garson Kanin, Sidney Kingsley, Robert E. Lee, Arthur Kopit, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Lawrence, Romulus Linney, Terrence McNally, Arthur Miller, Marsha Norman, Octavio Solis, John Patrick, Sir Peter Shaffer, Neil Simon, Stephen Sondheim, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson. We are proud to add Lynn Nottage to this list of Honorees. 

Persons interested in submitting a paper should submit a copy (maximum of twenty-minutes reading time and designed for oral presentation to a general audience,) or a substantial abstract with title, by March 23rd, 2020; early submissions are encouraged. Please send to: 

Hannah Joyce Hoven, Artistic Director 
The William Inge Center of the Arts 
1057 College Ave. 
Independence, KS 67301 
E-mail: info@ingecenter.org 

Circus and its Others 2020 – Extended Deadline

Circus and its Others
2020 November 12-15
University of California, Davis 
Revised Deadline – April 15, 2020

The Circus and its Others research project was launched in 2014 under the aegis of the Montréal Working Group on Circus Research to explore the ways in which contemporary circus artists and companies relate to difference in their practice. What has resulted is an ever-blossoming inquiry that, along the way, has started to feel like a movement, in that the scholars and artist-researchers seem to be united by more than the same research interests.

The third Circus and its Others conference will be held at the University of California, Davis, on November 12-15, 2020. As with the previous two conferences (Montréal 2016, Prague 2018), the conference will run alongside a contemporary circus festival. The Davis festival involves two components: several indoor, ticketed shows organized by the Mondavi Center, UC Davis’s performing arts presenting organization and curated in collaboration with the CaiO 2020 team; and a free outdoor circus festival curated by CaiO 2020.  Confirmed keynote speakers include Bojana Kunst, Professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Justus-Liebig University in Gießen, Germany; André Lepecki, chair of New York University’s Department of Performance Studies; Jane Nicholas, associate professor of history at St. Jerome’s University, University of Waterloo; and Susan Nance, professor of history at the University of Guelph. 

CaiO considers circus as a boundary object (as theorized by Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer) with many and various entry points, welcoming a wide variety of spectatorial and theoretical approaches. Concretely, it is our aim to foster a place where we can address the aesthetic, ethical, and political potentiality of circus practices. We invite proposals for research talks that address questions of difference and otherness in the context of traditional, new, and contemporary circus. We further make explicit invitation for presentations from artists and practitioners who address such questions in their work, practice, and/or research-creation (our conference venue includes some space for performance).

For more details, see our call posted on Circus Talk: https://circustalk.com/circus-auditions/circus-and-its-others-2020-call-for-paper

 We invite 300- to 400-word proposals for 20-minute presentations. Please send proposals by April 15, 2020 to CircusOthersDavis2020@gmail.com. Please articulate clearly in your proposal if you plan to make a formal paper presentation or if as a practitioner/creator/researcher you wish to engage in a hybrid practice/talk/research/creation exploration.

We look forward to seeing you in Davis! 

CFP for Proposed Volume on Science and Performance

CFP for Proposed Volume on Science and Performance

    From the Curious to the Quantum: Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance

 

Editors: Vivian Appler, College of Charleston
Meredith Conti, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Deadline for Abstracts:  January 31, 2020
Deadline for Chapters: December 1, 2020
    
The sciences (natural, social, formal, technological, medical) have never operated independently of the cultures in which they are practiced. Performance is one of many arts and humanities enterprises that has muddied the divide between “science” and “culture” for as long as humans have been thinking about their relationship to the natural world. As with the clinical laboratory and astronomical observatory, theatre and performance serve as reflexive and generative sites of transformations, a place to penetrate barriers and test innovative ideas, approaches, and praxes. Theatre and other forms of human performance are therefore viable laboratories for community conversation, debate, and knowledge generation about and within contested socio-scientific structures.
    
We are currently soliciting essays that interrogate the science performance as it intersects with notions of identity and culture. For the purposes of this volume, the science performance can be broadly defined as an event or process that straddles the scientific and theatrical realms, from surgical demonstrations in Victorian medical schools to contemporary productions of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, from activist demonstrations against fossil fuel-sponsored art exhibits to planetarium shows. “Performance” may connote theatrical treatments of science content, live art, public history, performance art, applied performance, and/or the consideration of scientific events qua performance. “Science” might engage a range of disciplines from biology, chemistry, ecology, medicine, psychology, physics, geology, astronomy, data science, robotics, technology, or engineering. It might also encompass historical fields such as natural philosophy, phrenology, “the new science,” alchemy, or astrology.
    
The questions at the heart of From the Curious to the Quantum have evolved through a series of Science and Performance working groups convened at the American Society for Theatre Research conferences, though participation in the working groups is not a prerequisite for the collection’s contributors. We seek abstracts describing chapter-length essays (between 4,000-6,000 words) that deeply engage performance as a method for knowing the world, serving the intertwined demands of science and society. We encourage contributors to pose questions that document and dispute racist, ableist, sexist, and heteronormative ideologies that are prevalent across the history of science, and which are alternately challenged and upheld by public science outreach enterprises. We welcome the use of diverse theoretical frameworks and discursive approaches to an array of topics that bring together science, performance, and their overlapping social venues; these investigations are not restricted to specific time periods, geographical locations, and cultures. Practice-based contributions are welcome.
    
Please submit an abstract of 250-400 words and a brief bio of 200 words no later than 31 January 2020 to Vivian Appler (applervr@cofc.edu) and Meredith Conti (maconti@buffalo.edu). Complete drafts will be due 1 December 2020.
    
Questions regarding the collection’s scope, content, and format may be directed to either of the editors.

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