Dorothy Chansky was awarded a fellowship by the Penn State Humanities Institute for the 2021-22 academic year. She is completing a book on representations of dementia on the American stage of the past century that will be published by Palgrave Macmillan.
LMDA’s journal Review is currently accepting submissions for the 2022 issue.
The mission of the journal is to provide a venue for exploration of dramaturgy, and for ongoing conversation about the work of the dramaturg and the literary manager and their relationship to all aspects of theatre-making. Review publishes peer-reviewed scholarly articles, along with work in other formats such as expanded essays and interviews from the LMDA Newsletter, conference presentations, manifestos, and book reviews. Review welcomes submissions by all writers regardless of professional affiliation, as well as submissions on topics at some remove from the primary mission.
Review is an annual publication.
This year’s deadline for paper submissions and proposals is February 14, 2022.
To submit an article for peer review, please email the following as two separate documents:
The full paper submission, double-spaced 4,000-5,000 words as a MS Word file (No PDFs please!), formatted according to MLA style guidelines. Articles can contain footnotes and should include a Works Cited page. To ensure a fair blind-review process, the author’s name should be omitted from this document.
A title page that includes the author’s name, email address, telephone, and institutional affiliation (if applicable), as well as a brief biography.
For alternative submissions:
Please submit a proposal of approximately 500 words as a MS Word file. This document should include the author’s name, email address, telephone, and institutional affiliation (if applicable), as well as a brief biography. The editors welcome proposals that engage with practice, process, and scholarship in a variety of formats including but not limited to:
Please send submissions to editor@lmda.org . Editors Kristin Leahey and Elizabeth Coen will directly receive inquiries and submissions from this address. Review acknowledges receipt of submission via email in 1 to 2 weeks and response time is 2 to 3 months from the submission deadline.
Mark Cosdon recently returned from Sicily where he directed a Broadway Musical Revue with students from the University of Palermo. He joined Mimesis International Publishing’s editorial board for the book series ““Drammaturgie e drammatica.” Cosdon continues as Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Allegheny College. This past year at Allegheny, Cosdon directed Karen Zacarías’s Native Gardens and remounted his 9-11 themed production Bikeman.
Crossroads
We encourage submissions from all fields that use the lens of Black performance to acknowledge and explore the concept of crossroads: the intersections of past, present, and future; the dynamics of power and disempowerment; the diverging and converging of gender, sexuality, and sensorial and lived experience; performance and performativity; incarnation and reincarnation; and more.
With its inaugural issue, tBTR seeks to publish original papers, book and performance reviews, technical and design notes, theoretical frameworks and perspectives, case studies, and works of multimedia. All issues will be centered on specific themes (as in the case of Crossroads above). Special issues devoted to performance pieces and particular artists will occasionally be published as well.
Submission Deadline: Sunday, 23 October 2021
The Theory and Criticism Focus Group will accept individual 250-word position paper abstracts for the Tending the Garden Roundtable Series. Submissions should include:
Tending the Garden—An Interactive Roundtable Event
Progress is a forward march, drawing other kinds of time into its rhythms. Without that driving beat, we might notice other temporal patterns. Each living thing remakes the world through seasonal pulses of growth, lifetime reproductive patterns, and geographies of expansion. Within a given species, too, there are multiple time-making projects, as organisms enlist each other and coordinate in making landscapes. […] The curiosity I advocate follows such multiple temporalities, revitalizing description and imagination. This is not a simple empiricism, in which the world invents its own categories. Instead, agnostic about where we are going, we might look for what has been ignored because it never fit the timeline of progress. [1]
In response to the 2022 ATHE conference theme, “Rehearsing the Possible: Practicing Reparative Creativity,” the Theory and Criticism Focus Group will focus our annual roundtable series on explorations of “gardening” as scholarly, creative, and pedagogical practice—both metaphorically and literally. For the “Tending the Garden” roundtable series, we welcome a wide range of contributions from practitioners, educators, and scholars.
This roundtable series will explore gardening as a cyclical, seasonal practice of regeneration and reciprocity. To plant and tend a garden is a radical act of faith that assumes a future in which interspecies communities will flourish and actively create that future; it is also a continual encounter with the past through memories of prior seasons, intergenerational knowledge, and material encounters with soils, saved seeds, and compost. If theater and performance— and theory and criticism—is a garden, what does it mean to tend it? How do we believe in and create a future of mutual flourishing? (As Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us, “all flourishing is mutual” (20).) [2] How to compost old ideas, frameworks, and materials into a generative bed out of which something new might grow? How to regard the practice not as a means to a fruitful harvest, but as an ever-evolving process of growth, change, and care? Following Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s provocation above, how to resist the timeline of progress in favor of alternative worlding and time-making projects, human and non?
The Theory and Criticism Focus Group seeks position papers from theatre artists, educators, scholars, activists, philosophers, and critics interested in examining our 2022 Roundtable Series theme, “Tending the Garden.”
The roundtables eschew formal paper presentations in favor of short position papers and provocations designed to encourage interactive critical conversations among panelists and audience members. Building on our previous roundtable series, we strive to include a diverse range of participants from graduate students and emerging scholars to professional critics, artists, educators, and senior scholars.
Position papers can take the form of a short essay, a manifesto, an outreach exercise, a critical review, a theoretical musing, a research report, a creative project, an interview, or an embodied performance practice. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
How do actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs, and teachers cultivate a future through engagement with the past? What pasts do we consciously or unconsciously reinforce, reify, or ignore? To what ends?
How does imagining the field of theater and performance as a garden to be tended change our usual patterns, modes, and ways of doing work? What would flourishing look like?
What must be weeded, composted, broken down, re-tooled, or re-combined to contribute to the flourishing of theater and performance theory and criticism?
What are the daily, seasonal, annual “chores” of the field? What must be constantly done and redone in order to maintain the cycle?
What does it mean to “get your hands dirty” in this field? Where is the productive messiness?
What are the seasons of rest, growth, and harvest in theater and performance?
What is the theoretical equivalent of monocultural, industrial-scale agriculture? Of organic/regenerative farming? Of the community garden?
What is already growing in Detroit, and who is tending it? How might we engage, guided by an ethic of genuine reciprocity?
What does it mean to truly recognize land?
How does attention to the nonhuman change perceptions of space and time?
What would it look like to value process over product, cyclicality over linearity? How would such a shift impact narrative, theory, pedagogy?
How does environmental racism shape worldings both locally in Detroit and more expansively across other geographies? What is the role of theater and performance in that system of oppression?
T&C will inform participants of their acceptance by Monday, November 1, and the Theory and Criticism Focus Group will oversee the submission of the Roundtable Series panels through ATHE’s online proposal process. Send your roundtable abstracts to the Theory and Criticism Focus Group conference planner Abby Schroering, abby.schroering@gmail.com.
Call for Complete Session Proposals, and Curated Panel Proposals
Sponsored by the Theory and Criticism Focus Group
Complete Session Proposals
We seek complete session proposals for the 2021 conference that include a broad range of theoretical/critical interrogations and applications based on the theme of “Rehearsing the Possible: Practicing Reparative Creativity.” We encourage multidisciplinary dialogues across the fields of performance scholarship and praxis. We also seek participants from a variety of focus group affiliations.
The Theory and Criticism Focus Group supports broad definitions of criticism and performance, and therefore encourages a wide range of examples and topics. Feel free to explore both historical and contemporary critics and theorists, in popular culture, academic scholarship, and performance praxis. Panel proposals that engage scholarly conversation in creative ways are highly encouraged.
Complete session proposals (separate from the Roundtable Series) should be submitted directly to the ATHE website (www.athe.org). You must have the names for all participants ready for the proposal. The website includes submission information and forms. The session proposal deadline is December 1, 2021.
Curated Session Proposals: DEADLINE Monday, November 22
We also seek proposals to present on curated panels. Please direct these submissions to the organizer of the panel to which you are applying.
1. Cite Better–A Lightning Roundtable Amplification of Theorists You Should be Citing: As a field we have come to recognize the dire need to expand our citation pool. Too often, theory and criticism privilege the same voices, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white. For this panel we seek presenters to give short spotlights to BIPOC women theorists and women theorists of the global majority who we may not have learned about in graduate school. For this roundtable we invite members to share lightning fast introductions to scholars they want to make sure the rest of us know about. Presenters will be asked to speak for no more than 3 minutes about an individual theorist and to submit a short thumbnail summary of that theorist prior to the conference for distribution to all in attendance. Panelists may present on more than one theorist if they wish.
Contact: Abby Schroering, abby.schroering@gmail.com
2. Growing In Detroit: Artistic expression and experimentation thrive in Detroit. This panel seeks scholarship and criticism dedicated to amplifying work in Detroit and/or by Detroit-based artists, past and present.
Contact: Abby Schroering, abby.schroering@gmail.com
Please Note:
Individuals do not need to be a member of the Theory and Criticism Focus Group or ATHE to submit single presentations or panels. However, if chosen and scheduled, participants must become members of ATHE by the time of the conference.
Single Focus Group Sessions can address questions to the conference planner (abby.schroering@gmail.com) before submitting their proposal.
Multidisciplinary proposals must be authorized by TWO sponsoring ATHE focus groups. Email and get authorization from each focus group’s conference planner before submitting.
For more detailed information, see the ATHE website.
If you have an individually-authored paper that you would like to present but does not fit in the roundtables series or the curated panels, please email an abstract to Abby Schroering (abby.schroering@gmail.com) before the December 1st deadline and she will help it find a home.
*THREE TIPS FOR FIRST-TIME PANEL ASSEMBLERS*
Consider inviting panelists with a range of theatrical perspectives and backgrounds.
Conference panels can be helpful networking tools. Instead of assembling a panel of only your cohort-mates, consider inviting a senior scholar whose work you’ve cited recently. Clearly and briefly explain the core idea of the proposal, the reason you’re inviting them, and ask if they’re working on anything they’d like to present.
Alternatively, it can be helpful to give panelists clear options: “Dear senior scholar, I am putting together a panel on [X]. I greatly admire your work on [X-related] and would love for you to present in this area. Of course, we would be thrilled with whatever you would like to contribute, but please consider that you might do A, B, or C.”
ATHE Annual Conference 2022 Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group
Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, Detroit, MI Conference Dates: July 28-31 Submission Deadlines: Single Papers/Presentations – November 1st, 2021 Full Panels – December 1st, 2021
The Music Theatre/Dance (MT/D) Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) invites session proposals for the 2022 Conference in Detroit:
As we prepare to meet in person once again at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, a city that is undergoing its own renaissance, we invite you to join us as we work toward a post-shutdown renaissance of music theatre, musical theatre, dance, and related fields. Last year our conference theme was RE: ATHE and MT/D asked its membership to reckon with the past in order to build a new future for our field and our industry. The MT/D membership rose to the challenge, decentering white, cis-heteropatriarchy in many of our sessions, asking tough questions about the work we do, and sharing resources and strategies for the evolution of our field. The 2022 conference theme, Rehearsing the Possible: Practicing Reparative Creativity, asks the ATHE membership to amplify the work that began at the conference in 2021 by continuing conversations and curating new dialogues. Last year we began devising the script for the future, and this year, we continue that work as we put that script on its feet in Rehearsal.
ATHE asks us “How will we abolish institutional, embedded racist structures? As we seek to reimagine, rebuild, and rise up, what are some new arrangements of the possible that we might pursue?” MT/D asks its members to move from conversation to action as we envision a new paradigm for the study and practice of music theatre, dance, and related fields. We have been inactive for too long, endlessly discussing the shortcomings in our field. Rather than remaining stuck in our table work, let’s begin blocking. Therefore, for this year’s conference, MT/D seeks sessions that share actionable strategies, both practical and pedagogical, for moving our field forward. As we interrogate the issues inherent in the structures of our field, we must also examine the issues that arise from the structure of our traditional conference format. MT/D is actively seeking proposals that challenge the traditional— not only addressing issues in the field but also in the shape and accessibility of our sessions.
No matter the format: workshop, roundtable, working group, case study, poster session, or something we’ve never seen before, we ask our membership to engage with the following questions:
1. How can music theatre and dance, both the field, and the focus group, engage in the “reparative creativity” called for by the ATHE 2022 theme? How can we as scholars, artists, and teachers take action to dismantle the oppressive, white-supremacist systems that have ruled our industry and our classrooms? What might we build instead?
2. What tools have we gained and insights have we gathered through the challenges of the past two years that can inform how we move forward? What tools or practices have we discovered are no longer useful in our current world and should be left behind?
3. How can we as educators disconnect from harmful industry and institutional practices to teach new models of creating that uplift instead of tear down?
4. How can we expand the scholarship of our field to include more voices, ideas, and perspectives?
5. How can we create spaces, in our classrooms, rehearsal rooms, and our scholarship to invite in those who historically have been excluded?
6. How can we restructure or reframe our courses, rehearsal spaces, and committees to engage in practices of care and mindfulness for the health and safety of all artists and scholars in the room?
7. How can we think outside of the box and utilize new and creative ways to teach musical theatre, dance, and related fields?
8. What attempts have we made to engage in “reparative creativity” and what was the result?
Again this year, regardless of your proposed session topic, MT/D is asking you to de-center white cis-heteropatriarchy. We encourage you to consider foregrounding equity and anti-racist practices and elevate the work of BIPOC artists and scholars. All sessions that investigate any aspect of musical theatre, music theatre, dance, or related fields from this perspective are welcome.
In an effort to move toward greater equity in MT/D programming, for the 2022 conference, in addition to our request that all presentations de-center white cis-heteropatriarchy and our request that you consider foregrounding equity and anti-racist practices and elevate the work of BIPOC artists and scholars, panels that meet the following criteria will be more highly ranked in the session vetting process:
● Sessions that explicitly meet the call from this year’s CFP, especially sessions that utilize innovative formats.
● Sessions that center minoritarian topics.
● Sessions that include diversity in identity, affiliation, and rank of presenters.
● Sessions for which participants were solicited openly through the MT/D listservs and or were created through the single paper submission or the MT/D research-in-progress forum.
● Sessions that include detailed descriptions of both the content and the format for the session.
All members are asked to utilize the MT/D listservs: both the Google Group and the Athe.org messaging system to seek panel participants. As the membership to the two listservs is different, you are encouraged to send your inquiries to both. For instructions for joining and using the MT/D Google Group listserv, please click here. For information about how to utilize the Athe.org messaging system, please click here.
SUBMISSIONS
For the 2022 conference, there will be three kinds of submissions: single paper, full session (single focus group), and full session (multiple focus group). For full session submissions, we ask that all session coordinators alert the Conference Planner(s) of their session prior to submitting through the ATHE system. For multi-disciplinary sessions, please contact the Conference Planners for all focus groups to which you are submitting the panel prior to submission. The contact information for the Conference Planners can be found at this link.
Single paper/presentation submissions will be accepted this year. These papers/presentations are to be submitted to MT/D via this link. Papers/Presentations will then be vetted and may be assigned to panels, which will need to then be submitted to the ATHE system by a designated session coordinator. The deadline for single submissions is November 1st, 2021.
Completed full session proposals should be submitted online via the ATHE website at www.athe.org. The deadline for submissions is December 1st, 2021. Sessions submitted on December 1st must be complete panels with multiple presenters. MT/D does not accept sessions with fewer than three presenters. All single papers submitted to MT/D will need to be re-submitted as full panels to the ATHE system. Upcoming MT/D Events to support panel formation and submission:
MT/D CONFERENCE PROPOSAL WEBINAR – Saturday, October 9th 3pm EST/2pm Central/1pm MST/12pm Pacific:
MT/D is committed to supporting all interested participants in crafting proposals for the conference. Therefore, MT/D will again host a conference proposal webinar. This year’s webinar will be held on October 9th. At this session, members of the MT/D leadership will talk about best practices for crafting proposals, discuss the process that MT/D uses to rank submissions, and answer questions about the proposal process. The event is free and open (MT/D or ATHE membership not required) to all but registration is required. Please click here to register for the session.
MT/D RESEARCH-IN-PROGRESS FORUM – Thursday, November 4th 6:30pm EST/5:30pm Central/4:30pm MST/3:30pm Pacific In order to facilitate more connections between our members as panels are being created, MT/D will host a scholarship matching session. Modeled after the research in progress session at the 2021 MT/D pre-conference, this informal forum will provide an opportunity for participants to share elevator pitches about their current work and/or ideas for conference sessions in an effort to help members find collaborators prior to the December 1st submission deadline. The event is free and open (MT/D or ATHE membership not required) to all but registration is required. Please click here to register for the session.
The 39th Annual William Inge Theatre Festival and Conference, April 21-23, 2022
CALL FOR PAPERS
Papers are invited on the films and plays of William Inge, and/or the works of our 2022 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 three days this year, the small city of Independence, Kansas, becomes the theatrical center of the universe, with visits from some of the nation’s finest playwrights, directors, actors and theatre practitioners, who all meet to honor a distinguished playwright in a playwright’s town. The 39th Annual festival will be held April 21-23, 2022.
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 January 28th, 2022; early submissions are encouraged. Please email to Jackson Bryer, Scholar’s Conference Director at jbryer@umd.edu and copy info@ingecenter.org
AMERICAN THEATRE AND DRAMA SOCIETY (ATDS) SESSIONS
ASSOCIATION FOR THEATRE IN HIGHER EDUCATION (ATHE) CONFERENCE
DETROIT MARRIOT, DETROIT, MI
JULY 28 – 31, 2022
ATHE 2022: REHEARSING THE POSSIBLE: PRACTICING REPARATIVE CREATIVITY
ATHE 2020 and ATHE 2021 showed us that remote engagement offers positive and challenging possibilities for our conference community. The 2022 conference will reconvene in person in Detroit, and also marks ATDS’s 35thanniversary. In this landmark year, ATDS invites individual paper abstracts and full session proposals that celebrate and critique the past, present, and future of theatre and performance scholarship across the Americas, broadly conceived. What creative and scholarly advances have occurred over the past 35 years that have challenged and shaped the discourse of the field? We ask that submissions particularly decenter whiteness and hetero-cis-patriarchy that either amplify minoritarian knowledge production or explicitly analyze the power dynamics in normative/dominant case studies. How can the concept of “reparative creativity,” as defined by Dorinne Kondo, be used to speak truth to power about the structures that continue to oppress people of the global majority within theatre spaces and educational systems in the Americas today? What can theatre practice, history, and scholarship tell us about the relationships between performance and power structures in the ongoing wake of the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and #WeSeeYouWAT? How can theatre techniques and methodologies be used beyond theatre, as theatre for reparative ends that works towards goals such as prison abolition or Black reparations in the Americas? What methods are necessary to make real strides towards equity for BIPOC theatre artists and academics within institutions ranging from ATDS and ATHE to colleges, universities, and theatre companies? And how does Detroit’s own multifaceted history, as highlighted by Damani J. Partridge’s work on decolonizing Detroit, help us (re)frame these important questions? Papers and panel submissions are welcome from all colleagues. ATDS members are especially encouraged to submit. We also welcome opportunities to co-sponsor session proposals with other focus groups. To learn more about membership benefits, please visit the ATDS website: www.atds.org.
The Fine Print: Additional Proposal Submission Information:
Individual paper proposals should be submitted to ATDS Conference Planner, Bess Rowen (bess.rowen@gmail.com), who will group submissions into cohesive panels for consideration by ATHE. Individual proposals must be submitted to Bess Rowen by OCTOBER 15, 2021. Proposals should include an abstract of 250 words, a paper title, a short bio, and contact information including phone number and email. Please specify any A/V needs. ATHE does not accept individual paper submissions, so DO NOT submit your individual proposal on the ATHE website. Individuals wishing to identify colleagues to create panels prior to the November 1st deadline should use the ATDS listserv:
ATDS@LISTSERV.COFC.EDU or the new ATDS focus group page on the ATHE website: www.athe.org/group/ATDS to circulate questions or possible panel topics.
Completed panel proposals (with all panel members assembled) must be submitted directly to ATHE (www.athe.org) by NOVEMBER 1, 2021. Please forward a copy of your completed proposal to Bess Rowen (bess.rowen@gmail.com). Unlike multidisciplinary sessions, single focus group panel proposals do not require focus group approval before submission. Include all requests for A/V, guest passes, or conference grants when you submit your panel proposal. ATHE permits two conference presentations per participant.
Multidisciplinary session proposals must be sponsored by a minimum of two (2) ATHE Focus Groups and/or Committees. It is your responsibility to contact each Focus Group Conference Planner or Committee Chair prior to the submission deadline to gain approval of all sponsoring Focus Groups and/or Committees. For contact information and additional details on proposal submissions visit ATHE’s website: www.athe.org and click on the “Conference” tab.
January 2021
Greetings ATDS colleagues,
As we begin 2021, we hope you and your loved ones and communities are healthy and safe.
In August 2021, Lisa’s term as president will conclude, and Dr. Jocelyn L. Buckner will assume the presidency of ATDS. We write now, together, as we look forward to a collaborative transition in leadership.
We are excited for additional transitions in 2021 with the election of three Board members, four officers (Vice-President/President-Elect, Secretary, Treasurer, and International Secretary), and a Graduate Student Rep. Please send all nominations and self-nominations to ATDS Board Member Donatella Galella (galella@ucr.edu) by February 1, 2021. We are indebted to our colleagues who have served in these roles over the past years. Thank you Jordan, Laura, Fonzie, Josh, Dorothy, James, Heather, and Megan. Your labor, wisdom, and friendship has been invaluable to us and to ATDS.
ATDS hosted two anti-racist training workshops this fall. Thank you to Dr. Koritha Mitchell and Dr. Claire Syler for leading these workshops. We will host a third workshop in January with Dr. Brian Herrera. Click here to register for “Responsive Pedagogy with Dr. Brian Herrera.” These workshops are available at no cost to ATDS members. Thank you to Board Members Donatella Galella, Ariel Nereson, and Digital Media Secretary Peter Wood for organizing and stewarding these events.
Please take a moment to peruse the many ATDS awards and opportunities coming up this winter and spring. Please share widely, and please submit your work. Reviewing and celebrating our field through our awards is a true highlight of the organization. Thank you to all our committee chairs and members.
We look forward to the next Theatre Annual issue, as well as the Spring 2021 issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, co-edited by the American Theatre and Drama Society, the Black Theatre Association, and the Black Theatre Network, and focusing on the theme: Milestones in Black Theatre.
ATDS has had a very busy year. Archives of officer reports and messages from the president can be found on our website.
We are pleased to offer ATDS memberships on a sliding scale; we hope you will renew, join, or gift a membership today: https://www.atds.org/membership-shop/. We look forward to working with you in 2021.
Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, President
Jocelyn L. Buckner, Vice-President/President-Elect
Rethinking the Biography of the Actor and the Entertainer
essay cluster curated by Beth Holmgren (Duke University)
Whereas biography has been characterized as one of the least prescribed and most undertheorized of the genres in the literary canon, the biographies of both serious actors and popular entertainers have long remained formulaic and simplistic in recycling the celebrity and marketability of their subjects. The vast majority of biographies being produced about contemporary actors exploit the binarism of the star’s image, repeating critical hyperboles about their performances while dishing gossip about their intimate lives. Those biographers who choose the tougher project of writing about stars past (sometimes stars who dimmed well before the invention of film and recording technology) tend to follow the same pattern: They labor to resurrect the past glories of their subjects’ famed roles as well as the past scandals of the stars’ private misbehavior. How else are writers to interest today’s readers in their performers’ once renowned legacy and public personae?
We dedicate this special issue of Pamiętnik Teatralny to consider other more analytical, contextualized, yet still engaging approaches to writing performers’ biographies. We invite submissions from any scholars who have either written a substantial biography of an actor or entertainer or are preparing to do so and ask them to reflect critically on their practice in their essays. Your biographical subject need not be Polish, but the biography you wrote/are in the process of writing must be analytical, well-researched, and published/intended for publication by an academic or non-mass market press. We welcome biographers at any stage in their careers. The more diverse this issue is in terms of subjects and contributors, the more useful it will be for readers and future biographers. The languages of this issue, as for all issues of Pamiętnik Teatralny, are Polish and English.
Your article must respond to the first question and engage with some of the following questions insofar as they are relevant to your work:
1. What compelled you to showcase and analyze your subject for the reading public? Did you choose an actor regarded as serious, a popular entertainer, or a performer who played/has played in a range of different venues (stage, film, television, cabaret, nightclub, etc.)?
2. What reading public did/do you have in mind for this biography?
3. What sort of primary sources were/are you able to locate on your subject (e.g., memoirs by actor, family members, associates; correspondence; reviews; recorded or filmed performances; published or filmed interviews; material belongings; even former homes and haunts)? Given that many actors compose their memoirs upon their retirement to exploit their celebrity and reprise a written performance of the star image, how did you/do you intend to incorporate their first-person testimony, still maintaining a critical distance? If you were/are missing important primary sources, how did/do you plan to deal with this lacuna?
4. How did/do your subject and its primary sources shape the plot or analytical design of your biography? Did/do the works of specific theater scholars or examples of certain actor biographies inform your approach? Did you utilize paradigms such as the one proposed by Viv Gardner (2007): a “polyfocal” reading that situates the subjects and their works in their specific sociocultural and theatrical contexts and addresses the influence of both the market and extant genres (e.g., epistolary novels, Bildungsroman) on the subjects’ self-presentation?
[1] If your subject is a popular performer, did/do you find useful approaches in relatively recent biographies that underscore how such performers modeled and made desirable new social types and behaviors? (See, among many others, Andrew L. Erdman, Ruth Feldstein, Neal Gabler, Susan A. Glenn, Shane Vogel, and David Weinstein, among many others.[2])
5. One of the primary challenges facing biographers of actors and entertainers is conveying their subject’s embodied, enacted, ephemeral art – the liveness and in-the-moment impact of their performances. How did/will you try to convey this art effectively?
6. What other challenges confronted/are confronting you in writing your biography? What advice would you like to share with future biographers of the actor/entertainer?
This issue will be published in June/July 2022. A special committee made up of members of the editorial board, Ewa Partyga and Emilia Olechnowicz, as well as the curator, Beth Holmgren, will decide on contributors based on their review of submitted abstracts.
To be considered, your abstract should summarize your essay in 500 words and be sent to pamietnik.teatralny@gmail.com no later than September 10, 2021. In your abstract, specify if your completed text will be 6000 words or 3000 words, the journal’s customary long and short article lengths. If you have any questions, please send these to pamietnik.teatralny@gmail.com.
Once we have chosen the articles to be published in this issue, the contributors should be ready to submit their full texts—either 3000 or 6000 words—by December 30, 2021. The accepted submissions will then undergo the double-blind peer review process according to journal policy. Please refer to the journal website for formatting guidelines: https:// czasopisma.ispan.pl/index.php/pt/dlaautora.To the right on this site, you can click on your preferred language – English or Polish.
