Fall 2021 President’s Message
Fall 2021 President’s Message
Welcome to the American Theatre and Drama Society website. As we continue to engage in remote and hybrid ways, I hope you experience ATDS as a scholarly community of support, inspiration, and encouragement.
ATDS 2021 Awards Winners:
Congratulations once again to the 2021 ATDS awards winners! We look forward to congratulating you again in person in 2022. Thank you for the privilege of recognizing your work and thank you to the committees and chairs responsible for choosing these distinguished honorees.
Betty Jean Jones Award
Cheryl Black
Curators Distinguished Professor of Theatre Emerita
University of Missouri
John W. Frick Book Award
Sean Metzger, THE CHINESE ATLANTIC: SEASCAPES AND THE THEATRICALITY OF GLOBALIZATION (Indiana University Press)
Honorable Mention
Virginie Magnat, THE PERFORMATIVE POWER OF VOCALITY (Routledge)
Vera Mowry Roberts Award
Catherine M. Young, “The Performance and Politics of Concurrent Temporalities in George C. Wolfe’s Shuffle Along.”
Honorable Mention
Bethany Hughes, “Oka Apesvchi: Indigenous Feminism, Performance, and Protest”
Honorable Mention
Heidi Carolyn Feldman, “Staging Public Blackness in Peru: The Repertoires of Pancho Fierro and Cumanana.”
Publication Subvention Award
Ariel Nereson, DEMOCRACY MOVING: BILL T. JONES, CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PERFORMANCE, AND THE RACIAL PAST
Honorable Mention
David Bisaha, AMERICAN SCENIC DESIGN AND FREELANCE PROFESSIONALISM
Faculty Travel/Research Award
Kate Buselle, to present “Gender and Violence in Marisa Wegrzyn’s KILLING WOMEN,” at the Comparative Drama Conference, 2021
Contingent Faculty Travel/Research Award
Beto O’Byrne, “Pedagogical Applications of El Teatro Campesino’s newly codified acting practice, ‘Theatre of the Sphere’”
Graduate Student Travel/Research Award
Stephanie Lim, “Deaf Music-Making: Performing National Identity and Decolonizing the Musical World”
ATDS Emerging Scholar Awards
Evan Duncan, “An (Un)abashed Exercise in Overthinking: Practice, Second Nature, and Double Consciousness”
Jay Kimberley, “Trauma, Theatre, and the Power of Community: Re-Imagining Therapeutic Intervention for Foster Youth”
Spotlight on New Works:
The ATDS/BTA/LIA Spotlight on New Works session highlighted the following new works which are already making a tremendous impact in our field. I encourage you to engage with these titles, and to add them to your syllabi as well as personal and institutional libraries.
Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance: Indigenous Spaces
By Jaye T. Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler, and Christy Stanlake
Breaking It Down: Audition Techniques for Actors of the Global Majority
By Nicole Hodges Persley & Monica White Ndounou
The Performative Power of Vocality
By Virginie Magnat
The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization
By Sean Metzger
Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative
By Claire Syler & Daniel Banks
Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century United States
By Katelyn Hale Wood
As the new academic year starts, ATDS’s programming begins again with a renewed commitment to our current ongoing initiatives: mentoring and supporting the development of new works by scholars at all stages of their careers, and continuing to offer anti-racism programming that works to dismantle systems of oppression within our field. I invite you to take this moment to consider how your own creative/scholarly work aligns with ATDS’s offerings, and ways you might wish to become further involved with the workings of the organization.
There are many ways to take part in our endeavors, including:
Submitting your work to one of our journals or awards committees. In particular, please see the CFP for the spring 2022 ATDS special issue of JADT, “Asian American Dramaturgies,” edited by ATDS Vice President Dr. Donatella Galella.
Participating in our anti-racism programming. Planning is underway for this year’s sessions, so stay tuned!
Applying for the First Book Bootcamp. 2022 will be the third year of the FBB, which is focused on supporting the development of new publications in our field through guided workshops, mentoring from experienced authors and editors in the field, and pitch-your-book sessions with series acquisitions editors. Be on the lookout for the call for proposals!
Attending ATHE/ATDS in Detroit, MI, July 28-21, 2022. The ATDS call for papers is now available, and we welcome individual paper and panel submissions.
Celebrating ATDS’s 35th anniversary during next year’s conference. If you are interested in serving on the anniversary planning committee, please reach out to me.
Not sure how you’d like to get involved? Complete our volunteer formand we will connect you with opportunities that align with your interests. To receive news and updates from ATDS throughout the year, please join our listserv.
Finally, if you have not already done so, please join or renew your membership to ATDS, and invite a colleague or friend to join with you! We offer memberships at all levels, including a pay-what-you-can option as well as a lifetime membership that guarantees you member benefits, well, for a lifetime! Memberships and donations sustain the vital work of our organization, and we are grateful for your engagement and support.
Please contact me if you have ideas for ways ATDS can further serve our field. I wish you a productive, healthy, and happy fall.
Jocelyn L. Buckner
President, American Theatre and Drama Society