Theatre-Fiction Edited Book

CFP: “Theatre-Fiction”
November 1, 2020

Seeking proposals for an edited book of chapters on “theatre-fiction”,
i.e. novels and stories about theatre.

Theatre has made star appearances in dozens of novels, from J. W.
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship to Mikhail Bulgakov’s Black
Snow to Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed. There are historical
theatre-novels (John Arden’s Silence Among the Weapons), naturalist
theatre-novels (George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife), children’s
theatre-novels (Noel Streatfeild’s Curtain Up), detective
theatre-novels (Claire Legendre’s La Méthode Stanislavski), and even
science-fiction theatre-novels (Christopher Stasheff’s A Company of
Stars). But while literary genres such as science fiction or detective
fiction have been extensively theorized, “theatre-fiction” has not
received the attention that this enduringly popular and complexly
intermedial genre deserves. This volume of essays will explore
novelists from a range of eras and parts of the world who engage in
sustained ways with theatre as artistic practice(s) and industry,
examining what happens to theatre on the pages of novels, and what
happens to novels when they collaborate with theatre.

This project situates itself within a developing domain of scholarship
on theatre/novel intersections. The significance of theatre in the
lives of particular novelists has been probed in studies such as
Francesca Saggini’s Backstage in the Novel: Frances Burney and the
Theater Arts and Stephen Putzel’s Virginia Woolf and the Theater.
Monographs such as Alan Ackerman’s The Portable Theater: American
Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Stage and David Kurnick’s Empty
Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel remind us that theatrical and
novelistic forms did not develop in isolation, accentuating a history
of fluid boundaries, reciprocal exchanges, and creative antagonisms.
On one hand, what will connect the chapters in the proposed volume is
a more specific thematic emphasis: they will focus on novels that are
specifically about theatre as artistic practice and industry (as
opposed, for instance, to novels whose engagement with theatre and
drama is more strictly formal, e.g. novels reflecting the five-act
structure of Shakespearean tragedy or the dialogue of well-made
plays). Theatre-novelists, however, are linked not only by theme and
topoi but also by the shared formal and stylistic challenges and
opportunities that arise from engaging through one medium with
elements and attributes of others. In this respect, a study of
theatre-fiction has links with the developing field of intermediality,
which has grown to examine what theorists call “intermedial reference”
or “intermedial representation”. Within intermediality studies,
significant attention has been paid to topics such as the ekphrasis of
visual art and cinema, leaving novelistic engagement with theatre
largely unexplored.

In addition to accentuating the significance of theatre in the work of
prominent novelists, this volume is also an opportunity for
less-studied theatre-novelists to receive critical attention. The aim
is to bring together discussions of theatre-fiction from a range of
eras and parts of the world, shedding light on some hitherto neglected
works and bringing them into conversation with a broader field. The
following link provides a list of novels that engage in sustained ways
with theatre, and which might be possibilities for discussion in this
collection. Link

The volume will showcase a range of approaches to theatre-fiction, such as:

• a focused analysis of a particular theatre-novel;
• an analysis of theatre across the oeuvre of a novelist who
  frequently engages with it;
• a comparison of the ways in which two or more novelists engage with theatre;
• a discussion of theatre-fiction from a particular era (e.g.
  late-1800s France);
• a discussion of a specific theatre-fictional phenomenon across two
  or more novels (e.g. novelistic portrayal of theatre audiences,
  novelistic rendering of acting methods ?);
• an investigation of how theory and scholarship from the realms of
  Theatre and Performance Studies might inform analysis of theatre in novels;
• theatre-fiction and pandemics: the next-best thing when theatres are closed?
• etc.

Please send a brief bio and an abstract of no more than 600 words to
graham.wolfe@nus.edu.sg by November 1st 2020.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Dr. Graham Wolfe
Associate Professor, Theatre Studies, English Language and Literature,
National University of Singapore
graham.wolfe@nus.edu.sg