2023 ADSA Conference 

Archives, Artists & Absences

Kaurna Country, Adelaide
Monday 27 November – Friday 1 December

Performance Research

Call for Reviews Edtior

• Monitors press catalogues and selects the works to be reviewed
• Commissions reviewers for each review/receives submissions for reviews
• Liaises with relevant presses to secure a review copy text for contributing reviewers
• Supports first-time reviewers in shaping their submissions in terms of content and style
• Liaises with the designated managing editor to support final revisions

2023 Annual Conference

SAVE THE DATE: 27 NOVEMBER — 1 DECEMBER

PhD Scholarship, Murdoch University

 “Life after digitisation: future-proofing WA’s vulnerable cultural heritage”

We have extended the deadline for our special issue at RiDE: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance on the topic of solidarity by 3 more weeks (April 5); please see call below.

We invite all forms of contribution, including articles, short reflective essays, interviews or other artistic responses to the topic. We also welcome contributions from PGRs.

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
THEMED ISSUE 29:3
Call for Papers

Performing Solidarities or Solidarities performed
Edited by Réka Polonyi and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta

October 17, 2019. Riots broke out in Lebanon in response to heightened economic pressure and corruption scandals surrounding the political elite. Within days, people flooded the streets, repurposed public spaces, organised public debates and mass actions. As a resident at the time, I, Réka, found myself caught up in trying to find my place as both a foreign national and an ally to the struggle of my Lebanese friends and colleagues. Do I stand alongside them, shout the chants in my rusty Arabic, share the face cloth when there’s tear gas? Or do I stand quietly on the side - present, but on the margins? This was not ‘my fight’, I was often reminded; it was clear that I was here to listen, not necessarily to be heard or noticed. I soon found my place: I joined the garbage collective, a group of volunteers who met up every morning to pick up the rubbish on the streets of the protests. Here, in the sleepy hours of the morning, no one questioned who I was, or why I was there: every revolution leaves some rubbish in its wake.

The Lebanese riots bring to light various concerns around the idea of solidarity, or the idea of ‘unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards’ (Merriam-Webster). When does a ‘quiet’ act of solidarity speak louder than its more directly-recognised, public enactments? How is it performed without necessarily drawing attention to its enactment, and when is this the appropriate response? In the immediacy of an event, how can solidarity be embodied, rather than stated? In this themed issue, we ask, what purpose does solidarity serve in applied theatre and performance? We are particularly interested in capturing the possibly ‘quiet’, micro-practices of solidarity that occur not only within sites of struggle, but also in everyday life.

Critical positionality is a feature of solidarity. Many aspects of solidarity are implicit in works of applied theatre and performance, which are deeply embedded in community involvement and rely on one’s critical positionality. Participatory theatre-making often values relationality and involves the creation of meaningful and respectful environments. And yet the word ‘solidarity’ is not commonly referred to within current scholarship in applied theatre arts. Solidarity is articulated as a moment of inter-relational care - of ‘affective solidarity’ (Thompson 2015) - which deliberately counters a ‘careless’ society. Is solidarity, then, an act of attentiveness, kindness and attunement? Or, on the contrary, is it a process of recognising differences and distinctiveness in personal opinions, behaviours and actions, rather than of ‘finding common grounds’ or identifying others ‘like us’ (Walhof 2006)? Diana Taylor (2020) argues for being ‘presente’ with and alongside participants. ‘To be’, she writes, ‘I have to walk and talk with others’ (Taylor 2020, 2). Negotiating the idea of presence enables us to re-examine what she calls a form of ‘cognitive imperialism’ within our artistic practices. In other words, walking and talking alongside others, and at times deliberately choosing to be silent and to listen, can both be forms of solidarity. In Taylor’s work, solidarity is implied in the idea of non-presence or in the act of deliberate silence - and in what silence can signify in applied theatre practices as a way to listen, to hear, and not to interrupt. When is the knowledge of when to stay quiet a form of solidarity (if at all)? Similarly to Diana Taylor’s questioning of ‘cognitive imperialism’ through presence, activist and scholar Harsha Walia calls for replacing a ‘politics of solidarity’ with a ‘practice of decolonisation’. She argues that this involves creating ‘a radical terrain for struggle where our common visions for justice do not erase our different social locations, and similarly, that our differing identities do not prevent us from walking together towards transformation and mutual respect’ (Walia 2012: 254). Is solidarity then - instead of avoiding conflicts of beliefs - a way to engage with a multitude of voices potentially all existing within dissonance? The lack of focused theorisation of solidarity in applied theatre and performance – and the sense that applied theatre assumes it is performing solidarity – asks for this urgent themed issue.

The last few years have seen various expressions of solidarity in relation to tragedies around the world. The global COVID-19 pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the (re)ignited Black Lives Matter movement, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, the women’s movement in Iran, are just a few examples of moments when individuals were engaged in finding their performance(s) of solidarity. Whether it was the act of ‘clapping for the health care workers’ (during lockdown in the UK and Canada), uploading a blank social media profile photo (as a sign of allyship with BLM), or flying kites (see Good Chance Theatre’s Kite Festival for Afghanistan), we have had to locate and navigate our positions as being spectators-in-solidarity, participants-in-solidarity, or marching in solidarity ‘alongside’ others. Some joined mass, performed actions of solidarity - such as protests or on social media - whereas others felt less inclined to join in what could arguably be seen as a spectacle or commodification of solidarity (Nash 2008; Vastergaard 2008). Large, visible enactments of solidarity, although often very effective in inciting mass participation, can also be seen as narcissistic sentimentalism (Nash 2008: 177). Media scholar Lilie Chouliaraki, for instance, extensively writes on the critical emergence of a ‘post-humanitarian’ solidarity, which is made of loud gestures that provide an instant sense of gratification and reveal more about the individual self rather than the cause, or the ‘vulnerable other’ (2011). Chouliaraki believes we are thus becoming ‘ironic spectators’ (Chouliaraki 2013) of things going wrong in the world. Tensions in these ‘louder’ forms can also be noted by expressions of solidarity arising from grassroots and media generated public debates in which ‘everyday people participate in unequal ways in constructing this debate and its parameters’ (Siapera 2019), where solidarity is becoming an expression that is widely accessible, but potentially more equalized in access rather than in nature. Spectacles of solidarity - loud, statement-led - are nuanced in complexity, as intention does not always correlate with best practices. There is a story told by the activist artist Banksy, during his work among many other street artists leaving their marks of solidarity on the West Bank’s Separation Wall in the occupied Palestinian Territories (recounted in Parry 2010: 10):

Old Man: You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful.
Banksy: Thanks.
Old Man: We don’t want it to be beautiful. We hate this wall, go home.

The questions this raises for applied theatre and performance are how best practices relate to critical positionality, and how good intentions of ‘performing solidarity’ can potentially harm the people and communities involved.

Commonly-recognised forms of solidarity are also visible in the theatre arts industry, as Bree Hadley (2020) points out in her work on allies, ally skills and allyship in disability arts. Performances of solidarity by ‘allies of convenience’ are aimed to benefit the individual and can look like a number of things: ‘be it tokenistic mainstream work, community work facilitated by allies who fail to afford disabled artists control and/or financial benefit, or companies that present disabled artists work but only in tagged ‘disability arts’ programmes separate to their main activities’ (Hadley 2020: 179). The kind of solidarity that valued allies do falls in the skill set described by Hadley as: ‘professional, social, and singular – all allies must remember their privilege, listen, accept the realities oppressed people describe, and allow oppressed colleagues and/or audiences to speak for themselves’ (180). Bradley endorses this form of ‘social allyship’ in disability arts, as it can be a start of outlining the requirements for professional, social and aesthetic support for artworkers (185).

Can solidarity be seen as reciprocal co-perception (Walhof 2006) in which teachings of otherness are vital? Our interest in quiet, micro practices of solidarity in applied theatre and performance follows the rationale that these performances often go unnoticed, or do not necessarily enter the scope and language of more commonly recognised acts of solidarity. They are not the loud, deliberate brush strokes on a giant separation wall. They are not always clear, and well-defined forms of expression. Although the editors of this themed issue recognise the significance and importance of acts that catch the public’s and authorities’ attention, what does it look like when, as philosopher Gadamer (2009) proposes, solidarity does not leave the other completely other, nor does it make the other same? Is there even reciprocity in acts (or intention) of solidarity? If not, is this vital for the work that we are undertaking?

Format
For this special themed issue, we are inviting research articles (6000 words), as well as reflective accounts of artistic works, interviews, and other conceptual explorations of solidarity (1500 words) in relation to the encounters being made in applied theatre and in relation to the positionality of our work. All submissions will be reviewed by the editors and blind peer reviewed at least once prior to final acceptance.

Possible topics
Small/quiet acts of solidarity in applied theatre and performance
Challenges or ethical limitations within acts of solidarity
Solidarity as reciprocal
Absence (in solidarity)
Solidarity as spectacle
Embodiment and solidarity
Solidarity and decolonialist practices
‘Making’ or ‘doing’ solidarity vs ‘being in’ solidarity
Practices/limitations of allyship
Nuanced practices of activist presence/co-presence

Please send your proposed abstract of 300-500 words and 100 words biography to Réka Polonyi (email) and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta (email) by 5 April, 2023.

Full papers will be expected by September 1, 2023 and publication is estimated for summer 2024. Submissions will all go through one or more rounds of blind peer review. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

ksadeghi@uvic.ca
reka.polonyi@manchester.ac.uk

Timeframe
Proposal for contributions: April 5, 2023
Final Publication of accepted submissions: Summer 2024

References:
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2013. The ironic spectator: Solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism. John Wiley & Sons.
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2011. “Improper distance: towards a critical account of solidarity as irony.” International journal of cultural studies 14(4): 363-381.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2009. “Friendship and Solidarity.” Research in Phenomenology 39(1): 3–12.
Hadley, Bree. 2020. “Allyship in disability arts: roles, relationships, and practices.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 25(2): 178-194.
Nash, Kate. 2008. “Global citizenship as show business: the cultural politics of Make Poverty History.” Media, Culture & Society 30(2): 167–181.
Parry, William .2010. Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine. London: Pluto Press.
Siapira, Eugenia. 2019. “Refugee solidarity in Europe: Shifting the discourse.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22(2): 245-266.
Taylor, Diane. 2020. Presente! The Politics of Presence. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thompson, James. 2015. “Towards an aesthetics of care.” Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 20(4): 430-441.
Vestergaard, Anne. 2008. “Humanitarian branding and the media: The case of Amnesty International.” Journal of language and politics 7(3): 471-493.
Walhof, Darren R. 2006. “Friendship, Otherness, and Gadamer's Politics of Solidarity.” Political Theory (34)5: 569-593.
Walia, Harsha. 2012. “Moving beyond a politics of solidarity toward a practice of decolonization.” In .), Organize!: Building from the local for global justice, edited by Eric Shragge, Jill Hanley, and Aziz Choudry, 240–253. Los Angeles: PM Press.

Job Opportunity: Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Melbourne

Performance Paradigm 17 (2022)

Perform or Else? Revisiting Jon McKenzie's Work in the Post-Pandemic World

Job Opportunity: First Nations Writer's Fellowship, University of Adelaide

Call for Proposals: Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance
Volume 3: Designers & Crafters

Co-edited by Greer Crawley and Carolina E. Santo

Proposals due: 15 April 2023

• Who are the women who made significant innovations and contributions as designers and stagecrafters, and what were those innovations? What were the social/political/economic conditions under which they worked? How did their status as women affect their ability to define their status in the field and exercise autonomy as artists? What creative endeavors required the naming/claiming and consolidation of the status of designer?
• How have design and innovation intersected in women’s stage or performance work, particularly in historical eras or in cultures/theatrical practices in which design, as a subspecialization, did or does not exist? What role have women played in defining design subspecialties or in challenging and changing established conventions? Are there other ways to consider female stagecraft practice beyond the limited constraints on the word and process of creation that upholds a singular, genius model of innovation?
• How did their work help to shape or change the future of theatre or dance as an art form? Why is the recuperation of their legacies important?

• The marginalization of women’s craftmanship and aesthetic processes
• The importance of women as stagecraft educators and mentors
• The spaces of innovation: the workshop, the studio, the rehearsal room, the home, the classroom
• Representations of theatre designers and crafters in literature, visual art, film, and photography
• Innovations in the exhibition of stagecraft
• Stagecraft and cultural identity

• Innovations in artistic practices and design methodologies
• Innovations in labor and production
• Innovations in craft knowledge
• Innovations in sustainability and stagecraft
• Innovations in digital technologies
• Innovations in interdisciplinary practices
• Innovations in theatre technology
• Innovations in scenic vocabularies and strategies
• Innovations in making and materiality
• Innovation in working environments
• Innovations in experimental practices
• Innovations in pedagogies
• Innovations in exhibiting stagecraft

Australasian Drama Studies, vol. 83 (Special Edition)

Resilience? Response, Resourcefulness, Recovery, Resistance

Call for proposals

• Managing precarity and vulnerability: in response to climate crisis, global pandemic, cultural and social and change
• Australasian innovations in approaches to partnership and collaboration to engender more sustainable approaches to performing arts.
• Performance practices and training for resilience, cultural safety and well-being
• Key questions regarding liveness and presence in performance and pedagogy which have arisen (or re-emerged) in relation to the pandemic.
• Alternatives to current renditions and conceptions of resourcefulness and resilience
• Government and policy responses to the Covid pandemic and the post-lockdown environment.
• Alternate economies and the loss of economic certainty for artists and small to medium companies in the performing arts
• Designing robust strategic change approaches to embed arts and artists in communities
• Artistic responses to the Covid pandemic, climate emergency, global economic instability, and war
• The place of care and personal wellbeing within the performing arts
• Intimacy, institutional and corporate responsibility in the performing arts
• University responses to the Covid pandemic
  • The changing nature of the Higher Education landscape 
  • Losses to the sector during Covid
  • Strategic rebuilding for a sustainable future
• Changing aesthetics and production processes in the post-lockdown environment.
• Economic and social labour in the small to medium and independent artist sectors
• Holistic working practices and technologies for a sustainable performing arts sector
• How the industry is contending with with and leading/innovating in policy and procedures embedding First Nations, disability, LGBTQI+ concerns to sustain diverse teams and cultural safety for artists and audiences
• Imagining the future: practice, training, scholarship

Theatre Dance and Performance Training Journal (TDPT)

Special issue: Green Trainings to be published in September 2024 (15.3)

Call for contributions, ideas, proposals and dialogue with the editors

If not now, when? 

• How have training regimes and their articulation contributed to the discourse of eco criticism?
• What historic practices of performance training can we draw on as inspiration for green training today?
• How have historical training approaches differed in their approach to green training, cross culturally?

• Which trainers, institutions, networks, models should we be looking to for help in shaping green trainings? 
• What is the relationship between indigenous and first peoples’ practices and environmentally aware training practice in other cultural contexts today?
• How have recent statements on the climate crisis (IPCC, COP 26/7) impacted upon approaches to performer training? 
• Given the known disparity between richer nations that emit the most carbon and poorer nations that suffer the greatest climate change impacts, how does geography impact on training’s reaction to rising temperatures?
• In work outside of theatres, in site-based practice for instance, how is the training congruent with the performance’s ethics and politics?
• How are performance-based activists trained and what might be learned from such approaches? 

• What value and impact might interdisciplinary connections and research have for green trainings?
• What would a carbon literate curriculum for training include?
• What are the opportunities and threats associated with digital green trainings?
• How will training be shaped by factors of climate change in the future? What will rising sea levels, extreme weather, bioodiversity reduction, new energy sources mean for performance training? 
• What can performer training do to play its part in global adaptation? What small acts can be taken that might excite and motivate others?
• What training initiatives might be taken to lower our carbon footprint?  

• 'Articles’ features contributions in a range of critical and scholarly formats (approx. 5,000-6,500 words) 
• ‘Sources’ provides an outlet for the documentation and analysis of primary materials of performer training. We are particularly keen to receive material that documents the histories and contemporary practices associated with the issue’s theme.
• ‘Training Grounds’ hosts shorter pieces, which are not peer reviewed, including essais (more speculative pieces 750-1250 words); postcards (up to 100 words); visual essays and scores; Speaking Images (short texts responding to a photo, drawing, visual score, etc.); and book or event reviews. We welcome a wide range of different proposals for contributions including edited interviews and previously unpublished archive or source material. We also welcome suggestions for recent books on the theme to be reviewed; or for foundational texts to be re-reviewed. 

• 13 June 2023: proposals to be submitted.
• Early July 2023: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation to submit contribution
• Early July to end October 2023: writing/preparation period
• End October to end December 2023: peer review period
• January 2024: author revisions post peer review
• September 2024: publication as Issue 15.3

• Date: Friday 17 & Saturday 18 February
• Venue: Rex Cramphorn Theatre, University of Sydney
• Cost: $55 (or $30 for 1 day only)
• Enquiries: thomas.deangelis@sydney.edu.au 
• Registration: via the USyd Events Calendar.

Opportunity-Visiting Professor of Australian Studies (TOKYO)
2023-24 and 2024-25

The Centre for Pacific and American Studies at the University of Tokyo is seeking applications for Visiting Professor of Australian Studies for two terms (2023-24 and 2024-25).

Position title: Visiting Professor of Australian Studies

Open to: Australian citizens and permanent residents

Location: Centre for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus

Salary: Starting salary ¥600,000 per month (before tax). See position description for further details.

Duration: Approximately 10 months

Commencement of position: Late September 2023 or late September 2024. Applicants may apply to be considered for a specific term only or for either term. This must be indicated clearly on your application.

Closing date for applications: 1 February 2023

For the recruitment call and more information about the opportunity see the attached PDF or go online to the link provided.

• New intercultural practices
• Pedagogic models and values
• New canons, traditions & lineages
• Post-pandemic experimental performance
• Student agency 
• Technique
• The normalisation of technologies and media 
• Telematic music performance and composition 
• Equity, diversity and inclusion
• Emerging practices in industry and professional organisations
• Identity
• Translation
• Creative practice research in Higher Education 
• Consent and safety
• Matrixes of authority 
• Ethics in vocational training
• Citizenry 
• Listening, empathy & attunement

Dear members,

We hope this email finds you well and enjoying a relaxing end to the year.

As telegraphed at our recent Annual General Meeting, the current Editor of Australasian Drama Studies Dr Yoni Prior will conclude her term as Editor at the end of 2023. We will celebrate Yoni's achievements as Editor across the next year, and formally commend her work at the 2023 AGM; in the meantime, we thank Yoni on behalf of the membership for all that she has done to modernise and streamline the journal's activities.

The ADSA Board has opened applications for the role of ADS Editor, with a closing date of 3 February 2023 at 11.,59pm AEDT. This will allow for a substantial handover period across 2023. Details of the application procedure can be found in the attached Position Description. As is noted there, the Board strongly encourages applications from both individual members, and from pairs of applicants who would like to be considered as co-Editors. 

Informal questions about the role can be directed to Yoni (editor.ads@adsa.edu.au). For any other questions about the wider recruitment process, please contact the ADSA Board via Rea (president@adsa.edu.au) and Chris (vice.president@adsa.edu.au).

Best wishes,
Rea, for the ADSA Board.

 

Call for papers: Confronting the Global Climate Crisis: Responsibility, Agency, and Action

Research in Drama Education The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Guest Editors: Rachel Turner-King (University of Warwick) and Bobby Smith (University of Warwick)

In 2012, Deirdre Heddon and Sally Mackey’s themed issue of RiDE made an explicit plea for a deeper ‘critical engagement’ with environmentalism, education and applied drama, theatre, and performance. In the decade since, the discourse around climate change has shifted to reflect the immediacy of rising temperatures and ecological catastrophes: a climate crisis and emergency that requires urgent action (IPCC 2022). This necessitates a reengagement with the challenge of exploring, understanding, and representing the crisis in our field and, particularly, how the idea of responsibility underpins or complicates such work and related action. This issue invites researchers, educators, and practitioners to confront the climate crisis with a revived interest in the diverse pedagogical, ethical, aesthetic, and sensory qualities of our work.

For more information, the full call is attached.

300-word proposals for contributions, plus 100-word biographies for each contributor due by 31^st January 2023
To Rachel Turner-King [rachel.turner-king@warwick.ac.uk] and Bobby Smith [bobby.smith@warwick.ac.uk].

Dear colleagues,

The University of Tasmania is currently recruiting for a full-time, ongoing Technical Officer (Performance) to support the activites of the Theatre and Performance program, based in Launceston. Full details and the application link can be found via the UTas Careers site (https://careers.utas.edu.au/en/job/498111/technical-officer-performance) — please note the deadline for applications is rapidly approaching: Monday 28 November, 11.55pm (AEDT). 

Best wishes.
Chris.

• Devise and deliver the existing Sexwise programme in line with Manatū Hauora – Ministry of Health guidelines and current best practice.
• Identify and secure funding for new programmes through applications to funding bodies and liaison with community groups and other current and potential stakeholders.
• Devise and deliver new programmes in accordance with the needs of the stakeholder/clients while upholding the principles and mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/treaty-of-waitangi/meaning-of-the-treaty/
• You will devise, direct, and supervise interactive applied theatre programmes and work in ways that respect and accommodate gender and cultural diversity. You will be able to tailor programmes to fit the needs of specific communities and groups, Māori and Pacific, rural and more.
• You will liaise with the THETA Board on the strategic direction of the organisation, and with the THETA Manager/Coordinator in the production of reports to the Board and stakeholder organisations.
• You will be responsible for budget creation and administrative oversight of the programmes.

There are a suite of positions currently advertised for Theatre at VCA, University of Melbourne.

Specialist in Movement<https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/910460/specialist-in-movement>

Specialist in Voice<https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/910484/specialist-in-voice>
 

Specialist in Directing<https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/910463/specialist-in-directing>
 

Lecturer in Acting/Undergraduate Course Co-Ordinator, Bachelor of Fine Arts Acting<https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/910456/lecturer-in-actingundergraduate-course-coordinator-bachelor-of-fine-arts-acting

Lecturer in Theatre (Contemporary)/Undergraduate Course Coordinator, BFA Theatre<https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/910458/lecturer-in-theatre-contemporaryundergraduate-course-coordinator-bfa-theatre>
 

Closing dates are 14^th and 17^th (see listings).

Contact Chris Mead christopher.mead@unimelb.edu.au<mailto:christopher.mead@unimelb.edu.au> (Head of Theatre) with questions regarding the positions in Theatre.

With the hurly burly of semester still in flow, we thought it best to extend the deadline of the Call for Papers for the Critical Stages special edition on Australasian Dramaturgy until 30 November, 2022.

The full Call for Papers is attached, with all of the details, but new timelines here, at a glance:

For information about submission: click here.
Those interested should send a 300-word abstract to kl.kelly@qut.edu.au by 30 November, 2022 and please don’t hesitate to be in contact if you have any queries.
The abstract should outline the planned submission, indicate the format of submission and also include a 50-word biography identifying all collaborating authors.

Timeline
Proposals (Abstracts of 300 words, including a short biography): 30 November, 2022

Selection:     27 January 2023
First drafts:  30 June 2023
Final drafts: 15 September 2023
Publication: 30 December 2023

Best, Kath, Julian, Fiona, Moana and Emily

Murdoch is seeking a Lecturer Level B colleague to start in the new year. The position includes expectations that the appointee willl develop scholarly research outputs and professional activities relevant to the discipline.  This position contributes to the teaching effort of the Discipline through the preparation and delivery of lectures, tutorials, other types of teaching activities, and supervision of honours and postgraduate students, and is expected to perform a range of administrative and service functions within the College and across the University.  For more information: https://www.seek.com.au/job/58752028?type=standout

PhD in theatre/performance with archival studies, cultural heritage, digital humanities with a 3.5 year PhD scholarship (offset and stipend) with Murdocuh University in partnership with the Digitisation Centre of WA.

• The traditions and current practices of First Nations and Māori dramaturgy, decolonial and decentring dramaturgy, allyship in dramaturgy, intercultural, transcultural and relational dramaturgy, and the incorporation of First Nations, Māori or Indigenous perspectives into cultural resurgence in Australasian dramaturgy.
• New play development, production dramaturgy, institutional dramaturgy, literary dramaturgy, translation, theatre criticism and adaptation.
• New dramaturgies, New Materialist Dramaturgy, Expanded Dramaturgy, Slow dramaturgy, Porous dramaturgy, Spatial dramaturgy, Archipelago dramaturgies, Heterarchical Dramaturgies and Saltwater dramaturgy.
• New media dramaturgy, digital dramaturgy and the confluence of scenography and dramaturgy, particularly ecoscenography, eco-dramaturgy and visual dramaturgy.
• Dance dramaturgy, choreo-turgy, curation and dramaturgy, co-dramaturgy and devising dramaturgy.
• Dramaturgy of Belonging, Divisive Dramaturgy, Dramaturgy of Mobility, Unresolvable Dramaturgy, Viral Dramaturgies and dramaturgy as cultural intervention.

Call for Papers

Performance Research, vol. 28, no. 2, 2023

"On Invasion"

• Theatres and performances of invasion, of resistance.
• Disciplinary invasions: borrowing or stealing perhaps, from theatre to elucidate other arguments or fields, and what of performance’s disciplinary invasions or incursions?
• How do we negotiate in performative terms invasions of bodies, minds, through persecution and war and/or the drive for geo-political expansion?
• What are the contemporary artistic strategies that invade social space?
• How does theatre and performance alter the status quo?
• What of ecological invasion? Rising sea levels, species decline, fire, drought, pestilence, flood?
• Bombing, loss of life, dislocation and fear in the face of military oppression.
• Resistance, refusal, solidarity and stealth.
• Hope and renewal; can signs of resolution or peace be found among the wreckage of tragedy?
• Increasing surveillance and control via digital platforms and media and our willingness to participate, despite the risks. How much is one’s identity worth these days?
• Controlling viruses and the associated impacts on the arts sector. How much is too much? 
• Saving lives and economic viability at what social cost?
• Do sanctions and boycotts seem useful strategies to halt invasion?
• What role might hacking and resistance, fighting back against ‘oppressors’ play?

• Before submitting a proposal, we encourage you to visit our website (www.performance-research.org ) and familiarize yourself with the journal.
• Proposals will be accepted by email (Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format (RTF)).
• Proposals should not exceed one A4 side.
• Please include your surname in the file name of the document you send.
• Please include the issue title and issue number in the subject line of your email.
• Submission of images and other visual material is welcome provided that all attachments do not exceed 5 MB, and there is a maximum of five images.
• Submission of a proposal will be taken to imply that it presents original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Dear colleagues,

The University of Manchester (UK) is currently recruiting for a fixed-term Research Associate to join the interdisciplinary AHRC-funded Care Aesthetics: Research Exploration (CARE) project. The opportunity is particularly suitable for those with recently-completed PhDs, which are defined here as "awarded, submitted, or soon to submit". Further details, and the link to apply, are available on the University of Manchester Jobs page. Applications close on 17 May 2022 at midnight (BST). 

Best wishes,
Chris.

 

Dear members,

This is a quick note to let you know that the deadline for submissions to present at ADSA 2022: Travelling Together, Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland is almost upon us – submissions are due by the end of tomorrow, Monday 9 May. Abstracts and queries can be directed to Emma Willis (emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz). (Please note this email address was mis-typed in the previous circulation). 

If you're looking for any last-minute guidance while putting your abstract together, you might like to consult the recording of our recent session on The Art of the Abstract, convened by the Postgraduate Committee. You can find the recording in the ADSA Members-Only area by clicking on the "Postgrad and ECR" link.

Best wishes,
Chris.
 

International Ibsen Prize 2022

Back to Back Theatre

Kia ora colleagues,

A warm reminder that abstracts for ADSA 2022: Travelling Together, Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland, 6 to 9 December, are due on Monday 25 April. Conference registration will also open on that date. For conference information, please see the conference website at https://www.adsaconference2022.com/. Abstracts and queries can be submitted to emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz. The ADSA 2022 team at Waipapa Taumata Rau can't wait to see you in December!

To that end, ADSA is also offering an abstract writing workshop in advance of the submission deadline:

The Art of the Abstract
Wednesday 20 April, 10am AEST, via Zoom

Please join us for a professional development session organised by the Postgraduate Committee on the Art of the Abstract. Our expert panel, which includes Dr Emma Willis (one of the convenors of the 2022 ADSA Conference), will share their tips and tricks on crafting an effective abstract, speaking to a call for papers, and how to balance specific detail and overall shape in 300 words or fewer. There will be some time to workshop your ideas with other attendees, and get advice on your abstracts from the panellists. All ADSA members are welcome to join us, regardless of career stage; if you have any questions, please reach out to our PG/ECR reps, Anita (a.hallewas@student.unsw.edu.au) and Gareth (g.belling@uq.net.au). 

If you are unable to attend the event, the advice section will be recorded, and made available in the Postgrad and ECR section of the ADSA Members-Only Area, where you can also find a record of our recent session on Peer Review 101.

Best wishes,
Chris, for the ADSA Board.

Call for PhD Candidate: 'Actor Training and Physical Literacy'

School of Communication & Creative Arts, Deakin University

Law Text Culture

Volume 25 (2021), "Performing Theatrical Jurisprudence"

Travelling Together: ADSA 2022, December 6—9

Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland

https://www.adsaconference2022.com/

• Journeys, wayfinding, lines of flights
• Arrivals and new beginnings
• Connection and exchange
• What are our mooring posts?
• Presence – what happens when we are present together? How does performance allow us to ‘travel together’?
• What might our experiences of the last period contribute to our disciplinary understanding of presence?
• What does our discipline have to contribute to wider discourse about the role of presence in a (we hope) post-pandemic era? Where have we come from as a discipline and where are we moving to? What are the peaks that we aspire to?
• How do we move, dance, sing, act, together through change?
• In an article for Performance Paradigm in 2021, Lisa Samuels wrote of the critical practice of ‘withness,’ a stance that turns ‘towards a standing with the engaged object/event, an attention that does not turn away, that does not seek to be somewhere other than in relation.’ How might we foster such a stance in our own practices?
• The Tongan whakataukī (proverb) ‘pikipiki hama kae vaevae manava’, an expression of lashing together canoes to preserve life, provides us with an image coming together to share knowledge. How might we better share and connect our knowledges?
• In Imagining Decolonization, Ocean Ripeka Mercier writes, ‘To see a truly decolonized Aotearoa […] decolonizing actions will […] have to transform the European systems and frameworks that are the deep institutions of colonization.’ How do we practice such decolonization within our own institutions, research and creative practices?
• What does it mean to travel with our students? What kind of journey is this? How have our students travelled together during this period of distance and isolation? What contribution does performance pedagogy have to make to these wider sector challenges?
• Theatre and performance studies has long engaged in discourses related to site and place, to travel and tourism, what more might we now have to say about these intersections?

• (re)consider the role of touch in training in which race, gender, dis/ability, and health have a significant place in shifting understandings of why/when/where and who can/should touch.
• examine the power relationships during touch between teacher/student; performer/audience; between performers in rehearsal rooms.
• critically examine the ways in which touch is (re)framed and negotiated through policy-making and revolutionary protest in drama schools, rehearsal rooms and training studios.
• Address questions such as ‘How do these movements influence and cross-fertilize each other?’

• Touch and gender
• Touch and race
• Touch as and/or despite contagion/infection
• the value of touch to wellbeing and the impacts of being deprived of that contact
• Touch as violence
• Touch as revolution
• Touch in training the actor’s body and voice in various training traditions.
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of touch in training and in rehearsal, between teacher/student, between performers, between performers and audience?  
• When performers in rehearsal and actors-in-training cannot touch or do not want to touch during the creative process, how does this change creative processes in different ways? How does it change student actors, actor trainers and performers?
• In what ways have performers and performer trainers (re)negotiated touch in their work?

• Articles features contributions in a range of critical and scholarly formats (approx. 5000-7000 words).
• Sources provides an outlet for the documentation and analysis of primary materials of performer training. We are particularly keen to receive material that documents the histories and contemporary practices associated with the issue’s theme.
• Training Grounds hosts shorter pieces, which are not peer reviewed, including essais, postcards (up to 100 words), speaking images (one page of image and text response), visual essays and book or event reviews. We welcome a wide range of different proposals for contributions including edited interviews and previously unpublished archive or source material. We also welcome suggestions for recent books on the theme to be reviewed; or for foundational texts to be re-reviewed. For further advice on these please contact: Sara Reed (sbenhardreed@gmail.com).

Issue Schedule

• 8 April 2022: 250-word proposals submitted to Ha Young Hwang (hyhwang@karts.ac.kr), Tara McAllister-Viel (tamcal@essex.ac.uk), and Liz Mills (lizm@afda.co.za).
• 9 May 2022: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation to submit contribution.
• May to 12 August 2022: Writing/preparation period.
• August to October 2022: Peer review period.
• October 2022 to January 2023: Author revisions post peer review.
• June 2023: Publication as TDPT 14.2.

Throughout the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, artists around the world have imagined new, better futures for subsidy: in America, Jeremy O. Harris invoked the Federal Theatre Project; the third edition of the UNESCO report Reshaping Policies for Creativity in 2022 recommended minimum wages and labour protections; and in Aotearoa New Zealand, artist Nisha Madhan wondered “what the long-term game plan is. Is it just to survive a few weeks? Or to take a moment to think about what might be possible that hasn’t already happened? Is this the moment, when physical access to live performance is cut off to the privileged, that we finally figure out how to open the arts up to everyone?”. As parts of the world begin to adjust to Covid-normal, how might we keep hold of this spirit of reimagination and possibility? This issue seeks to examine both the impact of Covid 19 on funding for the arts and what this ‘break’ in status quo reveals about the nature of the relationship between artists and not just governments but also other funding mechanisms.

Our starting point here follows Julian Meyrick, who declares “it is the fact of funding that demands attention” (139). Certainly, economic subsidy is one of the core points of imbrication between artists and the state. As Jen Harvie points out, in the United Kingdom and current and former Commonwealth nations, this link historically “marks an economic relationship, but it also articulates state and social attitudes to the importance of the arts, to social responsibility for the arts, to social relations and to society itself” (150). In this issue, we hope to curate a documentation of subsidy’s effects and operations, the specific challenges that come from funding live performance, and subsidy’s hermeneutic relationship with arts policy and cultural capital, recognising

what is missing is a study not of institutional change . . . or of culture’s social and economic entanglements (which are endless, culture being simultaneously everywhere and infused into particular forms), but an analysis of the bureaucratic regulation of artistic practice: of the logic of culture as it applies in a time of democratic provision. (Meyrick, 142)

We ask how value and benefit are defined in this context, and what government responses to crisis in the performing arts sector tells us about this. While artists have always been attuned to the shifting sands of government arts funding – even small changes can have a seismic impact on career progression and work development –the wholesale suspension of live performance due to public health orders magnified these industrial concerns to existential threats. In the Anglosphere, the motley collection of ad hoc initiatives to support arts companies and arts workers throughout the Covid-crisis has to some extent exposed the priorities of the neoliberal state, within which the creative industries remain radically under-funded. Indeed, as Miriam Haughton wrote of the Irish context, “Covid-19 is not only a sectoral emergency, it’s the latest sectoral emergency” (2021, 51). This is a particularly apposite moment to consider both government subsidy and broader funding mechanisms; as Haughton remarks, “Covid-19 has brought the economic livelihood of the state and the arts sector to the cliff edge at the same time, forcing a conversation regarding survival and sustainability” (50).

In this issue of Performance Paradigm, then, we seek to capitalise on this moment to reflect on the art of subsidy, and on the subsidy of art. We invite contributions that expand the frame of reference beyond the Anglosphere to other national models of live performance subsidy. Across academic pieces, artist responses, interviews, and other performance documentation, we envisage potential contributions might address:

• Historiographies of subsidy across performance forms and national traditions, particularly attending to subsidy in its historical context and between government-led and patronage-led models;
• The resistant potential of private subsidy in forms old (sponsorship, patronage) and new (crowd funding);
• Historical accounts of particular funding agencies or subsidy schemes that trace and reveal the impact of the subsidy in the art that they funded;
• Subsidy of First Nations and Indigenous performance around the world as a policy priority, and the (inter)national priorities these programs reveal;
• The role of subsidised performance in legitimising the neoliberal state, including queer strategies for subversion and re-visioning of subsidy;
• Subsidy as a marker of national distinction and cultural capital;
• The role of subsidy in the lived experience of arts practitioners, including artists’ wellbeing and proposals such as the living wage for artists;
• Polemical re-imaginings of subsidy’s form and function;
• Subsidy’s hermeneutic relationship with arts policy across time and different models of arms-length and in-house government funding;
• Subsidy across and beyond the Anglosphere, including comparative studies across different national and continental traditions; and
• The dramaturgy of subsidy.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in conversation with Barbara London
Friday February 11, 6.00am (AEDT)
Online, via Zoom

The CUNY Graduate Center’s Art Science Connect is delighted to host curator and writer Barbara London in conversation with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, the celebrated media artist working at the intersection of architecture and performance art. Lozano-Hemmer creates platforms for public participation using technologies such as robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, media walls, and telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival, and animatronics, his light and shadow works are “anti-monuments for alien agency”. London and Lozano-Hemmer will discuss the artist’s latest work, “Atmospheric Memory,” a hybrid exhibition-performance encompassing soundscapes, kinetic sculptures, immersive environments and interactive light installations, all exhibited together with original 19th-century artifacts.

The conversation will be on Zoom: please register at CUNY's website. 

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 
Special Issue: Contemporary Directions in Director Training, to be published in September 2023 as TDPT 14.3

How does a director train? 
This issue invites a broad range of contributions from scholars and artists globally, in order to offer a contemporary consideration of training for directing. We invite longer articles or ‘Sources’, each interrogating director training as it appears in a contemporary context; shorter ‘Essais’, inviting more personal reflections; and quick-fire ‘Postcards’ responding to a question or illuminating a moment of practice. We are especially keen to receive material that can host audiovisual contributions on the popular ‘TDPT blog’, integrated with the journal. See below for the full range of potential formats.

Direction?
The figure of the director and the practice of directing seems to enjoy a kind of elusiveness of definition. In contrast to the long history of shared knowledge of acting technique and performer training, how the work of the director might be defined seems challenging. And where the director spends most of their time, rehearsal, has also been considered a ‘hidden world’ (Letzler Cole, 1992). Direction goes on behind closed doors and is made up of a combination of, perhaps, dramaturgical, literary, acting, collaborative, scenographic, stage-management, and financial concerns. 

Given the ambiguity around what directing might be, the training of directors seems even more obscure. How do they know what to do? Does ‘training’ shift according to the contexts and needs of performance making? Whilst there is burgeoning publication on theatre directing, comprising scholarly work, practical guides and books by directors themselves (recently, for example, the Great European Theatre Directors series (Bloomsbury Methuen); Boenisch, 2015; Dunderdale, 2021; Simonsen, 2017; and by us: Ledger, 2019; Sidiropoulou, 2018), director training as a topic appears neglected and often dealt with as uncritically accepted directorial technique(s), methodology, and a discussion of productions.

Training(s)?
Director training is certainly institutionalised: the most well-known European examples of schools being, for instance, the Ernst Busch Hochschule, Berlin, and the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts; in the USA, university-level, professional directing programmes have long existed, and there has been a noticeable growth in recent years in academic and conservatoire director training courses elsewhere. These models have, to an extent, been adopted by other institutions globally, though some major schools have opened branches in other countries; on the one hand, localised theatre traditions may benefit, but, on the other, a kind of colonisation of practice via imported Euro-American theatre methods predominates. This special issue might offer space to consider, instead, how a director can train in geographically and culturally specific practices.
 
Some directors have not explicitly trained in directing, but emerged from educational backgrounds other than theatre, or shifted from other roles. Normalised or institutionalised training for direction might also be set against more inclusive, experiential opportunities; for instance, the well-established Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme (UK) now explicitly seeks applications from emerging directors of historically excluded backgrounds, and the many artist development schemes in specific theatre organisations (the Directors Lab in New York, for example; see too the report ‘The Director’s Voice’ [2018]). In the context of the ongoing pandemic and the emergence of hybridised theatre forms, training has now moved online (for instance, the NIPAI organisation, but also within academic or conservatoire curricula), to be delivered at a distance. 

Finally, training might exist in-between performance preparation, or exist in rehearsal itself. We invite reflections on where and how ‘training’ might be considered ongoing professional development.

Contributions
This special edition on contemporary director training aims to collect together productive examples that:

• ask what directing training ‘is’, and, crucially, how its development can best serve contemporary concerns in theatre practice
• invite an investigation and theorisation of the field, including how historical practices can be interrogated, reimagined and applied from a contemporary perspective
• internationalise and diversify perspectives, including through a variety of submission formats

In remaining contemporary in our focus, we want to open new conversations about a clearly complex and under-theorised field and to examine the current moment from a broad, inclusive and international perspective. Contributions might consider, but are not limited to: contexts of training; the ‘validity’ of director training; canonicities; communities of practice; inclusivity; interdisciplinarity and hybridity.

Possible questions and topics might include:

• how and on what terms do institutions offer director training? 
• are there ‘methodologies’ or lineages of directing? How are these taught, learned and challenged now, and who by?
• what models of director training exist beyond the Global North and Anglo-American traditions and are underrepresented in current scholarship?
• are there modes of directing/theatre-making that require certain types of training? Does the director need choreographic, musical or scenographic skills? How can directors ‘learn’ to direct collaboratively?
• where and what is the place for continuing professional development, intensives and workshops, and the rehearsal room as a laboratory for ongoing directing training?
• how can director training attend to issues including, but not restricted to, ethnicity, disability, gender, and socio-cultural background? How do economic considerations impact upon the training of directors and what models or provocations might help ensure the role is not elite or privileged? 
• what is director training in the (post)-‘COVID age’ and does the current situation change the director’s training, identity and role?

To signal your interest and intention to make a contribution to this special issue in any one of the ways identified above please email an abstract (max 250 words) to Adam J. Ledger (A.J.Ledger@bham.ac.uk) and Avra Sidiropoulou (avra.sidiropoulou@ouc.ac.cy). Training Grounds proposals are to be made to Thomas Wilson (thomas.wilson@bruford.ac.uk) with copies to Adam and Avra. Firm proposals across all areas must be received by 16 June 2022 at the latest.

Special Issues of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (TDPT) are an essential part of its offer and complement the open issues in each volume. TDPT is an international academic journal devoted to all aspects of ‘training’ (broadly defined) within the performing arts. It was founded in 2010 and launched its blog in 2015. Our target readership comprises scholars and the many varieties of professional performers, makers, choreographers, directors, dramaturgs and composers working in theatre, dance, performance and live art who have an interest in the practices of training. TDPT’s co-editors are Jonathan Pitches (University of Leeds) and Libby Worth (Royal Holloway, University of London).

Please consider the range of possibilities available within TDPT: Essays and Sources between 4000 and 6500 words; photo essays; shorter, more speculative, essais up to 1500 words; Postcards (up to 100 words); Speaking Images (short text responding to a photo, drawing, visual score, etc.); book and event reviews. All contributors could extend their work through links to blog materials (including, for example, film footage or interviews). Questions about purely digital propositions can be sent directly to James McLaughlin at jimmyacademy@gmail.com along with ideas for the blog.

Issue Schedule

• 16 June 2022: 250 word proposals to be submitted Adam J. Ledger (A.J.Ledger@bham.ac.uk) and Avra Sidiropoulou (avra.sidiropoulou@ouc.ac.cy).
• Early July 2022: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation to submit contribution.
• Early July 2022 to end October 2022: Writing/preparation period and submission of first drafts.
• End October-End of December 2022: Peer review period.
• January 2023: Author revisions, post peer review.
• September 2023: publication as Vol. 14, Issue 3.

Dear members,

Just in time to be added to your summer reading pile, Australasian Drama Studies 79 (December 2021) has been published. Our warmest congratulations to Guest Editors Pia Johnson and Miles O'Neil, ADS Editor Yoni Prior, and all of their contributors. Members can access the issue here, by logging in with their ADSA details. To whet your appetite, a Table of Contents appears below.

Best wishes,
Chris, for the ADSA Board.
 

• Editorial Pia Johnson and Miles O’Neil
• A Conversation Between Performance Photographers Brett Boardman and Jeff Busby, with Notes by Heidrun Lohr Pia Johnson
• The Intimate and the Epic in Plunge: A Writer-Director’s Approach to Heterarchical Composition  Kate Shearer
• A Performative Investigation of the Agency of Sound: Mapping the Sound/ Soundscape Portrait  Angela Viora
• ‘Where’s the AV Guy?’: A Conversation with Rhian Hinkley, Margie Medlin and Nick Roux  Yoni Prior
• Seed Value: Collaboration and Creative Development in Composed Theatre  David Megarrity 
• Siren Song: Strengthening Community through Sonic Insurgency  Miles O’Neil
• Towards a Post-Pandemics of Sound in Performance  Chris Wenn
• Liveness in the Digital Age: Performance Case Studies  Russell Fewster, Geordie Brookman and Richard Chew
• Authenticity within Digital Performance: A New Framework to Understand the Relationship between Audience, Vision Technology and Scenography  Tessa Rixon, Gene Moyle, Steph Hutchison and Joslin McKinney
• A Feminist Lens in the Rehearsal Room: On the Bodily Education of Young Girls  Pia Johnson in conversation with Adena Jacobs
• Genealogies of Darkness  Paul Jackson 
• A Sound Conversation: Performance-Makers and Sound Practices with Roslyn Oades, Madeleine Flynn and Tamara Saulwick  Kate Hunter

Dear Colleagues, 

The Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne has an open call for identified Indigenous positions as follows:

• 2 x Level A/B Indigenous Research Fellow positions (Fixed-term, 4 years, details here: https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/907433/indigenous-research-fellow; and

• Multiple Faculty-wide positions at all levels and in any discipline, subject in the first instance to submission of an Expression of Interest, found here: https://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/907449/indigenous-academic-all-levels. 

Please consider sharing this with your networks, and with individuals you think may be interested. While the Research Fellow positions have a closing date of 31 January 2022, the Faculty-wide positions appear to be an open call with reviews of EOIs at the end of February, June, and October 2022. 

Best wishes,
Chris.

Dear colleagues, 

A team at Deakin University, led by Professor Hilary Glow and Professor Katja Johanson, is currently recruiting for a full-time, funded PhD candidate on their project on organisational change in the arts and cultural sector to diversify arts audiences. Full details on the scholarship, and the link to apply via Expression of Interest, can be found here: https://www.deakin.edu.au/study/fees-and-scholarships/scholarships/find-a-scholarship/hdr-scholarship-organisational-change-in-the-arts.

Please circulate this email to any students or colleagues you think might be interested — the candidate must meet Deakin's PhD entrance requirements, which include an Honours degree (first class) or an equivalent Masters degree with a substantial research component. The position is open to domestic (Australian citizenship, permanent residence, or New Zealand citizenship) and international candidates, and applications close at 5pm (AEDT) Monday 7 February. 

Best wishes,
Chris.

Dear colleagues, 

Flinders University are currently advertising for a Professor, Teaching & Research, in Drama. Details of the job can be found on the Seek listing: https://www.seek.com.au/job/55330783. Applications are to be submitted through the Jobs at Flinders website, by 11.59pm (ACDT) on 12 January 2022. Application enquiries can be directed to Alex Vickery-Howe. 

Best wishes,
Chris.

The Centre for Critical and Creative Writing (CCCW) presents a symposium on

Wicked Problems and Speculative Futures: Writing the Anthropocene

22-23 June, 2022
Hosted at St Lucia campus Brisbane/Meanjin and online by the University of Queensland (UQ)

Timothy Morton has termed global warming a wicked problem, ‘one you can rationally diagnose but to which there is no feasible rational solution’ (36). For Morton, living in the Anthropocene comes with an uncanny knowing – a ‘weird weirdness’ – underpinning our awareness that this wicked problem is one of our own making. Theatre scholars Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh have gone so far as to suggest that this wicked problem is an Absurd one – ‘Absurd’ with a capital ‘A’ – calling for a rethinking and a ‘greening’ of the Theatre of the Absurd. According to their analysis, we are once again, like our post-war forebears, living in existential times, and need to re-read that movement through the eco-critical lens of the present. Morton’s sense that we are living in uncanny times – of weather, indeed of a planet and its behaviour – that is at once deeply familiar but behaving deeply strangely lends itself also to a Gothic reading of literature, theatre, film, and visual art depicting the Anthropocene. After all, we are living in a period where we are reaping what we have sown since we first started pumping carbon into our atmosphere. The return of the repressed is erupting into the present with violent force in the form of climate catastrophe. So how are our artists and critical theorists engaging with the climate change and its material effects? What are the most appropriate literary forms and genres to be tackling the issue, and how are artists bending them to their own needs in the twenty-first century? In short, how do we write the Anthropocene?

The CCCW is very proud to announce that keynote speeches will be provided by international climate fiction theorist Professor Adeline Johns-Putra (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China) and internationally-acclaimed Australian novelist James Bradley. We will also host a special in-conversation-with session between Noongar speculative writer Claire G. Coleman and UQ’s Professor Kim Wilkins, and another with journalist-activists Garry and Anne Charnock and UQ’s Dr Helen Marshall.

Questions that arise here include: How do we portray or speculate about the future in literature, theatre, film and visual art in uncanny times, where the present is more alarming than some of the direst of future predictions have been? Are we living in a futuristic Gothic dystopia, or is there hope that this is a wicked problem that we can fix? How do we solve it through art? How do we map the ways in which the Anthropocene has been portrayed in cli fi across the twenty first century? As we move from Kyoto to the Paris Agreement to the Glasgow Climate Pact, how is the artistic response to the Anthropocene tracking? Towards ever-more dystopic depictions of doom, or to cautious narratives of hope? Is there a pragmatic in-between?

We invite individual proposals from critical and creative writers for 20 minute papers that address the following themes, topics and questions as they pertain to the wicked problem of writing the Anthropocene:

• Droughts and floods: the absence and/or the omnipresence of cli-fi narratives on page, stage, screen and gallery
• Narratives of hope vs narratives of doom
• Dystopia/Armageddon fatigue
• Environmental rhetoric in the Anthropocene
• Technical communication and wicked problems
• The ethics of speculation in an age of fake news
• The limits, opportunities and obligations of naturalism
• Writing speculative futures in a time where ‘the future’ is intruding into/become the present 
• World building and techniques for describing the future
• Science writing on the Anthropocene
• The Anthropocene and colonialism
• The Anthropocene and race
• Art and the real world: collaborations between artists, scientists and activists
• The cottagecore movement and the aesthetics/ethics of everyday living 
• Gothic pasts and futures

​​​​​​​Abstracts due by: 31 January 2022.
Acceptances issued by: 28 February 2022.
Cost: Free. 

The Centre for Critical and Creative Writing aims not only to champion and celebrate Australian writing in all of its many forms, but also to lead important national debate around questions of representation, opportunity, and identity. We particularly welcome applications from scholars and practitioners traditionally under-represented in higher education, or whose voices are under-represented amongst the range of those we have identified in the above symposium description.

Send proposals and queries in the first instance to Associate Professor Stephen Carleton, Director of the Centre for Critical and Creative Writing, on cccw@uq.edu.au.


Indicative Reading List:
Bradley, James. Ghost Species. Hamish Hamilton, 2020.
Coleman, Claire G. Terra Nullius. Hachette, 2017.
Freestone, Elizabeth and Jeanie O’Hare. 100 Plays to Save the World. Nick Hern Books, 2021.
Johns-Putra, Adeline, ed. Climate and Literature. Cambridge UP, 2019.
Lavery, Carl and Finburgh, Clare, eds. Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage. Bloomsbury, 2015.
Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. Columbia UP, 2016.
Scranton, Roy. Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilisation. City Lights Publishers, 2015.
Taylor, Melanie Benson. “Indigenous Interruptions in the Anthropocene.” PMLA, vol. 136, no. 1, 2021, pp. 9-16.
Todd, Zoe. “Indigenizing the Anthropocene.” Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. Edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, Open Humanities Press, 2015, pp. 241-254.

Dear members, 

I hope you are well, and enjoying your time at the annual conference. 

Flinders University have recently listed two new positions in which members might be interested:

• Associate Lecturer (0.5) — Drama; and
• Lecturer (1.0) — Creative and Performing Arts (Screen). 

Details on each position can be found by following the above links; applications are to be submitted through the Jobs at Flinders site. I would draw your attention in particular to the closing date for the Drama position, which is 11.59pm (ACDT) this Sunday December 5. 

Best wishes,
Chris.

Dear members,

I am writing to you to encourage you to nominate yourself, or a postgraduate student you supervise, for the Veronica Kelly Prize. The only thing that nominees need to do right now is to e-mail their nomination along with their abstract to Hilary Halba on contact details below; they don’t have to send their completed paper yet.

This award is designed to recognise research excellence in postgraduate studies, and is awarded to the best postgraduate paper delivered at the ADSA conference. To be eligible for the award candidates must:

• nominate themselves for consideration to the prize convenor prior to the conference;
• submit a draft of the paper in conference presentation format (it is understood it will not yet be in publication ready format) to the prize convenor by Wednesday 1st December 2021;
• be a currently enrolled postgraduate student;
• present an original paper at the conference;
• be a current student member of ADSA at the time of application;
• not hold a tenured (that is ongoing or continuing contract) position at a university or other tertiary institution; and
• not have previously been awarded the prize.

The criteria for shortlisting and selecting the most excellent paper is:

• the paper is nominated for the prize before the conference commences;
• the paper engagingly and effectively addresses the conference theme;
• the paper presents a clear, complete, well-researched argument about an element of drama, theatre or performance studies which is of interest to the field at large, and original or innovative in its content or its conceptualisation;
• the paper is suitable for publication in ADS within 3 months of presentation.

Each year’s winner is announced in a special session at the conclusion of the ADSA conference. The Prize consists of $500 from ADSA, and mentoring towards publication of the winning paper in Australasian Drama Studies. For further information, or to nominate yourself, please contact Hilary Halba on hilary.halba@otago.ac.nz. The deadline for nominations for the Veronica Kelly Prize is 1 December 2021, at the conclusion of the pre-conference PG/ECR Day. 

Warm regards,
Hilary Halba.
Panel chair – Veronica Kelly Prize

The new issue of Performance Paradigm is out now.
 

No 16 (2021): Performance and Radical Kindness

Edited by Emma Willis, Alys Longley and Victoria Wynne-Jones 

Performance Studies International has announced this year’s conference with the theme of ‘Hunger’. 

PSi #27: Hunger seeks panels, artistic, activist and scholarly actions and interventions on the theme in a fully online conference in July 2022. We have two submission streams available to applicants: response panels and hunger action sessions. 

PDF copy of the full CFP is attached
Also see weblink to the CFP on the PSi website below.

Caitlin Main

Communications Officer 

PSi#27 Hunger

HKAPA Virtual Conference
Harnessing a 21st Century approach to Performing Arts: Technology, Practice, Education and Research

Date: 20 - 22 January, 2022
Host: Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts

The past two years have been filled with an unprecedented scope of complexities. Universities and Conservatories in Performing Arts had to take a more proactive and agile role in shifting into newer learning modes and teaching under the pandemic. These paradigm shifts required new ways of encounters and approaches as universities and conservatories (re)think how the new normal in living, performance, learning and teaching under the pandemic required a (re)invention of existence, values, and ways of doing. As we approach a new era of (re)thinking, universities and conservatories must now reflect on their practices and generate innovative strategies and insights to overcome the new challenges, and ask how technologies and 21st Century competencies are reshaping performing arts in performance, curriculum design, teaching and learning and research.

We invite students, educators, researchers, and practitioners to submit a 250 to 300 word abstract for a paper presentation, roundtable discussion, lecture-demonstration /workshop, or performance lecture. The abstract should clearly state the aim/objective, the issues/questions addressed, the research design and methodology, the findings and the implications addressing these topics broadly within these themes:

• Digital pedagogies and educational technology
• Online, mobile, flexible, and blended learning
• 21st Century competencies and curriculum in performing arts pedagogy
• Digital performance and live streaming
• Telematic performance
• Experimental theatre
• Transmedia storytelling
• Innovation in Practice as Research (PaR)/Applied practice/Community of practice.

• What are the various creative innovations and technologies emerging in performing arts, practice, performance, and art pedagogy in this new normal?
• What are the ways in which both academics, practitioners and arts educators articulate and evolve these (re)new approaches within the field of performing arts?
• What are the philosophical underpinnings?
• What are the issues and challenges (re)emerging that need confronting as artists, performers, academics, educators, researchers, performers, and spectators?

• a postgraduate qualification in Theatre or a related field 
• an understanding of and experience working in the professional theatre industry 
• experience in teaching at a Tertiary level  
• outstanding organisation skills, creativity, and adeptness to think on the floor 
• ability to build strong working relationships with a variety of colleagues, students and stakeholders.  

 
Why you should join our team 
The appointee will have the opportunity to contribute to a vibrant, positive, and unique programme in Theatre at Victoria, and to other academic and creative communities in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. 

Any questions?
Please contact contacthr@vuw.ac.nz. 

Closing date
Applications close on 22 October 2021, via the VUW job site.

CfP: Changing Perspectives on Live Performance: Interrogating digital dimensions and new modes of engagement

8-9 October 2021
Anglia Ruskin University
An online international symposium for academics and practitioners

The past year has brought changing circumstances to the performance scene. The impossibility of rehearsing and performing to live audiences has forced artists to investigate new alternatives. This has affected both the aesthetics of performance-making and the professional practices of performance-makers. Changes in formats have created new ways of reaching audiences which have more fully exploited an ever-increasing engagement with a wide variety of screen-based technology and digital platforms.

This has significantly transformed live performances which have adapted to new ways of working and resulted in resourceful and imaginative alternatives and variations. Identifying the features of these changes will highlight pioneering directions for the future of live performance. This involves developments in the relationship between dance, theatre and film, offering digital innovations within liveness that this symposium wishes to identify and analyse.
We welcome presentations, provocations, workshops, and performances as part of the proposals for participating in the symposium. The aim is to identify and analyse the transformations and generate new conversations among artists and theoreticians.

Keynote speakers include:
Anne Bogart (theatre director, SITI Company, USA)
Prof Maria Shevtsova (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Dr Mark Nicholls (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Roundtable discussion includes:
Charlotte Vincent (choreographer/director, Vincent Dance Theatre, UK)

Workshop by:
Parliament of Practices

The symposium will cover but is not limited to the following themes:

• integrating screen-based technology and practices into live performance

• blurring the boundaries between the stage and the screen

• preserving, enhancing, or degrading the actor’s performance via screen-based technology

• delivering virtual performances - platforms and best practice

• the role of recording live performances

• theatrical adaptations of cinematography

• choreographing the camera when recording live performances

• streaming performance or recording performance

• site-specific as the new theatre

• evolving and enduring innovations

• theatre developing its own cinematic language

• expanding and diminishing theatrical markets

• changing patterns in audience engagement and spectatorship

• cognitive dimensions of engaging with emerging forms

• impact on emerging artists and pathways into production

• re-thinking notions of live performance

• the digital hiatus altering the experience of live performance

• the experience of the liveness in a digital context

• digital dramaturgies within live performance

• the gendered nature of the impact of digital and technological innovations

• definitions of digital theatre

• blended and hybrid modes in transmission of meaning

Please email all abstracts (no more than 300 words in length), an additional brief biographical information (no more than 50 words) as well as the precise details of the audio-visual technology you will need to make your presentation.
 

Proposals must be submitted to naz.yeni@anglia.ac.uk by 31 August 2021

NAZ YENI
Theatre-maker, Movement Practitioner, Researcher, Lecturer (UK)
 
Dr EVA AYAMAMI RENE
Senior Lecturer of Dance, Cambridge School of Creative Industries,
Anglia Ruskin University (UK)
 
Dr PATRICIA DI RISIO
Lecturer in Media, Screen Studies and Journalism,
Monash College (Monash University, Australia)
 
Dr MELINA SCIALOM
Research Fellow in Theatre and Performing Arts,
The Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), (Brazil, CAPES-Print funding programme)

New Publication, Out now

The Cambridge Companion to the Circus, edited by Gillian Arrighi and Jim Davis

A terrific volume with 16 chapters over 2 parts. Gillian has shared the Cambridge 20% discount flyer, see attached.

From the back cover:

Part One: Trans-national Geographies of the Modern Circus

Catching On: Chinese Acrobatics from China to the West in the Twenty-First Century                                                                                                            

Part Two: Circus Acts and Aesthetics