DEADLINE EXTENDED Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance Themed Issue 31,1 (Publication Feb 2026) Call for Proposals
"Walking as applied critical practices: methodologies, pedagogies and performances"
Editorial Team: Dee Heddon, Stephanie Springgay, Harry Wilson
The dynamic relationships between walking, performance and performativity are long-standing, from psychogeographical drifts, which trace capitalism’s appropriations and productions of place, to protest marches which re-claim the streets as a demonstration of power, from ceremonial walks as memorialisations of place, to (mis)guided tours which rewrite partial histories, from attentive walking as ways to know and feel differently, to technologically-enabled walking performances that take the city as their stage. Walking as a mobile method of applied critical practice - with bodies located in and moving through space – offers a plurality of ways to explore, feel, attend, make, enact, connect, contest and demand. Walking is often simultaneously method (a process of rigorous investigation), pedagogy (a mode of engaged learning), and practice (a way of doing and sharing).
For many, COVID-19 and its attendant restrictions focused a spotlight on walking. For some, it became permitted and encouraged as daily exercise or a safe way to travel, while for others, it became out of reach because of policing or total lock downs. Walking was experienced as liberating, boring, necessary, scary, a lifesaver, and forbidden (Rose, Heddon, Law et al., 2022). Practitioners and teachers of drama and performance engaged with walking, some for the first time, as a means to continue their work, finding innovative ways to offer continued access to social, cultural and learning experiences. However, barriers to walking – time, access, confidence, safety – were amplified, including the affordances given to different bodies that walk in different places. Inequalities in the Global North and South were also magnified during this time, including people’s access to walking. This themed edition on walking as a critical applied practice takes its cue from the multiple ways in which walking was oriented during COVID-19, to consider how walking can be harnessed as creative, critical and pedagogical resource in an ongoing/’post’-pandemic world.
We invite submissions which engage with the diversity of walking as methodology, pedagogy and performance, attentive not just to walking’s potential as a critical applied practice, but also its current exclusions and barriers:
Submission Instructions We welcome research articles (c.6,000) and other forms of contributions such as interviews, provocations, practitioner statements and case studies (c.1,500) as well as creative contributions, such as photo essays, walking scores, or online outputs (10-15 minutes).
Online outputs could include peripatetic conversations between researchers or practitioners recorded on the move, clips of performances and/or workshops, and more. All submissions will be reviewed by two anonymous referees and by the editors.
Please send 300-word proposals for contributions, plus 100-word biographies for each contributor, to Deirdre.Heddon@glasgow.ac.uk
Editorial Biographies Professor Dee Heddon holds the James Arnott Chair in Drama at the University of Glasgow and has practiced and published widely on walking as a creative practice. In 2012, she co-founded with Misha Myers, the ongoing creative-research project, The Walking Library. She is currently completing an AHRC-funded project, Walking Publics/Walking Arts: Walking, Wellbeing and Community during COVID-19, a collaboration with Maggie O’Neill, Morag Rose, Clare Qualmann, and Harry Wilson.
Professor Stephanie Springgay is Director of the School of the Arts (SOTA), at McMaster University, Canada. She is a leading scholar of research-creation with a focus on walking, affect, queer theory, and contemporary art as pedagogy. She runs WalkingLab, an SSHRC-funded international research-creation project with a goal to create a collaborative network and partnership between artists, arts organizations, activists, scholars and educators interested in walking, movement, and sensory knowledge. Springgay’s other funded project is The Pedagogical Impulse. She is the author, with Sarah E. Truman, of Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: WalkingLab (2019).
Dr Harry Wilson is an Early Career Researcher in Digital Theatre at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on interdisciplinary explorations of live art and performance, photography, documentation, digital art and new media and he has recently been exploring intersections between immersive technologies and intimate performance, including virtual and remote walks.
References
Professor Deirdre Heddon, PhD, FRSE James Arnott Chair in Drama & Head of Theatre Studies University of Glasgow https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/cca/staff/deirdreheddon/
PI Walking Publics/Walking Art: Walking, Wellbeing & Community During COVID-19 CoI, newLEAF | |
For more information, see: | https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/FhzxCYWLOxh3G452Dt0LgpJ?domain=bit.ly |
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Job Opportunity: Positions in Acting, WAAPADetails and application link: https://www.ecu.edu.au/employment-opportunities/overview. Applications close: 13 october 2023, 11.30pm (AWST). The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) is seeking skilled and experienced acting teachers to join the creative and forward-looking BA Acting team as we prepare to move into Edith Cowan University's new state of the art City Campus in the heart of Perth. Following recent staff retirement the following roles are open:
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Performing Care and Carelessness: An interdisciplinary conference delivered in hybrid formatHosted by The Performance of the Real Research Theme at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand14th – 16th February 2024 Call for Papers Care is a topic of enormous complexity that is relevant to all of us. In a turbulent era, scholars from many different fields are returning again and again to consider care, or a lack of care, in political spheres, in relation to the environment, in a globalised world, in everyday life, amidst health crises, and in our mediatised and digital lives. Care is both an affective orientation (I.e. ‘caring about’) and a practice (I.e. ‘caring for’, or ‘taking care of’). As such, it is something that is both performed, and performative; attached to embodied subjectivities, in which it takes on polysemic potential as a communicative and symbolic as well as relational act. As intimate and everyday as it can be, it is also recognised as being both political and politicised; entangled with systems of power at both macro and micro/everyday levels. As James Thompson observes, while care was once considered the province of the household, it is now ‘a crucial issue within public policy’ (2020: 41–2). This is perhaps especially true given that 21st century care politics have been deeply concerned with aims such as unmaking racial capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, the carceral state, and the colonial present (Woodly et al. 2021: 891). A lack of care - or a carelessness - can also become routinely embedded in many social institutions. As we acknowledge structures that represent barriers to care/ing, we can also acknowledge that caring despite these can stand as a form of resistance; an articulation of particular ethical commitments, an expression of collective identity, or an act of political imagination. As such, amidst shifting and challenging contemporary contexts, we consider how a call to care (for marginalised groups, for the natural world, for the people around us, and for distant others) can generate tensions and dilemmas. We focus on how both care and carelessness are performed, negotiated, and communicated, in both public and private settings, in response. We encourage contributions relating (but not limited) to the following aspects of the performance and performativity of care:
Abstracts of 200-250 words due by 31st October 2023.
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For more information, see: | www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real |
The Performance and Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL) in association with the Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI), the Climate Action Beacon and Griffith Institute for Educational Research (GIER) at Griffith University invite you to attend the Culture for Climate Symposium: Supporting the transition to sustainability in the performing arts.
When: Friday 8 September, 9.00am - 5.00pm In Person: The Ship Inn Function Room (S06), Level 2, Sidon Street, South Brisbane Online: Link to be advised on RSVP P+ERL are hosting this Culture for Climate Symposium in Brisbane and online on Friday 8 September (9am - 5pm). The day is organised around the three key areas of Programming, Practice and Policy with international key notes and provocations together with more local speakers on the panels. As part of your preparation, familiarise yourself with their recent Culture for Climate report
Link to the registration and brief here
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For more information, see: | https://app.vision6.com.au/em/message/email/view.php?id=1728599&a=100788&k=ReuyIZ2S9lRftnmDdaozKB2FHzjFNkfk4KwRBrNHo8M |
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For more information, see: | www.massey.ac.nz/about/colleges-schools-and-institutes/college-of-humanities-and-social-sciences/school-of-humanities-media-and-creative-communication/precarity-creative-arts-and-wellbeing-symposium/ |
Call for Papers: The S-Word, 2024Stand in Place / Stanislavsky and Place4 — 6 April 2024
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2023 ADSA ConferenceArchives, Artists & AbsencesKaurna Country, Adelaide
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For more information, see: | www.adsa.edu.au/next-conference |
Performance ResearchCall for Reviews EdtiorSubmissions due: 30 June 2023. About the role The Performance Research journal seeks an incoming Reviews Editor, to begin in August/September 2023 for an initial three-year term. This is an opportunity to join a team of committed global scholars and artists invested in innovative and equitable publishing. In particular, we seek a Reviews Editor who will be attentive to new trends in Performance Studies, uplift emergent voices in the field, value a diverse range of scholars, methods and topics and operate with a generously collegial attitude to support contributing scholars. While the position is unpaid, it offers the post holder the opportunity to develop editorial skills re the curation and management of published work, to expand international networks of collaboration and collegiality with both select presses and contributing scholars, and to enhance experience for CV purposes. A free subscription to the journal is provided. All are welcome to apply; no prior editorial experience is required as we will work with the new editor to ensure they are supported in the role. About Performance Research Since 1996, Performance Research has set a precedent that has become standard for thematic and cross-disciplinary ways of bringing together the varied materials of artistic and theoretical research in the expanded field of performance. Working closely with designers, artists, academics, theorists, performance practitioners and writers, Performance Research resists disconnected, disembodied and disinterested forms of scholarship. We prefer instead the possibilities of imagining the journal as a dynamic space of performance that produces inspiring conversations, unlikely connections and curious confluences. Our emphasis on contemporary performance arts within changing cultures and technologies is reflected in the interdisciplinary vision and international scope of the journal. Performance Research continues to combine writings and works for the page in an interplay of analysis, anecdote, polemic and criticism—interweaving the oblique with the conflicting, the pivotal with the resistant and the eclectic with the indispensable. Reviews Editor responsibilties Performance Research is published eight times annually; for each issue, the Reviews Editor has full responsibility for initiating and curating the Reviews Section. As such, the Reviews Editor:
Application details If you are interested, please email a cover letter expressing your interest and experience, along with a relevant CV, to Deputy Editor Helena Grehan (h.grehan@murdoch.edu.au) by 30 June 2023. If you have questions about the role prior to submission, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the current Reviews Editor, Anna Jayne Kimmel (ajkimmel@stanford.edu). | |
For more information, see: | www.performance-research.org/ |
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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.
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Performance Paradigm 17 (2022)Perform or Else? Revisiting Jon McKenzie's Work in the Post-Pandemic WorldPerformance Paradigm 17 is online now! This latest issue revisits Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else, reflecting on the book's influence on performance studies and beyond over the last two decades, and thinking about what its insights mean in a post-pandemic era. The issue is edited by Emma Willis, Chris Hay and Nien Yuan Cheng and features an interdisciplinary range of long and short articles, as well as interviews with McKenzie and artist pages. Contributors include: Tim Edkins, Ioana B. Jucan, Ali Na, Shuntaro Yoshida, Natsumi Fukasawa, Esther Neff, Nien Yuan Cheng, Chris Hay, Emma Willis, Jon McKenzie, Edward Scheer, Sara Baranzoni, Paolo Vignola, Helen Dickinson, Fabian Muniesa, Anna Islind, Anthony Gritten, Miško Šuvaković and Goran Sergej Pristaš. | |
For more information, see: | www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/issue/view/28/showToc |
ADSA call out - PhD scholarship opportunity - please share Area of research: Self-sensing and somatic awarenesses: A movement improvisation study of interoception and physical literacy (a Deakin-Coventry Cotutelle arrangement) Dear ADSA colleagues, Deakin Theatre and Dance is offering two PhD scholarships in a partnership with C-Dare in Coventry UK. We are seeking applicants who are interested in the intersection of movement and physical literacy with a particular focus on somatic practice and interoception. Candidates will commence their studies in Australia and complete their second year in Coventry UK, before concluding in Australia. There is more information on the URL Questions can be directed to Associate Professor Rea Dennis, rea.dennis@deakin.edu.au | |
For more information, see: | https://www.deakin.edu.au/study/fees-and-scholarships/scholarships/find-a-scholarship/deakin-coventry-cotutelle-self-sensing-and-somatic-awarenesses |
Job Opportunity: First Nations Writer's Fellowship, University of AdelaideJob listing: https://careers.adelaide.edu.au/cw/en/job/511616/first-nations-writers-fellowship. Closing date: 16 April 2023. The JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice First Nations Fellowships support the production of new work by First Nations artists, to be awarded to creative writers/storytellers and musicians, beginning with a writer in 2023. The Fellowship comprises $10,000 for creative development of a project, and office space at the Centre. Collaborations and dialogue between the Fellow and JMCCCP members will be encouraged, and the successful applicant will be invited to give a masterclass to students in English and Creative Writing. The Fellow will also be free to engage with our neighbours in the North Terrace Cultural Precinct, by exploring or responding to the collections of the South Australian Museum, or by participating in the programs of the Art Gallery of South Australia, particularly those scheduled around Tarnanthi, Reconciliation week and NAIDOC week. Applications close: 11.55pm (ACST), 16 April 2023. For more information, or a confidential discussion about the role, please contact Professor Anne Pender, Director JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice (anne.pender@adelaide.edu.au). |
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Australasian Drama Studies, vol. 83 (Special Edition)Resilience? Response, Resourcefulness, Recovery, ResistanceCall for proposalsThe effects of the Covid pandemic on the field of theatre and performance in Australasia have intensified and, in some cases, refocussed the attention of artists and scholars on issues of resilience, well-being and precarity that have been legitimate preoccupations across academic disciplines since the early 2000’s. As Ames and Greer (2021: 1) point out, however, the resilience so frequently attributed to those who work in creative spheres can also serve “to rationalise and naturalise the redistribution of responsibility for social and systemic problems from the state to communities and individuals” . How is this sustainable? This century we are witnessing the emergence of critique, practices and actions that foreground the value of ‘the arts’ and challenge instrumentalist models, demanding greater emphasis on people-centred and strength-based approaches. In this issue, we aim to interrogate convenient notions of resilience and seek to reiterate Ames and Greer’s salient questions, asking ‘resilience to what?’ and ‘resilience for whom?” (4) in our region. How might the quest for resilience serve the larger agenda of governments and the corporate sector if the resourcefulness attributed to our sector represents what Evans and Reid describe as “deceitful emancipatory claims that force people to embrace their servitude as though it were their liberation” (2015: 154) ? Where do rebellion, resistance and revolution feature in the discourse, aesthetic, and practices of next generation artists? We purposely do not use the term ‘post-pandemic,’ as the pandemic is still with us and our processes, modes and sites of production and learning continue to need to account for this. In a changed landscape, is it resilience that is needed? Can resilience be characterised simply as a ‘bouncing back’ to original shape in this context? Acknowledging the “located, contextual nature of resilience” (Ames and Greer: 3), where, and in what shape, do we find ourselves? This issue is, then, intended as a form of health check, examining the state of play in theatre, performance, scholarship and training in Australasia in precarious times. While the Covid pandemic sits within a range of imminent and immediate global crises that both inform and threaten our practices as artists and scholars (if not our existence), its effects have arguably piggy-backed on more persistent problems in relation to making and holding space for diversity, decolonisation, equity and wellbeing. All of these pressing issues point to both individual and collective vulnerabilities and appear in localised formations in our region that can be fragile, at risk of erosion, and in some cases of extinction.
Send proposals of 300 words to the editors on the emails below by 17 April 2023. If commissioned, full submissions will be due on 25 July 2023.
Rea Dennis (rea.dennis@deakin.edu.au)
Yoni Prior (editor.ads@adsa.edu.au) Sarah Woodland (sarah.woodland@unimelb.edu.au) Erica Charalambous (echaral@deakin.edu.au) References Margaret Ames & Stephen Greer (2021) Renegotiating resilience, redefining resourcefulness, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 26:1, 1-8. Brad Evans & Julian Reid (2015) Exhausted by resilience: response to the commentaries, Resilience, 3:2, 154-159. |
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 editorsEditors: Jonathan Pitches (j.pitches@leeds.ac.uk) Libby Worth (libby.worth@rhul.ac.uk) Training Grounds Editor: Maria Kapsali (M.Kapsali@leeds.ac.uk) If not now, when?We are living in a time of an unprecedented global environmental crisis. Scientists have developed a sophisticated understanding of the Earth’s climate system and we know with high confidence that climate change is happening today as a result of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity. Negative impacts from climate change, including extreme weather events, the acidification of the oceans, declining glaciers and sea ice, and rising sea temperatures are already being felt and will continue to increase into the future. Radical action to limit future global greenhouse gas emissions is essential if we are to restrict future changes in the climate system. A key target emerging from COP27 (November 2022) is the pressing need to effect the shift from pledging to implementation. In this time of climate emergency we must collectively accelerate, scale up, replicate success stories and bring about transformative action. Conscious of the ubiquitous, and iniquitous acts of greenwashing and virtue signaling, this call for transformative activism must at the same time be expressed honestly with open acknowledgment of the barriers to change, the impediments, and potential failures and the need for persistence - to try and then to try again. In the last 20 years, there has been an increase in arts-based training for environmental awareness, and a rich history of practitioners working outside, drawing for instance from paratheatre, somatics and bodyweather. There has been a concomitant process in Fine Art - Suzi Gablik's The Re-enchantment of Art (1991) is a key frame of reference and Natalie Loveless’s How to make Art at the End of the World (2019), has also been very influential more recently. Their focus on pedagogy, responsibility and ethics is instructive for thinking across disciplines. In parallel with this movement there has been a too-late acknowledgement of indigenous/first peoples’ training methods, and the capacity they have to spark new thinking about old training methods, and thus to decolonise the training studio – Te Rākau’s Theatre Marae for instance in Aotearoa/NewZealand (Pearse-Otene, TDPT 12.1) or Cricri Bellerose’s ecosomatic attentiveness through which she becomes an ‘apprentice to the land’ (TDPT 13.2). In the UK and the US, there have been logistical and industrial responses to the crisis, with a focus on finding ways of operating more sustainably and with less waste. The emergence of the Theatre Green Book, now complete at 3 Volumes, provides free guidance for theatre-makers on what everyone can and should be doing to change their practice, and is evidence of the UK theatre sector’s commitment to creating a common standard for sustainable theatre. Similarly, in the US, the Broadway Green Alliance has paved the way for an initiative dedicated to educating and inspiring producing theatres to implement environmentally friendlier practices, with their Green Captain programme providing advocacy and support for professional theatres and college theatre departments. In the UK, some institutions have adopted Green Captains, highlighting their commitment to future sustainable practices. These programmes are, however, almost exclusively focused on theatre production, buildings and operations. If we look to the training methods of performers employed in these contexts, there is scant (published) evidence of sustainable, or ‘green training’ practices. Cognisant of the urgent need to address the often problematic issues around responsibility for engagement and action, our discipline is provoking ways to respond. For example, the 9th edition of the International Platform for Performer Training (Chiusi, Italy, January 2023), where this Call for Papers was first developed, included New Creative Ecologies: Non-anthropocentric Spaces, Geopoetics and Climate Change in Performer Training as one of its four key themes for exploration, while RiDE’s forthcoming Special Issue, Confronting the Global Climate Crisis: Responsibility, Agency, and Action, seeks to ‘confront the climate crisis with a revived interest in the diverse pedagogical, ethical, aesthetic, and sensory qualities’ of applied theatre research and practice. In this Special Issue of TDPT we seek to discover green trainings’ roots, to document forms of green training which already exist, and to debate what new forms might emerge. As such, our questions for this special issue may be conceived in three interrelated parts – sources, contemporary practices and imagined futures: SOURCES
CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES
IMAGINED FUTURES
We welcome submissions from authors both inside and outside academic institutions, from professional practitioners and those who are currently undergoing training or who have experiences to tell from their training histories. To signal your 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 Jonathan Pitches, University of Leeds (j.pitches@leeds.ac.uk) and Libby Worth, Royal Holloway, University of London (libby.worth@rhul.ac.uk). Training Grounds proposals are to be made to Maria Kapsali M.Kapsali@leeds.ac.uk, and copied to Jonathan and Libby. Please state clearly which type of Training Grounds submission you wish to offer. Our deadline for these abstracts is 13 June 2023. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training has three sections:
Innovative cross-over print/digital formats are possible, including the submission of audiovisual training materials, which can be housed on the online interactive Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal blog: http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/. About Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (TDPT) 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 own blog in 2015. In 2022 we reached the landmark of 50,000 downloads in one year. 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). Issue Schedule
References Climate Change Committee. 2023. News and Insights. [Online]. [Accessed 16 January 2023]. Available from: https://www.theccc.org.uk/ COP27. 2023. Vision and Mission. [Online]. [Accessed 16 January 2023]. Available from: https://cop27.eg/#/vision#goals University of Surrey. 2023. Guildford School of Acting (GSA) and its green captains pioneer sustainable theatre production. [Online]. 9 November 2021. [Accessed 16 January 2023]. Available from: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/guildford-school-acting-gsa-and-its-green-captains-pioneer-sustainable-theatre-production |
Hosted by the CREATE Centre at the University of Sydney, in collaboration with University of British Columbia Research-based Theatre Lab and in association with the School of Theatre and Performance Studies: a 2-day Symposium on Research-Based Theatre featuring national and international guests, presentations, workshops, and a performance of Empire of the Son by Canadian solo theatre artist Tetsuro Shigematsu. Research-Based Theatre (RbT) is a qualitative, arts-based methodology that invites researchers, artists, educators, and research participants to collectively translate and transform research phenomena into theatre. This approach makes use of applied drama and theatre strategies, and at its core rests on two commitments: to honour and ethically explore the research context, and to engage and commit to the art form of theatre. Explore a methodology that strives to enliven research, honouring subtilties and complexities while engaging researchers, participants, and audiences in critical and empathetic explorations within live and ephemeral spaces using a host of theatre-based approaches.
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For more information, see: | whatson.sydney.edu.au/event/652366db-d08f-434d-b62a-d3d6b1a14318 |
Dear members, On this coming Saturday 4 February, some of the co-editors and authors of the recent special issue of Australasian Drama Studies on Queer Performance in our region have curated a panel discussion at Melbourne's Midsumma Festival. Although the event is free, booking is required at the link below. When: 11.00am - 12.30pm, Saturday 4 February Where: The Edge, Federation Square Bookings: via the Midsumma website. Best wishes, ADSA Board. | |
For more information, see: | www.midsumma.org.au/whats-on/events/midsumma-matters-a-panel-on-queer-performance |
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS GLOBAL CONNECTIONS IN PERFORMANCE PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE International conference jointly hosted by LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore) The National University of Theatre and Film I.L Caragiale (Romania) Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts (Australia) 31 May - 3 June 2023 Online Proposal submission deadline: 5 February 2023 The 21st century has brought about critical societal changes that could be argued to put pressure on some of the paramount tenets of performance pedagogy and practice during the 20th century. Transnational connections have enriched our practice with diverse cultural influences and techniques. But they have also shown that what was assumed to be culturally neutral training can have biases and exclusionary practices. Social media has taught us that knowledge is no longer transferred unidirectionally from the teacher/master to the student. Across peer-to-peer networks, students are agents themselves in defining the meaning of knowledge and knowing. And the digital disruption forced by the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that remoteness and embodiment are not in opposition. These, among other contemporary issues and trends, invite us to re-evaluate the connections we make in and through performance: in professional practice, in our pedagogy, between concepts, objects, locations, and between ourselves. How do we create performance in the 21st century? How do we teach with in-depth training in hybrid and intersectional spaces? How do we continue to diversify and make performance accessible? LASALLE College of the Arts, the National University of Theatre and Film I.L Caragiale, Bucharest, and the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts invite proposals for our international conference, Global Connections in Performance Pedagogy and Practice. The event will give the space necessary for these and similar questions to be explored collaboratively and interculturally. We wish to gather educators, scholars, and students from across the world to enact and present new connections upon which we can chart the future of our field ahead. We want to open a space that refreshes the experience of an online conference. To that end, panels at the conference will be dedicated to discussing previously circulated papers, sharing live performances or work demonstrations, and delivering workshops. We also welcome proposals for masterclasses or curated panels suitable for an online format (Zoom). The conference will be broadcast online globally and free of charge. This call is open to artists, educators, scholars, and students working in and for the performing arts (Dance, Music, Theatre and adjacent disciplines, such as Film). The list of possible topics that presentations may cover includes but is not limited to the following list. We hope that contributions will advance and challenge current conversations:
Please note that while we welcome contributions in languages other than English, we cannot provide written text or live interpretation translations. Please secure your translation services if you wish to submit/present in another language, and ensure that your materials are circulated in advance. To submit your proposal, please fill in this form. Deadline for submission: 5 February 2023 Notice of acceptance: March 2023 Expected submission and circulation of written contributions: May 2023 For inquiries: performing.arts@lasalle.edu.sg. |
Opportunity-Visiting Professor of Australian Studies (TOKYO)
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For more information, see: | https://jobs.theconversation.com/jobs/183638379-visiting-professor-of-australian-studies-2023-24-and-2024-25-at-university-of-tokyo |
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Kaihautū Toi - Artistic Director (Theta) Applications close Friday 2 December 2022 To apply: CV and covering letter outlining your background and interest in this role via www.ph.co.nz. Contact: Vanessa Barker +64 3 474 9717 or vanessa.barker@ph.co.nz. About THETA - visit www.theta.org.nz About the Position: Does using applied theatre to empower rangatahi (youth) and other groups to tackle issues of concern and take charge of their well-being inspire you? Are you looking for the challenge of growing a proven rangatahi well-being programme, and to develop new programmes? The Theatre in Health Education Trust (THETA) works nationally, specialising in delivering applied theatre-based programmes on well-being issues to rangatahi in mainstream schools and alternative education in Aotearoa. THETA has been expanding its operations to include programmes for a variety of community groups and organisations. Our interactive programmes use applied theatre practices including forum theatre, educational drama, structured role-play and decision-making activities to engage participants in the safe exploration of issues relevant to their lives. We have an exciting and rewarding opportunity to support the Trust’s work by managing and growing a successful rangatahi well-being programme as well as developing new programmes that promote well-being and foster new perspectives and understandings. In this role, you will:
This is a full time, permanent role based in Dunedin. If you think you possess the passion to add value to this key role, and the work THETA undertakes, we would love to hear from you. | |||
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For more information, see: | www.ph.co.nz |
Reconnections: Looking back, moving forward, enacting change 2023 Dance & Somatic Practices Conference Deadline for the submissions: 30th November 2022. Proposals should be submitted online via Google Forms please follow this link: https://forms.gle/sh7zP2bjvQUg1qqM7 Confernce dates: Friday 14th to Sunday 16th July 2023 Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University, Coventry, UK. To be held at the ICC Building, Coventry University, Parkside, Coventry, CV1 2NE, UK. Call for Papers The Dance & Somatic Practices Conference invites practitioners, dance artists and scholars from a range of somatic practices and disciplines to debate and share investigations in the field of somatic informed movement practices. The conference will take place in-person with the opportunity to present online. The conference – Reconnections: Looking back, moving forward, enacting change – will offer a space to collectively engage with themes pertinent to the field of somatic practices internationally and to consider recent world events and concerns such as COVID-19, social justice and the climate emergency. Historically, the Dance & Somatic Practices Conference has been a moment for all areas of somatic practice, research and other modes of somatic enquiry to meet and share experience, knowledge and connection. This year we have recognized a need and desire in the wider somatic community to gather together in this way again. Welcoming different perspectives from the ever-enrichening field, we also want to acknowledge, celebrate and honour who and what has come before, to reflect on what has happened in recent years and to collectively explore current and future priorities for our community. We invite proposals for papers, panels, workshops, presentations and other formats that we may not have thought of that, through somatic movement and enquiry, engage with the following questions:
• What do you consider are key topics of enquiry in the field today?
• What do you consider are the pressing questions that will need to be addressed into the future? • What do you consider are the emerging topics of enquiry and how are these supported by the legacies in the field? • How do you imagine we might continue to develop sustainable formats for somatic practice and research, whether through conference, journals or other modalities? • What, in your opinion, has been missed in our explorations of somatics so far? The call is open to themes and perspectives such as but not limited to: screendance; dance science; spirituality; body and environment; social justice; climate emergency; pedagogy and performance; politics and trauma; embodiment; ethics; care; technology; and non-Western perspectives. Submissions We are accepting proposal submissions via Google Forms, you will be asked to include the following:
• Your proposal (max 500) words including the key theme(s) you will be examining please leave out any personal details as the proposals will be reviewed anonymously by the conference committee.
• Details of any collaborators • Biographies • Your preference for presenting in person or online • Technical requirements - noting that only low-level technical requirements can be accommodated. Unfortunately, we cannot provide performance level technical support.
If you have any issues with the form or need any additional support with the form please contact lily.hayward-smith@coventry.ac.uk.
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For more information, see: | https://forms.gle/sh7zP2bjvQUg1qqM7 |
Lecturer and Specialist Technique positions at VCA
There are a suite of positions currently advertised for Theatre at VCA, University of Melbourne. 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 Closing dates are 14th and 17th (see listings).
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EARLY-CAREER RESEARCHER OPPORTUNITY - CREATIVE & PERFORMANCE LEADERSHIP FELLOWSHIPS
CLOSES 31 Oct 2022 FORREST RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Two (2) prestigious 18 month fellowships designed to create a new pathway to nurture creative talents and research leadership skills of those working in the creative and performing arts sector.
Open to candidates of any nationality in the creative and performing arts sector. You will require an out-standing academic track record (minimum GPA of 3.8/4.0), be a creative thinker, excellent communica-tor, passionate researcher and wish to join this elite group of exceptional Forrest Scholars. Applications must be submitted via the online portal by 31 October 2022. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed in December 2022. Fellowships must commence between January and August 2023. | |||
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For more information, see: | www.forrestresearch.org.au |
Closing soon!
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.
Timeline Selection: 27 January 2023
Best, Kath, Julian, Fiona, Moana and Emily | |||
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For more information, see: | aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.critical-stages.org%2Fsubmission-guidelines%2F&data=05%7C01%7Crea.dennis%40deakin.edu.au%7Cd957be1ff3664330785908dab2e7db53%7Cd02378ec168846d585401c28b5f470f6%7C0%7C0%7C638019006148229534%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=eQhMHjfjKZWDUdaisdw4h0G7W8wiDewFTGj5hS8ROLo%3D&reserved=0 |
Lecturer, English and Theatre. Murdoch University 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 | |
For more information, see: | https://www.seek.com.au/job/58752028?type=standout |
Critical Stages CFP: Post-millennial Australasian Dramaturgy (Eds) Kathryn Kelly, Julian Meyrick, Fiona Graham, Moana Nepia & Emily Coleman This special edition aims to build on scattered accounts of Australasian dramaturgy in national and international publications over recent decades to provide a timely focus on the field now. Send 300-word abstract to kl.kelly@qut.edu.au Due 30 October 2022 Call for Papers: Post-millennial Australasian Dramaturgy Adopting a place-based curation outlook, this edition embraces the full spectrum of Australian and Aotearora/New Zealand theatre culture, incorporating First Nations and Māori live performance practices, and the modern settler, post-colonial drama of both nations. Within this complex narrative, Australasian dramaturgy has a history filled with contention, paradox, improvisation and passionate practice. The centrality of place in this edition seeks to honour the distinctive nature and primacy of First Nations and Māori cultural practices and scholarship. This will be supported by the appointment of cultural consultants to ensure the agency of First Nations and Māori perspectives in the curatorial process. As Turner and Behrndt note in their seminal work, Dramaturgy and Performance (2016), “dramaturgy is as diverse as performance-making itself”. We offer an inclusive conception of dramaturgy drawn from existing Australasian scholarship and the global dramaturgical research that has most impacted the local field. We recognise dramaturgy as a specialised field of professional knowledge, with shared approaches and objectives that sit alongside distinctive patterns of work. Our broad church outlook allows for different currents of dramaturgical theory and practice to exist in their contradictions and challenges without invalidating potential commonalities arising from their distinctive Australasian context. To encourage a wide range of submissions, we welcome traditional research articles on the last ten years of dramaturgical practice and theory, case studies, interviews and panel discussions in video or text form, diagrammatic representations, models and theorisations, and innovative proposals that value oral traditions, or capture other dramaturgical practices in culturally appropriate ways. We welcome submissions that relate to or engage with the following:
Critical Stages has made the generous offer of potentially including the publication of a new Australasian play/theatrical text. About your Abstract 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 October 2022 Selection: 15 December 2022 First drafts: 30 June 2023 Final drafts: 15 September 2023 Publication: 30 December 2023 | |||
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For more information, see: | https://www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/announcement/view/9 |
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The Sea is on Fire: Machinic Crustaceans and Ecological Promises A public lecture by Professor Jennifer Parker-Starbuck (Royal Holloway, University of London) Thursday 29 September 2022 6:00pm - 7:30pm Forum Theatre (153), Arts West - North Wing (148A) The Future Scenarios: Performance, Climate, Ecology series in the School of Culture & Communication is proud to present a public lecture by visiting scholar Professor Jennifer Parker-Starbuck. Focusing largely on Les Machines des L’ȋle in Nantes, France, a “theme park” of mechanical animals and sea creatures, this public lecture reflects on the power of machinic or substitute creatures to both point to and at the same time override environmental concerns. Will riding on a giant manta ray increase awareness later in life toward the environmental challenges the seas will face? Can embodiment shift the human-animal-technological balance? Professor Jennifer Parker-Starbuck is an internationally renowned expert in theatre history and theory. She has recently served as Executive Dean of the School of Performing and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is the author of a number of books on multimedia performance including Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance (2011); Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (co-authored with S. Bay-Cheng and D. Saltz, 2015), and co-editor of Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices (2015). Professor Parker-Starbuck has served as editor of Theatre Journal, a contributing editor for PAJ: A Journal of Art and Performance, and an editorial board member of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Currently, she is a co-Theme Leader of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Industries Cluster Grant and International Centre of Excellence Grant, a £9.5 million project based at Royal Holloway, University of London, for which she is a theme leader for StoryLab, a center for immersive storytelling. Jennifer is also involved as a Partner Investigator with the Australian Research Council-funded project Towards an Australian Ecological Theatre, based at The University of Melbourne. https://bit.ly/parkerstarbuck This event is sponsored by the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne and the Macgeorge Bequest. This is a free event, and registration is essential. Please note: This is a mask-friendly event. As it is held indoors, the University of Melbourne’s current advice strongly recommends mask use in indoor settings. See the University’s current COVID Safe guidelines here: https://www.unimelb.edu.au/coronavirus | |
For more information, see: | https://events.unimelb.edu.au/event/16953-the-sea-is-on-fire-machinic-crustaceans-and |
Climate Collaborations: Art, Science and Future Scenarios A public symposium to be held at the University of Melbourne and Keynote address by special guest Professor Peter Eckersall, City University of New York. Tuesday 27 September 2022 9:00 – 5:00 Discursive Space (553), Arts West - North Wing (148A) Climate Collaborations interrogates urgent questions for our time: what causes eco-anxiety and fear? What offers hope and enchantment? And what can art do in a climate emergency? Bringing together artists, activists, scientists, academics and curators, the symposium explores the relations between knowledge, aesthetics and culture in a climate emergency and beyond. The symposium is sponsored by the Australian Research Council, the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne, and the Macgeorge Visiting Speaker Award. Part of the The FUTURE SCENARIOS – PERFORMANCE, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY series at the University of Melbourne Please note: This is a mask-friendly event. As it is held indoors, the University of Melbourne’s current advice strongly recommends mask use in indoor settings. See the University’s current COVID Safe guidelines here: https://www.unimelb.edu.au/coronavirus | |||
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For more information, see: | https://events.unimelb.edu.au/culture-and-communication/event/17499-1 |
We are pleased to annouce the launch of two new books from long term ADSA colleagues Professor Peta Tait and Professor Rachel Fensham. From the Bloomsbury Methuen Theatre Studies series on Movement and Emotion the launch will be hosted by Chris Mead, Head of Theatre, Victorian College of the Arts on Thursday 1 September 5.00 (for 5.30) to 6.30 p.m in the Melbourne Theatre Company Foyer, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank | |||
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Conference: Call for Papers The Colour of Fire: Sinophone Performance across Australia and Cultural Exchange Host: JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide Date: 3-4 November 2022 Organising Committee: Jonathan Bollen, Tsan-Huang Tsai, Anne Pender Sinophone performance across Australia has a rich history and cultural significance that has not been fully documented or widely appreciated. We seek to explore the reach of Sinophone performance across our region, its many forms, long history and contemporary expression. We welcome papers from a multidisciplinary frame of reference. We invite proposals for papers that explore any aspects of what might be called Sinophone performance across Australia from contact times to the present, with interest in diasporic experiences, migration networks, identity formation, sensory adaptation, community engagement, creativity and traditionalization, regional touring circuits, regional politics, international and cultural relations, diplomacy, exchange, collaboration, trade, globalisation, training, audiences, theatre ecologies, ritual and daily life, as well as all forms of performing arts, music, opera, music theatre, cabaret, ballet, dance, circus, revue, spoken word theatre, works in translation, puppet theatre, devised work and hybrid contemporary forms. Consideration of the performance archive and analysis of the curatorial afterlife of performance cultures are also of interest. Abstracts are invited for papers of 20 minutes duration or panels of 90 minutes on any of the topics listed above that examine performance and performance cultures from Sinophone contexts or inspired by Sinophone cultures. Works in English deriving from or inspired by Sinophone sources are included in this enquiry. Please indicate your preference for attending in person or online. Please send proposals for abstracts of approximately 250 words to the emails below by 1 October 2022. The conference is scheduled to coincide with the OzAsia Festival in Adelaide, 20 October – 6 November 2022. Please feel free to contact the organising committee members with any questions.
Anne Pender anne.pender@adelaide.edu.au
Jonathan Bollen j.bollen@unsw.edu.au Tsan-Huang Tsai tsan-huang.tsai@adelaide.edu.au
Jonathan Bollen
Associate Professor
Theatre and Performance Studies
School of the Arts and Media, UNSW Sydney https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/jonathan-bollen |
Call for Papers - Performing Global Crises An interdisciplinary conference hosted by The Performance of the Real Research Theme at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand 30th November-2nd December 2022 Crisis has characterised contemporary lives in many ways –as we witness, experience, perform, and respond to entangled health, political, social, and environmental disasters. For example, in the past few years, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected virtually every area of our lives. Individual, local, national, and global responses have been played out and performed in the media, on social media, and in embodied social landscapes. Scientists have become the new celebrities, and politicians have risen and fallen according to their Covid management performances. The virus itself has also performed, taking on different guises as it mutates to extend its life and efficacy. Zoom and other similar platforms have become the new mode of communication for many, generating new forms of visibility, intimate digital surveillance, and networked sociality. Many people have been marginalised or further marginalised by the pandemic, by inequalities in access to digital technologies as well as health technologies. At the same time there has never been a time when communication, miscommunication, disinformation –about vaccines, mandates, and more –have been so fraught and politicised. As all-encompassing as the pandemic has seemed at times, it has been eclipsed in some respects, more recently, by public attention to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is emerging as the most visible war in history. With visibility comes multiple modes of performance and performativity, including competing deep fakes, and another arena for the performance of global leaders, politicians, and the public. Meanwhile, the slow violence of Climate Change continues to devastate communities, nations, and species. The Climate itself, specific ecosystems and landscapes, and non-human creatures, have be enacting as key performers in diverse scientific, popular, and media-scapes, garnering global attention as harbingers for a harrowing future, even amidst those who doubt its existence.This conference will explore the way that these multi-layered global crises have been and continue to be performed, contested, and mediated across all strata of communication and society. We encourage contributions relating (but not limited) to the following topics and issues connected to the performance and performativity of crises: -The Climate Emergency and public performances of responsibility -Protest action and the performance of dissent-Digital technologies of visibility and surveillance -News, information, and the politics of truth -Precarity, marginalization, and inequality in times of crises -Art, literature, and creativity for wellbeing and resilience amidst crises -Leadership, celebrity, and the public performance of power and trust amidst crises -Public communication of science (virology, climatology, etc.) -Spectacularisation of war, violence, and the military -Participatory/symbolic performances of political relations: allyship, solidarity, fear, or threat -Decolonisation and indigeneity in responses to crises -Empathy, care, and witnessing: mediated responses to the suffering of others -Gendered experiences of/in crises: labour, feminism, care ethics -Politicised bodies/selves: intersectional views of gender, disability, race, and the good life -Racialised and spatialised performances -mapping and tracing crises through bodies -Multispecies, posthuman, and more-than-human worlds: living with ‘others’ through crises-Wellbeing and affect amidst crises: hypervigilance, anxiety, apathy, compassion fatigue -Social imaginations of the future: hope, optimism, connection and connectivity, the utopian/dystopian, apocalyptic visions, and ‘doom’Conference and Paper Format: This will be a hybrid conference that allows people placed in Aotearoa New Zealand and nearby to attend in person, and for internationals -if they cannot travel -to attend online via Zoom. Submitting an Abstract: Please submit a 200-250 word abstract of your contribution and a 100-word biography for each presenter by 16 September 2022. Please send us your abstract as a Word document. Use your surname in the document title. Please clearly indicate the title of your presentation, the nature and timing of your presentation e.g. 20 minute spoken paper with Powerpoint, as well as your full name (first name, surname) and institutional affiliation (if relevant). Please send your abstracts or any enquiries to the Theme administrator at performance.real@otago.ac.nz. In addition to conventional 20-minute papers, we also invite presentations with a performance or creative or workshop component. Accepted delegates must confirm their attendance by completing registration and payment by October 31, 2022. Travel bursaries for Postgraduate Students:There are also a limited number of small travel bursaries available for attending the conference. Please contact the Theme administrator at performance.real@otago.ac.nzfor more details. ___ About the Performance of the Real Research ThemeThe Performance of the Real is aUniversity of Otago funded interdisciplinary Research Theme. The project investigates what it is about representations and performances of the real that make them particularly compelling and pervasive in our current age. At its core is the study of how performance/performativity, in its many cultural, aesthetic, political and social forms and discourses, represents, critiques, stages, and constructs/reconstructs the real, as well as the ethical, social, and form-related issues involved in such acts. Website: http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real Journal:http://www.performancereal.org | |
For more information, see: | www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real |
Call for PapersPerformance Research, vol. 28, no. 2, 2023"On Invasion"Proposal Deadline: 27 June 2022 Issue Editors: Helena Grehan (Murdoch U) and Miriam Haughton (NUI Galway) We live in a world of unpredictability, fracture and powerlessness. Acts of violence, invasion and oppression, both seen and unseen, pervade all aspects of life and threaten the viability of the planet. Yet, perhaps because of this powerlessness and fracture, this is also a time of solidarity, of acts of resistance both large and small, and of friendship, love and bravery. It is a confusing and confounding time and one in which we must yet again consider the role, value and power of art to intervene, to destabilize, to disrupt and to question. As Hannah Arendt points out:
Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind [sic] had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence… and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives. (Arendt 1951: vii)
Arendt wrote the lines above in the Preface to the first edition of The Origins of Totalitarianismin 1951, which resonates strongly with the crises of today. However, let us also reflect on Seamus Heaney’s verse adaption of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, first published in the early 1990s as sectarian violence in the north of Ireland seemed beyond hope. History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave… But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. (Heaney 1990) We draw from them now to acknowledge the powerlessness of so many, while hoping for a ‘longed-for tidal wave/Of justice…’ The topic of ‘invasion’, in the context of the current world order, is an apt topic for an issue of Performance Research. We call for submissions to ‘On Invasion’ to consider the idea and reality of invasions – of communities and nations, of the body, the imagination and the environment, and of artistic response. What does and might invasion mean in the current tumultuous world? How indeed might performance and artistic practice more broadly respond to or enact this concept? We may, for example, understand the theatre as an invasive force, following Antonin Artaud, one that seeps into the body of the performer and/or spectator—one that infiltrates slyly, demands an audience or bombards sonically; think of the work of Romeo Castellucci, Sarah Vanhee, Tania Bruguera, Milo Rau, Bashar Murkus, ANU Productions, or Back to Back Theatre, for example. In what ways might performance equip us to withstand these and other kinds of invasions – outside and beyond the performance space? How might it operate to alter this status quo of fear, fracture and disruption? When we think of invasion as a concept and a reality, we conjure up images of war, isolation, refugees, climate destruction, the Anthropocene, racial division and oppression, ecological devastation and infiltration, political rupture, technological interference and surveillance, medical procedures and immersive dramaturgies, among myriad others. But what is the value in an issue on this fraught and huge topic? What might artists and scholars make of it? What examples can they draw on to flesh out this pervasive reality? Whose voices do we most need to hear from on this theme? We invite essays, manifestos, artists pages and other meditations on the topic that consider ‘On Invasion’ in the broadest possible terms. Submissions might consider, but are not limited to, the following areas:
References Arendt, Hannah (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, Berlin: Shocken Books. Heaney, Seamus (1990) The Cure at Troy: A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes, London: Faber in association with Field Day. Schedule Proposals: 27 June 2022 First Drafts: October 2022 Final Drafts: January 2023 Publication: March 2023 Format Alongside long-form articles, we encourage short articles and provocations. As with other editions of Performance Research, we welcome artist(s)’s pages and other contributions that use distinctive layouts and typographies, combining words and images, as well as more conventional essays. Issue contacts All proposals, submissions and general enquiries should be sent direct to Performance Research at: info@performance-research.org Issue-related enquiries should be directed to the issue editors: Helena Grehan: h.grehan@murdoch.edu.au Miriam Haughton: miriam.haughton@nuigalway.ie General guidelines for submissions:
If your proposal is accepted, you will be invited to submit an article in first draft by the deadline indicated above. On the final acceptance of a completed article, you will be asked to sign an author agreement for your work to be published in Performance Research. |
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For more information, see: | www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?isPreview=Yes&jobid=21824 |
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For more information, see: | www.adsaconference2022.com/call-for-papers/ |
International Ibsen Prize 2022Back to Back TheatreADSA warmly congratulates Back to Back Theatre, and recognises their extraordinary achievement in winning the 2022 International Ibsen Prize, awarded biennially by Norway's Nationaltheatret to an individual, institution or organisation that has brought new artistic dimensions to the world of drama or theatre. This award places Back to Back in exalted company: previous winners of the award include Taylor Mac, Christoph Marthaler, Forced Entertainment, Heiner Goebbels, Jon Fosse, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Peter Brook. This is not only a ringing endorsement of Back to Back's international reach, but also a victory for the visibility of Australian and neurodiverse artists on the global stage. Many ADSA members have deep intellectual and professional links with Back to Back, and members of the company joined us in conversation at our 2018 Conference at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. In the Committee Statement that accompanied the award, the judges even cite long-time ADSA members Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall and their edited collection We're People Who Do Shows: Back to Back Theatre — Performance, Politics, Visbility. The Statement reads: Back to Back have consistently and defiantly challenged social and cultural perceptions and constructs. They have unsettled the politics of normalisation by making uncompromising work that stimulates, contests, entertains and engages, challening the interdependence of myth and history and the grand narratives that ground Western culture, as well as those stories that have been repressed, forgotten, or erased. On behalf of the membership of ADSA, the Board toasts the success of this most remarkable company. If you haven't had the chance to experience their work yet, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is currently on tour, with upcoming dates in Melbourne, Canberra, Vienna, Brussels, and (fittingly) Oslo. | |
For more information, see: | www.nationaltheatret.no/international-ibsen-award/winners/back-to-back/committee-statement/ |
The Art of the Abstract 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. |
Dear colleagues, The University of Queensland is currently recruiting for a teaching-focussed Lecturer in Drama (0.5 FTE), a fixed-term position until 4 August 2023. Details of the job can be found on the UQ Careers website (https://uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/uqcareers/job/St-Lucia-Campus/Lecturer-in-Drama_R-05952-1), where applications can also be submitted. The posting closes at 11.00pm (AEST) on Sunday 10 April. Best wishes, Chris. |
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Law Text CultureVolume 25 (2021), "Performing Theatrical Jurisprudence"A special issue of the journal Law Text Culture on "Performing Theatrical Jurisprudence", guest edited by Sean Mulcahy and Marett Leiboff, has been released and published. The special issue brings together distinctive and innovative research in the interdisciplinary field of law and performance, and highlights the diverse and valuable work on the intersections of law and theatre. The special issue can be found online and open access — with a special note from legal scholar and playwright Desmond Manderson — at this link: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/. | |
For more information, see: | ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/ |
Travelling Together: ADSA 2022, December 6—9Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Aucklandhttps://www.adsaconference2022.com/In July 2021, The University of Auckland was gifted a new Māori name, Waipapa Taumata Rau, by the people of Ngāti Whātua Ōrakei, the hapu on whose lands many of the University’s campuses are located. Waipapa refers to the shoreline, the landing place of Māori waka, a destination, place of arrival, connections between people, an exchange of knowledge and teaching. Taumata, refers to the peaks where land meets the sky, places of challenge, achievement and revelation. Ihonuku Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori, Associate Professor Te Kawehau Hoskins (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi), said that the new name better connects the University to where it is located and highlights the significant partnership with Ngāti Whātua iwi. She proposed, “This new name underpins a new strategic direction. It is one that champions building respect for Māori knowledge and challenges us to understand that we are part of a whakapapa of historic and current relationships.”This new name, Waipapa Taumata Rau, its gifting and the reflections of reciprocity of place and people provide the direction for the ADSA conference 2022. The theme for our conference: Travelling Together considers how the broad field of performing arts can facilitate meeting places that are culturally centred, inclusive and responsive to landscape which its practitioners and audience members co-inhabit. We invite contributors to consider how they might respond to this theme, to attend to where we/you have come from, your personal and professional genealogies, past relationships, to look up to the peaks, places of challenge, achievement and revelation we/you have reached on our journeys as performance scholars and makers, to imagine and find places of arrival, connection, exchange, and to think about what we will carry forward together in future journeys and actions. ADSA 2022: Travelling Together embraces interdisciplinary intersections and invites artists and scholars from fields of theatre, dance, visual arts, writing and performance as expanded fields. We invite contributors to think both critically and creatively about how to respond to the call for papers and welcome proposals for 20-minute paper presentations, artistic research presentations, workshops and roundtable discussions. We encourage collaborative proposals and are also open to discussing alternative formats that participants may want to propose. For those interested in performative/creative presentations or workshops: the University has a small black box theatre and small dance studios that may be used for workshops and presentations. Presenters should be aware that we will have limited technical support and rehearsal capacity for this space. Please indicate on your abstract any specific technical requirements so that we can let you know whether what you want to do is possible. It may also be possible to pre-record a digital performative presentation, which we will host in an online context. Please let us know if you are interested in this option. We offer the following prompts and possibilities as starting points for responding to the conference theme:
We ask that attendees submit their abstracts to Emma Willis (emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz) by Monday 25 April.
We appreciate the degree of uncertainty for most of us around travel at present. While we are currently working towards an in-person conference with some elements available online, we recognize the need to be fluid in our planning. We remain optimistic, however, and strongly encourage members to submit abstracts while we work to deliver the conference in a format that allows as many members as possible to participate. To that end, please indicate on your abstract whether:
Conference organisers: Emma Willis, Molly Mullen, Tia Reihana, Alys Longley, Michelle Johansson, Peter O’Connor, Tahnee Vo. For more information, please contact Emma (emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz).
The conference is kindly hosted by Te Kura Tangata, Faculty of Arts; Te Puna Aronui, School of Humanities; the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation, Faculty of Education and Social Work; and Dance Studies, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland. | |
For more information, see: | www.adsaconference2022.com/ |
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Special Issue: Touch and Training, to be published in June 2023 as TDPT 14.2
Global happenings throughout this past decade, such as #MeToo, #blacklivesmatter, Asian Spring, Arab Spring, the Marriage Act (2013 UK) and Russia’s “Gay Propaganda” law (2013), and COVID-19, have radically repositioned touch in performance and performer training. Touch is a socio-cultural event, a political act between two people as well as a network of power positions and layers of institutional infrastructure: who touches, how does/should one touch, why and when can/should touch occur? These questions when raised within performance traditions, theatre, film and television rehearsal and performance spaces and performer training studios ask creative artists to (re)consider the ways we think about, talk about and stage touch: for instance, the rise of the “intimacy coordinator” in response to concerns about the inequitability of touch during re-enactments of intimacy is only one of a number of recent developments in performance-related fields (re)considering the role of touch during the creative process.
The aim of this issue is to look at the different ways performers and performer trainers across the globe have responded to issues of touch as a socio-cultural and political event within creative processes. The special issue will:
Proposals are encouraged to look across disciplines, for instance between performance and Post Colonial studies, Queer studies, dis/Ability studies, to critically consider the ways touch has been framed by mainstream rehearsal and training traditions to the exclusion of other ways of working. This issue welcomes critical approaches to new forms of training and rehearsal processes. Expressions of Interest We welcome submissions from authors both inside and outside academic institutions and from those who are currently undergoing training or who have experiences to tell from their training histories. To signal your interest and intention to make a contribution to this special issue in any one of the ways identified please email an abstract (max 250 words) to Ha Young Hwang (hyhwang@karts.ac.kr), Tara McAllister-Viel (tamcal@essex.ac.uk), and Liz Mills (lizm@afda.co.za). Our deadline for these abstracts is 8 April 2022. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training has three sections for which we accept proposals:
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The Art of Subsidy / The Subsidy of Art
Performance Paradigm 18 (2023) — Call for Papers
CALL EXTENDED TO 3 JUNE 2022 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. 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).
Issue Editors Chris Hay, University of Queensland Lawrence Ashford, University of Sydney Izabella Nantsou, University of Sydney References Harris, Jeremy O. “American theatre may not survive the coronavirus. We need help now.” The Guardian, 25 Jan. 2021. Harvie, Jen. “Public/Private Capital: Arts Funding Cuts and Mixed Economies.” Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 150-91. Haughton, Miriam. “As much graft as there is craft: Refusal, Value and the Affective Economy of the Irish Arts Sector.” Performance Paradigm 16, 2021, pp. 40-58. Madhan, Nisha. “Live (Why I’m Not in a Hurry).” Words By Nisha Madhan, 1 Apr. 2020. Meyrick, Julian. “The Logic of Culture: The Fate of Alternative Theatre in the Post-Whitlam Period.” Australasian Drama Studies, vol. 64, 2014, pp. 133-54. UNESCO. Re-shaping Policies for Creativity: Addressing Culture as a Public Good. Third Edition, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 2022. |
The Drama and Performance Forum of the Modern Language Association is sponsoring two guaranteed panels on "humor and humorlessness" (one pre-1900, one post-1900): Humor and Humorlessness before 1900 The Drama and Performance Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA) announces a sponsored session entitled “Humor and Humorlessness before 1900” to be held at the MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA from January 5-8, 2023. From the medieval period to the nineteenth century the concept of humor shifted from an aspect of human physiology, to the eccentric qualities of individuals or comic characters, to a mode of seeing that was also a cultural sensibility (Daniel Wickberg, The Senses of Humor). That the modern “sense of humor” emerged during the nineteenth century, a period better known for its moral seriousness, suggests the dialectical relation of humor and its opposites. We welcome proposals on humor and humorlessness in drama and performance prior to 1900. We are especially interested in papers that foreground sites outside of the U.S. and Britain or that explore understudied subjects in our field. Some possible questions: How did theatre genres and performance traditions present humor and its opposites? How do performed humor and humorlessness intersect cultural histories of race, class, gender, and sexuality? When and why did humorlessness become a performance? Please submit brief bios and 250-word abstracts by March 15, 2021 to Sarah Balkin sarah.balkin@unimelb.edu.au and Darren Gobert rdg37@duke.edu. Humor and Humorlessness after 1900 The Drama and Performance Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA) announces a sponsored session entitled “Humor and Humorlessness after 1900” to be held at the MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA from January 5-8, 2023. Humor denotes the capacity to appreciate or express what is funny; it is an index of shared feeling. Humorlessness lacks or refuses this sharing; it often pejoratively describes people or groups who object to jokes at their expense. We welcome proposals on humor and humorlessness in drama and performance after 1900. We are especially interested in papers that foreground sites outside of the U.S. and Britain or that explore understudied subjects in our field. Some possible questions: How have twentieth and twenty-first-century plays and performances deployed humor and humorlessness as modes of belonging, exclusion, resistance, and refusal? How have comedians and other performance makers navigated shifts in what audiences understand to be funny? What can drama and performance contribute to contemporary debates about political correctness and taking a joke? Please submit brief bios and 250-word abstracts by March 15, 2021 to Sarah Balkin sarah.balkin@unimelb.edu.au and Darren Gobert rdg37@duke.edu. |
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in conversation with Barbara London 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. |
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training How does a director train?
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.
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.
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For more information, see: | https://www.adsa.edu.au/dbpage.php?pg=newsletterfull |
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. |
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Wicked Problems and Speculative Futures: Writing the Anthropocene22-23 June, 2022
Abstracts due by: 31 January 2022. |
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. |
The criteria for shortlisting and selecting the most excellent paper is:
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. |
Dear members, We are pleased to invite you to the 2021 ADSA Conference:
Performers, Makers, Methodologies —
Crafting Conditions for Decentring Scholarship and Pedagogy in Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies, and Dance
The program is a rich collection of keynote events, plenaries, paper presentations, panels, book launches, and performances. To browse the full Conference program, and to register to attend, go to adsaconference2021.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @ADSAConf2021.
This year, the Conference once again gives us an opportunity to gather remotely as a community of scholars, teachers, practitioners, and artists. Times are demanding, and our field is under substantial pressure to reinvent itself and to work together as our sector. We welcome you with hope and gratitude. Rea, Kate, Miles, Katya, and Ashlee 2021 ADSA Conference organising committee ![]() We recognise and thank the traditional owners of the lands on which we work and live. Deakin campuses are on Gunditjmara, Wurundjeri, and Wadawurrung lands. We acknowledge the absence of a treaty that recognises these lands were never ceded. |
Dear members, PERFORMERS, MAKERS, METHODOLOGIES: Crafting Conditions for Decentring Scholarship and Pedagogy in Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies, and Dance
The 2021 ADSA Conference website is live, and registrations are now open.
We are very excited to be able to share the 2021 ADSA Conference website and program with you. Thank you for your patience as we revised the program and moved the event online. We invite you to share the news with post-grads and colleagues, and to encourage your industry peers and friends to join us if they can. Attendees can register on the Conference website, where you can also find session access and conference updates. We have recommended Full, Student, and Artist fees, and have included a pay what you can afford option to acknowledge the various financial hardships that have emerged from the pandemic (including the lack of insitutional funding from universities). Please remember to renew your ADSA membership as well. We are looking forward to gathering online in December. Best wishes,
Rea, Kate, Miles, and Ashlee.
2021 ADSA Conference Committee
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For more information, see: | adsaconference2021.com |
The new issue of Performance Paradigm is out now. No 16 (2021): Performance and Radical KindnessEdited by Emma Willis, Alys Longley and Victoria Wynne-Jones Inspired by the Universtiy of Auckland research initiative 'Agencies of Kindness', this issue of Performance Paradigm investigates what it means to “do” radical kindness. The editors have curated 17 distinctive research articles cohered around 'how kindness performed goes beyond 'simply ameliorating suffering' to 'challend the very structures that presage unkindness' (Willis 2021: 1).Authors include: Sarah Burton, Miriam Haughton, Lisa Samuels, Erik Ehn, Astrid N. Korporaal, Daniel Johnston, Elena García-Martín, Katharine E. Low, Sue Mayo, Alys Longley, Paula Guzzanti, Renée Newman, Sarah Harper, Rea Dennis, Kate Hunter A full table of contents can be viewed here: https://www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/issue/view/27/showToc Performance Paradigm promotes discussion among scholars, curators and practitioners of performance in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Founded in 2005, it is one of the field’s first open access, peer-reviewed journals.
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For more information, see: | https://www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/index |
CFP Special issue of Australasian Drama Studies on Queer Performance, Issue 81, October 2022.
Edited by Jacob Boehme, Jonathan Bollen, Alyson Campbell and Liza-Mare Syron. It is time to pay attention to queer performance across Aotearoa, Australia, Pasifika and the Asia Pacific. We have rich histories and thriving cultures of LGBTQI+ performance, including an explosion of queer performance from First Nations artists across our regions. Queer performance is eclectic and tenacious, persisting as a field of innovation and continuing to sustain LGBTQI+ artists and their audiences despite contexts of ongoing homophobia, transphobia and criminalisation. Much queer performance, however, goes undocumented, overlooked in mainstream reviews, unrecorded in formal archives, or given scant scholarly attention. As such, we are calling for contributions to a long-overdue collection of critical thinking about this body of work. We envisage an intersectional collection of essays, interviews, recollection-reflections and performances-as-publications, and other forms that emerge. Wherever we find them, however we’re making them – at the party, on your screen, in the studio, on our stages, in the clubs, on our streets – how do queer practices in performance proliferate diversity in our ecologies, sustain us as communities, invigorate creativity for our survival and generate lifeworlds of transformation? We hope through the collection to trace the LGBTQI+ desire-lines linking artists and audiences – crossing social, cultural, political and regional boundaries and reaching out queerly across time and place. We want to remember, record and grapple with what emerges in intersectional-queer dance, theatre and performance that transforms us and envisions new worlds. Send proposals (300 words) to the editors by 10 December 2021. Please include a brief biography and set of key words. Full submissions due 30 April 2022. Essay length is a maximum of 6,000 words including bibliography. As the journal is now published online, we welcome the integration of rich digital format such as images, video footage, sound files and the like. Jacob Boehme, jacobboehme1@gmail.com
Jonathan Bollen, j.bollen@unsw.edu.au
Alyson Campbell, alyson.campbell@unimelb.edu.au
Liza-Mare Syron, l.syron@unsw.edu.au
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For more information, see: | https://www.adsa.edu.au/dbpage.php?pg=journalsubmit |
Call for Proposals: PSi#27: Hunger 2022
PDF copy of the full CFP is attached Caitlin Main Communications Officer PSi#27 Hunger | |||
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For more information, see: | https://www.psi-web.org/2021/09/15/call-for-proposals-psi27-hunger-2022/?fbclid=IwAR0aLsWsOT5XwKIrQ-akjnJ39V8asfvQf2WGd4XvOsvtRWGOaTX4lc0qgGchttps://www.psi-web.org/2021/09/15/call-for-proposals-psi27-hunger-2022/?fbclid=IwAR0aLsWsOT5XwKIrQ-akjnJ39V8asfvQf2WGd4XvOsvtRWGOaTX4lc0qgGc |
Date: 20 - 22 January, 2022 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.
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Kōrero mō te tūranga - About the role Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington is currently recruiting a 0.5 Professional Teaching Fellow to join the Theatre Programme on a permanent contract in 2022. This role is for a Permanent 0.5 Professional Teaching Fellow. The position will teach specifically into our MFA (CP) programme, as lecturer, workshop leader, course-co-ordinator and Festival Producer. The workload for this position will comprise 80% teaching and teaching-related responsibilities and 20% administration. It is expected that the appointee will contribute to teaching across three trimesters. Mōu - About you You will be an experienced tertiary educator with a sound understanding of the live performance sector in Aotearoa New Zealand and in the global context, as well as value for scholarship in the making and analysis of practical work. You will have experience in arts management and producing theatre productions. You will have the confidence to communicate ideas to a varied, cross-disciplinary community of recent graduates and professionals. You will have exemplary organisation and problem-solving skills, flexibility and a positive outlook. You will have an understanding of the relevance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi to the making of theatrical productions, in forging relationships, and within the teaching and learning environment. Key Requirements:
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The Univeristy of Tasmania is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Theatre based in Hobart in the School of Creative Arts and Media (CAM) which is part of the College of Arts, Law and Education. This position is a teaching intensive role with an expected 60% teaching allocation in a full time equivalent workload. The Lecturer in Theatre will join the Theatre and Performance team to deliver the Theatre and Performance major as well as contribute to cross disciplinary Creative Curriculum units in the School of Creative Arts and Media. The Creative Curriculum units provide frameworks for students to build their interdisciplinary expertise through collaboration and work-integrated learning, as well as providing a place-based, collaborative, and responsive environment for new practice. To be successful, you will be a dynamic academic with knowledge and experience in the delivery of contemporary theatre and performance pedagogies. The Lecturer in Theatre will contribute to academic programs and operations in Hobart and other campuses as required and will have expertise in teaching and curriculum design; delivery of interdisciplinary creative arts units; and experience in blended learning and online teaching. The Lecturer will also contribute to the strategic research, impact and engagement agendas of the School, College and broader University. A strategic priority for the School of Creative Arts and Media is to increase participation in, and contribution to, cultural activities across the state as well as engage with the artistic and cultural fabric of Tasmania, and the potential for creative arts pedagogy to address social, environmental, and cultural challenges. To support this priority, the Lecturer in Theatre will initiate and develop a network of partnerships with organisations, professional bodies – including the festival industry and theatre sector – and the creative arts and local community, through their research, teaching and community engagement activity. Through the Southern Transformation Project (Hobart) and the new Hedberg building, the University of Tasmania is making a significant investment in the creative arts, as part of a vision for the University as a site for collaboration between community, industry and the University via creative projects. In 2020 the School of Creative Arts and Media refined and enriched our creative arts program through the 2020 Curriculum Renewal project. The University’s commitment to contemporary arts practice and scholarship continues through the appointment of exceptional creative practitioners and scholars. For more details, and to apply: please visit the UTas Careers site. Applications close: 17 October 2021. |
WAAPA is hiring! We are currently looking for a Course Coordinator for our BPA Performance Making course. It’s a rare opportunity: being in the BPA Performance Making course represents a chance to shape a course that allows new, innovative artists to develop their unique voice in the performing arts. The opportunity has come up due to current staff moving on to new roles in the organisation. With WAAPA moving into a new CBD building with new venues and studios in 2025, it’s a particularly exciting time to join our faculty at WAAPA. Please feel free to share with your networks. The link to the advert and the submission portal is now live at ECU employment opportunities: 220/2021 — Lecturer (Performing Arts). It is also visible on the following job sites: Seek; LinkedIn; and UniJobs. The advert is set to close on Wednesday 27 October 2021 at 5.00pm (AWST). |
Dear members,
ADSA Conference 2021
Performers, Makers, Methdologies – Crafting conditions for decentring scholarship and pedagogy 30 November to 3 December, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria As you know, we are based in regional Victoria so have been monitoring the current national and local health orders regarding pandemic management. Currently across Australia there are lockdowns in the Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra metropolitan areas, as well as lockdowns in various regional centres across these states. There is also an ongoing lockdown in Auckland. Mostly, Australian states in which there is no Covid detected have their borders closed to anyone from other states, and also have quite stringent policies in regard to residents returning from other states. While there is an Australian national program of opening when 80% of the population have their first vaccine dose, this is not tested and is likely to allow freedom of movement in local areas, or intrastate, but does not give us any optimism that interstate travel will be simple. When taking the precarious nature of these projections into account, we have made the call to move the 2021 ADSA conference fully online. We have now met with our venue partner and can move ahead with the changed delivery mode. We are currently updating the website and finalising the program to accommodate this adjustment. We are disappointed as we had retained our determination to host you here at Deakin's Waterfront campus in Geelong. However, we know you will understand and will join us online in December. Thank you for your continued support and understanding. Rea, Kate, Miles, and Ashlee. 2021 ADSA Conference Committee |
CfP: Changing Perspectives on Live Performance: Interrogating digital dimensions and new modes of engagement8-9 October 2021
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New Publication, Out nowThe Cambridge Companion to the Circus, edited by Gillian Arrighi and Jim DavisA terrific volume with 16 chapters over 2 parts. Gillian has shared the Cambridge 20% discount flyer, see attached. The Cambridge Companion to the Circus provides a complete guide for students, scholars, teachers, researchers, and practitioners who are seeking perspectives on the foundations and evolution of the modern circus, the contemporary extent of circus studies, and the specialised literature available to support further enquiries. The volume brings together an international group of established and emerging scholars working across the multi-disciplinary domain of circus studies to present a clear overview of the specialised histories, aesthetics and distinctive performances of the modern circus. In sixteen commissioned essays, it covers the origins in commercial equestrian performance during the late-eighteenth century to contemporary inflections of circus arts in major international festivals, educational environments, and social justice settings. Table of Contents
Timeline timeline of the circus, 1537-2018 (16 pages)
Introduction Gillian Arrighi and Jim Davis The Circus: reflecting and mediating the world Part One: Trans-national Geographies of the Modern Circus1 Matthew Wittmann The Origins and Growth of the Modern Circus 2 Sakina Hughes Reconstruction, Railroads, and Race: The American Circus in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 Gillian Arrighi Circus, Colonialism and Empire: the circus in Australasia and Asia 4 Julieta Infantino The Criollo Circus (Circus Theatre) in Argentina: the emergence of a unique circus form in connection with the consolidation of the Argentine nation state 5 Hanuš Jordan and Veronika Štefanová The Past and Present of Czech Circus 6 Rosemary Farrell Catching On: Chinese Acrobatics from China to the West in the Twenty-First Century Part Two: Circus Acts and Aesthetics7 Kim Baston The Equestrian Circus 8 Peta Tait Animals, Circus and War Re-enactment: Military Action to Colonial Wars 9 Louise Peacock Circus Clowns 10 Kate Holmes Aerial Performance: Aerial Aesthetics Part Three: Circus: A Constantly Evolving Form 11 Catherine M. Young Circus and Somatic Spectacularity on Stage in the Variety Era 12 Agathe Dumont Becoming an Art Form: from ‘Nouveau Cirque’ to contemporary circus in Europe 13 Alisan Funk Risky Play and the Global Rise in Youth Circus 14 Jennifer Beth Spiegel Social Circus: The rise of an ‘inclusive’ movement for collective creativity Part Four, Circus Studies Scholarship 15 Charles R. Batson and Karen Fricker Methodologies in circus scholarship 16 Anna-Sophie Jürgens Through the Looking Glass: multi-disciplinary perspectives in Circus Works Cited Index | |||
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Australasian Drama Studies Journal (ADS) Call For ReviewersADS is looking to expand its database of peer and book reviewers. If you would be interested in reviewing and providing expert feedback on articles submitted for publication in Australasian Drama Studies, or reviewing recently published books on Theatre and Performance, send your contact details and nominate your area/s of interest and expertise to:The Editor, Dr Yoni Prior by email editor.ads@adsa.edu.au Copy in Assistant Editor, Dr Sarah Woodland, sarah.woodland@unimelb.edu.au |
CfP: ADSA General Issue (80), April 2022Edited by Yoni PriorWe invite submissions for the general issue of Australasian Drama Studies, Issue 80, April 2022. Submissions may be in the form of an abstract or a full draft. A full draft or substantial example of academic writing is preferred from emerging or unpublished researchers. Essay abstracts should be no more than 400 words, stating the title and author/s, and should give a clear sense of the proposed argument or investigation. Essay length is a maximum of 6,000 words including bibliography. Please also submit a brief biography and set of key words. Abstracts should be submitted by 3rd September, 2021. Contributors will receive notification about acceptance by early October and drafts should be submitted by November 30th. Peer review will take place through December 2021 and January 2022. The deadline for final essays is 31st March, 2022 and the journal issue will be published in April 2022. Please note that the journal is now published online, so we welcome the integration of rich digital format such as images, video footage, sound files, performance texts etc. Please send enquiries, or essay abstracts and drafts, to Dr Yoni Prior at editor.ads@adsa.edu.au |
Contemporary Theatre Review Special Issue
Simon Stone & Company Guest Editors Emma Cole (University of Bristol) Chris Hay (University of Queensland) Ticket holders to a new production of The Good Hope at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA), to be directed by the iconoclastic Australian-Swiss director Simon Stone, received an unusual email in September 2020:
We would like to inform you that the title The Good Hope has been changed to Flight 49. When writing his new play, Simon Stone drew inspiration from the motives presented in the Dutch theatre classic The Good Hope. Stone, however, writes lines for his plays during rehearsals, and created an entirely new and contemporary version of the classic. […] The play still deals with the central themes from Heijermans’ original piece, but Stone’s characters and the character developments in the plot are new. Considering this, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam has decided to change the title of the play.
Perhaps the title change was prompted by memories of the heated commentary around Stone’s 2012 production of Death of a Salesman in Sydney and its abbreviated ending, or the war of words prompted by his 2013 Melbourne production of The Cherry Orchard, which was accused variously of arrogance, disrespect, and offence against the art of playwriting. The production of Flight 49 — which eventually opened under its new title on 26 September — was part of a banner year for Stone, which included a new production of his version of Medea showing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), a new production of his version of Yerma at the Schaubühne Berlin, and a planned début at National Theatre, London, with a new version of Phaedra (although this last was a victim of COVID-cancellation). Stone’s career began in Australia with the success of independent company The Hayloft Project, of which he was Artistic Director from 2007-2010, before he graduated to the mainstage and then pivoted towards Europe with the 2013 appearance of his version of The Wild Duck at the Holland Festival. This same text was later directed by Stone in a film version titled The Daughter (2015), and his second film, The Dig, débuted on Netflix to positive notices in 2021. The template provided by other Australian auteur-directors such as Barrie Kosky and Benedict Andrews is clear – indeed, Stone has worked with many of Kosky’s key collaborators including Tom Wright on Baal (2011), and acted in Andrews’s seminal production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (2007) – but it is a career profile Stone has made all his own. Stone’s work has crossed national and linguistic boundaries; as well as ITA, he has made work for Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe with Three Sisters (2017) and Trilogy of Vengeance (2019), the Berliner Ensemble with A Greek Trilogy (2018), the Young Vic and the Schaubühne with Yerma (2016/2020), and more across the theatres and opera houses of Europe. This mapping of Stone’s trajectory highlights the role of networks in his professional profile: he is linked backwards to Kosky and Andrews, and forwards to the other artists who have worked with him repeatedly across companies, countries, and mediums. In curating this Special Issue of Contemporary Theatre Review, we are seeking a way to apprehend the work of the iconoclastic director that includes and highlights the network of collaborators, in terms of both individuals and institutions, who develop, facilitate, and assist their work. We are thereby attempting to build a body of scholarly work that addresses the work of a director on the rise by demonstrating and interrogating the multiple networks in which that director is suspended. We contest the idea that the auteur-director is a lone artist with a singular ‘brand’; while their name may well be alone on the marquee, or they alone may lead the company, the rise of an iconoclastic director is facilitated by those around them, many of whom go on to build significant careers or whose venues symbolise a particular politics of practice in themselves. This Special Issue of Contemporary Theatre Review has two key aims. Firstly, it looks to situate Stone within a wider creative ecology, particularly of mid-career artists such as Alice Babidge and Anne-Louise Sarks who are rising in prominence as leading figures within the international theatre industry. We aim to showcase how repeat collaboration and a shared approach to practice, which is in part defined by blurring the boundaries between adaptation and new writing and between the categorisation of artistic role (the multi-hyphenate or ‘slashy’ artist), has been integral to the career trajectories of this new generation of theatrical heavyweights. In so doing, the Special Issue seeks to provide the first large-scale documentation of Stone and Company’s theatrical practice. Despite Stone’s career span, the significance of his collaborators, and the global prominence of his productions, he is yet to receive substantial scholarly attention. Contributions might approach questions including but by no means limited to:
Please submit 300-word proposals by Monday 4 October 2021 to the Speical Issue editors on: emma.cole@bristol.ac.uk and chris.hay@uq.edu.au. If successful, full articles will be due in April 2022. |
PG/ECR PD Event Abstract Writing Workshop for 2021 ADSA Conference Monday 19th July 10:00am – 12:00pm About the workshop This workshop aims to support you to develop your abstract for the upcoming conference. Given the way the opportunities to present and network have been impacted by covid-19 over the past 18 months we hope this workshop will give the confidence and impetus to get out there present your research. This workshop is for any ECRs/PG students who wants to present and this year’s conference and would like some additional support to get there. Writing mentors include Emma Willis, Chris Hay, and Yoni Prior. Organised by Kathryn Roberts-Parker and Anita Hallewas (ADSA PG/ECR reps) ---- To confirm attendance or if you have any questions please email kathryn.roberts-parker@newcastle.ac.uk and a.hallewas@student.unsw.edu.au ---- Join Zoom Meeting using this link: https://zoom.us/j/98609642285?pwd=OU1KVFRVKy9OazBrbnF4QjZGSTZzUT09 Meeting ID: 986 0964 2285 Passcode: ADSA21 ---- We have two writing mentors confirmed. We hope to also include a writing mentor from AotearoaNZ. About the Writing Mentors Dr Chris Hay - Chris is an ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Theatre History at the University of Queensland. In his research, Chris is particularly interested in what funded cultural output can tell us about national pre-occupations and anxieties. He is Deputy Editor of Performance Paradigm, and an Associate Editor of the journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training for which he is currently co-editing a Special Issue on Performer Training in Australia. Dr Yoni Prior - Yoni Prior has worked as a performer, animateur, director, dramaturg, translator and writer with theatre and dance companies in Australia, the Middle East and Europe. She served on the Australia Council Theatre Board, was Chair of the Big West Festival, and is currently on the Board of Back to Back Theatre. She is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne. Between 1991 and 2019 she was a Senior Lecturer and Course Director of Drama (1997 - 2017) at Deakin University. Her doctoral research focused on contemporary Australian rehearsal processes, and she has created digital theatre collaborations between Deakin University, the University of Amsterdam, the British Museum and Cambridge University. She has published on contemporary performance practice, practice as research, dramaturgy in dance and theatre, rehearsal practice, performance and disability, intercultural performance, intermediate theatre, performer training and repertoire development. Yoni is the journal editor of Australasian Drama Studies editor.ads@adsa.edu.au |
Jonathan Bollen is inviting proposals for Brill’s book series on Australian Playwrights and Australian Drama, Theatre and Performance.
The series aims to publish scholarship on Australian drama, theatre and performance, both authored books and edited anthologies, including:
Contact Jonathan Bollen, j.bollen@unsw.edu.au, if you have a proposal in mind. Further details on the series is available at https://brill.com/view/serial/AP.
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For more information, see: | https://brill.com/view/serial/AP |
2 Level B Positions in Drama - Flinders University
For application enquiries please contact: Dr Alex Vickery-Howe - alex.vickeryhowe@flinders.edu.au Jobs at Flinders: https://flinders.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/flinders_employment/job/Bedford-Park/Lecturer--Drama_JR0000002133Seek: https://www.seek.com.au/job/52871587?type=standout#searchRequestToken=769d07dc-7214-4de8-a46d-24f9d343e805 | |
For more information, see: | https://flinders.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/flinders_employment/job/Bedford-Park/Lecturer--Drama_JR0000002133 |
Dear members, TO SIGN THE OPEN LETTER TO SAVE THE ARTS AT USYD | |
For more information, see: | tinyurl.com/savetheartsusyd |
Expressions of interest: Editor and Editorial Board Journal of Arts & Communities 2 issues per volume | First published in 2009 ISSN 1757-1936 | Online ISSN 1757-1944 The Editorial Board and Intellect are seeking expressions of interest for a new Editor and Board Members for the Journal. As you may know Stephanie Knight stepped down after many pioneering years of leading the Journal and we are now looking for new and experienced researchers, practitioners and academics to get involved in the journal. About the journal The Journal of Arts & Communities is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal that seeks to provide a critical examination of the practices known as community or participatory arts, encompassing a field of work defined for this purpose as incorporating active, creative collaboration between artists and people in a range of communities. The journal takes a cross-artform and interdisciplinary approach, including work happening in performance, visual arts and media, writing, multimedia and collaboration involving digital technology and associated forms. The Journal of Arts & Communities seeks to provide a critical examination of creative collaboration between artists and people from a range of communities of place and interest. Interdisciplinary in approach, the peer- reviewed journal focuses on practice, policy and research related to issues arising from artist/community engagement. Current status The journal is currently published once a year, with an option to increase to two or three issues a year once the new Editorial team are in place. Editor We are open to expressions of interest from dedicated individuals, co-editors, or co-operative teams. The role Editors are key to driving the vision and scope of the Journal. We are looking for individuals or co-editors who can renew and take forward the ideals and commitments of the Journal. As Editor(s) you will be expected to: • Provide overall vision and leadership of the journal. • Evaluate all manuscripts that are submitted to the journal. • Select articles that are suitable for the journal for peer review. • Encourage usage and subscriptions to the journal. • Consider peer reviewers’ advice to make a final decision about what gets published. • Work with the Editorial Board to identify new writers or develop ideas for Special Issues. Editorial Board • We are looking to expand and welcome new members to the Editorial Board. As a board member you will be expected to:
For questions or enquiries please write to the Intellect Journals Manager: amy.r@intellectbooks.com If you are interested in joining the Editorial Board, or being considered for the position of Editor, please provide a cover email outlining your specific interests and reasons for wanting to join the Journal of Arts & Communities team. Please also attach a CV. Deadline Monday 2 August 2021 | |||
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Call for Papers EXTENDED: Performance Paradigm 17 (2022)
Perform or Else? Surveying the state of the discipline for the post-pandemic world Edited by Emma Willis (University of Auckland), Chris Hay (University of Queensland), and Nien Yuan Cheng (University of Sydney)
∞
In Perform or Else (2001), Jon McKenzie outlined three performance paradigms – the cultural, the organisational and the technological – to argue that the imperative to perform had replaced Foucault’s description of discipline, hence the book’s subtitle: “from discipline to performance.” McKenzie’s insights partially inspired the name of this journal and our first issue “Performance in the Information Age” (2005) featured his work. This issue returns to McKenzie’s seminal text to ask what the imperative to perform looks like when performance is thwarted – for many, 2020 was marked by a “hyper-stasis” (Reynolds 2011, 516), with change happening all around us as we were (and continue to be) stuck in place. To do this, we take each of McKenzie’s three paradigms in turn, asking how they might be interpreted in the time of COVID-19.
Firstly, how is the playbook of performance management being mobilised at this time? University staff, for example, are currently being asked to consider ‘enhanced leaving,’ or ‘voluntary separation.’ What happens when the paradigm of performance measurement is mobilised against scholars and practitioners of performance, as we’re told “you’re obsolete, liable to be defunded, junkpiled, or dumped” (McKenzie 2001, 15)? How might we reclaim performance as a discipline, a mode of measurement, an act of political resistance? While performance has been defined as “restored behaviour,” Colbert, Jones and Vogel argue that formula can also be reversed. In other words, it can also be a mode of “behaved restoration”, repair, meaning, and becoming (Colbert, Jones, and Vogel 2020, 13)?
Secondly, how have “the worldwide circuits of performative power and knowledge” (McKenzie 2001, 25) aligned to techno-performance been amplified by COVID-19 and what does this amplification tell us about the distribution of such power? For artistic works, how has techno-performance itself performed? What happens when software programs made for business conferences and webinars become the performance spaces of the many artists forced to adapt to these new circumstances? In addition, techno-performance has also brought about new practices in documentation and archiving. What will be the “performance remains” (Schneider 2011, 100) of the pandemic — and, given the imbrication of performance space and commercial product, to whom will these remains belong?
Thirdly, performance studies, like many other disciplines, was facing demands for paradigm shifts in both teaching and research — even before the pandemic. In Perform or Else, McKenzie rehearses the “intellectual history” (2001, 33) of performance studies as located in its relationship with anthropology without fully critically acknowledging anthropology’s violent legacies of cultural and political imperialism. Twenty years on, “decolonisation” has become a buzzword within and beyond the university––but have things really changed? As Bhakti Shringarpure asks, “what counts as ‘authentic’ decolonisation in 2020?” (2020). As a journal with a focus on the Australasian and Oceanic region, we are particularly interested in how this question bears out in this part of the world.
Lastly, and more recently, McKenzie sketches another three “additional paradigms of performance research”: government performance, financial or economic performance, and environmental performance (2006, 37-38). Each of these paradigms has been implicated by the COVID-19 crisis, which has brought with it comparison graphs on national infection rates, vaccination performance reports, and so on. Could we even suggest that pandemic performance might soon form a paradigm of its own?
The above lines of inquiry proposed by this issue are far-ranging; nonetheless, they resonate with one another, bound together by an interest in revisiting and advancing the ideas explored by McKenzie 20 years ago. We ask not only what it means to “perform” in the shadow of a global pandemic, but also what is its “or else?” (McKenzie 2001, 5). This issue therefore seeks essays or interviews in response to the four areas sketched above:
Please send proposals of approximately 300 words to Dr Emma Willis (emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz) by 10 May 2021. Full articles will be due on 1 November 2021 for publication in Performance Paradigm 17, July 2022. Please feel free to contact the issue editors with any questions. For more information about them, see here: Dr Emma Willis, emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz, http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/ewil077. Dr Chris Hay, chris.hay@uq.edu.au, https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/19715. Dr Nien Yuan Cheng, nien.cheng@sydney.edu.au.
∞
Works Cited: Colbert, S., Jones, D., & Vogel, S. (Eds.). (2020). Race and Performance after Repetition. Durham, London: Duke University Press. McKenzie, J. (2001). Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, London: Routledge, 2001. ---- (2006). “Performance and globalization.” In The SAGE handbook of performance studies, edited by D. S. Madison and J. Hamera, 33-45. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addition to its Own Past. London: Faber & Faber. Schneider, R. (2011). Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge. Shringarpure, B. (2020). “Notes on fake decolonization. “Africa is a Country, 18 December. https://africasacountry.com/2020/12/notes-on-fake-decolonization. |
The VCA Theatre program is seeking an outstanding and well-respected theatre professional and experienced academic with the vision and capacity to shape and build the teaching, learning and research within VCA Theatre. Based on Southbank Campus of The University of Melbourne. Doctoral qualification (or equivalent experience) required. http://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/904763/associate-professor-professor-in-theatre | |
For more information, see: | jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/904763/associate-professor-professor-in-theatre |
Next ADSA Conference. Deakin University, Geelong 30 Nov - 3 Dec 2021 Revised Call for Papers Performers, Makers, Methodologies – Crafting conditions for Decentring Scholarship and Pedagogy in Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies and Dance Extended deadline: 21 July Thanks to all who have already sent in proposals for ADSA2021. We are re-circulating the CfP with some revisions, thanks to guidance and feedback from ADSA colleagues. In the revised call, we seek to better differentiate between decolonising practices and decentring practices. We re-share the call in this amended form and acknowledge the way in which members of ADSA have engaged with us to help us to better understand this distinction. The revised call also seeks to better scaffold how you might go about what you can propose and to integrate insightful feedback we have received. The field itself is under pressure, and that pressure itself brings to the fore these concerns. As convenors of the 2021 conference we invite you to engage with the precarity of the times in which we are researching and teaching. Across Australasia there are university programs under pressure of review, while others are being cancelled altogether. It is a good time to examine our assumptions and past practices in scholarship and pedagogy. Our intention in convening the conference on this theme is to engage us all in examining assumptions, behaviours, and processes that claim authority. In amending the CfP, the subject of decolonisation is not being pushed off the agenda, rather we invite you to investigate a range of practices within the broader remit of decentring and to engage in self-examination within a spirit of solidarity. We urge you to locate your proposals in the region, to cast an eye over your own local context/s, within the Australasian region. How do these concerns relate more specifically to Aotearoa NZ and Australia? Rea, Kate and Miles, ADSA 2021 conference organising committee *** Call for Papers (with revisions) We invite submissions for the 2021 ADSA conference. ADSA 2021 invites you to go beyond the instrumental objectives within your research reporting toward an intersectional discussion of the processes, forms, and materials of making and performing. As an analytical tool, intersectionality views categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, ability, ethnicity, and age – among others – as interrelated and mutually shaping one another (Patricia Hill Collins 2). Aligning with Collins’ theory of intersectionality as a way of explaining complexity in the world, the conference seeks to tell stories that embody the many specificities of the Australasian experience. ADSA2021 asks us to frame our methods, habits, and practices through this intersectional lens and to analyse key aspects of the Australasian performing arts ecology. The conference leverages science philosopher Isabelle Stenger’s take on ecology as a question of habitat, that is, the context in which we undertake our labour, and the habits that inform our methodologies. Stenger (2005) argues that through practice, by its very nature, we must feel out its edges, acknowledge its limits, and also push against these limits to (re) establish them over and over again. Conference discussions will sit within the intersection of these propositions by Collins and Stengers.
While we retain these broad questions:
How is our research critiquing singular ideas and understandings and tipping perspectives on their head?
How is our research testing conserved ways of thinking and knowing? How might we reveal stories and disrupt conventions through practice? What are the methodological nuances that are forged, and that are contingent on our unique research cultures/ecologies? When proposing your paper or panel we ask that you resist binaries and consider how the inquiry is of this place and time. Conference keywords – Intersectionality, Queering, and Ecology – denote our deliberate purpose to begin to decentre our scholarship and pedagogy, ways of knowing, and modes of inquiry. Decentring is about intersectionality. We add additional indicative references recommended by colleagues: Indicative references Ahmed, Sara (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, Durham. Arora, Swati (2021) A Manifesto to Decentre Theatre and Performance Studies, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 41:1, 12-20, DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2021.1881730 Collins, Patricia Hill and Sirma Bilge (2016) Intersectionality. Polity Press, Cambridge. Bianca Elkington et. al. (2020) Imagining Decolonisation. BWB Texts: Wellington, NZ. Stengers, Isabelle (2005) Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices, Cultural Studies Review, 1 (11) 183-196. We invite presentations (20 minutes), panels (90 minutes), performative proposals (30-90 minutes, live) and/or performative audio (5-20 minutes, recorded) for the 2021 ADSA conference, convened by Drama and Dance in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Geelong Australia, 30 Nov – 3 December 2021. Please send proposal abstracts of approximately 250 words to Dr Rea Dennis (rea.dennis@deakin.edu.au) by extended due date 21 July 2021. Please feel free to contact the conference organisers with any questions. Rea Dennis rea.dennis@deakin.edu.au Kate Hunter k.hunter@deakin.edu.au Miles O’Neil mileso@deakin.edu.au |
Online Symposium: Adaptation and the Australian Novel Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 April 2021 Landmark Australian novels are being adapted for the stage and screen at a rate we’ve not seen for many decades. In the 2015 to 2020 period alone, what was previously a steady trickle has become a flood as the nation’s various mediums of cultural transmission have offered reimagined versions of much-loved novels, including: Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South, Kenneth Cooke’s Wake in Fright, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones, Colin Thiele’s Storm Boy, Christos Tsiolkas’s Loaded, The Slap, and Barracuda, Madeleine St John’s The Women in Black, and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies. This trend has continued into 2021, with screen adaptations including The Dry from Jane Harper’s novel, and stage premières including Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe (QT/MTC) and Ruth Park’s Playing Beattie Bow (STC). Meanwhile Andrew Bovell’s adaptation of Kate Grenville’s contentious classic The Secret River has toured to the heart of the former empire whose violent colonisation of Australia it depicts, playing to broad acclaim in both Edinburgh and at London’s National Theatre. Questions that arise here include: Why the rush on Australian adaptation now? What’s fuelling the appetite for this locally themed work, and why is it being distributed internationally via digital platforms such as Amazon and Netflix? Is there a ‘house style’ emerging either at particular theatre companies or television production houses who are leading this push? Whose stories are being canonised in this tranche of largely Anglo-Celtic authored works, and whose voices are doing the adapting? What version of Australian national identity becomes enshrined in this process, and whose perspectives are elided or omitted? We are pleased to invite ADSA members to join UQ’s Centre for Critical and Creative Writing for a two-day online symposium that interrogates adaptation, the Australian novel, and what it means to perform the canon in the 2010s and 2020s. Attendance at the Symposium is free, and all sessions will be presented via Zoom. We also seek to elevate practitioner perspectives alongside academic ones; the Symposium programme features paper panels and keynotes, as well as ‘in conversation’ sessions with leading adaptors. Please register for the Symposium at this link. This will give you access to the Zoom links for all of the panel sessions, the keynotes by Andrew Bovell (on The Secret River) and Professor Frances Babbage, and the in conversation sessions with Anita Heiss (on Tiddas), and Andrew Bovell and Dan Giovannoni (on Loaded). The full program for the Symposium is available here. Any questions can be directed to Stephen Carleton on cccw@uq.edu.au. | |
For more information, see: | https://writing.centre.uq.edu.au/event/465/symposium-2021-%E2%80%93-adaptation-and-australian-novel |
Dear Members, Announced this week, the V&A Museum is planning major cuts in staffing that will heavily impact curators and librarians and directly impact the Theatre and Performing Arts Dept which is earmarked for closure as part of the cuts. The V & A houses the national collection for the UK’s performing arts community. This year V & A Theatre and Performance partnered with AusStage to better understand how to move their collection online – this news disrupts these plans. Please sign and share the petition: Save the Theatre and Performing Arts Collection https://www.change.org/p/tristram-hunt-director-v-a-performing-art-heritage The loss of the knowledge and skills accrued through sustained care and practice by the custodians of cultural and artistic histories will be catastrophic for our field. Without their presence in the museum these stories will remain buried in archives until the artefacts become dead pieces of information. Please also sign and share this petitions to protect people’s jobs. Save the National Art Library https://www.change.org/p/victoria-albert-museum-stop-the-cuts-and-access-restrictions-at-the-national-art-library-v-a?recruiter=1183901351&recruited_by_id=e8263fa0-7c2f-11eb-96a4-535df5a0b61c&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard More information about the staff cuts can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/mar/07/guardians-of-uks-literary-jewels-at-risk-in-va-plan-to-cut-key-library-staff | |
For more information, see: | chng.it/rMkZ6p6Hgb |
Please see below an alert from Tessa Rixon who is the guest editor of the upcoming Special issue of Scene Journal on Australian Scenography.
**New extended deadline for full paper submissions – 30th April 2021** Please direct any queries about submission ideas to Tessa Rixon tessa.rixon@qut.edu.au . Please submit final papers to Christine White christine.white@dmu.ac.uk and Tessa Rixon tessa.rixon@qut.edu.au .
This special issue aims to provide space to consider the state of scenography and performance design within Australia, ranging across creative practice, pedagogical approaches and evolutions, and research inquiry. On the cusp of a new decade, Australian performance finds itself within the context of a turbulent political landscape, which has seen the devaluation of the arts at a federal level and instability in the funding landscape, as well as ecological disasters from fires, floods and drought; persistent humanitarian crises and an inability to reach humane solutions for those seeking asylum in our country; and finally, the pernicious impact of European settlement and the marginalisation of First Nations and indigenous voices. Against this backdrop, this special issue welcomes contributions on the state of Australian performance and their scenographies. It presents perspectives on the evolution and diversification of design practices and philosophies tied to the unique Australian experience, across a range of performance genres including dance, theatre, opera and inter- and transdisciplinary practices. Submissions could address the following points:
Submissions could be in the form of essays, case studies of practice, interviews and roundtables capturing diverse perceptions on Australian design. Guest editor: Tessa Rixon. Journal Co-editors: Christine White and Alison Oddey. Guest edited by Tessa Rixon tessa.rixon@qut.edu.au. Please submit final papers to Christine White christine.white@dmu.ac.uk and Tessa Rixon tessa.rixon@qut.edu.au. Download the Call for Papers here: https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/46752/1/Scene_CFP_feb2020.pdf | |
For more information, see: | https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/46752/1/Scene_CFP_feb2020.pdf |
CfP Australasian Drama Studies Focus Issue: New Dramaturgies of Sound and Vision We invite submissions for this special issue of Australasian Drama Studies, Issue 79, October 2021. ADS Sound and Vision, guest edited by Pia Johnson and Miles O’Neil, is a special issue focusing on the nexus of theatre and technology. At the sharp end of 2020, it was only natural for a confrontation between theatre and technology to arise. The pandemic has forced the technological hand, as theatre artists have navigated the performative possibilities of the internet, both professionally and pedagogically. While acknowledging the pandemic, this issue is not exclusively focused on pandemic or Zoom performance, but takes this histori-cultural moment as a pivot point that prompts a wider interrogation of the relationship between performance and technology. New Dramaturgies of Sound and Vision examines contemporary dramaturgies of the aural and visual in performance. As narratives of sound and vision become increasingly technologically embedded within theatre and live performance, the issue aims to render these developments and mechanisms visible and audible. We argue that the pandemic has accelerated an existing movement towards the digitised, connected and recorded in performance, but that these concerns sit within a broader landscape of persistent but shifting artistic practices of sound and vision through time. The issue will actively pursue practitioners and people interested in expanding the journal article form, aiming to prioritise innovation in form and content that may incorporate new ways to present, analyse and critique sound and vision in performance.
Contributions to the issue may address the following topics: Technological innovation in contemporary Australian performance Merging of technologies – sound, vision, performance Sound as presence or character Internet as performance space Technodrama and mixed reality Virtual actors and digital scenery Creative form and its ghosts, its evidence / residue Dramaturgies in vision and sound Social media and/as performance Performance in the digital age Revealing the mechanisms behind the form (technician, camera, creative) Visual documentation and its value Pandemic constructs of performance and presentation
Submissions may be in the form of an abstract or a full draft. Full drafts are preferred from emerging scholars. Essay abstracts should be no more than 400 words, stating the title and author/s, and should give a clear sense of the proposed argument or investigation. Essay length is a maximum of 6,000 words including bibliography. Please also submit a brief biography and set of key words. We also welcome shorter pieces, reflections and notes from the field (2000 word maximum). Please note that the journal is now published online, so we welcome the integration of rich digital format such as images, video footage, or sound files.
Submission of abstracts/drafts: Friday March 19th to guesteditor.ads@adsa.edu.au Authors will be advised whether their submission has been successful by the end of April, and full drafts are due by Friday August 6th, 2021. The issue will be published in October, 2021.
Dr Yoni Prior, Editor: Australasian Drama Studies | |
For more information, see: | https://www.adsa.edu.au/ADSjournal |
Call for Papers: Performance Paradigm 17 (2022)
Perform or Else? Surveying the state of the discipline for the post-pandemic world Edited by Emma Willis (University of Auckland), Chris Hay (University of Queensland), and Nien Yuan Cheng (University of Sydney) Proposals of approximately 300 words due 11 April 2021. ∞ In Perform or Else (2001), Jon McKenzie outlined three performance paradigms – the cultural, the organisational and the technological – to argue that the imperative to perform had replaced Foucault’s description of discipline, hence the book’s subtitle: “from discipline to performance.” McKenzie’s insights partially inspired the name of this journal and our first issue “Performance in the Information Age” (2005) featured his work. This issue returns to McKenzie’s seminal text to ask what the imperative to perform looks like when performance is thwarted – for many, 2020 was marked by a “hyper-stasis” (Reynolds 2011, 516), with change happening all around us as we were (and continue to be) stuck in place. To do this, we take each of McKenzie’s three paradigms in turn, asking how they might be interpreted in the time of COVID-19. Firstly, how is the playbook of performance management being mobilised at this time? University staff, for example, are currently being asked to consider ‘enhanced leaving,’ or ‘voluntary separation.’ What happens when the paradigm of performance measurement is mobilised against scholars and practitioners of performance, as we’re told “you’re obsolete, liable to be defunded, junkpiled, or dumped” (McKenzie 2001, 15)? How might we reclaim performance as a discipline, a mode of measurement, an act of political resistance? While performance has been defined as “restored behaviour,” Colbert, Jones and Vogel argue that formula can also be reversed. In other words, it can also be a mode of “behaved restoration”, repair, meaning, and becoming (Colbert, Jones, and Vogel 2020, 13)? Secondly, how have “the worldwide circuits of performative power and knowledge” (McKenzie 2001, 25) aligned to techno-performance been amplified by COVID-19 and what does this amplification tell us about the distribution of such power? For artistic works, how has techno-performance itself performed? What happens when software programs made for business conferences and webinars become the performance spaces of the many artists forced to adapt to these new circumstances? In addition, techno-performance has also brought about new practices in documentation and archiving. What will be the “performance remains” (Schneider 2011, 100) of the pandemic — and, given the imbrication of performance space and commercial product, to whom will these remains belong? Thirdly, performance studies, like many other disciplines, was facing demands for paradigm shifts in both teaching and research — even before the pandemic. In Perform or Else, McKenzie rehearses the “intellectual history” (2001, 33) of performance studies as located in its relationship with anthropology without fully critically acknowledging anthropology’s violent legacies of cultural and political imperialism. Twenty years on, “decolonisation” has become a buzzword within and beyond the university––but have things really changed? As Bhakti Shringarpure asks, “what counts as ‘authentic’ decolonisation in 2020?” (2020). As a journal with a focus on the Australasian and Oceanic region, we are particularly interested in how this question bears out in this part of the world. Lastly, and more recently, McKenzie sketches another three “additional paradigms of performance research”: government performance, financial or economic performance, and environmental performance (2006, 37-38). Each of these paradigms has been implicated by the COVID-19 crisis, which has brought with it comparison graphs on national infection rates, vaccination performance reports, and so on. Could we even suggest that pandemic performance might soon form a paradigm of its own? The above lines of inquiry proposed by this issue are far-ranging; nonetheless, they resonate with one another, bound together by an interest in revisiting and advancing the ideas explored by McKenzie 20 years ago. We ask not only what it means to “perform” in the shadow of a global pandemic, but also what is its “or else?” (McKenzie 2001, 5). This issue therefore seeks essays or interviews in response to the four areas sketched above: 1) the mobilisation of our field for neoliberal measurement purposes; 2) the impacts of techno-performance on our work and our experience as scholars, artists and citizens; 3) the question of how to decolonise performance studies and what that might look like; and 4) the rising paradigms of governmental, financial and environmental performance. Please send proposals of approximately 300 words to Dr Emma Willis (emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz) by 11 April 2021. Full articles will be due on 1 November 2021 for publication in Performance Paradigm 17, July 2022. Please feel free to contact the issue editors with any questions. For more information about them, see here: Dr Emma Willis, emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz, http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/ewil077. Dr Chris Hay, chris.hay@uq.edu.au, https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/19715. Dr Nien Yuan Cheng, nien.cheng@sydney.edu.au. ∞ Works Cited: Colbert, S., Jones, D., & Vogel, S. (Eds.). (2020). Race and Performance after Repetition. Durham, London: Duke University Press. McKenzie, J. (2001). Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, London: Routledge, 2001. ---- (2006). “Performance and globalization.” In The SAGE handbook of performance studies, edited by D. S. Madison and J. Hamera, 33-45. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addition to its Own Past. London: Faber & Faber. Schneider, R. (2011). Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge. Shringarpure, B. (2020). “Notes on fake decolonization. “Africa is a Country, 18 December. https://africasacountry.com/2020/12/notes-on-fake-decolonization. |
The latest Issue (77) of Australasian Drama Studies is published and now available on the ADS website. Edited by Jennifer Beckett, Rachel Fensham and Paul Rae, this focus issue examines cultural activity in regional, rural and remote Australasia. Diverse contributors include: Article authors Asher Warren and JaneWoollard Ailsa Brackley du Bois Miles O’Neil, Anna Loewendahl Ariel Songs Angela Campbell, Tanja Beer, Richard Chew and Kim Durban Abbie Victoria Trott Sarah Woodland Brydie-Leigh Bartleet Interviews with Chloe Flockhart and Paul McPhail Elena Carapetis and Anthony Peluso Jude Anderson and Joe Toohey Ros Abercrombie, Paul McPhail, Anthony Peluso and Joe Toohey Edwin Lee Mulligan and Dalisa Pigram Ross Review essay Angela Conquet | |
For more information, see: | www.adsa.edu.au/dbpage.php?pg=view&dbase=newsletters&id=78 |
Dear colleagues, The international journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training is seeking two new colleagues to join its editorial team, a Co-Editor and a Peer Reviews Associate Editor. This is an opportunity to join a rapidly growing journal, which now produces four issues a year, and to work with an international network of editors. The journal is particularly seeking applications from candidates who have been historically under-represented both the journal and in the field more broadly. Applications for both close on 31 March 2021. If you would like more information on the positions, please feel free to reach out using the contact details on the attached advertisements. You might also like to contact some of the ADSA members on the journal’s Editorial Board, including Rachel Fensham (rachel.fensham@unimelb.edu.au), Hilary Halba (hilary.halba@otago.ac.nz), Chris Hay (chris.hay@uq.edu.au), and David Shirley (d.shirley@ecu.edu.au). More information about the journal is available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtdp20. | |||
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For more information, see: | https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtdp20 |
Tuesday 15 December 1.30-4.00pm In this Zoom round-robin, a diverse range of performing arts movers and shakers put their heads together to tell a braided story of 2020 and beckon a 2021 that cannot come soon enough. They’ll be explaining all the things they did right and how they did them, what bombed and why, and how to get from here to the future without tears. If you work in, study or simply love the performing arts, come along, get some perspective, and share your own. With:
Hosted by Alyson Campbell and Paul Rae, University of Melbourne For the Zoom link, register at:
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Australian Playwrights Brill gladly invites authors to contribute to their book series Australian Playwrights . This series aims: i) to contribute to the interpretation, critical analysis, promotion, and wider understanding of Australian drama, theatre and performance in Australia and overseas; ii) to pursue a scholarly investigation through monographs which could include either an overview of a particular playwright, director or company and a critical analysis of his/her/its plays or performances or a study of a grouping in drama and theatre including writers for performance and theatre makers within a unifying framework; iii) to enliven, enrich and illustrate the study of drama, theatre and performance within Australia and overseas, especially for scholars, artists and students. Each monograph provides an in-depth study aimed at furthering knowledge of Australian drama, theatre and performance and therefore Australian culture with reference to primary and secondary sources. Interested or want to learn more? Contact Masja Horn, Acquisitions Editor (Horn@brill.com) | |
For more information, see: | www.brill.com/AP |
Special issue Performance Training and Well-Being to be published June 2022 Call for contributions, ideas, proposals and dialogue with the editors Guest editors: Dr. Virginie Magnat, University of British Columbia, Canada (virginie.magnat@ubc.ca) and Dr. Nathalie Gauthard, Université d’Artois, France (ngauthard@orange.fr). Performance Training and Well-Being (Issue 13.2) Conceived as a way of foregrounding the relevance of performance-based artistic practices in response to the current health crisis caused by the global pandemic, as well as a way of challenging neoliberal conceptions of creativity and performance as hallmarks of capitalist productivity, adaptability, and efficacy, this special issue will explore the relationship between performance training and the notion of well-being, broadly conceived, to reignite, reconfigure, revitalize, renew and/or reimagine their inter- and/or intra-action. We seek contributions by performance and theatre studies scholar-practitioners, artists, educators, and activists committed to critically and reflexively investigating the cultural, social, political, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of performance training modalities that have the potential to promote, enhance, restore, and sustain the well-being of practitioners, audiences, and other/more-than-human participants and collaborators. We are committed to integrating the perspectives of non-Western and Indigenous scholars and artists, and welcome contributions examining the ethical implications of conducting research on performance and well-being in the neoliberal academy, as well as decolonizing approaches to performance training that take into account the well-being of culturally diverse communities. This special issue will therefore respond to the urgent need to acknowledge and to include multiple ways of knowing and being within Eurocentric paradigms that still inform dominant knowledge systems. The contested term “well-being” is intended as a generative provocation. In this light, potential contributors are invited to engage with topics and questions such as:
To signal your interest and intention to make a contribution to this special issue please contact Virginie Magnat (virginie.magnat@ubc.ca) and Nathalie Gauthard (ngauthard@orange.fr) for an initial exchange of ideas/thoughts or email us an abstract or proposal (max 300 words). Please consider the range of possibilities available within TDPT: Essays and Sources up to 6500 words; photo essays; shorter, more speculative, essais up to 3000 words and postcards (up to 200 words). 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. Firm proposals across all areas must be received by 1st March 2021 at the latest. We look forward to hearing from you. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training has a number of formats:
Innovative cross-over print/digital formats are possible, including the submission of audiovisual training materials, which can be housed on the online interactive Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal blog: http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/ Issue Schedule: 1 March 2021: proposals to be submitted to Virginie Magnat (virginie.magnat@ubc.ca) and Nathalie Gauthard (ngauthard@orange.fr) 31 March 2021: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation to submit contribution April to End August 2021: writing/preparation period Start Sept to end October 2021: peer review period November 2021 – end January 2021: author revisions post peer review June 2022: publication as Issue 13.2 |
Edited by Yoni Prior We invite submissions for the general issue of Australasian Drama Studies, Issue 78, April 2021. Submissions may be in the form of an abstract or a full draft. A full draft or substantial example of academic writing is preferred from emerging researchers. Essay abstracts should be no more than 400 words, stating the title and author/s, and should give a clear sense of the proposed argument or investigation. Essay length is a maximum of 6,000 words including bibliography. Please also submit a brief biography and set of key words. Please note that the timeline is fairly tight this year. Abstracts should be submitted by 30th October, 2020. Contributors will receive notification about acceptance by mid- December and drafts should be submitted by end January. Peer review will take place through February. The deadline for final essays is 31st March, 2020 and the journal will be published in April 2021. Please note that the journal is now published online, so we welcome the integration of rich digital format such as images, video footage, sound files etc. Please send enquiries or essay abstracts and drafts to Dr Yoni Prior at editor.ads@adsa.edu.au Call For Reviewers ADS is looking to expand its database of peer and book reviewers. If you would be interested in reviewing and providing expert feedback on articles submitted for publication in Australasian Drama Studies, or reviewing recently published books on Theatre and Performance, please contact the Assistant Editor, Dr Natalie Lazaroo by email natalie.lazaroo@alumni.griffithuni.edu.au providing contact details and nominating area/s of interest and expertise. |
Proposal deadline 13th November 2020 (for publication in August 2022, 27.3) Co-editors: Molly Mullen (University of Auckland) and Kelly Freebody (University of Sydney) This themed issue brings a focus to the relationship between applied theatre, applied performance, drama education and policy, seeking new perspectives on this topic. In these fields there has been a longstanding concern with understanding the relationships between policy, funding and practice within institutions and communities, and with the implications of these relationships (Kershaw 1999, Jackson 1993, Neelands 2007 Hughes and Ruding 2009; Mullen 2019). It is evident that this relationship has implications for political, pedagogic, aesthetic and ethical values, approaches and outcomes. This themed issue is interested in profiling diverse and emerging approaches to conceptualising and researching policy and its relationship with practice. In the broadest sense, policy establishes ‘goals, values and practices’ as the basis for a particular process or programme of action (Laswell and Kaplan 1950, cited in Rosenstein 2018, 13). Policy is typically ‘orientated toward a problem or set of problems’ (Rosenstein 2018, 13). There is debate, however, about whether policy is a pragmatic response to the need to solve objectively identifiable problems or whether problems are produced or ‘constituted’ via policy (Bacchi 2014). From the latter perspective, policy is treated as a form of governmentality. Understandings of society as governed in ways that go beyond the government open up the scope of what might count as policy. Performance studies scholar Paul Bonin Rodriguez (2014), for example, defines cultural policy as ‘[a]s a set of ‘decisions (by both private and public entities) that either directly or indirectly shape the environment in which the arts are created, disseminated, and consumed, … an admixture of ongoing political, social, and economic projects’ (p. 2). Policies try to ‘get something done’ (Rosenstein 2018, 14). But, their capacity to do so depends, in part, on their legitimisation by a recognised authority. Education scholar, Stephen Ball (1993), makes the important argument that policies are still always open to being de-legitimised or undermined. Considering the various perspectives on policy outlined above, one can make clear connections to work in applied theatre, drama education and community theatre. These fields are often oriented to a series of social or policy ‘problems’, whether it be a problematisation of the participants themselves (as marginalised, as silenced, as in need of education) or with less tangible social problems (such as violence, drug addiction, unsafe partying practices and so on). There are examples or traditions of applied theatre and performance with explicit intentions to develop and inform policy, including Boal’s Legislative Theatre. Other practices are directly engaged with challenging or resisting particular policies and their effects. Further, as transdisciplinary practices, drama education and applied theatre often happen in places governed by policy (public and institutional) and operate to bring policy-infused messages to participants, communities, and audiences. Recent scholarship has sought to understand these connections, both implicitly through an exploration of how applied theatre works in societies and institutions (Balfour 2009), and explicitly, through critical analyses of the intersection between theatre, policy, and funding (Mullen 2019). There is a growing recognition that the context work takes place in can have effects on intentions, approach and outcomes. Tensions arise when policy-infused agendas conflict with the needs or desires of participants or key partners. Complicated negotiations are required between competing notions of what is valuable, ‘effective’ or ‘successful’. Policy and funding relationships affect participants, their experience of the work and the terms of their engagement with it. Policy can also impact the nature of facilitators’ labour and positionality. In practice, therefore, policy has profound effects on applied theatre, applied performance, and drama education practitioners. This volume seeks to expand our current thinking about these effects and how they might be negotiated. We invite papers that consider:
We are seeking contributions that consider these topics from a range of levels: micro through to macro, local through to global. We are looking for diverse theoretical and geographical perspectives. We are seeking research-based articles (6-8,000 words), including: case studies, historical studies, theoretical or philosophical approaches, practice-based/led methodologies. We will also consider shorter submissions in the form of interviews or accounts of relevant practice examples (approximately 1,500 words). Please send initial proposals of approximately 300 words for articles, interviews and accounts of practice by 13thNovember to the issue guest editors: Molly Mullen (m.mullen@auckland.ac.nz) and Kelly Freebody (kelly.freebody@sydney.edu.au) for consideration and feedback. Full articles will be due mid-2021 (please note, full articles will undergo anonymous peer review prior to final acceptance). Final publication for volume 27, issue 3 is expected to be August 2022. |
Further Update Massey Profile| LinkedIn | Academia.edu| Summary: On the 15th of June in Albuquerque, New Mexico, protestors attempted to pull down a statue of the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. Oñate is controversial figure who is celebrated as the founding father of the Spanish colony in New Mexico despite being convicted by the Spanish crown for crimes against the Native American inhabitants of the Acoma Pueblo. During the demonstration to tear down the statue, an activist shouted ‘This is an act of decolonisation! This is an act of liberation!’ (Mars and Alcorn, 2020). Similar ‘acts of liberation’ have been staged around the globe in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter protests, with demonstrators tearing down monuments, contesting narratives of shared history, and challenging perceived white and Eurocentric commemorative practices. Taking inspiration from the urgent cry of a black lives matter activist, this is a call for papers that engages with recent ideas, theory, and practices of liberation. The Black Lives Matter movement has been accompanied by a renewed interest in Black feminist thinkers such as Angela Davis (2003) and bell hooks (1981), black scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois, writers such as James Baldwin (1963), and the philosophy of self-determination as expressed in Stokely and Hamilton’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967). This Special Issue seeks to advance the practice and theory of liberation that builds on a diverse and interdisciplinary body of literature, ranging from the psychology of liberation as expressed in the writings of Erich Fromm (1942) to the pedagogy of liberation as articulated by Paulo Freire (1972). Contributions in the field also include the liberation psychology of Frantz Fanon (1967), who articulated the liberation of the colonial mind as a key site for the struggle for freedom, as well as the liberation philosophy of Enrique Dussel (1985), which provides a critique of modernity and oppressive rationalisation. The current political upheavals draw attention to the need to explore with renewed critical vigour decolonial approaches to practice, theory, and teaching. Decoloniality proposes that the "coloniality of power" (Quijano, 2000) did not end with colonialism, and that the modern capitalist world-system imposes a racial/ethnic classification of people as a basis for global exploitative and extractive power-structures. According to Walter Mignolo, decoloniality involves “delinking” from Eurocentric categories of thought to “change the terms and not just the content of the conversation” (2007, 459). For Nelson Maldonado-Torres, decoloniality involves the production of “counter-discourses, counter-knowledges, counter-creative acts” aimed at breaking down “hierarchies of difference that dehumanise subjects and communities and that destroy nature” (2016,10). This Special Issue of the Humanities journal will consider the emancipatory role of culture and the role of the arts in humanising subjects and communities impacted by colonial hierarchies of difference. This call for papers invites submissions from decolonial and indigenous scholars, practitioners, and activists involved in the production of counter-knowledges and counter-creative acts that challenge the privileging of Western- and European-centric ways of being and knowing. We hope that authors will engage with conceptions of liberation as explored through the arts and cultural production in general and in the fields of theatre and performance specifically. Contributions are invited that consider the embodied and performative aspects of liberation and how liberation acts, is acted on, or is acted out. Submission: Please send an abstract of 300 words and short bio by 31 October 2020 to: r.t.hazou@massey.ac.nz Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 30 November 2020. Full manuscripts are due 31 March 2021. Keywords: § theatre and liberation; About the Journal Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI. Humanities is an international, peer-reviewed, and open access scholarly journal (free for readers). The central concern of this journal pertains to the core values of the Humanities, i.e., focusing on the ideals of human existence, seen through many different lenses. Humanities is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and, accordingly, submissions are peer reviewed rigorously to ensure that they conform to the highest standards in their field. Key benefits from publishing with the journal include:
§ High Visibility: Indexed in ERIH Plus.
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions. | |||
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The performing arts sector has been significantly hit by the impact of COVID-19. In 2020, we have seen theatres close, productions cancelled and many arts practitioners losing jobs. In addition to this, acting teachers in institutions and the private sector moved swiftly to online learning; some even transitioning to rehearsing and performing productions online. Online coaching is not a new phenomenon, as teachers have been coaching actors using video conferencing tools for most part of the decade, however, this pandemic has highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of learning in this way. Actors, while in isolation, need to maintain their skills and keep active. They are also looking at different ways in which they can keep connected with other performers. This crisis has reawakened actor training, inspiring communities and theatre companies to work on the sustained wellbeing of all actors who wish to perform and train. These teachers and artists have rapidly adapted their arts practice with new ways of working. Overall, questions may stem from, but not limited to, the following points concerning new developments in Australian performance pedagogies: • How are we teaching acting to the current digital generation? • What methods have actors been working on during this time of isolation to maintain their skills? • What new methods and practices have been developed by teaching acting online? • What are the advantages and disadvantages of teaching acting online? • What adjustments have acting teachers made adjusting in this new environment? • How have rehearsals and performances adjusted in this new environment? • Are there are gaps recognised in training and process, and what would be helpful to fill those gaps? • What are some new developments in Australian actor training that have surfaced this year in response to the ever-changing world? • How are we adapting actor training due to financial pressures facing the tertiary sector? • What does the post COVID-19 landscape look like for actor training? ABSTRACT AND INFORMATION SUBMISSION Participants who are interested in presenting a paper and/or conducting a workshop must submit an abstract up to 250 words to Dr Robert Lewis: robelewis@csu.edu.au. Applicants who are interested in submitting an abstract for a workshop must clearly state the level of participation, e.g., beginners, intermediate or advanced, the aims and objectives of the workshop, influences/inspiration behind the work, and any other requirements needed. Applicants who are interested in staging a performance must indicate cast size, length of performance and any other helpful information. Technical requirements must be kept to a minimum. Abstract for papers, panel presentations and workshops due Friday October 2. PUBLICATION Presenters have the option to submit their papers to be considered for the peer reviewed International Journal of Practice Based Humanities (IJPBH). Presenters will be invited to submit an article version of their conference paper for inclusion early 2021. This edition of the IJPBH aims to make a contribution to the field offering new insights into Australian acting pedagogies in the past and in the present. It will consist of a selected number of essays from submissions drawing on papers presented at AusAct 2020 Conference. This volume will aim to engage with national and international debates on the nature and practices of Australian actor training as research as a scholarly methodology and/or as pedagogical practice. An expression of interest form will be available through the conference website: www.ausact.com.au. Every contributor must also fill out a ‘Publication Expression of Interest’ form in order to indicate whether or not they would like to: have their paper published in the special edition of IJPBH without being double blind peer reviewed; have their paper double blind peer reviewed to be considered for publication in the special edition of IJPBH; submit creative works and or other projects of equivalent scope; only attend the conference and present without any publication outcome. Timelines, important dates and other information relating to the publication are listed in the ‘Publication Expression of Interest’ form at: www.ausact.com.au SCHEDULE
REGISTRATION Early Bird: $55 Full: $90 Student/Concession: $20 Click here to register The conference will be held via Zoom, and all details regarding schedules, zoom link and structure will be forthcoming. | |
For more information, see: | https://www.ausact.com.au/ |
RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance RiDE is an international refereed journal aimed at those who are interested in applying performance practices to cultural engagement, educational innovation and social change. It provides a forum for research into drama and theatre conducted in community, educational, developmental and therapeutic contexts. RiDE is looking to expand its pool of reviews, guest editors, and editorial board members. · If you are interested in reviewing for RiDE, we would like to hear from you. We are particularly keen to have reviewers from different stages of their careers and from a diversity of backgrounds and international contexts. While we are looking for those experienced in Drama Education in particular, we would like to hear from anyone in the field of applied theatre and performance. If interested, please contact james.thompson@manchester.ac.uk · RiDE publishes two Open Issues and Two themed issues per year. We would like to hear from colleagues who are interested in editing a themed issue or proposing a topic for a themed issue. This can be done in collaboration with another colleague – themed issues are often jointly edited. If you are interested in editing, proposing a theme, or would like to discuss this further please contact colette.conroy@cumbria.ac.uk · For those colleagues who are familiar with RiDE and have reviewed for us already, we are seeking new members for our Editorial Board. Our board will be improved by diversifying in terms of members’ geographical location, career stage, gender, race, disability and sexual orientation. If you have questions about this role, please contact or send a short CV to james.thompson@manchester.ac.uk |
Volume 26, No. 4, ‘On Repair’ (June 2021) Issue Editors Helena Grehan (Murdoch University) and Peter Eckersall (The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)) Proposal deadline: 31 July 2020 The year 2020 should be seen as the year when human history dissolved—not because human beings disappear from planet Earth, but because planet Earth, tired of their arrogance, launched a micro-campaign to destroy their Will zur Macht (Will to power). The Earth is rebelling against the world, and the agents of planet Earth are floods, fires, and most of all critters. (Berardi 2020) Drawing on Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble the critters Berardi refers to here are ‘small playful creatures who do strange things, like provoking mutation. Well: the virus’ (Berardi 2020). In this issue we contemplate what comes after the year 2020 and its critters. We find that we inhabit a landscape that is scorched, parched, drowned and infected. One that is perhaps, if we concur with Berardi, fed up of us and beginning to fight back. What might the value be, if indeed there is any value, in repairing things in this context? What could we humans do to ‘repair’ the world? Stay-at-home directives in so many places around the world have shown us a reality of what less human intervention looks like. This led to some improvements—cleaner air, more space for animals, daily walks, less vacuous consumption—but this reality and its consequences has not been shared equally among us. COVID-19 made starkly visible the underlying conditions of structural precarity. How do we think about ideas of repair in light of this? Specifically, can creative practices and the imagination do something? Berardi (2020) calls for ‘[t]hought, art, and politics… no longer… as projects of totalization [but] of proliferation without totality’. How might we, as performance scholars and practitioners, make sense of this idea? What kinds of work should we make, respond to, or perhaps avoid if we are to activate Berardi’s call for ‘thought, art and politics’? According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), ‘repair’ means ‘the action of repairing a damaged, worn, or faulty object or structure by replacing or fixing parts. Also: the fact or process of keeping something in good condition in this way; maintenance, upkeep’. If we take the second part of the meaning here, then we have already failed it seems. We have failed to keep anything ‘in good condition’ to carry out the regular ‘maintenance’ that is needed to ensure that things work properly, to keep things in ‘good’ repair, to the extent that now perhaps the act of repairing would be futile. Have we gone beyond repair? Repairing was, or so it seems, something we should have been doing all along—if we are now inhabiting a broken planet that was rendered so by our inaction and by—some would argue—a form of capitalism gone feral. If the end stage of capitalism is, as Jodi Dean (2020) states, a condition of ‘neofeudalism’, then what is there left to do? Even if we could repair, would we want to? What is there to fix? We could argue that it is crucial to fix the planet, the geological and ecological structure on which life rests. In doing so we might stake a claim for humanity and refuse the dissolving that Berardi argues is underway. We could try to calm the fires, to eradicate the virus and to stop the floods, but if we were to do this would it require a radical rethinking of the very fabric that is worn? Can we repair the planet and at the same time return to the capitalist status quo? Or, is it only by jettisoning that system that we might be able to engage in any meaningful acts of repair? Is there something in-between or are these options our only ones? And, again, can we expect any meaningful interventions from performance and performance studies? Timothy Morton argues, ‘art is thought from the future’ (2016: 1) but what kinds of artistic thinking should this be and what kinds of artistic thinking should be resisted? We invite essays, manifestos, theoretical and critical reflections, images, documents and creative works that respond to this uncomfortable status quo of our own making. Topics might include but are not limited to:
Performance Research also invites short reviews (approximately 750 words) of recent books, performances, conferences or other forms related to the theme. For title proposals and suggestions related to ‘On Repair’, contact our Reviews Editor, Anna Jayne Kimmel, at reviews@performance-research.org.uk
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Contents: Dancing, Marching and Baton Twirling with the Virgin: Performing Community at the Peñafrancia Festival in the Philippines, by William Peterson Festivals, Funerals and Circuses: The Impact of Space and Design in the Construction of Meaning and Audience Experience, by Natalie Lazaroo and Jennifer Penton Polyfest Postponed: Performing ‘Us’ in Christchurch in 2019? by Tony McCaffrey Disciplined Subjects and Social Performance: Entertainments at the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, 1873–1906, by Jonathan W. Marshall Wassailing and Festive Music in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, by Kathryn Roberts Parker Local Archive, Distant Reading: Performance Space at Cleveland Street and Carriageworks, by Caroline Wake and Boni Cairncross Enacting Restorative Justice: Shakespeare and Tikanga Māori in Cellfish (2017), by Rand Hazou Hold On: Australian Innovations in Access Aesthetics, by Madeleine Little, Sarah Austin and Eddie Paterson Contemporary Performance and Climate Change: Re-defining the Australian Landscape Narrative, by Linda Hassall Celebrating Fifty Years in Prague: Reflections on Australian Scenographic Identity through the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, by Tessa Rixon and Sarah Winter Entanglements with Time: Staging Duration and Repetition in the Theatre, by Deborah Pollard An Actress Weeps: Corporeal Dissonance in the Actor’s Experience of Performing Testimony in Eduardo Coutinho’s Jogo de Cena, by Rea Dennis Shifting Hybridity: An Intercultural Arab–Australian Shadow Theatre Performance, by Lynne Kent In addition, the entire archive of Australasian Drama Studies has been digitized and archived, and will be uploaded to the ADS home site over the next month. | |
For more information, see: | https://www.adsa.edu.au/ADSjournal |
Theatre Dance and Performance Training Journal (TDPT) Special issue on Performer Training in Australia to be Call for contributions, ideas, proposals and dialogue with the editors Guest editors: Training Grounds editor: Conjoined with blood and tears, the axiomatic price of supreme rigour and achievement. Sweat (water, ammonia, salt, sugar) is deemed a noble and miraculous secretion, yet we habitually strive to disguise it. […] In the unapologetic seclusion of the training space, it becomes the proof of our proud status as grafters, as corporeal, visceral, present, working. As described in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training’s “A Lexicon of Training Terms” (3.1), sweat is a constituent part of training — a synecdoche for the tension and effort that underpin it. Sweat is also a precondition of living and training in Australia, from our corporeal engagement with a heating continent to the metaphorical ‘she’ll be right, mate’. This no sweat, laissez-faireacceptance of the status quo finds its way into training through “a willingness to ‘have a go’; a refusal to be cowed by received authority […] a characteristically Australian suspicion of influence” (Maxwell 2017, p. 326). The image of sweat also brings with it metaphors of fear, tension and anxiety, often drawn out or extended. This sense of determination over time pushes back against a conception of Australia as the rushed continent, whose artists seek to take short cuts to success. Hugh Hunt, the inaugural director of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, cautioned as much in a 1959 public lecture: We sometimes expect theatre to be made too quickly. Australians are impatient people, who would like their theatre to be made as quickly as wool grows on a sheep’s back. It takes many years to make it; it takes time to train and develop actors and producers. (Hunt 1960, p. 4) What has changed since Hunt’s proclamations? What is the labour of training in Australia, and how do we train an “impatient people”? In a country where sweat comes easily, do we mistake the by-product of hard work for the work itself? Hunt, like many others in Australian performance history, speaks only for white Australians: how do (or might?) the distinctive temporalities, collaborative modalities, and lineages of practice of First Nations training and performance inflect performer training in Australia? Despite the diversity and range of its performance ecology and the prestige in which its major training institutions are held, Australia’s influence in and contribution to key debates has, until fairly recently, remained surprisingly marginal. While much doctoral-level work has considered training in Australia, there is no authoritative, published history of Australian performer training. The history of training is thus another iteration of what Ian Maxwell terms “Australian theatrical bricolage” (2017, p. 338), its history an assemblage of sometimes contradictory facts, uncertain pathways, and unsubstantiated anecdote. In this special issue of TDPT, we endeavour to provide an update to Meredith Rogers and Elizabeth Schafer’s special issue of Australasian Drama Studies“Lineages, Techniques, Training and Tradition” (vol. 53, 2008). We also seek to curate a companion to the roundtable discussion “Training in a Cold Climate”, published in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 5.2, by considering training in a hot climate. As we are reminded all too frequently, Australia is at the forefront of the climate emergency. Australia’s wide skies and open spaces have always proven a challenge and a stimulus to artists: playwright Louis Esson insisted in 1914 that “in an authentic Australian play, there should be a real atmosphere — some space and sunshine” (quoted in Fitzpatrick 1995, p. 117), while decades later legendary critic H. G. Kippax wondered “realistic drama makes much of scene; but what stage could hold the Australian bush and plains?” (1963, p. 13). In our new ecological epoch “marked by unprecedented human disturbances of the earth’s ecosystems” (Gilbert 2019, p. 220), how do we train performers to hold the burning Australian bush and plains on stage? What kinds of training philosophies and regimes might be required in the Anthropocene? How might training intersect with or even encourage sustainability in performance practice? In this special issue of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, we want to use the sweat of training in the heat of a crucible to think through performer training in Australia. To do so, we welcome proposals that consider topics including:
Other topics that are broadly sparked by the consideration of sweat in Australian training are also welcomed. We particularly encourage proposals from scholars and practitioners whose voices are traditionally under-represented in higher education, as well as collaborations between scholars and artists that seek to amplify practice from the margins.
We are seeking proposals in three distinct categories, and authors are invited to indicate which category they feel best suits their work:
We welcome a wide range of proposals for contributions including edited interviews. Innovative cross-over print/digital formats are possible, including the submission of audiovisual training materials, which can be housed on the online interactive Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal blog. The editors will correspond with authors about the most appropriate category for their work, and can happily provide guidance before a proposal is submitted. Prospective authors are encouraged to familiarise themselves with TDPT’s Scope & Aims, as well as with the Instructions for Authors for guidance on formatting.
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ADSA has made a submission to the above inquiry. In our submission we argue that: • The Australian government’s response to the impact of COVID-19 on the arts sector has done very little to mitigate it; and in a related matter, • The government must develop an adequate arts and culture policy for post-COVID-19 and beyond. Since making our submisson, we are pleased that the NSW State Government has pledged $50 million to support the state's arts and cultural organisations. Our submission has been published and can be read on the link below (submission No. 39). Glen McGillivray President, ADSA | |
For more information, see: | https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/COVID-19/COVID19/Submissions |
Book Title: Creative Activism: Research, Pedagogy and Practice. Description: Who can contribute: Topic parameters: Suggested topics might include (but are certainly not limited to these areas – this collection is intended to provide a wide-ranging survey):
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PERIPETEIA As it turned out, last fall, when we sent out the call for papers for the TDR special issue on “Peripeteia,” we were on the cusp of a global pandemic. Little did we know that, by the time of our initial deadline (June 1), the topic of our special issue would have taken on a whole new dimension of urgency we could hardly imagine. And here we are: in the middle of an event that is most definitively a turn of fortunes of extraordinary proportions, and that could be a turning point in the way in which we think about our global community, solidarity, climate, and most definitively, how we make and receive performance. Our topic now seems more relevant than ever. Recognizing that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disruption for artists and scholars, we have decided to extend our deadline to September 1. We hope that will give our potential contributors time to reflect on the major sea-change we are going through, and to return to their libraries and studios to develop and complete their submissions. In classical dramatic theory, peripeteia designates a turning point from prosperity to downfall. This reversal of fortunes often marks a transformation of the entire outlook of the protagonist: from ignorance to knowledge, and from resignation to action. Peripeteia is the moment when opposing forces powerfully drag the world in opposite directions. This rending of the world as we know it may open new paths or close them forever. We are now at such a decisive point. The intensity of this current moment is clearly expressed in the rising temperature of the protagonist, the planet. The choice the world is facing is not only between dirty and clean technologies, but also between accumulation and sharing, exploitation and social justice, unabashed capitalism and radical democracy, Western exceptionalism and global awareness. And concerning this last point, this may be the last moment in which the categories of classical dramatic theory are still operative: we are experiencing a turning point in the very idea of crisis and its representation in live performance. The current moment presents humanity with a unique and multiscalar set of challenges that will require an essential reorganization of society, economics, and politics to address. As the 12-year timeline for action in the US Green New Deal makes clear, there’s a specific urgency, a deadline, that – in the West, at least – arguably differentiates this moment from other historical periods that have been identified as crisis-ridden. This moment is characterized by a particular mode of uncertainty regarding the future, exacerbated by the fact that many contributing factors to this “crisis” are pervasive yet intangible, omnipresent yet strangely distant, and ostensibly divorced from individual action and solutions, even if discussions of the crisis tend to revert to individual, moral stances. At the same time, we are mindful that different communities approach this situation from varying historical and epistemological standpoints. A strain of Indigenous climate-change studies, for instance, understands the Anthropocene not as a hitherto unanticipated occurrence but as an extension of a violent and unresolved historical past that renders the present moment already post-apocalyptic. This ephemerality, spectrality, and magnitude pose special challenges to representation in its many senses: aesthetic, social, and political. The planet is under siege, and performance is not there to witness, issue warnings, calls for action, or drop dead like that proverbial canary. Like all other spheres of human activity, art forms, and academic fields it has to transform itself in order to stage a redress in this social drama of planetary proportions. We invite scholars, artists, and activists to submit papers that address issues that include, but are not limited to:
6,000-word submissions are due September 1, 2020. Please submit essays and direct any relevant queries to Rishika Mehrishi at tdrstanford@gmail.com |
Theatres and arts institutions around the world have closed their doors and shuttered lights, interrupting premieres, runs, and rehearsal processes. Festivals are postponed, seasons suspended. Courses and workshops reliant on intimate, immediate contact must navigate remote access and exchange.
The theatre is closed, yet the theatre keeps performing. Performances work their way out in our private thoughts or distanced conversations, in makeshift configurations across media. As communities fragment into socially distant parts, we propose a festival of imagined theatres alive to this state of emergency. Imagined Theatres began as a platform for artists and thinkers of the stage to explore acts that resources, conventions, or the contours of reality deemed impossible or impractical; that landscape has shifted drastically over the last months. Imagined Theatres also originated out of a need to experience performance while living far from the people who make it; we are all living in that place now. Share your performances with us and we will together stage an impossible gathering. This special issue of Imagined Theatres will be released on a rolling basis over the coming months of our common crisis. Submissions will be reviewed by our editorial team as they come in, and published on an accelerated schedule every few weeks as long as necessary. This ongoing issue will not interfere with the publication schedule of future editions of the journal, including a forthcoming issue devoted to performance curation (co-edited by Ron Berry and Anna Gallagher-Ross) and Chile (co-edited by Alexandra Ripp, Adam Versenyi, Anne García-Romero, Pía Gutiérrez Díaz, and Mauricio Barría Jara). Published work may engage with the current emergency directly or it may not—our purpose is to present a space for performance. Who We Are Imagined Theatres is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal and archive dedicated to imagining what might be possible and impossible in the theatre. We publish scripts, scores, stories, manifestoes, and essays, in prose, in verse, and in other media. These texts are paired with a critical response, or “gloss,” extending the argument or view of each imagined theatre in new directions. Imagined Theatres supports creative criticism, meaning creative work that acts critically and criticism that acts creatively. Submissions Who Can Submit? We encourage submissions from artists, scholars, writers, performers, directors, choreographers, musicians, designers, students, teachers, programmers, and spectators. You need not have a publication record. Authors who have published with us in the past are also welcome to share their work again. What Should A Submission Look Like? We encourage the publication of short works (a page or less), though there is no prescribed word limit. Prospective authors are encouraged to explore the website, as well as the book Imagined Theatres: writing for a theoretical stage, for a sense of possible approaches, bearing in mind that these are merely suggestions. We emphasize the written word, but are open to submissions that take advantage of the digital form in interesting ways. Glosses As mentioned above, each text is paired with a critical response, or “gloss,” extending the argument or view of each imagined theatre in new directions. You are welcome to submit both a theatre and its gloss if you would like. You are also welcome to submit independent glosses that respond to previously published texts; in this instance, please let us know which text you are referencing. Otherwise, once a theatre is accepted the IT editorial team will help you find a gloss writer to respond to your work. How to Submit We accept submissions via email at submissions@imaginedtheatres.com. All submissions should include contact information, a brief contributor’s bio, and the word “submission” in the title of the email. Please send your work as an attachment in one of the following formats:
There are no submission fees, publication fees, or page charges for this journal. All work must be original; copyrighted images or media will not be published.
For more information, please write info@imaginedtheatres.com. |
Edited by Emma Willis (University of Auckland) and Alys Longley (University of Auckland) Kindness as a radical act is not just ‘being nice’ to one another; it is the core of articulating, recognising, and valuing the complexity and beauty of the human condition, and putting this into practice in order to dismantle harmful systems of oppression and subjugation. Radical kindness is the creation of space for vulnerability. (Burton and Turbine 2019) In an era where political and civil discourses are marred by populist politics of division and exclusion, kindness may seem to be in short supply. When it does appear, it is perceived as soft, uncritical and feminized. Alternatively, it is critiqued as inherently biased and/or dependent on differences in subject position and power (Clegg and Rowland 2020). Yet kindness has its champions. In performance, the fields of applied theatre as well as socially engaged and relationally oriented modes of performance often express an ethos of kindness through their aim towards, justice, social coherence, and transformation. In the scholarly and popular psychology, researchers have heralded the benefit of kindness to personal happiness and wellbeing. At a political level, current New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has attracted global attention for her politics and practices of kindness. However, ‘Kindness in the contemporary moment continues to be an under-researched emotion even in the midst of a surge of work in emotion and affect theory’ (Magnet at al 2014). This issue of Performance Paradigm (https://www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal) seeks to respond to this gap in the literature, focusing on performance-based instantiations of kindness, and performance-led analyses of political and civil discourses that extend our understanding of its radical potential. Through discussion of a broad range of performance examples, we are seeking to redefine the performative potential of kindness, reinvesting it with the political power needed to counter prevailing political dispositions. In considering the relationship between performance and kindness, we encourage a broad range of approaches. Kindness may be framed as a politically aspirational ethic that underlies or motivates performance – Petra Kuppers’ and Neil Marcus’s practice of ‘Helping Dances,’ for example, of which Kuppers writes: ‘All of us acknowledge living inter dependent lives, intersected and enabled by many, carried on the backs of infrastructural laborers of all kinds and touched by the kindnesses of strangers’ (Kuppers 2014). Kindness may also constitute an act of political and aesthetic refusal. Reflecting on a series of feminist performance works in Australia, Jana Perkovic remarks that the artists ‘found their strength not in attacking the enemy, but in standing their own ground. They were friendly works, non-combative – but through them, the artists claimed the right to exist for a universe full of dress-ups, kindness, self-reflection, freedom, and femininity’ (2014). Writing of Back to Back Theatre’s work, Super Discount, Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall remark that ‘The juxtaposition between dark and light, vulnerability and superpower, and acting and performance remind us that it is not the epic encounter that is of significance. Instead, as the artifice of acting is banished from this work, we are left with moments of human kindness and a series of questions about where we go from here’ (2013). Kindness may also feature as a subject of thematic consideration. Lydia Adetunji’s 2019 play Calculating Kindness, for example, explores the life of George Price, best known for formulating an equation explaining altruism. Kindness may also inform the creative process. Sandra Reeve, for example, writes of what she calls ‘regenerative choreography’ which incorporates ‘loving kindness’ into its methodology (2018, 78). Performance strategies discussed may involve creating enabling disruptions or, as anthropologists Alison Phipps and Lesley Saunders describe, ‘poetry for the sake of gentling the space where violence is writ large and ugly’ (2009). Finally, a performance-based analysis might be applied to the discourse of kindness in political rhetoric. For example, in the same way that Denise Varney applies a performance studies framework to scrutinise the ‘affective power of misogyny’ (2017) in attacks on Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, such an approach might be used to assess the rhetoric of kindness in the discourse of leaders such as Ardern. Through considering performances that variously enact, contemplate or promote kindness, we invite authors to challenge some of the prevailing beliefs and assumptions about what constitutes kindness. We therefore invite authors to consider not only performances that enhance our understanding of both the radical potential of kindness but also those that draw attention to its misuses. Topics may include but are not limited to:
Please send proposals of approximately 300 words to Dr Emma Willis (emma.willis@auckland.ac.nz) and Dr Alys Longley (a.longley@auckland.ac.nz) by 8 May 2020. Full articles will be due on 1 November 2020 for publication in Performance Paradigm, July 2021. Please feel free to contact the issue editors with any questions. For more information about them, see here:
Works Cited Burton, Sarah and Vikki Turbine (2019) “‘We’re Not Asking for the Moon on a Stick’: Kindness and Generosity in the Academy.” Discoversociety July 03, https://discoversociety.org/2019/07/03/were-not-asking-for-the-moon-on-a-stick-kindness-and-generosity-in-the-academy/. Clegg, Sue and Stephen Rowland (2010) “Kindness in pedagogical practice and academic life”, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31:6, 719-735. Grehan, Helena and Peter Eckersall (2013) “Review: Super Discount by Back to Back Theatre”, The Theatre Times, 20 November, https://thetheatretimes.com/review-super-discount-back-back-theatre/ Habibis, Daphne, Nicholas Hookway and Anthea Vreugdenhil (2016) “Kindness in Australia: An Empirical Critique of Moral Decline Sociology.” The British Journal of Sociology, 67(3), 395-413. Hall, Tom and Robin James Smith (2015) “Care and Repair and the Politics of Urban Kindness.” Sociology 49(1) 3–18. Hazou, Rand (2018) “Performing Manaaki and New Zealand Refugee Theatre.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 23(2), 228-241. Kuppers, Petra (2014) “Crip Time.” Tikkun, 29 (4), 29-30. Magnet, Shoshana, Corinne Lysandra Mason and Kathryn Trevenen (2014) “Feminism, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Kindness.” Feminist Teacher 25 (4), 1-22. Perkovic, Jana (2014) “Performance: Dying on stage: Feminism 4.0.” The Lifted Brow, 23, 34. Phipps, Alison and Lesley Saunders (2009) “The Sound of Violets: the Ethnographic Potency of Poetry?” Ethnography and Education 4 (3), 357-387. Reeve, Sandra (2018) “On the Way to Regenerative Choreography.” Choreographic Practices 9 (1), 75-80. Shklar, Judith N. (1989) “The Liberalism of Fear.” Pp. 21–37 in Liberalism and the Moral Life, edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Varney, Denise (2017) “‘Not Now, Not Ever’: Julia Gillard and the Performative Power of Affect” in E. Diamond et al. (eds.), Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times, Palgrave Macmillan, 25-38. |