CFP: CATR roundtable - Victoria, 2013 - University Student Productions: Between Teaching Tools and Artistic Creations

[Day, Moira]

University Student Productions: Between Teaching Tools and Artistic Creations
Proposal for a CATR Roundtable
Organizers: Moira Day and Diana Manole

In response to the phenomenon of more and more practitioners engaging themselves in academic careers, the “‘practitioner-researcher’ and fresh methods of mending art and scholarship were invented” (Kershaw 63). However, most year-end and/or main-stage university student productions remain ignored by critics and annual civic theatre awards, not only because their short run makes them generally less accessible to large audiences, but because they are still viewed more as school projects/training exercises rather than artistic creations. Why spend time watching student apprentices, when you can enjoy fully-developed masters of the craft working on professional stages often just blocks away?

At the same time, the status of such productions as graded class work often leads the students and instructors not directly involved to ignore them as well. Would you go watch students writing a math exam? Then why go see the third year Shakespeare exam or the fourth year production of Waiting for Godot? -- especially when they seem to produce Shakespeare, Beckett –or someone equally canonical and “teachable” - every year? 

Sadly, these productions also fall under the radar when it comes to “serious” scholarship and theoretical reflection. Most of the texts that address this part of the theatre education are usually practical textbooks that offer recipes on how to teach theatre practice with little information on the specific demands of the university student shows. As such, most of these productions remain exiled in the under-appreciated and confusing space “halfway between teaching and culture” (Pavis 428), hanging at the edge of both academic education and theatre art. Perhaps just as seriously for “practitioner-researchers” how does one negotiate that edge in an academic environment where research is still largely measured in books and papers, and teaching success in terms of how many hundreds of students can be packed into a single lecture hall or reached long-distance in video or digital formats?

The roundtable panel we are proposing addresses the issue of university student productions’ artistic value vs. their educational value. Consistent with this year’s conference theme, drama/theatre/ performance “at the edge” of innovative scholarship and practice in Canada and beyond, we invite participants to consider both our current practice and possible new directions in response to Patrice Pavis’s plea to “revamp” the year-end and other types of university student productions into “artistic research project(s)” (429) that are properly valued by the theatre and academic communities as both teaching tools with educational value, and as artistic creations in their own right. To this end, we think that a roundtable is the best mode for the participants to share their experience during the first 60 minutes and include the audience members in the last 30 minutes. 

WORKS CITED  
•	Kershaw, Baz and Helen Nicholson. Research Methods in Theatre and Performance. Edinburgh:
	Edinburgh UP, 2011. Print.
•	Pavis, Patrice.  Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Toronto: U of Toronto  P, 	1998. Print.  



CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS – CATR ROUNDTABLE 

University Student Productions: Between Teaching Tools and Artistic Creations
Organizers: Moira Day and Diana Manole

Honouring the 2013 conference theme, drama/theatre/ performance “at the edge” of innovative scholarship and practice, this roundtable considers both our current practice and possible new directions in response to Patrice Pavis’s plea to “revamp” university student productions into “artistic research project(s)” (429) that are properly valued as both teaching/research activity and theatre production. Theatre practitioners and scholar/practitioners are invited to submit a 300-500-word statement in two parts. The first will focus on a particular production in which they were directly involved as a teacher, artist, or student, and address a specific question or challenge that arose from it. The session will begin with each participant summarizing that issue to facilitate discussion. The second part will describe a personal solution to that specific problem or query, and become part of a collective “How to…?” file circulated in advance among the participants, then shared with the audience as a hand-out. The first hour will consist of discussions among participants; discussion will open to the audience in the last 30 minutes.  

The roundtable will facilitate a lively, provocative exploration of the challenges involving university student productions, including: 

•	ways to balance and assess the production’s artistic and educational values for both the students involved in the show and the student audiences;
•	strategies to integrate the production into departmental and university programming, and community outreach;
•	differences between working in large urban centres and in smaller, more isolated communities;
•	specific challenges of generating productions for differing streams within theatre departments/programs; 
•	steering students through the transition from the academic to the professional world;
•	strategies for mounting productions within departments/programs external to performing arts programs/departments;
•	specific challenges of directing/working on a university as opposed to a professional or amateur production.

Please send proposals to Moira Day (moira.day at usask.ca) and Diana Manole (dianamanole at trentu.ca) by March 1, 2013