[Candrama] REMINDER_CATR - Performing the Anthropocene_CFPs for Curated Events
Marlis Schweitzer
schweit at yorku.ca
Fri Feb 17 09:27:06 EST 2017
Dear Candrama colleagues,
Attached and below, pleased find the CFP for all curated events as part
of this year's Canadian Association for Theatre Research in Canada to be
held in Toronto, *May 27-30, 2017*. The deadline for submissions is
*FEBRUARY 17, 2017. *See below for specific contact details for conveners.
---
*CATR 2017: Performing the Anthropocene: Setting the Stage for the End
of the World*
*Canadian Association for Theatre Research / L’association
canadienne de la recherche théâtrale (CATR/ACRT) Toronto, Ontario*
*Saturday 27 May – Tuesday 30 May 2017*
//
/CATR/ACTR sponsors a wide range of presentation formats, from keynotes
to working groups. This document lists a series of calls for curated
panels, roundtables, seminars, and working groups. All proposals are due
*February 17, 2017.
*/<http://catracrt.ca/conference/catracrt-2017-performing-anthropocene/>//
//
/---///
CFPs for Curated Panels
----
*The Virtuosic Body: Shifting Towards a Post-Human Future*
Organizers: Christine Mazumdar and Seika Boye
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
*This is a song for the genius child.*
*Sing it softly, for the song is wild.*
*Sing it softly as ever you can -*
*Lest the song get out of hand.*
*Nobody loves a genius child.*
*-Langston Hughes,*/ The Genius Child/
*I knew I had to achieve very quickly in order to beat the
menacing development of my own body, to shine with
undeniable brightness in my adolescent career, before giving
it all up for the old-age home. I had to break in to the top
six before puberty and curves and weight made it nearly
impossible for me to fly through the air, attempting flips
meant for younger lighter girls.*
*-Jennifer Sey, */Chalked Up/
At what age should I enroll my child in music lessons, dance, or sport?
At what point does the window to pursue virtuosic excellence close? A
race against time, these decisions to begin training in such disciplines
often must be made before a child is old enough to understand the
ramifications of such a disciplined practice.
At what point is the virtuosic body exhausted? Individually, it can
occur at different moments during the training process, but what about
as a collective? At some point, the record for the 100-metre dash will
no longer be broken, the quadruple jump is likely the most revolutions
that can be performed in figure skating, the 100mph pitch has already
been recorded in baseball. So what’s next? What’s left?
In the light of the recent doping scandal from the Sochi Olympics, the
virtuosic body, like the earth in the epoch of the Anthropocene, seems
to be in a state of crisis. This panel seeks paper submissions on the
topic of the systematic breakdown of the virtuosic body in performance
studies, dance studies, sports, music, circus arts. Possible topics
include but are not limited to, a reimaging of the virtuosic body, via
post-human interventions, including: doping, experimental drug therapy,
prosthetics, cyborgs, surgical interventions, and redefining gender in
competition.
With the goal of stimulating discussion across disciplines this panel
seeks to examine this crisis of the virtuosic body across a variety of
disciplines.**
*Expanded Topics*:
* *Dance studies***
* *Performance studies***
* *Circus arts***
* *Sports***
* *Music***
* *Gender studies***
* *Disability studies***
* *Training practices for athletes/artists***
* *Performance enhancing practices***
* *Doping, surgical enhancement, prosthetics***
* *The virtuoso outside of their discipline***
* *Sustainability, the systematic breakdown of the virtuosic body***
* *The virtuosic body reimagined***
* *Pain/wellness and the performing body***
This curated panel will include three to four paper presentations and
will be followed by a question and discussion session moderated by Seika
Boye.
*Submission Requirements *
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to Christine Mazumdar
at christine.mazumdar at mail.utoronto.ca
<mailto:christine.mazumdar at mail.utoronto.ca>. Proposals are due by 17
February 2017. Decisions will be communicated by the session’s
conveners. Presentations are limited to 20 minutes; time for questions
will be included following all presentations. Please indicate your AV needs.
---
*Aesthetics of Indetermination: Theatre of the Real, Multiplicity,
and the Disruption of Authenticity*
Organizers: Dr. Kathleen Gallagher (OISE); Scott Mealey (CDTPS); Kelsey
Laine Jacobson (CDTPS)/
/University of Toronto//
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
Arguably, one of the markers of the contemporary turn towards the
“theatre of the real” is the often evocative presentation of fragments,
multiples, or selections rather than a complete representative world.
Verbatim performance, for instance, eschews an enclosed and privileging
narrative in favour of destabilization, gesturing visibly toward past,
or even future, peoples and processes in and amongst the present
performance, thereby unleashing a range of temporalities, spaces and
social relations on stage.
While “realism” as a theatrical genre is traditionally linked to
singular, dominant, conservative authorities in Western metaphysics,
contemporary expressions of “theatre of the real” tend more towards non-
or partially-representational expressions of a ‘whole’
person/community/place. Further, we note a contemporary trend towards
privileging the representation of marginalized or minoritized voices and
question whether the simultaneous turn towards partial representational
practices is an effort to express ‘humanness’ in more expansive or
non-authoritative ways?
The aim of this curated panel is to attend to encounters in which the
time, space, and social relations of “theatre of the real” disrupt
notions of the originary, the whole, or the singular experience. In
particular, it considers the implications for theatre-making when this
popular form is utilized and evaluated in ways that move beyond the
traditional measures of ‘true-to-lifeness,’ which may no longer be
adequate, satisfying or politically complex enough for contemporary
stagings of culture. Questions such as the following might be considered:
* *In what ways are authenticity, truth, and the idea of the originary
being utilized, challenged, and expanded politically, pedagogically
and/or aesthetically in contemporary theatre of the real
performance? How might re/presentations of an originary serve to
challenge and/or reinforce authenticity or true-to-lifeness?***
* *What is the place of theatre of the real in increasingly
globalized, digitized, and fragmented societies? Or conversely, how
might theatre of the real restore and redress the displacement of
embodied Nature within domains dominated by disembodied naturalism?***
* *How might active aesthetic practices that erase the privilege of
original reals emerge previously hidden, or as yet undiscovered,
realities? In what ways could this be harmful or helpful?***
* *What is the place of traditional stage realism
within/amongst/beside/opposed to theatre of the real? What
(dis)connections might exist between the two?***
Participants will be asked to present a brief, 6-8 minute long
provocation/paper before engaging in a wider discussion with the other
participants and the attending audience.
250 word proposals, along with a short biography, should be sent to
scott.mealey at mail.utoronto.ca and k.jacobson at mail.utoronto.ca no later
than 17 February 2017.
---
*Metamorphic Magic: Performing Objects, Agency and Ecologies*
Organizers: Gabriel Levine (SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Theatre,
Concordia University) and Mark Sussman (Associate Professor, Concordia
University)
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
In her essay “Reclaiming Animism,” the philosopher Isabelle Stengers
argues that it is necessary to reclaim the ambiguous term “magic” to
describe the distribution of agency throughout material being. Magic,
she notes, is used in a metaphorical sense to describe the experience of
something extraordinary: a moment, landscape, or performance. It has
also been denigrated as the bane of Enlightenment rationalism—whether in
a critique of the “magical thinking” of colonized peoples, or in the
persecution of witches and other performers of folk magic. Adopting the
term “magic,” Stengers claims, conveys “the experience of an agency that
does not belong to us even if it includes us, but an ‘us’ as it is lured
into feeling.” It begins to reweave the relational web of agency that
runs through matter, including performing bodies and things of all kinds.
What Stengers describes as “the metamorphic capacity of things” is
evidently present in theatre, dance and other performance genres, as a
wealth of scholarship on material performance and performing objects has
demonstrated. In this panel, we invite participants to explore more
deeply the connections between performing objects, the magic of agency,
and ecological thought and practice. In a historical moment when every
ecosystem has been transformed by the extractive and waste-producing
processes of capitalism, can performance enact more equitable material
relations and assemblages? How does the material magic of performance
relate to the magic of the commodity? How do Indigenous performance
cultures weave new ecologies and agencies in the world of things? What
can the somewhat disreputable traditions of object performance, from
stage magic to puppet theatre, teach us about the dramatic ecological
metamorphoses that we are all now undergoing?
Possible topics include:
* *performance and waste*
* *capitalist sorcery: the magic of the commodity, performances of
extraction*
* *Indigenous performance cultures and relational agency*
* *theatrical metamorphoses: vibrant matter and uncanny life*
* *performing objecthood / prosthetic performances*
* *dance/movement ecologies and materialities*
* *ritual and ceremonial objects in performance*
* *traditions of transformation: stage magic, puppetry, performance art*
* *ecology, materiality, and performative agency*
Panelists will give a 15-minute paper or presentation, in a form of
their choosing, followed by a discussion.
Please submit proposals by 17 February 2017 to:
gabriel.levine at concordia.ca <mailto:gabriel.levine at concordia.ca>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*CFPs for Roundtables *
---
*Pop-Up Culture and the Anticipation of the End*
Organizers: Alana Gerecke and Laura Levin
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
This roundtable will explore pop-up culture in context of the geological
time that structures the Anthropocene. As several theorists note, the
Anthropocene has been shaped by the acceleration of consumption and
production since the mid 20^th century, an orientation to time and
space coincident with what Jonathan Crary views as the non-stop,
“world-destroying patterns” of 24/7 late capitalism. How might this
orientation towards time give rise to and propel the recent pop-up trend
in Canada and beyond, with its attendant urgency and hyper-temporality?
Here we are specifically thinking of events and experiences that emerge
temporarily in vacant, underused, or about to be demolished urban
spaces, but also a much wider range of temporary inhabitations whose
appearances—and meanings—are predicated upon their imminent disappearance.
With this session, we hope to start a conversation about the pop-up as a
mode of address and a mechanism of assembly that is definitively
structured by the anticipation of its own end. How does the pop-up
spring from and speak to a culture of urgency that is preoccupied with
inevitable endings and impossible futures? In selecting pop-up events to
discuss, participants might consider the following prompts:
* *Is the pop-up simply a signature of a culture bent on filling every
available moment and space with consumable (and/if exclusive)
content? When does the form explicitly resist forces of consumerism
(climate change awareness, human rights protests, Occupy, etc.)?***
* *Can pop-up culture think long-term? What might this tell us about
our relationship to possible futures?***
* *Pop-up culture appears to be acutely contemporary: what are some
historical precedents for the pop-up, ones that might also
complicate the temporalization of the Anthropocene?***
* *How has the popularization of temporary inhabitation shaped
perceptions of, and rationalized (dis)investment in, arts
infrastructure in Canada and other national contexts (as Jen Harvie
has noted in relation to the UK)?***
* *The pop-up implies a leave-no-trace ethos; but, of course, events
mark and make space. What does the pop-up leave in its wake: what
physical, material, psychic, spatial, and/or social stuff remains?
What detritus? What vacuums or ghosts?***
* *What are the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion that structure pop-up
events?***
*Structure:* In the spirit of a fervent pace, this ninety-minute long
PechaKucha-style roundtable will allow each participant 6.66 minutes to
show 20 image-based slides (20 slides x 20 seconds each) while
theorizing some aspect of pop-up culture. These brief presentations will
be followed by a sustained conversation about all things pop-up. Slides
are to be added to a roundtable Dropbox folder by *20 May 2017.*
Please send 250-300 word abstracts and a brief bio to organizers Alana
Gerecke (agerecke at yorku.ca <mailto:agerecke at yorku.ca>) and Laura Levin
(Levin at yorku.ca <mailto:Levin at yorku.ca>) by *17 February 2017*.
---
*Life after Theatre Studies: Learning for the 21^st Century*
Organizer: Dr Glen Nichols (Director of Drama, Mount Allison University)
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
As a follow-up to last year’s very successful round-table on Liberal
Education and Theatre Studies, I invite participants for a more focused
session that addresses the question, “*How are our theatre, drama, and
performance undergraduate programs preparing students for life in the
21^st century?*”
With more than 2000 students graduating every year from theatre, drama,
and performance programs in Canada, it seems reasonable to consider that
a large number of those are not being employed in the theatre industry.
They are putting their education to work in more complex ways,
benefitting from the fundamental liberal education that theatre, drama,
and performance studies can stimulate. To date there has been little
scholarly attention paid to those elements of our curricula, attention
being more usually placed on ambitions to professional or
pre-professional training. With pressure on arts programs to more
clearly define themselves, with the needs of our students to make their
lives in a world of change and uncertainty, it seems very timely for us
to have serious discussions around the role of theatre education in the
broader preparation of our students.
To that end I invite 250-word proposals that address the round-table
question (due by Feb 17, 2017). Round-table participants will then
circulate brief (1500-word) position statements by May 1, 2017. At the
conference round-table session, each participant will present the ideas
of another paper as a kind of introduction/response. These will take the
form of 3-minute “mini-theses.” Once everyone’s position has been
introduced the round-table will spend most of its 90-minute length in
general discussion among participants and auditors.
Please send 250 word proposals by February 17, 2017 to Dr. Glen Nichols
at gnichols at mta.ca
---
*Untethering Queer: Thinking Beyond the Normative/Antinormative Binary
in Queer Political, Personal, and Pedagogical Life*
Organizers: Laine Zisman Newman, and members of the Toronto Queer Theory
Working Group
/Deadline: February 17 2017/
//
/The queer conviction that it is the antinormativity of certain
practices or self-stylings that make them recognizable as political
means that antinormativity stands, mostly unchallenged, as queer
theory’s privileged figure for the political. The tautological character
of the short loop that binds antinormativity to the political, however,
invites us to think about the political usefulness of a queer theory
untethered from its antinormative tendencies; that is, a queer theory
that, for all the productive critical leverage the concept of
antinormativity has given us, might not be antinormative at its
definitional heart./
/—Annemarie Jagose, “The Trouble with Antinormativity” (2015:27)/
While considerable work in queer theory has been founded on the
assumption that antinormativity is a fundamental character of queering
scholarship and practice, more recent work has begun to question this
investment (see Duggan 2015; Halberstam 2015; Wiegman and Wilson 2015;
Tongson 2014; Jacobson 1998; among others). This debate has become
increasingly important in light of the recent US presidential election
and the threat to basic civil rights it threatens, if not promises. (If
not the end of the world, this is at least the end of the world as we
know it.) In this open roundtable discussion, participants will consider
the implications of denouncing antinormativity in activism, performance,
and daily life. What do we lose if we, as queer theorists, are no longer
fastened to the realm of the anti-normative? Furthermore, the roundtable
will consider how antinormativity is often only tenable from a position
of privilege: Who is given the freedom and liberty to refuse normativity
without reprisal? Through this line of questioning, the roundtable will
consider the intersections and divisions of activism, performance, and
scholarship in relation to performing queer activism and queer theory.
POSSIBLE QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
•What do we lose if we lose antinormativity?
•Who performs antinormativity?
•How does queer theory in academia lose the ability to perform queerness
(particularly if it is no longer invested in antinormativity?)
•How does a discussion on antinormativity/normativity in and of itself
reinscribe binaries that queer theory seems to want to destabilize and
denounce?
We ask invited-participants to share short statements with other
roundtable members three weeks before the conference, asking members to
read and to comment on each other’s contributions, and, during the
conference, to present concise, two-to-three-minute summaries of their
stances. After these presentations, we will open the discussion up to
the audience, following the format of Lois Weaver’s “long-table
discussion”: “an experimental open public forum that is a hybrid
performance-installation-roundtable-discussion-dinner-party designed to
facilitate dialogue through the gathering together of people with common
interests” (LADA 2014). Comprising initially those accepted
participants, and with the addition of two unoccupied chairs, this
discussion will, literally, invite participants to the table. After the
initial presentations, audience-participants who wish to join the
conversation may gently tap a currently seated participant on the
shoulder, and that participant will offer their place at the table to
the audience-participant.
Please contact *laineyale at gmail.com* with your proposal or any queries.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*CFPs for Seminars*
---
*Watching the World Burn: The Rise of the Spectator in an
Anthropocene Dusk*
Organizers: Cassandra Silver, Jenny Salisbury, Scott Mealey and Kelsey
Jacobson
*/Deadline: February 17, 2017/*
Among countless other issues, the 2016 American election has
foregrounded—even here in Canada—the ways that we ‘the people’ source,
share, understand, and indeed spectate the world around us (Shirky 2011,
Smelik 2010, McGregor 2016). In this techno-human age of what Jack
Bratich called “audience power,” the producing class must contend with
audiences who are no longer merely consumers but (co)producers in their
own right. Is the Rancierian (2009) epoch upon us? Following Maaike
Bleeker and Isis Germano (2014), does the theatrical event offer a model
for understanding the roles and responsibilities of spectators in an
always-performing staged world? How might the persistently understudied
area of spectator research (Reinelt 2014, Freshwater 2009, Park-Fuller
2003) help us grapple with the pragmatics and ethics of watching? Our
seminar will invite participants to consider what it is to be a
spectator in 2017.
* *How do we newly perceive and engage; how do we (or indeed do we at
all) delimit the actions that constitute spectatorship?*
* *Which audiences continue to be marginalized in Canadian theatre?
How might their increased presence shift our conception of
spectatorship?*
* *How do we come to understand the diverse groups of individuals we
call an audience? What research methodologies allow us to engage
with these groups?*
* *Do emergent technologies complicate the unique claims on liveness
in performance reception? What avenues might this open in
inter-disciplinary research? How might spectators perceive
differently in the future?*
* *What are the dramaturgies of theatre with participant-spectators?*
Prior to the conference, participants will be invited to collaborate on
a shared annotated bibliography. At our session, participants will share
their perspective on contemporary spectatorship in short (~5 minute)
presentations followed by small-group discussions about issues raised.
250 word proposals, along with a short biography, should be sent to/ the
Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research
(/centreforspectatorship at gmail.com
<mailto:centreforspectatorship at gmail.com>/)./
---
*Difficult Knowledges and Performances for/by/with Young People*
Organizer: Heather Fitzsimmons Frey
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
What is at stake and how do we approach making and thinking about
difficult knowledges and the performances for/by/with young people that
engage with them? This seminar encourages thinkers to consider the
precarity of human presence on the planet through the lens of those
people on whom we tend to place the greatest burden of hopes for the
future: children and young people. We will focus on performances
for/by/with young people that engage with the difficult knowledges
(Belarie Zatzman 2015), uncomfortable truths, horrific memories,
challenging impacts, and potential dystopias of humanity on earth, in
all scales of imagination, from the profoundly personal, to the
national, to global, from the micro-moment to the epic to the timeless.
The work of the young person, the young person’s body and the idea of
hope are particularly significant in terms of ethics, what we have come
to expect children to represent, and types of content deemed appropriate
for young people.
This seminar/workshop encourages scholars of all career stages to
discuss complicated questions related to performances for/by/with young
people that engage with difficult subject matter and taboos, to stretch
ideas of how performance is appropriate for/by/with children, and to
interrogate the role of young people in performance culture. Applicants
are encouraged to consider performance work for/by/with the very young
(Early Years), children, and "young people," in Canada or elsewhere, in
historical or contemporary perspective, in amateur, professional,
applied, social performance or educational contexts. *Applicants are
invited to submit a 300 word proposal by Friday 17 February*.
Participants will share a significant image (or 2) and a working paper
of about 1200 words for small group discussion online prior to CATR (due
22 April 2017). At CATR we will continue small group discussions, and
also share ideas with the larger group about our research and research
questions. *Please send proposals to Heather Fitzsimmons Frey at
h.fitzsimmonsfrey at mail.utoronto.ca by Friday 17 February, 2017.*
Topics may include (but are not limited to):
* *Holocausts, genocide, residential schools, forced assimilation, war***
* *Environmental disaster or degradation / science and technology /
traditional knowledges***
* *The dark, discordant music, snakes, other (possibly) cultural
created fears***
* *Divorce, bullying, cyber-bullying, child abuse, sexual abuse,
eating disorders, suicide, child labour, child soldiers, mourning
and grief***
* *Connections to race, class, religion, gender, sexuality, neuro and
physical ability***
* *HIV / AIDS, FAS, cancer, substance abuse, drug and health challenges***
* *Mental Health challenges***
* *Political rallies and youth participants/leaders***
* *Recreational activities (gaming, sports, consumerism(shopping),
dance, Disney, charitable volunteerism…)***
---
*Atomic Performances*
Organizer: Jenn Cole
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
In 1998, a delegation of Dene people from Canada’s North made their way
to Japan to apologize to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the
harm that the land they lived on had caused during the American bombing
in 1945. My hometown of Deep River ON was constructed as a planned
community to house physicists and engineers who built Canada’s first
nuclear reactors. An Anishinaabeg woman from the area recounts, in
Bonita Lawrence’s /Fractured Homeland/, that she and her family were
moved off the land by the government, and that she can no longer drink
the waters of the Kiji Sibi or Ottawa River. Uranium mining, nuclear
power plants and political military nuclear projects mark Canada’s
history and geology. How do people bear and negotiate these deep
traces? A seminar on cultures and performances of nuclear sites of
extraction and processing raises questions about the relationships
between bodies, societies, radioactive materials, waters and lands,
scientific and political competition, illness, the dangers of both
knowledge and the unknown. Scholars and artists working on atomic
history, topography, and performance ask questions like: what is the
nature of apology when it is made on behalf of the land? How can a
signpost mark nuclear toxicity for hundreds of years? What are the
dangers of scientific progress made at a rate faster than the collection
of knowledge about repercussions? At whose expense was Canada’s nuclear
project developed? What does it mean to create art in a radioactive
waste zone that no one can see? How does a person grapple with the many
fallouts of nuclear failure through performance? I would add, based on
my own experience growing up in a town built for Atomic Energy of
Canada, how do people most intimately affected by uranium processing
daily perform trust in a technology that symbolizes radical contingency?
What, in the context of performances of Canadian atomic culture, can be
said about films like Tarkovsky’s /Stalker/, the musical /Miss Atomic
Bomb/, the media spectacle around Fukushima, or the /This is Your Life
/segment where Hiroshima survivors Kiyoshi Tanimoto and the “Hiroshima
maidens” met pilot Robert A Lewis, who dropped the first bomb on
Hiroshima? What about Marie Clements’ /Burning Vision /or Jullie
Salverson’s recent atomic memoire/?/ How can we account for the erasure
of first people’s histories from conventional representations of nuclear
progress? How could we re-perform and re-represent what was once a
spectacle of atomic achievement and disaster? What iterations are now
possible and necessary?
Participants are asked to share 10-12 minute papers and to bring in a
cultural text to share. This can be an object, a photograph, a film
clip, a theatre side, a live performance, etc. The rest of us will rally
with the presenter to uncover its potential meanings. Pre-circulation of
papers is not required, but if participants want to circulate cultural
objects related to their discussion, these can be shared with the
seminar group by May 10 in a forum that allows group feedback and online
discussion. The Atomic Performances seminar emphasizes discussion, with
the goal of generating and addressing good questions about
representations of atomic culture and nuclear confrontations with lands,
waters and bodies.
Please send a working title, a 200-300 word abstract and a short bio by
17 February 2017 to jenn.cole at utoronto.ca <mailto:jenn.cole at utoronto.ca>
---
*Decolonizing Methodologies and Settler Responsibility in Theatre
and Performance Studies: 3.0*
Organizers: Selena Couture and Heather Davis-Fisch
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
Building on the two seminars on decolonizing methodologies in theatre
and performance studies convened at CATR 2016, this seminar will move
conversations forward, specifically focusing on how decolonial
methodologies can be applied by settlers and other non-Indigenous
peoples working and living on occupied Indigenous homelands.
Place-based methodologies are key to Indigenous epistemologies,
expressing reciprocal relationships to ancestral homelands; conversely
the settler colonial project demands that non-Indigenous arrivants adopt
an extractive relationship to commodified lands, treating them as
generically /re-place-able /resources. This seminar invites settler,
non-Indigenous, and Indigenous scholars and researchers to consider how
settler scholars can engage with Indigenous decolonial methodologies to
address their own specific, place-based positionality and to develop
responsible relations with the traditional caretakers of the lands.
Participants will have the opportunity to share and receive feedback on
a well-developed work-in-progress (whether this is a draft of a journal
article, a dissertation chapter, or a piece of writing in another
genre/form). Participation is not limited to those who participated in
2016 seminars. We encourage participants to consider the themes of the
CATR conference but also welcome papers on a range of topics--including
historical, contemporary, theoretical, and practice-based considerations
of decolonial methodologies--and reflecting a range of disciplinary and
cultural perspectives. We invite 250-500 word abstracts summarizing the
work-in-progress and explaining why the participant wishes to share
their work in this forum.
*Description of work required:* Selected participants will submit their
work-in progress, approx. 5000 words in length, by 15 April 2017. These
will be shared with all seminar participants online (through dropbox,
googledocs, or a similar platform). Each participant will be assigned to
formally respond to one paper (approx. 500-1000 words) by 15 May 2017.
Online dialogue and comments on additional papers will be encouraged but
not required. When we meet in Toronto, each participant will provide a
brief abstract of their paper (2-3 mins.) and each respondent will
deliver a 5 min. response to the paper. Over the course of the winter,
we will also circulate several readings to selected participants;
participants will be asked to read a selection of these pieces in
preparation for the seminar.
*Due dates: * 250-500 word abstracts and bio are due 17 February 2017.
Works-in-progress are due 15 April 2017. Written responses are due 15
May 2017.
Contact info: please address any questions and abstracts/bios to Selena
Couture: couture2 at ualberta.ca <mailto:couture2 at ualberta.ca>.
---
*W.E.T: Water Ecologies in Theatre*
Organizers: Donia Mounsef and Stefano Muneroni
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
This seminar looks at the history and aesthetics of the hydro-imaginary
and considers the material, symbolic, and aesthetic conditions of water
in theatre and performance. It goes beyond the dichotomy between the
symbolic and the mimetic in order to demonstrate how the aquatic
reflects our complex and often contradictory relationship to the
element. This seminar will trace water ecologies in performance from the
ancient Greeks and Romans to the more recent proliferation of water in
performance, as seen in Franco Dragone’s /The House of Dancing Water/,
Anabel Soutar’s /Watershed/, Marie Clements’ /Burning Vision/, and
Théâtre du Soleil’s /Tambours sur la digue/ (1999), to mention only a few.
Proposal submissions should address one of the following topics:
* *Use and significance of water on stage throughout theatre history***
* *Contemporary performance in/on/around water***
* *Staging sustainability, global warming, pollution, and water
security***
* *Waterscapes as scenic, sound, and lighting designs***
* *Aquatic dramaturgies (immersive and fluid approaches to texts in
performance)***
* *Politics of water in theatre and performance***
The seminar will accept a total of eight participants (for a duration of
3 hours) who will share their work ahead of time, and serve as
discussants on each other’s papers. During the seminar, each discussant
will introduce their assigned paper (5 minutes) followed by a short
presentation by the participant, then an open discussion with all
participants. This seminar will serve as the first step toward bringing
together a number of contributions for a collection of essays that will
be co-edited by the organizers.
Please email your proposal (500 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words)
by 17 February 2017 to Donia Mounsef (mounsef at ualberta.ca
<mailto:mounsef at ualberta.ca>) and Stefano Muneroni
(stefano.muneroni at ualberta.ca <mailto:stefano.muneroni at ualberta.ca>)
---
*Terra Nullius: Charting Paths To Settler--Indigenous Relationships
through Theatre and Performance in Academic Contexts*
Organizers: Annie Smith and Lib Spry
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
Margaret Kovach writes:
/As an Indigenous presence surfaces within Western universities, it
brings with it all that is Indigenous: thought, custom, culture,
practice, and self. This is causing the academy to pause for a number
of reasons. For some, the hesitancy reflects an active resistance to
change, while for others it is born of a passive non-awareness. Still
others are uncertain as to how to include, without subsuming, Indigenous
knowledges. . . . They know that 'add Indigenous and stir' is not a
valid response . . . / (156)
This seminar offers participants the opportunity to present traditional
papers that address their experiences, concerns and questions arising
from their inclusion of Indigenous texts and performance in their
research, teaching, and artistic practice. How can our research,
teaching, and artistic creation challenge the settler reality and
history described by Paulette Regan as “The foundational myth of the
/benevolent peacemaker/ – the bedrock of settler identity” (2010, 11)
(our italics)? What can we learn from each other that will assist us in
charting paths to becoming settler allies? Following the paper
presentations there will be an open discussion/workshop session where
the presenters and curators will facilitate small group circles based on
the issues raised in the papers.
_Potential topics or perspectives:_
* *Challenges in audience reception of Indigenous plays***
* *Building relationship with Indigenous communities in preparation
for presenting Indigenous work***
* *Respecting cultural diversity among students of different
Indigenous and non-Indigenous background***
* *Resisting Pan-Indigeneity***
* *The risks of subsuming Indigenous knowledges as cultural artifacts***
* *The pitfall of academic authority: can we relinquish our control to
Indigenous knowledge keepers? How do we do this?***
* *Cross-cultural collaboration.***
* *How do we go about decolonizing settler theatre?***
* *How have Indigenous peoples been represented in settler theatre?***
Paper proposals with title and a 300 word abstract should be sent to
curators Lib Spry (lib.spry at queensu.ca <mailto:lib.spry at queensu.ca>) and
Annie Smith (anismith at telus.net <mailto:anismith at telus.net>) by February
17, 2017. The proposal should also include two or three discussion
points that the presenter would like to facilitate in the following
discussion/workshop session. Inquiries are most welcome.
*_Works cited_**: *
Kovach, Margaret. /Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics,
Conversations, and Contexts/. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of
Toronto Press, 2009.
Regan, Paulette. /Unsettling the Settler Within: Inside Residential
Schools, Truth Telling, and /
/Reconciliations in Canada. /Vancouver, BC: University of British
Columbia Press, 2010.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*CFPs for Praxis Workshops*
---
*Verbatim Theatre Praxis Workshop*
Come join us for a reading and discussion of */Out At School/**: A
Verbatim Theatre Project about the Experiences of LGBTQ Families in
Ontario Schools*
Organizers: Tara Goldstein, Jenny Salisbury, Pam Baer (Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education, University of Toronto)
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
*_Purpose of the Workshop_*
Some practitioners of verbatim theatre, especially in Britain, believe
verbatim theatre is displacing mainstream media as a way for the public
to access reliable information about current political events.
However, other practitioners such as Alana Valentine in Australia, have
described their work as being on a spectrum that ranges from “pure
verbatim” (where nothing said in the play hasn’t been said in the
interviews, and nothing is fictionalized) to fiction. How reliable is a
verbatim play that has fictionalized (some of) its research findings?
The purpose of this praxis workshop is to discuss the spectrum of
verbatim theatre using a play called /Out at School /as an exemplar of a
play that is positioned closer to the “pure verbatim” side of the
continuum spectrum. /Out at School / is a work-in-progress play script
that has been written from interviews with LGBTQ families about their
experiences in schools/. /In the workshop we will read aloud the current
draft of /Out at School/, share our process of turning our interview
findings into a play, discuss where it sits on the spectrum and discuss
its relationship to truth, reality, authenticity and subjectivity. We
are interested in hearing from our workshop participants where they
think the play is positioned and what they think about its relationship
to truth, reality, authenticity and subjectivity.
The deadline for expression of interest to our session as Friday 17
February 2017 to*tara.goldstein at utoronto.ca*
---
*
*
**
*Stopping the Breath: an exploratory workshop***
Organizer: Maria Meindl (mvmeindl at gmail.com <mailto:mvmeindl at gmail.com>)
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
The way we breathe affects the way we move, and this, in turn, affects
our breathing. Equally important is the way we stop breathing, and we
all do it as part of normal functioning. This workshop will bring
awareness to habits of stopping and starting the breath which often lie
beneath the level of consciousness. Since breathing is both a voluntary
and an involuntary activity, exploring habits of breathing affords
access to the liminal territory between nature and culture.
Elsa Gindler (1885-1961) wrote: "The pause, or rest, after exhalation
must not be lifeless. It should never be a matter of holding the breath.
On the contrary, it should most closely resemble the pause we experience
in music – which is the vital preparation for what is to follow" (10).
Yet there is a reason Gindler felt the need to articulate this thought.
Stopping the breath is often associated with death. It is a moment of
both fear and possibility.
One accessible way to work with stopping the breath is through the
Feldenkrais Technique (which was influenced by Elsa Gindler’s work). The
workshop will consist of a Feldenkrais lesson (called “Stopping the
Breath”) followed by a discussion. The discussion will focus on the
question of how the very real threat of destruction shapes our work,
just as habits of breathing shape our bodies. What can the experience of
consciously stopping the breath teach us? What possibilities arise when
any unconscious habits are brought to light? How can fear transform to
possibility?
Named for Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) the Feldenkrais Technique uses
gentle movement and directed attention to enhance functioning. The
movements are based on martial arts and child development, yet the
method is based on proprioception, rather than on following external
forms. The group practice of Feldenkrais involves lying on a mat while a
teacher verbally guides students through a series of pleasant and
deceptively simple movements designed to bring awareness to underlying
habits.
*_Works Cited_*
Gindler, Elsa. “Gymnastik for People whose Lives are Full of Activity.”
Translated by The Charlotte Selver Foundation. /Bone Breath and Gesture:
Practices of Embodiment /edited by Don Hanlon Johnson. Berkeley,
California: North Atlantic Books, 1995. pp. 5-14. Print.
*_Equipment_*
Participants are asked to wear loose and comfortable clothing. Please
bring a yoga mat. No auditors, please, but all are welcome to participate.
---
**
*Articulating Artistic Research 5.0: Positioning the Researcher with/in
Artistic Research*
Organizers: Bruce Barton (University of Calgary) & Natalia Esling
(University of Toronto)
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
This year’s “Articulating Artistic Research” praxis seminar extends
conversations and investigations developed through its past four
sessions, shifting attention to the position(ing) of the researcher in
Artistic Research. Building on previous seminar discussions of
/methodology /(CATR 2013)/, utility /(2014),/ epistemology /(2015), and
/results /(2016), AAR 5.0 will focus specifically on the role of the
researcher – as facilitator, collaborator, subject, material, observer,
recorder, articulator, analyst, creator – and the critical impact of
this role on the environment in which it operates – through presence,
absence, influence, displacement, adaptation, affect.
We welcome proposals that consider the many ways that researchers are
positioned and position themselves within research-creation contexts,
across the spectrum from deeply embedded to critical/analytical observation.
* *How are these different placements direct expressions of the
research’s theoretical underpinnings and methodological frameworks?***
* *In what ways are a researcher’s possible placements predetermined
by her prior education, training, and experience, her personal
history and habits, her mental and/or physical capacities?***
* *How do these positions within the processes shape and define
potential outcomes and articulate epistemological possibilities and
priorities?***
As was the case in the previous four iterations of this seminar, next
year’s gathering is meant as a forum to explore diversity in motivation,
design, execution, and documentation. However, participants will once
again be called upon to /explicitly/ articulate their practices with
direct reflection on the following aspects: /focus, context,
participants, methodology, process design, documentation/,
/dissemination,/ and /utility/. Through this process of detailed
articulation, we hope to draw particular attention to the expanded
epistemological horizons attainable within artistic research contexts.
We also hope to identify innovative models that may be transferred and
adopted within other artistic research contexts and, potentially, within
more traditionally organized research processes.
1. *A selection of no more than 12 participants will be invited to
attend the seminar in accord with the above noted criteria.***
2. *By _March 30th, 2017_, all invited participants will share
(electronically) with the full group an approx. 3000-word
articulation of a personal Artistic Research activity */that
explicitly addresses the above-identified aspects/*. (Additional
criteria for these documents will be distributed to all accepted
participants.)***
3. *Between _March 30^th _^and _April 30^th _, the first stage of
seminar engagement will consist of an electronic forum, in which
participants of the full seminar group will discuss a selection of
published articles addressing the theories and practices of Artistic
Research internationally. The focus of this exchange will be issues
of */process design/*, */methodology/*,
*/epistemological/**/orientation/*, and */research roles and
positions /*in Artistic Research.***
4. *After _April 30^th _, the invited participants will be organized
into two or three sub-groups (depending upon the number of
participants), according to shared interest/focus, and tasked with a
structured pre-conference exchange leading to in-conference
collaboration.***
5. *The actual seminar will involve two or three workshop-style
Artistic Research exercises designed and facilitated by the
sub-groups, involving the participation of other members of the full
seminar and attending conference participants.***
6. *The final hour of the seminar will take the form of an open
discussion between the seminar participants and audience members.***
7. *The entire seminar will be open to all conference attendees.***
Seminar proposals should be sent to Natalia Esling
(natalia.esling at mail.utoronto.ca
<mailto:natalia.esling at mail.utoronto.ca>) and Bruce Barton
(bruce.barton at ucalgary.ca <mailto:bruce.barton at ucalgary.ca>) no later
than* Friday, February 17^th , 2017*.
---
*Natural Clowning Session*
Workshop leader: Megan Hyslop
/Deadline: February 17, 2017/
This is actually a Call For Participation – seeking fellow theatre
researchers to act as participatory audience members for a doctoral
pilot performance autoethnography and post-performance feedback activity
that privileges the physical and imaginal, as different to the verbal.
At a time in my life when I became increasingly frustrated with human
impact on the environment, theatre and clowning was the answer I
received. How can the physical, dialogical qualities of clowning advance
the human ability to be in physical connection and dialogue with the
more-than-human, especially for non-Indigenous Canadians? This
performance will explore my ongoing personal and academic journey in the
gifts and connections between clowning and the natural world. As long as
it isn’t pouring rain, we will be outside, so please dress for the weather.
Please contact Megan at meganhyslop at yahoo.ca
<mailto:meganhyslop at yahoo.ca> by *17 February 2017* to express interest
in the session.
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