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<b>American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) 2009</b><b><br>
San Juan, Puerto Rico</b><b><br>
Condado Plaza Hotel and Casino</b><b><br>
November 12-15, 2009</b><br>
<p class="western"><b>Working Session </b><b>Call for Papers</b><b>: </b><b>CONTEMPORARY
WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS</b><b><br>
Deadline for proposals: </b><b>Friday, May 15, 2009<font
color="#000000"><br>
Conveners: </font>Anna
Birch, Manchester Met University; Penny Farfan, University of Calgary;
Lesley Ferris, Ohio State University</b><font color="#0000ff"><u><br>
<a href="mailto:annabirch1@mac.com">annabirch1@mac.com</a></u></font>; <font
color="#0000ff"><u><a href="mailto:farfan@ucalgary.ca">farfan@ucalgary.ca</a></u></font>;
<font color="#0000ff"><a href="mailto:ferris.36@osu.edu"><span
style="text-decoration: none;"><font color="#000000">ferris.36@osu.edu</font></span></a></font></p>
<p class="western">In her ground-breaking 1989 volume <i>Making A
Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre</i>, Lynda
Hart remarked, “The latter half of the twentieth century has seen an
emergence of women playwrights in numbers equal to the entire history
of their dramatic foremothers.” Hart regarded the book’s contributors,
as well as the playwrights themselves, as working “in defiance of the
warning generally given to women to avoid having attention drawn to
themselves, a prohibition against being publicly seen and heard.” Like
the playwrights, feminist critics were “appropriating the stage to
assert [their] own images.” </p>
<p class="western">In 2008, nearly twenty years after Hart’s volume
signaled a kind of golden age of women’s theatre writing, playwrights
Sarah Schulman and Julia Jordan convened a “standing-room-only” town
hall meeting in New York City to discuss a bias in the subsidized New
York theatre that has male writers being produced four times more than
women. Clearly, despite the ground-swell of feminist dramatic and
critical writing that Hart captured in 1989, what she called “the last
bastion of male hegemony in the literary arts” has, in the early
twenty-first century, not yet been dismantled.</p>
This working session will focus on contemporary
playwriting by women, considering, but not limited to, the following
questions:<br>
<p class="western" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">- Who are some of the
key voices in contemporary playwriting by women? What are some of the
concerns and techniques that distinguish their work? How is the work of
contemporary women “playwrights” being “written”? Are “playwright” and
“playwriting” adequate terms for describing contemporary practices?</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">- What contextual
research, theoretical frameworks, and critical methods are required to
articulate
the political and aesthetic affiliations and interventions of
contemporary women playwrights?</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">- What work by
contemporary women playwrights gets produced, where, why, how, and for
whom? What work by contemporary women playwrights is not making it to
production, and why?</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">- How have such
developments as the critical turn to feminist performance in the 1990s,
the move toward gender studies, the rise of queer theory, and the
articulation of postcolonial criticism affected academic and scholarly
engagements with contemporary women playwrights?</p>
<p class="western">In her manifesto “Feminist Performance and Utopia,”
in Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case’s 2007 edited volume <i>Staging
International Feminisms</i>, Jill Dolan recalls the feminist
“academy-community synergy” that helped to circulate challenging work
by women beyond its original performance venues in the 1980s. This
working session aims to re-produce some of the synergy that vitalized
1980s feminist theatre writing, extending and updating that earlier
conversation so as to continue to intervene into the ‘default position’
of producing the white male playwright.</p>
<p class="western"><b>SESSION FORMAT AND GUIDELINES</b><br>
The working session will be a combined reading
group/seminar. We invite proposals submitting 1) the title of a play
written by a woman within the past twenty years (published or in
manuscript); 2) an abstract (250 words) indicating why it is important
to consider this work; and 3) a biographical note about yourself (150
words).</p>
<p class="western">A bibliography of selected plays will be circulated
to those accepted into the session. Participants will read all plays
(maximum 12) over the summer. By September 15, participants will
circulate critical statements on their plays (1000 words). The plays
and statements will serve as the basis for a pre-conference email
discussion and the working session at the conference.</p>
<p class="western"><b>Proposal Submissions: </b>Please submit proposed
play titles (plus publication/manuscript information), abstracts, and
bios by email to all three session leaders by Friday, May 15, 2009: </p>
<p class="western">Anna Birch, Manchester
Met University (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:annabirch1@mac.com">annabirch1@mac.com</a>)<br>
Penny Farfan, University
of Calgary (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:farfan@ucalgary.ca">farfan@ucalgary.ca</a>)<br>
Lesley Ferris, Ohio
State University (<font color="#0000ff"><a
href="mailto:ferris.36@osu.edu"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><font
color="#000000">ferris.36@osu.edu</font></span></a></font>)</p>
<p class="western">All selected participants must become members of
ASTR. For general guidelines for participants in ASTR
working sessions, see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.astr.org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Default.aspx">http://www.astr.org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Default.aspx</a></p>
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