<html><body><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Dear colleagues, </span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Natalie and I look forward to receiving your abstract proposals in the coming weeks the 2015 ASTR gathering. </span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">**</span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">2015 ASTR/TLA Conference </span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Debating the Stakes in Theatre and Performance</span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">November 5-8, Portland OR</span></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><br></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><strong><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Sustainable Tools for Precarious Subjects: Performance Actions and Human Rights</span></strong></p><p style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 36px; font: normal normal normal 20px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><strong><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></strong></p><p style="line-height: 26px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; color: #c39d56; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 26px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; color: #c39d56; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Conveners: </span></p><p style="line-height: 26px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; color: #c39d56; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 26px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; color: #c39d56; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Natalie Alvarez (Brock University) </span></p><p style="line-height: 26px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; color: #c39d56; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="line-height: 26px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; color: #c39d56; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Keren Zaiontz (Simon Fraser University)</span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">In the wake of recent uprisings such as Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, the Maple Spring, and the Euro Maiden, this working session focuses on an emergent concern among artist-activists and researchers: How to sustain and keep alive the political interventions and “calls to action” that performance actions stage? How to create activist performance that makes effective use of its “remains,” to invoke Rebecca Schneider, as a vehicle for ongoing political action? This working session charts the changing frontier of global activism by examining the work of artist-activists who are invested in the creation of performance strategies, tactics, and technologies designed to create sustainable tools and sustainable spaces for “precarious subjects”—such as the undocumented laborer, the homeless, the political refugee—that exceed the event horizon of the performance action itself. From Apps and hashtags, to open-source human rights novelas, to socially engaged public art, the tools and tactics artist-activists employ both emerge from and shape local histories. We are particularly interested in work with regional foci in the Middle East, as well as work centered in regions across the Americas. In bringing work from distinct regional contexts into conversation with one another, the working session will respond to the larger conference call to examine how the compass points of activism, advocacy, and coalition-building shift from location to location. Working with the conviction that the tools of our discipline can serve as the “catalyst for change,” to echo the ASTR program chairs, this session will orient its investigations toward unapologetically instrumentalist methodologies—documenting and archiving the repertoires of sustained, and sustainable, performance actions against human rights violations.</span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Participants will circulate 3,000- to 4,000-word papers seven weeks prior to the conference. Those papers will be organized into thematic subgroups that will exchange feedback via email and identify key emergent issues to bring to our in-person meeting for discussion. Our three-hour meeting time will be devoted to a detailed discussion of participants’ papers and the key concerns that emerged from the online exchanges within subgroups prior to the conference. We will begin the working session with a précis of participants’ papers for the benefit of interlocutors who would like to sit in on the session and allow ample opportunity in the final 45 minutes of the session for discussion with auditors.</span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Please send a 250-word abstract along with a brief bio by <b>May 31, 2015</b> to the conveners:</span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><br></span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="color: #000000;">Natalie Alvarez (<a href="mailto:nalvarez@brocku.ca">nalvarez@brocku.ca</a>) and </span></span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="color: #000000;">Keren Zaiontz (<a href="mailto:kzaiontz@sfu.ca">kzaiontz@sfu.ca</a>) </span></span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #2e6696; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="color: #000000;"><br></span></span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;" data-mce-style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Georgia; color: #444444; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Members will be notified by the <b>end of June</b> whether their proposals have been accepted for the working group.</span></p></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " data-mce-style="font-size: small; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">--</span></div><div><span name="x"></span><div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; " size="2"><span size="2"><span name="x">Keren Zaiontz, PhD<br>Banting Postdoctoral Fellow<br>Simon Fraser University<br>Department of English<br></span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; ">Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6</span></div><div><br></div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; " size="2"><span size="2"><span name="x"></span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; " size="2">Reviews Editor | <a style="COLOR: blue !important; CURSOR: text !important; TEXT-DECORATION: underline !important" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/current#.U79XPhzyDGk" data-mce-style="color: blue !important; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important;" data-mce-href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/current#.U79XPhzyDGk">Performance Research</a></span></div></div></div></div></body></html>