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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Dear Colleagues, <br>
<br>
Please find below the Call-for-Papers for the International Federation for Theatre Research Annual Conference 2024.<br>
<br>
</span><b>International Federation for Theatre Research Annual Conference 2024<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>University of the Philippines Diliman<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Manila, Philippines<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>15 – 19 July 2024<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>CALL FOR PAPERS / ABSTRACT PROPOSALS<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Our States of Emergency: <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Theatres and Performances of Tragedy <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tragedy often connotes a sense of misfortune, a condition of pain, an encounter of betrayal, a state of insecurity and instability. Aristotle conceptualized tragedy as “the fall of a great man” and as an emotionally charged narrative that
excites “pity and fear,” possesses cathartic properties, and involves the recognition of virtues and the reversal of fates and fortunes due to varied human vulnerabilities.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet it is time to look beyond tragedy in its ancient, Western conceptions and consider how it exceeds individuating tendencies and takes stock of what we might describe, echoing Franz Fanon, as the ongoing wretchedness of the Earth. Within
this ambit, tragedy may account for the consequences of unequal relationships among social agents from the global North and the global South; the disorders in the longstanding hierarchical linkages between humans and non-humans; the rise and return of political
personalities that have caused the further breakdown of already delicate public systems and services; the decimation of the world’s resources amid unprecedented health crises and environmental disasters; and, not least, the destitute ways of life among the
oppressed who are caught up in highly colonial, imperial, capitalist, neoliberal, heteronormative, and racist regimes. These notions establish that tragedy is neither simply about personal fate nor about, as prevailing beliefs from the Period of Antiquity
go, the wrath of the gods. It is, instead, a structured state of existence and an outcome of accumulated human mistakes, caprices, and excesses.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To these reflections on the notion of tragedy embedded in a wider socio-historical and geopolitical field, we can also add the theatre-specific need to consider the material, tragic circumstances that impact the profession. Consider for
instance the precarious labor situations that have left theatre practitioners without securities and safeguards; the withering support of state and non-state entities that has forced theatre companies, artistic collectives, and their corresponding projects
to grind to a halt; the occupational hazards of theatre and performance making that have led to the deterioration if not the demise of certain artists; the diverse and multiple forms of interventions—from political orders to commercially-minded patrons and
sponsors—that impinge upon artistic and creative expressions. Viewed in this way, theatre itself appears as a site of tragic practices, the locus of its own tragedies.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Through an IFTR conference dedicated to <i>Our States of Emergency</i>, the University of the Philippines initiates a collective gathering where artists, practitioners, academics, researchers, and scholars of theatre and performance can
discuss the circumstances and consequences of past, present, and prospective tragedies that we have been variously suffering and living with. An archipelagic nation situated in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Philippines is not new to aquatic and terrestrial
tragedies. Given its geographical location, it is no stranger to hurricanes, typhoons, and earthquakes. And yet, it is this same delicate placement that renders the Philippines a strategic gateway to Southeast Asia and a much-coveted territory to successive,
ever mutating, and ever expanding colonial and imperial orders. Akin to many other countries on other continents, in addition to natural catastrophes the Philippines has also suffered and continues to suffer the tragedies brought forth by its complex historical
encounters and political structures. Since the sixteenth century, for example, our country was on the receiving end of the violence that its conquerors inflicted on Filipino dispersed across the islands. Further, while the Philippines has successfully staged
bloodless uprisings that led to the fall of a dictator in the mid-1980s and to the ousting of another corrupt president at the turn of this century, it still must grapple with the tensions between the dynamism of its social movements and the persistence of
its political dynasties. The rise of the felonious Rodrigo R. Duterte to the presidency in 2016 and the re-installation of the Marcoses to the country’s highest political seat in 2022 are telling markers of these frictions.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Capturing these different tragedies in the Philippines are vernacular terms and concepts that relate to the lack of luck (<i>kamalasan</i>) or the malevolent destiny (<i>masamang kapalaran</i>) of a person, the severity and enormity of
a calamity (<i>sakuna</i>), the weight and impact of a pitiful phase of being (<i>kalunusan</i>), and the pervasive presence or potentiality of danger (<i>kapahamakan</i>) and death (<i>kasawian</i>). This relay of ideas brings into focus the personal and
social, the superstitious and scientific dimensions of tragedy. It also underscores how tragedy, in Philippine belief systems and worldviews, can be fated or self-made, intimately suffered or publicly confronted, caused by the forces of nature or by the doings
of humans themselves. Even more importantly, it crystallizes the many ways Filipinos encounter, rationalize, and express the tragic in both thought and in deed.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This conference invites a re-imagination of tragedy as a social experience and an aesthetic encounter that relates to but importantly exceeds classical, Aristotelian legacies. It welcomes revaluations of theatrical and performative forms—intercultural
performances, melodramas, musicals and mega-musicals, avant-garde practices, and post-dramatic productions, to name a few—that depict the broad spectrum of human suffering. It offers an opportunity to re-examine how tragic moments constitute and, in turn,
are constituted by the fields of theatre and performance studies. It seeks to encourage discussions on how tragedies come about on the stage, in artistic and social communities, in history and society, in cultural industries and organizations. It intends to
bring together those who confront assorted tragedies in everyday life and those who make sense of the depths of the darkness where we may find ourselves situated, albeit to different, varying degrees. All in all, it hopes to locate the intersecting modes of
survival and resistance, the creative means to imagine the world anew, as well as the sympathetic and sensitive modes of sharing, structuring, and saving the world from planetary destruction.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We anticipate your participation as we all gather in Manila to think about tragedy as a theatrical genre or form, as a performance theory, and, not least, as an occurrence that bears symbolic, dramatic, and material effects on our private
and shared lives. What are the new insights and methods that theatre and performance studies have occasioned from the 20<sup>th</sup> to the 21<sup>st</sup> centuries to rethink, reperform, and reclaim tragedy as a genre? How have theatre and performance makers
utilized their talents, intelligences, and outputs to spotlight and, even more importantly, intervene in local, national, and global systems and procedures that have thrown large human and non-human populations into a whirlpool of danger, degradation, and
despair? How have theatres and performances functioned as the venues and ventures that people turn to in their attempt to come to terms with the tragic realities that they are sensing, feeling, if not undergoing? Far from reveling in the miserable destinies
of others, this conference is a reckoning of how theatres and performances of tragedy can sufficiently play a role in our communal efforts of responding to the world’s persistent sufferings and contending with their conditions of emergence.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Suggested topics include but are not limited to: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0in" start="1" type="A">
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Spectacles of tragedy/tragic spectacles<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Staging and scripting tragedies<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Tragic conditions of theatre and performance making
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">The politics of tragedies <o:p>
</o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Confronting tragedies in everyday life
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Tragic histories of theatre and performance
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Embodied sufferings across cultures and communities
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Performing planetary catastrophes and environmental degradations<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Technological networks and circuits of tragedy
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Theorizations of tragedy as theatrical/performance genre
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">National and global tragedies
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Forms of life-making amid and after tragedies
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Commemorating tragedies <o:p>
</o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Theatres and performances of crisis
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">Dramatizing tragic experiences
<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">The pandemic and other health emergencies in performance
<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
</ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Abstracts of between 200 and 250 words are invited for this conference from scholars, teachers, researchers, artists, and students of theatre arts, theatre studies, performance studies, and other related disciplines.
<b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>All abstracts should be submitted to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr/conference">
Cambridge Core</a>. Please do not send abstracts to the organizers. Please note that you have to be a member of the IFTR to submit an abstract. To join the IFTR or renew your membership, visit the
<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr/membership">Cambridge Core Membership page</a>.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: <b>2 February 2024</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Conference Dates<b>: 15 – 19 July 2024</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Conference Venue: The University of the Philippines Diliman<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Conference Co-Conveners: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Prof. Sir Anril P. Tiatco: <a href="mailto:sptiatco@up.edu.ph">
sptiatco@up.edu.ph</a><u><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></u><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dr. Oscar T. Serquiña, Jr.: <a href="mailto:otserquina@up.edu.ph">
otserquina@up.edu.ph</a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Contact Email for Conference enquiries: <a href="mailto:iftrmanila2024.upd@up.edu.ph">
iftrmanila2024.upd@up.edu.ph</a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.75pt;background:white"><b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">Marcus TAN (Dr)</span></b><b><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">
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