FWD: ATHE NEWS: Call for Papers

Sat Nov 5 14:31:02 EST 1994

Date: Sun, 09 Oct 1994 13:32:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: James Thomas <jthomas at mailer.fsu.edu>
Subject: ATHE NEWS: Call for Papers
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                         ATHE NEWS ONLINE BULLETIN

         PLEASE NOTE: This is a FORWARDED message for members of ATHE NEWS
         ONLINE.  Questions or responses should be sent directly to the
         original author of this bulletin, not to Jim Thomas or ATHE NEWS
         ONLINE.  Many thanks.

CALL FOR PAPERS/ABSTRACTS/PROPOSALS for a book collection tentatively

entitled STAGING RESISTANCE:  POLITICAL THEATRE AND SOCIAL CHANGE edited

by Jeanne Colleran and Jenny Spencer (address below)

Description:  Defining political theatre as a cultural practice that
actively seeks a redistribution of power among states or among groups within
a state, we are seek articles for a collection of essays on international,
contemporary political plays.  Our primary concern is 1) to better understand
how plays which are self-consciously RESISTANT (position themselves against
dominant social values and norms) emerge within a particular historical,
geographical and social context and operate in their own cultural milieu
and 2) what happens to such work (and their political/pedagogical effects) when
they are reproduced, distributed, evaluated and/or read in geographically,
institutionally or historically different contexts.  We expect the collection
to address work emerging from cultural margins as well as work by playwrights
with established reputations in their own country.  We hope to encourage new
ways of understanding, discussing and evaluating work with avowedly political
aims, and to facilitate discussion across traditional disciplinary boundaries
between theatre, practitioners, political activists, and literary scholars.

Related questions may include, but are not limited, to the following:

--what are the national politics in which or against which a performance, or
dramatic text, situates itself?
--what version(s) of national histories does the performance, or dramatic
script, seek to reform?
--how might the political efficacy of a dramatic work be measured or evaluated?
--can the specific political agendas of resistant theatre survive the
disciplinary agends of the classroom and canonization?
--what rhetorical issues arise with the production and reception of politcal
theatre?
--how does contemporary political theatre build upon or disregard its own
history of radical theatre practice?
--what happens to a work's political agenda in cultural transition?
--in what ways can a meaningful distinction be made between left and right,
progressive and conservative political performance and drama strategies?

DEADLINE FOR INITIAL SUBMISSIONS:  DEC. 1, 1994.

CONTACT:  Jenny Spencer
   Dept. of English
   University of Massachusetts
   Amherst, MA  01003
   413-545-5506 (Phone)
   413-545-3880 (FAX)
   email:  jspencer at english.umass.edu