CFP: Performance & Text (1/31; 5/2-5/4) (fwd)

[Kathy Chung]

F.Y.I.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:19:08 -0500
From: Heidi B Coleman <hbc3 at columbia.edu>
To: cfp at english.upenn.edu
Subject: CFP: Performance & Text (1/31; 5/2-5/4)

            Oscar Hammerstein II Center at Columbia University
                presents its first annual theatre conference
                            Thinking and Doing:
                           Performance and Text
                                May 2-4,1997

The purpose of this conference is to bring together theatre theorists and
practitioners to explore the position of text in theatrical production.
In three days of workshops, lectures, panel discussions, and performances,
the conference will address the following questions:

        *What is a story and how is it told?
        *Who owns text before, during, and after performance?
        *How are bodies and space themselves text?
        *How does theatrical text use and create history and culture?

In addressing these questions, we are particularly interested in issues
of race (culturally specific theatres; postcolonial adaptation;
color-blind casting); gender (models of storytelling; reading
bodies); authenticity (tension between true stories and theatrical texts;
productions of canonical texts); ethics (recreations of culturally
specific texts; ownership of ideas); identity politics; the potential for
bodies, architecture, and media to contradict or reinforce text; and the
historical evolution of theatrical text.

The conference will take place within the theatres on Columbia's campus:
Miller Theatre, a 500 seat proscenium; Schapiro Theatre, a black box; and
Schapiro Studio.  The conference date is set to coincide with the 3rd year
MFA actors' thesis production, created and directed by Anne Bogart. The
Silent Film Project, working title, is an exploration of the American
silent film era using Bogart's widely-praised technique of training actors
and creating ensemble.  The text is a compilation of first-hand source
material on twenty players (actors, directors, editors, producers, etc.)
from the silent film period.

We welcome paper, performance, and panel proposals from the professional
and academic theatreical community.

Please send abstracts of 200 words for 20 minute papers, or proposals
for panels to:

        Carrie Ryan
        Columbia University
        Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies
        2960 Broadway, Mailcode 1807
        601 Dodge Hall
        New York, NY 10027

Deadline for submissions is January 31, 1997.
e-mail questions about the conference to Heidi Coleman: hbc3 at columbia.edu

(For confirmation and receipt of proposals, please include e-mail
address.)