Call for Papers

[Dr. Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe]

At the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of
European Ideas (ISSEI), to be held at Haifa University, Israel, 16 - 21
August 1998, I will be offering two workshops.

Colleagues wishing to present a paper in one (or both) of them should send a
one-page abstract to me by January 1, 1998

WORKSHOP 1

Theatre and Consciousness: The Psychology of Performance.


Despite current emphasis on the importance of the body for theatre
performance, consciousness, although more elusive and intangible, is at
least as important for any performance to take place and be successful. The
actor's presence is at the centre of Eugenio Barba's theatre anthropology,
referring to the third organ of the body of the theatre as "the irrational
and secret temperature which renders our actions incandescent". It is "our
personal destiny. If we don't have it, no one can teach it to us". Barba's
description suggests an altered, non-ordinary state of consciousness, which
is an appropriate concept to describe Grotowski's concept of
translumination, in which the mind-body split is overcome. On more
traditional levels of understanding is the issue of the actor's emotional
involvement with the feelings the character is supposed to be experiencing.
Diderot suggested that the actor should maintain a distance from those
emotions, should not get involved, should keenly observe behaviour and
reproduce its outward manifestations on stage during performance.
Stanislavsky, on the other hand, clearly advocates the actor's emotional
involvement, but requires the actor to simultaneously watch over those
emotions. A kind of dual consciousness is thus at the centre of
Stanislavsky's ideas. The ancient Indian treatise on drama and theatre, the
Natyashastra appears to be contradictory on the issue of the actor's
emotional involvement: in one passage it first states that the actor needs
full concentration, suggesting involvement, and a few lines later advises
that the actor playing an angry character should not be angry him/herself,
or that an actor playing a character who has to weep should not feel sad
him/herself. The way we understand consciousness as such will be essential
to the understanding of the relationship between theatre and consciousness.

These are only a few issues the workshop could raise. Topics are not limited
to traditional theatre: contributions from music, dance and performance art
are also strongly invited.


WORKSHOP 2

Privileged Moments in European Literature


Not limited to drama, but extending to prose fiction and poetry, this
workshop focuses on experiences of altered states of consciousness, peak
experiences, mystic experiences or privileged moments in European
literature. Are they expressions of wishful thinking, are they metaphors for
something else,, which we have to discover in the reading process. If they
can be argued to have  a literal truth-value or near truth-value, as Malekin
and Yarrow have recently suggested (Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow,
*Consciousness, Literature and Theatre. Theory and Beyond*, Basingstoke/New
York: MacMillan/St. Martin's Press, 1997), this has important implications
for literary criticism!



***************************************************************
Dr. Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
University of Wales Aberystwyth
1 Laura Place, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 2AU, UK
Tel. ++44 1970 622835 Fax ++44 1970 622831 email: dam at aber.ac.uk