CFP 'Adaptations--Performing Across Media and Genres"

[Denis Salter]

17th Annual CDE Conference 2008,
University of Siegen, Akademie Biggesee, Attendorn, Germany, May 01-04, 2008 

"Adaptations - Performing across Media and Genres"

The German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English announces its 17th Annual Conference (May 01 to 04, 2008). It will be organized by the Chair of English Literature at the University of Siegen and held between Siegen and Cologne at the Akademie Biggesee, Attendorn .

Call for Papers: 

Translation, transformation, appropriation, assimilation, adaptation - these processes of intertextual and intermedial contact have been part and parcel of theatre and drama since their very beginnings. In various guises, they have continued to play a major part in turning narratives into stage events. Linda Hutcheon argued in her recent study A Theory of Adaptation that "every live staging of a printed play could theoretically be considered an adaptation in its performance". While this is of course true in general terms we would like to bring into narrow focus the various processes and cultural issues at stake in converting or actualizing texts as theatre texts - and vice versa. For some time now, the academic sub-discipline of 'Adaptation Studies' has been active in exploring adaptive processes, but we feel that this burgeoning research area has yet to make its full impact on theatre and drama studies. Resistance to analysing adaptation has probably to do with implicit reservations against adaptive work and a bias towards the problematic idea of originality. The renowned adaptor Helen Edmundson has recently called upon the Bard to defend adaptation: "Shakespeare plundered other people's stories shamelessly. And people didn't say, 'That's not a play, it's an adaptation'". Taking as our point of departure Kamilla Elliott's statement that adaptation is "theoretically impossible yet culturally ubiquitous" we will seek to theorize a number of significant cases from within this ubiquity of adaptations across media and genres.

 

We would particularly welcome proposals in the following areas:

 

Ø       Stages, screens, sounds: Media adaptations from film, TV, radio, Internet, etc. - and vice versa

Ø       The role of translation in theatre and drama

Ø       Text, speech, image, performance: Books, oral narratives, cartoons and games on stage

Ø       Heritage in performance: The actualization of heritage or history narratives on stage

Ø       Re-enactments: Iterating, re-making and re-presenting theatre history on stage

Ø       Actualizing the classics: Myths, antiquity, Shakespeare, etc.

Ø       Intercultural adaptation: Putting the 'Anglosphere' on stage

Ø       Beyond fiction: Live art, reality plays, journalism, tribunal plays and verbatim theatre

 

Abstracts: 

200-word abstracts of suggested papers (20 minutes or less) plus short biographical note may be sent by Jan 15, 2008, to

 

Prof. Dr. Eckart Voigts-Virchow

Anglistik I/Literaturwissenschaft

Adolf-Reichwein-Straße 2

57068 Siegen 

fon: ++49-(0)271-740-4581

fax: ++49-(0)271-740-2692

e-mail: voigts-virchow at anglistik.uni-siegen.de

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"Those who have an orphan's sense of history love history."--Anna in Ondaatje's Divisadero
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"La Pocha Nostra is a virtual maquiladora [. . . ] that produces brand-new metaphors, symbols, images, and words to explain the complexities of our times. The Spanglish neologism Pocha Nostra translates as either 'our impurities' or 'the cartel of cultural bastards.' We love this poetic ambiguity. It reveals an attitude toward art and society: 'Crossracial, poly-gendered, experi-mental, ¿y qué?' " --Guilllermo Gómez-Peña.
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Denis Salter
Professor of Theatre
McGill University
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