CFP: sessions on talkbacks and performance reviews at ATHE 2009, New York

[Kim Solga]

Hi all,

A great initiative from the Theory and Criticism focus group. Please  
let me know if you have any questions!

Kim


Call for Participants, Joint Session: “Risking Innovation in the name  
of Lively Talkbacks” and “Rethinking the Performance Review: Risking  
Tradition.”

In accordance with the 2009 ATHE/AATE conference theme “Risking  
Innovation,” The Theory and Criticism Focus Group seeks participants  
interested in a joint session on conducting innovative talkbacks and  
writing effective (and publishable) performance reviews. While the  
performance review is a canonized part of critical and historical  
discourse, the talkback has only relatively recently begun to gain  
legitimacy and become a familiar part of production practices. The  
purpose of this joint session, then, is to actively take up the  
question of how performance reviews and dramaturgical talkbacks frame  
the discourse around theatrical productions both in their contemporary  
moment and in the historical record. New York City is the perfect  
place to explore such questions, and the participants in this joint  
session will take advantage of its theatrical abundance by 1)  
selecting a performance to attend together, and 2) using that  
performance as the fulcrum of the work in both sessions.


“Risking Innovation in the name of Lively Talkbacks”

The idea of the talkback is a risky one for some directors,  
performers, dramaturgs, and—perhaps most often—audience members.  
What’s on the line when we enter the space of a talkback? What do the  
participants—whether they’re production members or audience members— 
stand to gain or to lose by attending a talkback? Can pushing  
audiences beyond their comfort levels in traditional talkbacks  
generate more robust conversations and thus elevate the discourse into  
which the production enters? Can talkbacks offer theatre scholars a  
window on audience reception practices? What practical and ethical  
problems might the talkback-as-scholarship pose? Finally, what can  
dramaturgs do to innovate talkbacks beyond the staid question-and- 
answer sessions we’ve already grown used to seeing?

Please send contact information and a 100-word statement of interest  
to Kim Solga (ksolga at uwo.ca) no later than 17 October 2008.


“Rethinking the Performance Review: Risking Tradition”

The performance review has traditionally fulfilled two purposes:  
contributing to the archival record of performance and critically/ 
contextually analyzing and evaluating performance. But what happens to  
the broader conversation about performance when the biases held by  
reviewers with clout perpetuate themselves through years and years of  
the same kinds of reviews? When does the reviewer potentially have too  
much power to shape the discourse of performance? How might reviewers  
risk their own positions of power to invite a more rigorous, varied,  
and engaged conversation? How can we reimagine the genre of the  
performance review to avoid the risk of stagnating artistic and  
intellectual development?

Please send contact information and a 100-word statement of interest  
to Shelley Manis (jayhawkintexas at gmail.com) no later than 17 October  
2008.