Call for papers

[Jane Baldwin]

ASTR/CORD Conference Seattle, November 18-21, 2010



Working Group:

Negotiations of Power - A History of Collective Creation



Call for Papers: 

We invite authors to submit proposals for essays on aspects of the international development of the Collective Creation movement, 


from the early twentieth century forward.





Aims: The aim of this working group is to produce and publish a history of the international development of Collective Creation from the early twentieth century forward.  The goal of this proposed volume is to provide a more historically systematic overview than has hitherto been attempted, and to contribute a significant piece to a broader consideration of the relationship between institutional and aesthetic practices 



We are interested in studies of particular companies, overviews of the historical development of Collective Creation in particular regions of the world, and considerations of Collective Creation's varied manifestations (ideological, institutional, aesthetic, etc) at different historical moments and in distinct cultural contexts. 



For additional information on content, please see "Themes" and "Working Definition" below.



Rationale: Despite its significant, ongoing, global impact, Collective Creation remains underdeveloped as an object of scholarship.  We are aware of only a very small selection in-depth studies in English, including The Lives and Deaths of Collective Creation (Vox Teatri, 2008), and Collective Creation, Collaboration and Devising (Playwrights Canada Press, 2009).  While these constitute a significant step in the field, neither claims to offer an international, historical overview.  



Working Method:

  a.. E-mail exchange (June-November), to test ideas and share resources; 
  b.. Contributions to working bibliography exchanged early July; 
  c.. Drafts exchanged early October; 
  d.. Revisions submitted subsequent to ASTR session; date TBD. 
  e.. ASTR session will be structured as discussion, with break-out working-groups to:
1.     Refine the working definition of Collective Creation, taking into account intersections with related forms, including studio, laboratory, devised and post-dramatic theatre, as well as cultural divergences and convergences;

2.     Re-define the scope of the proposed volume based upon contributions; identify critical gaps; create a plan to address gaps; 

3.     Discuss ways of bringing drafts into fuller harmony with aims of the proposed volume;

4.     Produce draft book proposal;

5.     Lay out schedule for completion.



Contact: Please send an abstract of 250 words or more, and brief bio emphasizing your interest in Collective Creation to: Dr. Kathryn Syssoyeva, syssoyeva at gmail.com

Deadline: May 15, 2010



For further guidelines and information, please go to: http://www.astr.org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Default.aspx



Themes:

Our overarching aim is to map Collective Creation's crisscrossing temporal, spatial and cultural trajectories. Within this framework, themes we wish to see addressed include, but are not limited to:



  a.. Diverse structures of artistic authority/cooperation proposed by collective theatre groups over the century; 
  b.. The role of particular institutional structures in facilitating/foreclosing upon particular aesthetic possibilities - and vice versa; 
  c..  Intersections with related forms of theatrical experimentation; 
  d.. Collective creation as social protest; 
  e.. The politics of political disengagement; 
  f.. Imploding utopias and failed collectives; 
  g.. Extra-theatrical impetuses (political, ideological, philosophical, etc) to collective creation; 
  h.. The roots the theatrical collective in pre-twentieth century practice.


Working Definition: Collective Creation is a theatrical movement characterized above all by the nature of the creative process - in its essence, a group of persons collaboratively developing a theatrical work from conception to performance.  Typically, that collaborative method eliminates or decentralizes the role of the director, accentuates the creative contribution of the performer, emphasizes democratic or consensual decision-making, and redistributes traditional designations of responsibility.  Collective Creation is here understood to be an artistic movement with broader socio-political implications: a considered intervention into normative power dynamics of hierarchically structured institutions, by practicing and modeling institutional alternatives. The movement's impulses are thus understood to be at once aesthetic and political.  The nature of that politics, however, is open-ended.  Historically, the particular "politics" of particular performance collectives run the gamut from the engaged political activism that typified the U.S. collectives of the 1960's, to utopian theatre communities such as Jacques Copeau's "Copiaus" (established in 1924), to the politics of political refusal, such as we find in the work of Stanislavsky and his collaborators in his final Studio in the 1930's, which may arguably be understood as constituting a radical (for its time and place) retreat from political oppression through committed engagement in collective imagination.



While a flowering of Collective Creation occurred in the 60's and 70's, its roots can be traced to collaborative theatre practices developed earlier in the century.  Meyerhold, for instance, introduced the term "collective creation" in Russia in 1906; Copeau and Saint-Denis deployed collective creation methods in France in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Similarly, as Jane Baldwin, Jean-Marc Larrue and Christiane Page argue in The Lives and Deaths of Collective Creation, the movement's impact continues to be felt globally.  Indeed, the programs of many theatre schools, the subject matter of many conference talks, the intensifying scholarly interest in such related categories of practice as "devising," "laboratory," and "post-dramatic" theatre - all suggest a resurgence of interest in collective practices, in the form of broad diffusion; arguably, collective creation is experiencing a migration from margin to center. 



-- 
Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva, PhD
Stanford Department of Drama and the Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

________________
Jane Baldwin, Ph.D.
Editor of Theatre:  The Rediscovery of Style and Other Writings
For more information about the book, please visit:
http://www.routledge.com/books/Theatre-The-Rediscovery-of-Style-and-Other-Writings-isbn9780415450485
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