CFP: Objects and Things: The Histories of Theatrical Actants

[Marlis Schweitzer]

Greetings!


Please consider applying to the working group I'm convening with Dr. 
Joanne Zerdy for this year's American Society of Theatre Research 
conference in Nashville, Tennessee in November.

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*Objects and Things: The Histories of Theatrical Actants*

*Working Group at the American Society of Theatre History *

Convened by Marlis Schweitzer, York University (schweit at yorku.ca) and 
Joanne Zerdy, Penn State Erie (j.zerdy at gmail.com)

We are keen to explore a "remembrance of /things/ past," to chart the 
on- and offstage lives of the things that comprise, support, and enact 
theatrical performances (e.g. props, puppets, design elements, venue 
architectures, texts, transportation vehicles, etc.). By adopting a 
/thingcentric /perspective, outlined by political theorist Jane Bennett 
and social scientists working in /actor-network theory 
/and/object-oriented ontology/, we aim to rethink theatre histories from 
the perspective of such things. We understand physical materials not as 
inert human possessions but instead as /actants/, with particular 
frequencies, energies, and potentials to affect the human and nonhuman 
worlds in which they exist. This group seeks to build on extant 
performance and theatre studies scholarship that foregrounds the 
interdependence of organisms, objects, physical forces, ideas, and 
social practices. With this in mind, we invite performance and theatre 
practitioners and scholars to consider the contours of their work in 
terms of the "vibrant matter" of theatrical things.

Papers might address the following questions:

·How do things perform? What kinds of agencies, energies, and directions 
do they enact in theatre in the past and present?

·What new or overlooked theatre history narratives might emerge from a 
/thingcentric /approach?

·What theoretical frameworks and methodologies do theatre and 
performance scholars employ when they look at things? How might we begin 
to map the different genealogies that inform /thingcentric /scholarship 
today?

·How do theatrical things direct our critical and creative attention 
toward, away from, and within archival research?

·How do animate and inanimate objects relate to one another during and 
after live performance events (i.e. when placed on a props table, in a 
dressing room, in stock, or in a site-specific venue)?

·Can commodified objects resist such economic classification and use? If 
so, how? Where? When?

·How might a /thingcentric/ perceptive alter our understandings and 
practices of collaboration, multimedia performance, and 
interdisciplinarity in theatre?

·What can a theatrical object's circulation teach us about the movements 
of ideas, languages, and bodies in a specific historical time and place?

*Session Format:*

We invite 500-word proposals that include an abstract for your ASTR 
paper submission as well as its relation to your broader creative and/or 
scholarly work. Include full contact information and organizational 
affiliation (if any) on both your proposal and your email -- and send 
your proposal to both conveners by May 31, 2012. Following the selection 
of participants, conveners will generate initial discussion questions 
and a bibliography of sources with which participants will be expected 
to engage. Full 10-12-page papers will be submitted to the conveners by 
September 30, 2012. Smaller groups will be assigned and expected to 
interact with one another (through email, phone, and/or Skype) before 
the ASTR meeting in November. Conveners will distribute a set of 
discussion questions and/or a working session agenda by late October. We 
also plan to coordinate a follow-up discussion online, initiated by 
questions devised by the conveners from our meeting in Nashville.

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