ASTR Working Group on Puppetry and Material Performance (Nov. 3-6, 2016)

[Lawrence Switzky]

Please consider submitting a brief abstract (no more than 500 words) by June 1st to the American Society for Theatre Research working group on puppetry and material performance. The conference will take place this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota from November 3-6. Instructions for submission are at the end of the working group description. Please do not hesitate to contact Lawrence Switzky at lawrence.switzky at utoronto.ca with any questions.

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Puppetry and Material Performance

Alissa Mello, Independent Scholar
Dawn Brandes, University of King’s College
Lawrence Switzky, University of Toronto
Veronika Ambros, University of Toronto

Throughout its history, puppet and material performance have embodied what could be termed a trans-state. Objects fluidly transition between states—life and death, animacy and inanimacy, puppeteer and puppet—as performers work through material to create the appearance of life. Puppet and material performance play diverse roles and cross apparently impermeable barriers: through the dissemination of cultural knowledge, as agents of dissent, as a means of voicing the socially unvoiceable, as pastime and amusement. Performers and early itinerant players cross or transcend national boundaries. This Session will explore puppet and material performance through various notions of trans-, including transgender and representation, trans-nationality, transgression, transitional states, translations, and transformations (of materials, persons, spaces, ideologies). Working Group participants are invited to engage in theoretical, historical, or contemporary analyses of puppetry and material performance. Individual case studies might investigate, but are not limited to:

The transgender gaze in puppetry
Trans-gressive and trans-formative aesthetics and dramaturgies of puppet and material performance
Transitional states of material performers and live actors, or of puppet and puppeteer
Trans-fusions of persons and matter, e.g. bio-objects
Trans-national and trans-disciplinary puppet and material practices and performance
Translation in and as puppet and material performance
Trans-disciplinary approaches to research
Transitional objects i.e. ritual objects, psychological objects
Trans-lingual exchanges between the voices of subjects and visual or sculptural objects (e.g. ventriloquism, voiceovers, ekphrasis, and other forms of vocal projection)
Trans-cultural performance practices, productions and dramaturgies
Transfers between "high" and "low" culture

Papers (8-10 pages) should be distributed to all session participants by October 1. Leading up to the conference, the moderators will divide participants into smaller thematic groups, and participants will be asked to read and comment on the papers in their subgroup by November 1 using our online discussion board. At ASTR, participants will first present brief (1 - 2 minute) abstracts of their papers at the start of the session in order to help familiarize audience members with each project. Participants and audience members will then divide into their subgroups to discuss the themes that linked their papers, and then reconvene with the larger group to exchange ideas. The goals of the Working Session are to provide a broader critical context for puppetry scholarship and to develop essays for publication.

For any specific questions, please contact the working group convenors at alissa.mello at gmail.com, dawn.brandes at ukings.ca, lawrence.switzky at utoronto.ca, and veronika.ambros at utoronto.ca. Please note that all submissions must be received formally through the ASTR website, at http://www.astr.org/page/16_WGSubmissions. The form will allow you to indicate second and third -choice working groups if you wish; if you do so, note that there is a space for you to indicate how your work will fit into those groups. The deadline for receipt of working group proposals is 1 June 2016 and we anticipate that participants will be notified of their acceptance no later than 30 June. As this is the first year of this new process, please contact the conference organizers at astr2016 at astr.org if you have any questions about the process.