[Candrama] CFP: Circles of Conversation and Practice in Applied Theatre Roundtable (CATR 2019)

[Barry Freeman]

*CATR ROUNDTABLE CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS*

Co-conveners: Barry Freeman (University of Toronto Scarborough), Kathleen
Gallagher (University of Toronto, OISE), Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta (University
of Victoria)

*Title: Circles of Conversation and Practice in Applied Theatre*

The drama circle, in contexts from classrooms, to community organizations,
to theatre studios to the outdoors, has come to stand in for the mode of
communication undertaken in theatre-making spaces. Our circles situate
people equidistant from a centre and position participants face-to-face in
a kind of model of an egalitarian community. Our circles can be balanced
against something-- wider cultural, colonial narratives of linear
accumulation and progress perhaps, narratives that have left us in the
English language with negative connotations about circles: “go around in
circles,” “vicious circle,” etc. By contrast, the circle is an
arch-metaphor for life in indigenous cultures—the omnipresent shape of
social organization and the cultural imaginary.
In this session, we want to talk about the wider arts ecologies of applied
theatre. As in previous versions of this conversation, we use the term
applied theatre expansively to gather together various community-engaged or
interdisciplinary practices. In this version, we would like to pay special
attention to the arts’ ecologies those practices live in, how and why they
might give rise to particular genres and themes, what kinds of pedagogies
they invite, and what forms of engagement are or are not encouraged among
the multiple publics. Who, or what, do our circles of practice include or
exclude? What forces lean against our circles? How do our pedagogies
proceed from our circles and affect the social life and creativity in the
spaces in which we work?
Questions that may be addressed at the roundtable:

How is our work as teachers, scholars and practitioners delimited by our
context?
Who gathers for our work? What are their expectations for being present?
Can the geometry of the circle bring about alternative modes of engagement?
How are our intimate creative ecologies always-already entwined with
external or larger social forces and concerns?
As teachers or creators, how do we understand ‘leadership’ in our ecologies?
As scholars and practitioners, how do we account for the messiness or
contingency of our creative ecologies?
What affects do our ecologies seed?

*Please submit a proposal of 250 words by January 30, 2019 copied to Barry
Freeman, Kathleen Gallagher and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta
(barry.freeman at utoronto.ca <barry.freeman at utoronto.ca>,
kathleen.gallagher at utoronto.ca <kathleen.gallagher at utoronto.ca>, and
ksadeghi at uvic.ca <ksadeghi at uvic.ca>).*

Three weeks prior to the conference, successful proposals will be shared
with all participants, and participants will also be asked to propose three
questions they feel should animate the dialogue. During the roundtable,
participants will be given five minutes to briefly elaborate on how their
experience led them to these questions. These presentations and questions
will then be opened up to a general discussion among attendees about the
current strengths and challenges of the heterogenous field of applied
theatre in Canada.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/candrama/attachments/20190107/36994987/attachment.html>