[Candrama] Watershed Festival - Reimagining Music Theatre @ Dan School Queen’s University May 2021

[Kelsey Jacobson]

[cid:FC67A7FF654D4463937B63B8BC2D883D]
Call for Papers & Lightning Talks

Stitching New Stories: Reimagining Music Theatre

Music Theatre Symposium
We are delighted to share with you our Call for Papers for the first Watershed Music Theatre Symposium, Stitching New Stories, at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, May 26- 28, 2021.

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. [...] We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
(Sonya Renee Taylor)

“Now my ‘broidery affords the clue whose meaning we avoid.”
(Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten & Montagu Slater)

As Sonya Renee Taylor reminds us, the pandemic has offered us the opportunity to ”stitch a new garment.” As Broadway reels from its announced closure for the coming months, and as opera companies across the country remain dark and layoff performers, the music theatre community stands stiller and more silent than it has ever been, at a crossroads of sorts. Stitching New Stories seeks to provide a hopeful point of gathering and weave a collective energy around our passion for the art form. We hope to explore the unique ways that music theatre—in its broadest sense, as any combination of song, story, and theatre—might be stitched anew in this moment. What might a new normal look like, ideally, in our industry? What do we stand to gain from reflecting on the stories we weave in this way? We want to understand its potential to effect good in our communities. We want to have conversations that put pressure on the facets of the industry, practice, and repertoire that have caused harm. We are interested in dissolving disciplinary and academic/professional boundaries and in forming new circles of conversation around the possibilities for music and theatre to speak truth, connect communities, and tell new stories—all crucial in our current climate.

Acknowledging the fraught colonial legacies of opera and musical theatre vis-à-vis the stories they have told and the practices they have adopted, we are interested in inviting new voices into conversation with one another through a shared interest in music, theatre, and story. We invite practitioners, actors, singers, dancers, fans, academics, technicians, designers, directors, and any others invested in the many branches of this art form to join us to explore the following questions:

  *   What brilliant genre-defying work is being done in music theatre, and what is at stake in this work?
  *   What threads need to be pulled at in order to unravel the harm that has been caused by work in music theatre?
  *   Alongside Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, we ask, what meanings or resonances have we been avoiding; what painful clues have been ignored?
  *   What new stories need to be told, and how might they be told differently or more impactfully through music theatre?
  *   What are best practices for collaboration with new voices and stories?
  *   How might training and education pivot to account for shifts and re-orientations in the
  *   industry and in society?
  *   How can we learn from one another and build a community of practice around an interest
  *   in mobilizing the genre, broadly writ, for good in our communities and organizations?
  *   How does thinking about music theatre for pleasure, escape, or joy, fit into this conversation?

Blended Format
Re-Imagining the Symposium
We are interested in creating a safe, sustainable, and accessible gathering for our community. We are adapting to the challenges of the pandemic by creating a blended conference experience, where sessions will accommodate for both online and local knowledge exchange. In this way, we can invite and include a more diverse group of voices to take part, as well as be flexible to adapt to local COVID-19 recommendations in May. Whether locally or online—or, ideally, through a combination of both!—we will still be able to gather productively and passionately to share ideas and build our community.

Sessions
Through our interest in spurring conversations, we will feature a series of panel conversations with industry professionals, composers, librettists, directors, scholars, and performers on selected themes, as well as keynote addresses from leaders in the field.

Academic Papers & Lightning Talks
We welcome proposals for both traditional academic papers (15 minutes), as well as lightning talks (4 minutes) on any of the above threads, or sub-threads. We encourage topics, questions, and presentation styles that challenge traditional academic boundaries and that might engage practitioners, performers, and professionals in conversation. Please submit proposals of 300 words to Dr. Colleen Renihan at colleen.renihan at queensu.ca by February 15, 2021. Indicate paper/ lightning talk.

The Watershed Festival - Reimaging Music Theatre
The Watershed Festival is one of the first of its kind: a celebration and exploration of ALL things music theatre. Opera and musicals have long existed in divided communities with very little interaction, and the history and practices of both have traditionally drawn on a Euro-centric perspective. Yet in spite all of this, the integration of music, drama, dance, and design offers the thrilling potential for music theatre to be recognized and mobilized as a truly inclusive art form.
In an effort to reimagine the future of music theatre, the Watershed Festival strives to support and promote those who CREATE ground-breaking and genre-expanding new work, to deeply EXPLORE the past, present and future of the art form and to INSPIRE the next generation of artists and audiences.
The Watershed Festival brings together the worlds of opera, musical theatre, and those pushing the boundaries far beyond these traditional boxes. It seeks to REIMAGINE those worlds by embracing the richness of diversity, encouraging bold and innovative new work and changing the very way we think about the art form.

Queen’s University is situated on the territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek.
Ne Queen’s University e’tho nońwe nikanónhsote tsi nońwe ne Haudenosaunee tánon Anishinaabek tehatihsnónhsahere ne óhontsa.
Gimaakwe Gchi-gkinoomaagegamig atemagad Naadowe miinwaa Anishinaabe aking.


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