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“IT’S ALIVE!: Reanimating Theory/Reviving Criticism”
Theory and Criticism Focus Group
In his treatise on the survival of the fittest, naturalist Charles Darwin remarks that “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” As theatre artists, pedagogues, scholars, and activists, we grapple regularly with issues of survival and struggle to accept and enact the change necessary to assure the continued vitality of our discipline. Yet that act of reaction, reanimation, and even resuscitation leaves its own mark on our various practices. The continued processes of justification and revitalization can have lasting effects on the type of work we produce as well as its quality and overall engagement with various communities. So while we understand the persistence and necessity of narratives of survival we seek to interrogate the effects of those on theatre itself and the ways that the languages of theory and criticism provide a vocabulary for discussing these processes.
In response to the theme of the conference, “Theatre Alive: Theatre, Media and Survival,” the Theory and Criticism Focus Group (T&C) is interested in exploring the broader implications of the terms “live” and “survival” for our 5th annual panel series, "IT’S ALIVE!: Reanimating Theory/Reviving Criticism". Scholars, teachers, and practitioners of theatre and performance are constantly negotiating, redefining, reifying, and exploding the concepts of theatre, liveness, and survival. Yet the relationship between these terms is often a fractious, complicated one, often cast in terms of opposition, desperation, and hyperbole. How do educators, artists, and activists engage with issues of theatre, survival, and liveness? How do they apply theory to pedagogical practices, scholarly research, rehearsal room explorations, and community outreach as a way of speaking about how these terms relate to one another? How do theory and criticism engage in/perpetuate narratives of theatrical survival? How might media intervene in this discussion? How might media facilitate “survival” and at what cost? Similarly, how does criticism assure or deny the survival of specific theatrical practices and at what cost?
T&C seeks submissions from artists, pedagogues, scholars, and activists interested in exploring these questions and others. Continuing in the tradition of our previous panel series, we strive to include a diverse range of participants from graduate students and junior faculty to established artists and senior scholars. For the 2010 conference, we will host a series of roundtables that take up questions of survival and liveness as it relates to the disciplinary practices of pedagogy, performance, and research, as outlined below:
THE CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED!: Pedagogies of Survival, a roundtable investigating the various ways we “survive” the often volatile space of the classroom. How does critical theory provide us survival strategies in our classrooms? What similar strategies exist for students in their reception of such materials? How do we tackle real narratives of actual survival in classroom settings? How do educators and students embody and perform survival/liveness within the classroom? What do they risk by employing these ideas outside the space of the classroom and/or academic institution? How do we incorporate media into our own pedagogies as a means of perpetuating the “liveness” of performance and what are the ramifications of our decisions? How does media both assure, limit, and preclude the survival of liveness in the theatre classroom?
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD!: Performing Survival/Surviving Performance, a roundtable investigating how performers and performances navigate survival and liveness and incorporate practices of risk within performance contexts. Does theorizing survival provide a useful vocabulary to reexamine the relationship between process and product? How do certain performances theorize their own practices or survival? Alternatively, what types of performances become labeled or perceived as particularly engaged in liveness? What constitutes survival in performance? What performance gets to survive and what performance is allowed to disappear? Who legislates survival in performance or the survival of performance, and how do their processes of legislation communicate different moral values and/or cultural attitudes. How do shifting contexts (be it time, space, or place) affect our understandings of performance and survival?
IT CAME FROM THE ARCHIVE!: Researching Survival/Surviving Research, a roundtable investigating the interplay of research, narratives of survival, and liveness. How do narratives of survival shape the theatrical research we conduct? How does theory provide a vocabulary for describing/challenging such narratives? What is at stake in researching narratives of survival in theatrical history? How do the terms “survival” and “liveness” change across various historical periods? What is the relationship between research, publication, etc and the survival of the discipline? How does research grapple with actual stories of survival – life and death situations? How do historians deal with issues of liveness in their work? Are their certain research practices that lend themselves more naturally to issues of liveness? How does media influence theatrical research practices? How do historians incorporate media to insure the survival of particular theatrical practices or forms? For what issues, like censorship and arts funding, might theorizing survival, liveness, and/or media provide useful methodological frameworks? Selected participants will produce a five-page position statement that will be circulated to their roundtable collaborators and session chairs in advance of the conference meeting. The goal of the roundtables will be to foster dialogue that engages participants and audience alike.
In addition to the roundtable series, T&C also invites complete session proposals for the 2010 conference that include a broad range of theoretical interrogations and applications.
We encourage multidisciplinary dialogues across the fields of performance scholarship and seek participants from a variety of focus group affiliations. Note that all multidisciplinary proposals must be authorized by three sponsoring ATHE focus groups; please contact the appropriate focus group conference planners and network chair. For a list of the ATHE focus group conference planners visit http://www.athe.org/getinvolved/focusgroups/index [2] and click on the desired focus group.