2009 Religion and Theatre Preconference Event

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Registration is now open for…
“Sacred Performance Space in New York City: A Religion & Theatre Focus Group Pre-Conference Event”
Saturday, August 8th from 9:00am-1:30pm

ATHE’s Religion and Theatre Focus Group will spend the morning of Saturday, August 8th considering performance and sacred space in New York City. We will meet at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights at 9:00 a.m. (http://www.stjohndivine.org/visit_directions.html). The Rev. Tom Miller, Canon for the Arts at the Cathedral, will give us a tour of the cathedral and discuss the interaction between sacred space and performance as it occurs at St. John's. Our tour will end in a chapel where Dzieci Theatre, a New York-based company rooted in Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theatre, will perform its highly acclaimed "Fool's Mass" with a Q&A to follow (http://dziecitheatre.org/dzfiles/mass2009jan.html). The morning will end with an optional lunch (pay your own) at a restaurant in Times Square (TBD). We will be back at the conference hotel in time for the first conference session at 1:30pm.

This event is free, but participants must register in advance. If you are interested in joining us for this pre-conference event, please send the following information to Jill Stevenson at jstevenson@mmm.edu.

Name:
Institution/Affiliation:
Mailing Address:
Email Address:
Cell Phone (only to be used if necessary on the event date):
Dietary Restrictions:

The pre-registration deadline is Monday, July 13th. Please remember that you must pre-register to participate in this event. Registrants will receive travel directions to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as well as other relevant information, in early July. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Jill Stevenson (jstevenson@mmm.edu).

2009 AATE/ATHE National Conference

Saturday, August 8-Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Marriott Marquis Hotel
New York, New York

The 2009 ATHE/AATE conference will take place in New York City at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, and will run from Saturday, August 8th through Tuesday, August 11th. If you have any questions about the conference or about the R&T Focus Group, please contact Jill Stevenson (jstevenson@mmm.edu).

The R&T Focus Group is committed to supporting work that broadens and deepens the exciting and rigorous discourse surrounding the performative practices of spiritual belief. We are especially interested in work that challenges definitions of "religious performance" and that confronts preconceptions about the place of belief in theatre/performance studies. This year's sponsored sessions are:

Sunday, August 9th
8:00-9:30am: The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Theatrical: The Pursuit of New Vocabularies and Methods of Inquiry

11:30am-1:00pm: Religion and Theatre Membership Meeting—everyone is invited. Among other topics, we will discuss possible panels for next year’s conference in Los Angeles, as well as the potential for another R&T pre-conference.

1:45-3:15pm: Performing Religious Identity in Popular Culture

5:30-7:00pm: Living Histories: Performance, Cognition, and Spectatorship (multidisciplinary panel with R&T, Performance Studies Focus Group, and the Museum Theatre AATE Network)

5:30-7:00pm: Political Disasters and Disastrous Politics (multidisciplinary panel with R&T, Theatre and Social Change Focus Group, and the College/University/Research AATE Network)

Monday, August 10th
8:00-9:30am: Emerging Scholars Debut Panel in Religion and Theatre: Dramatic Intersections Between Religious, Cultural, and Performance Practices

9:45-11:15am: Performing Ritual Politics: Theatricality of Religion in the 2008 Elections

11:30am-1:00pm: Border Crossings: From Theatre into Religion and Back (ROUNDTABLE)

Tuesday, August 11th
8:00-9:30am: Pilgrims, Priests, and Mystics: Re-Visioning Medieval Christian Practices to Transform Contemporary Performance

9:45-11:15am: Risking the Whole Person: Theatre Serves as an Essential Laboratory for the Young Artist to Experience the Rigors of Risk and the Empowerment of Innovation

11:30am-1:00pm: Solo Performance, Confessional Narratives, and Religious Expression: Performance as an Act of Faith

3:30-5:00pm: Emerging Scholars Debut Panel in Religion and Theatre: Innovations in Performance Practice and Theorizing Theatre (2 of 2)