CFP: American Society of Theatre Research

Annual Conference: Nashville Nov. 1-4, 2012 – conference website:
http://www.astr.org/conference

CFP link: http://www.astr.org/conference/2012-working-session-cfps

Ecology and/of/in Performance Working Group (on-going)

“Trans-cultural, trans-national, trans-species histories in
performance”

Since our first ASTR Working Group session at the 2010 conference in
Seattle, the Performance and Ecology Working Group has spawned symposia,
anthologies, and publications. Foremost among those is a new volume that
grew out of our 2010 session: Readings in Performance and Ecology, eds.,
Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May (Palgrave 2012). Our Working Group has
continued valuable research on numerous fronts, including Earth Matters
on Stage conference at Carnegie Mellon University (2012) and the Staging
Sustainability at York University (2011). Participants in this Working
Group have published an array of new material including Ecology and
European Drama by Downing Cless (Routledge). Networks and journals in
the field such as The Center for Sustainable Practices in the Arts
Quarterly, the “Fieldworks” issue of Performance Research (eds. Pearson,
Roms, Daniels, 2010), and the “Performance and Ecology” section of
Theatre Topics (2007) attest to scholars’ acute awareness of
environmental politics and ecopoetics praxis in an imminently changing
world. The rising tide of this focused research indicate not only a
growing concern and mounting artistic will in the realm of ecological
sensibility, but also faith in the imagination as a critical aspect of
our individual and collective ecological identities.

In 2012, as part of ASTR’s “Theatrical Histories” focus, we turn our
attention to trans-cultural, trans-national, and trans-species
performance in anticipation of a second volume of ecocritical writings
on theatre and performance. Our questions for the upcoming 2012 Working
Group session include:

• How do transcultural and transnational performances re-map our understanding of what May has called “ecodramaturgy”?
• What constitutes “theatre of species” (Chaudhuri) and how might these trans-species performances rearrange or reinterpret understandings of representation?
• How do the material characteristics of artistic sites condition the aesthetics of the work produced?
• What kinds of geological and geographical histories emerge alongside socio-cultural storytelling?
• How do intersecting histories – indigenous, place-based, community-driven – play out on stage in performance?
• How do ecological transitions, transmigrations, transmutations, transformations and transference shape artistic practice and meaning-making in the theatre?

Other questions, approaches and topics that clearly address
trans-national, trans-cultural, trans-species topics in performance.

Please send Abstracts of approximately 300 words as word attachments to
both Working Group conveners below by May 31, 2012:

Theresa May, University of Oregon ( tmay33@uoregon.edu)
Nelson Gray, University of Victoria ( ncgray@uvic.ca)

http://www.astr.org/conference/2012-working-session-cfps