Deadline: Tuesday 16 April 2019
Directing & Dramaturgy Working Group, TaPRA (Theatre & Performance Research Association)
Annual Conference: University of Exeter (4-6 Sept. 2019)
Call for Contributions: On Strangeness
Since its inception, theatre has been preoccupied with strangeness. Greek Tragedy’s obsession with the barbarian underpinned its interrogations of the boundaries determining what belongs in or out of the polis, and the age-old potency of ‘strangeness’ –with its roots in the Latin extraneus (foreign, external, from without) –continues to be harnessed by political agents who build consensus by maligning society’s ‘others’ and escalating tensions between the familiar and the ‘foreign’. Practitioners have also long paid self-reflexive heed to theatre’s oddity as a medium –its strange liminality, with all the ambiguity and disorientation it can produce. Art has a rich history of instrumentalising strangeness: from Victor Shklovsky’s elaboration of ostranenie (making foreign) in ‘Art as Technique’ (1917) there extends a long line of artistic practice that makes objects unfamiliar to emphasise the process of perception as an aesthetic end in itself (e.g. dada), or to advance a new politics of seeing (Brechtian Epic Theatre, postmodern irony or pastiche). But in our increasingly polarised political cultures, where breaks with convention and daily disruptions are the new normal, what purchase do strategies of estrangement have today? Extending from the Working Group’s discussions around dramaturgies of crisis and the monstrous, we offer the notion of ‘strangeness’ as a point of departure for our conversations, that might give rise to pivotal questions about the entanglements of theatre, aesthetic form, identity and community. For this call we are interested in proposals for 15-minute papers, provocations or sessions that re/consider directing and dramaturgy, understood in their broadest senses, in the light of strangeness. We hope to engage a wide variety of scholars and practitioners and welcome proposals that think imaginatively about–and might even estrange –traditional formats. Potential points of entry:Submitting a Proposal
Please send a 300-word (max) proposal and short biography (in a Word doc.) via email to the Directing and Dramaturgy Working Group convenors by the deadline of Tuesday 16th April 2019. Cara Berger, Clare Finburgh Delijani & Benjamin Fowler: directinganddramaturgy@tapra.org Please also include precise details of your resourcing needs, for example, any audio-visual technology, or a particular type of space (e.g. drama studio) that you will need to make your presentation. Please note that TaPRA does not accept simultaneous submissions to multiple Working Groups). If you would like to be considered for the TaPRA Postgraduate or Early Career Researcher Bursaries scheme please indicate this in your proposal. To check if you are eligible to apply, please consult the criteria as outlined on the TaPRA website: http://tapra.org/bursaries/. There will be a separate call for the PG Bursaries later in the year.Please note: only one proposal may be submitted for a TaPRA event. It is not permitted to submit multiple proposals or submit the same proposal to several Calls for Participation. All presenters must be TaPRA members, i.e. registered for the event; this includes presentations given by Skype or other media broadcast even where the presenter may not physically attend the event venue.