TaPRA 2019, Surrey, History & Historiography WG CfP: ‘Industry Professionals/Professional Industry: European Legacies and Connections.’

Deadline: Monday 8 April 2019

TAPRA, University of Surrey, 4-6 September, 2019

 

History and Historiography Working Group

 

Industry Professionals/Professional Industry: European Legacies and Connections.

  “I think there is a movement – and certainly Brexit was an expression of it – to deny our inter-dependence internationally, to deny our colonial history and the relationships and responsibility we have as a result, that is inevitably going to lead us to a bad place.”[1]   In a 2017 response to the EU Referendum vote Aleks Sierz asserted that ‘just as successive governments and the EU have failed to enthuse the British people about the European project, so British theatre has, despite its ever-expanding canon, practically ignored the subject of Europe’.[2] The British Academy funded conference held at Central in January 2019 titled ‘Contemporary European Drama in Translation on the British Stage’, an event in fact prompted by the scarcity of this kind of production,[3] further endorses the view of a disconnect between U.K. stages and mainland Europe, signalling a kind of disengagement from European theatre practice, at least in the realm of scripted drama staged in professional theatre. However, the discussions of the H&H Working Group at the 2018 TaPRA conference suggested the variety of complex influences, cross-pollination and relationships between European (including British) theatres over time, and still today. Therefore, with this call for papers we invite contributions to the 2019 conference that engage with the concept of European Legacies and Connections, maintaining the particular focus upon theatre industry practices that has informed our work over the last two years.   We welcome contributions that engage with the topic, which may relate, but need not be limited to, the following suggestions:  

• Exclusion, erasure, erosion of connections and/or legacies
• Collaborative acts and labour
• Pan-European practice
• Historiographical questions posed when researching European legacies and connections
• Recovery, repositioning and remembering legacies and/or connections
• Emotional and/or intellectual labour and the connections/legacies of such practice
• Movement and transfer (of theatrical form and content, or personnel, for example)
• Adaptation and appropriation
• International Festivals and co-productions

  Submitting a proposal   Please send a 300-word (max.) proposal for a 15 minute paper, and a short biography in a Word document via email.   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. Email abstracts and information to the Working Group conveners, Dr Hayley Bradley and Dr Lucie Sutherland at theatrehistory@tapra.org   The deadline for the submission of proposals is Monday 8^th April 2019.   Early Career Researchers Bursary Scheme: If you are an Early Career Researcher, then you are eligible to be considered for a TaPRA ECR Bursary. Please follow this link for more information, and please indicate on your proposal whether you fit the criteria and wish to be considered for the bursary scheme: http://tapra.org/bursaries/   Postgraduate Bursary Scheme: There will be a separate call for PG Bursaries later in the year, but please do indicate in your proposal whether you are planning on applying to the scheme.     [1] Rufus Norris quoted from Peter Crawley, ‘I think we’re heading for a s**t storm,’ The Irish Times, 5 January 2019.  https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/rufus-norris-i-think-we-re-heading-into-a-s-t-storm-1.3735636 [2] Aleks Sierz, ‘Dark Times: British Theatre after Brexit’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 39: 1 (2017), pp. 3-11. [3] See https://www.cssd.ac.uk/event/contemporary-european-drama-translation-british-stage .

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.