TaPRA 2019, Surrey, Popular Performance WG CfP: Mask, Disguise, Persona

Deadline: Monday 8 April 2019

Mask, Disguise, Persona: Assumptions of Role and Identity in Popular Performance

Popular performance has often been the site of critical and creative tensions between the public (or social) role of the performer, and the mask or role through which s/he mediates their work.  This is often a playful tension, and may be characterised through flamboyant (Bowie/Ziggy Stardust), grotesque (bouffon/clown), or satiric (Rory Bremner) atmospheres, amongst others.  Alternatively, recent examples of the performed self may draw on the tension between playfulness and authenticity, (Donald Glover/Childish Gambino). Consistently these masks/disguises/personas reveal complex layers in terms of identity, role and performance.   For TaPRA’s annual conference at the University of Surrey (2019), the Popular Performance Working Group welcomes papers exploring notions of identity in performance, with a focus on ideas to do with performing through mask, persona and/or disguise.  We welcome papers which seek to address the ways in which makers of popular performance assume roles to generate complex and/or playful relationships with audiences, in areas such as theatre, comedy, storytelling, popular music, spoken word, cabaret and clown/bouffon.

We are particularly interested in proposals that address:

• Parody and pastiche in performance
• Representations of social class
• Drag personas
• (Re)Presentation of identities
• Transgressive roles in performance
• In/offensiveness

  Please email all abstracts (no more than 300 words in length), an additional few sentences of biographical information and precise details of the audio-visual technology you will need to make your presentation to Catriona Craig and Brian Desmond at popularperf@tapra.org.

 The deadline for the submission of proposals is 8th April 2019.

If you would like to be considered for the new TaPRA ECR Bursaries scheme, please visit http://tapra.org/bursaries/ and indicate this at the point of submission, along with details about how you meet the criteria.  

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.