TaPRA-SCUDD Postgraduate Symposium 2019

Engaging with Dissonance in Performance Research

Wednesday 13^thMarch, Faculty of English, University of Oxford

9.15-9.45 Registration

9.45-9.55 Welcome

10.00-11.30 Parallel panels

Panel 1: Embodied dissonance Chair: Hannah Greenstreet	Panel 2: Conflicted spaces Chair: Harriet Richmond
Joe Parslow – ‘Queer Learning/Learning Queer, or Drag Queens Made Me Do It’	Bomi Choi – ‘Koreans in-between: Staging North Korean migrants in heterotopic spaces’
Nina Michelle Worthington – ‘Phenomenological Perspectives of Disability Dissonance in Theatre Practice’	Leah Sidi – ‘Between reality and hallucination: Sarah Kane and the Bayesian Brain’
Ban Heo – ‘”The Rumble in the Jungle”: A Post-Colonial Performance of Violence within a Necropolitical Arena of Valuation’	Phoebe Patey-Ferguson – ‘Cultural Dissonance As a Critical Element In The Production of Heterotopic Theatre Festivals’
Kirsty Clarke – ‘Dissonance and conflict within a drag king performance of Paganini’s 24th caprice’	Reka Polonyi – ‘Unity and Discord: Ideological shifts and contradictions in approaching play in Performance Studies’

11.30-11.45 Coffee

11.45-13.15 Parallel panels

Panel 3: Dissonant practices Chair: Cathy Sloan	Panel 4: Conflicted identities Chair: Robert Laurella
Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill – ‘Modes and techniques of authorship in applied theatre projects in Northern Ireland’	Sue Healy – ‘The Royal Court Theatre’s fraught and fruitful years, 1968-1975’
Majeed Mohammed Midhin – ‘Cognitive Dissonance as a Cultural Tool in Drama Analysis’	Sudip Chakroborthy – ‘Performing Bangladesh: identity, violence and quest of a pluralist society’
Aparna Mahiyaria – ‘Political Performance: Building Equal and Opposite Forces of Action’	Alexander Coupe – ‘Between wholeness and particularity: masculinity and the politics of entanglement in Owen McCafferty’s Scenes from the Big Picture’
Beth Potter – ‘Reacting to the premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer’	Ariadni Lignou Tsamantani – ‘Dialectical challenges: towards a redefinition of national identity on the Greek stage’

13.15-14.00 LUNCH

14.00-14.45 Rehearsed reading of Unsettledby JC Niala, recently published in Contemporary Plays by African Women (Methuen, 2019), followed by Q&A with the playwright. Chair: Hannah Greenstreet.

14.45-14.50 Short break

14.50-16.15 Provocations and plenary discussion

Susannah Henry	‘Get Set: Running as scenographic process’
Isla Lindsay Hall	‘Performing Power in Julius Caesar: How casting and performance choices impact our implicit bias regarding leadership’
Amin Heidari	‘Body who performs ideal, Body who performs dissonant’
Mihai Florea	‘Sewing languages – stitching dissonances’
Magdalena Mosteanu	‘Richard Schechner and Rustom Bharucha: The collision of cultures in the creative process of theatre making’
Nicky Gluh	‘Dissonance as a shade of grey’
Faye Rigopoulou	‘Female aging voices and the sine qua non of musical theatre sensoriality: a provocation’
Anna Woolf	‘Performing invisible disability’

16.15-16.30 Coffee

16.30-17.30 SCUDD Workshop. Chair: Harriet Richmond.

‘Transitions into the Academy: Advice for Early and Second-Career Academics’

Panellists: Ilaria Pinna, Sophie Jump, Kate Katafiasz, Nina Michelle Worthington, Katherine Collins.

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We are delighted to announce the call for papers for the Postgraduate Symposium 2019

ENGAGING WITH DISSONANCE IN PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

TaPRA/SCUDD 2019 PG Symposium

Wednesday 13^th March, Faculty of English, University of Oxford

Dissonance implies conflict or discord, whether that be cognitive, or cultural, or perhaps, musical. According to Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance (1957), people are psychologically motivated to engage in behaviour orientated towards reduction of disharmony, in preference of an internal consistency. In practice, this theory suggests that when confronted with something that challenges our perception of ourselves, or our way of behaving in the world, we instinctively try to resolve the feeling of dissonance. Ziva Kunda (1990) developed this concept further, observing how motivation affects reasoning, resulting in a rationalization, an altering of our perception of the factors involved, to justify behaviour and confirm bias. The existence of the dissonant problem, thus becomes obscured. Yet, Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic model of democracy highlights that unresolvable, incommensurable conflict is both natural and necessary (2013). Rather than collude in a fallacy of consensus she argues in favour of embracing a more pluralistic approach that acknowledges and allows for difference, replete with its disagreements and antagonisms.

In the contemporary context of performance research, dissention and antagonism is palpably evident. Socio-politically, the rise of populist movements worldwide, the impact of ten years of austerity measures in the UK, and the continued experiences of intersectional inequalities discriminating difference, including race, gender, sexuality and disability, contradict neoliberal assumptions of social progress. Within academia, there is renewed debate around issues relating to access, value and modes of research. In particular, universities have been challenged to decolonise and de-canonise curriculums that have obscured non-western contributions to knowledge (Bhambra, Gebrial and Nisanciaglu, 2018). Yet, the work of diversity within institutions is perhaps conflated with reactions towards complaint and becomes particularly difficult when, as Sarah Ahmed notes, ‘to locate a problem is to become the location of a problem’ (2017). More broadly, the act of research, and also the process of encountering performance, might be considered as an openness to a chance encounter that might well contradict or, at least unsettle, pre-conceived ideas of what we think we know. Marissa Fragkou suggests that, in theatrical performance, staging dissonance might be used as an ethico-political tool to ask ‘difficult ethical questions’ about issues of social justice (2018). The theme of this symposium, therefore, invites discussion of the ways in which performance practice and/or performance research might engage with dissonance.

We invite presentations that relate with the theme of ‘Engaging with Dissonance’ in all forms of theatre practice, performance, performance studies, formal and informal performer training, stagecraft and theatre/drama in education. Themes might include, but are not limited to:

• Dissonance in performance, as an aesthetic or political practice.
• Conflicting ideas in research and/or performance – the process of doing research and practice today.
• Encountering moments of discord in practice and research.
• Challenging canons or repertoire or concepts.
• Doing and disseminating research differently.
• Revealing or performing antagonisms.
• Practices of conflictual consensus.

Papers (15mins), provocations (10mins) and alternative presentations (15mins) from postgraduates at all levels of study, postdoctoral researchers and early career academics, are welcome. Please note that this will not be in a performance studio, so technical requirements are limited, although we welcome suggestions for alternative forms of sharing work. As we are committed to fostering an inclusive environment, please let us know if there are any access provisions that would better enable you to participate.

The symposium will include a rehearsed reading of an extract from JC Niala’s play Unsettled, collected in the new anthology, Contemporary Plays by African Women (published January 2019), which JC Niala will introduce. There will also be a panel curated and hosted by SCUDD’s PG officer, Harriet Richmond on ‘Transitions into the Academy: Advice for Early and Second-Career Academics’.

The symposium is free and open to all postgraduates currently enrolled on a postgraduate course and early career researchers.

Abstracts should be 250 words in length. All abstracts should be sent to pg@tapra.org. When submitting your abstract, please also include a short biography (no more than 50 words) and a brief note on technical requirements (if any) in the same document. Those wishing to use alternative approaches to presenting research, such as performance lectures, are asked to include an additional 100 words detailing your intended presentation methods.

To support access to participation in this event TaPRA and SCUDD have allocated funds for a number of bursaries to cover travel costs and/or any other required access costs. Should you wish to be considered for a bursary, please include a statement with your proposal to support your request, including an estimated cost of travel/access costs of up to £100. A selection panel of TaPRA and SCUDD executive members will award bursaries based on:

1. Quality of presentation proposal,
2. The extent to which the applicant will benefit from attending,
3. The financial need that might otherwise impede participation.

Our intention is that those who may not otherwise be able to participate in the event are supported to do so.

All correspondence should be directed to Hannah Greenstreet and Cathy Sloan via pg@tapra.org

The deadline for submitting your proposal is 5pm on 1^st February 2019. We will be unable to accept submissions after this deadline. Notifications will be sent by the end of February 2019.

Hannah Greenstreet and Cathy Sloan (TaPRA PG representatives)