CFP: ASTR working session on Eastern European theatre

[Dassia Posner]

Dear colleagues,
Below please find a call for papers for a working session on Eastern European Performance and Physical Politics that I am co-chairing with Magda Romanska at the annual conference of the American Society for Theatre Research in Seattle (Nov. 18-21, 2010).  We look forward to your submissions.
All best,
Dassia Posner

ASTR/TLA/CORD 2010 WORKING SESSIONS CALL FOR PAPERS
 
Session Title: The Body (Un)censored: Eastern European Performance and Physical Politics
 
This working session invites papers that focus on the ways in which physical expression in performance has been shaped by or has reacted against political regimes in Eastern Europe during the last century.
 
In the decade preceding the Bolshevik Revolution, many Russian theatrical practitioners experimented with the physical grotesque (pantomime, commedia dell’ arte, puppetry) and new styles of dance (the Ballets Russes, eurythmics, dance influenced by Isadora Duncan). After 1917, movement styles like biomechanics aimed to promote the Revolution, until such styles were condemned by the Stalinist regime as “formalist.” During the communist era, in the entire Eastern block, theatre, as a live performance, was the primary medium – unlike radio, newspapers and TV– that could escape governmental censorship. Playwrights and actors learned to speak between the lines, using metaphors, symbols, body language, or sometimes just a wink to communicate anti-establishment sentiments to their audiences.  Thus, the body became a site of the subversion of Socialist Realism and of revolt against censorship and oppression. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, brought an end to the censorship that had been an integral part of the Eastern European theatrical experience. The unexpected onslaught of political freedom, ironically, deprived the theatre of what for years had been essential to it: its corporeal political subtext. In the post-Soviet era theatre and dance have been forced to reinvent the performing body in a new age of free market censorship. 
 
We welcome papers that deal with any aspect of how physical performance has responded to political environments in Eastern Europe during the last century. We aim to trace the multiple trajectories of physical expression in Eastern European theatre and dance over the past century and their international influence. Considering the influence of Eastern European performance on Western Theatre, our hope is to encourage active interest in this area within the broader field of theatre research.  
 
This is 3-hour working session. 
Working session format:
Papers (7-10 pages) will be distributed to session participants by October 1; all papers should be read by Nov. 1 in order to facilitate online pre-conference discussions of each other’s work.
Participants will present 2-3 page abstracts of their papers during the session to help familiarize audience members with each project.  This will be followed by a discussion of the themes raised in the papers, including suggestions for how to further develop those themes.
The goal of the working group is to provide feedback and to create a body of thematically related articles for possible publication.
 
Please email a 300-word abstract and 2-page CV in a single Microsoft Word attachment to both Magda Romanska (magda_romanska at emerson.edu) and Dassia Posner (dassia2 at gmail.com) by May 31, 2010.  Participants will be notified of their acceptance in late June.

_____
Dassia N. Posner, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor-in-Residence; Dramaturg, CRT
Department of Dramatic Arts, University of Connecticut

Research Associate, Harvard University
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies

Email: dassia2 at gmail.com; dassia.posner at uconn.edu
Website: www.dassiaposner.com





-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------