Following a proposal from our membership, our working group now operates with the new title “Directing & Dramaturgy”, signalling our members’ wide interests in exploring diverse dynamic practices and processes engendered by (mostly, but not at all exclusively) contemporary theatre, dance and performance practice across all genres. We continue to pursue the group’s original intentions of investigating artistic work and academic perspectives that defy and challenge the established preconceptions of cut and dried categories such as ‘playwrights’ theatre’, ‘directors’ theatre’, ‘choreography’ or ‘devised performance’, while now also explicitly exploring the expanding field of dramaturgy in our remit, again without confining its practice to any specific genre. Our members are both academics and practitioners who work in and on a variety of different forms and capacities, from classical drama to dance, puppet theatre to playwriting.
To provide a focal point for our conference discussions every year, an important and relevant theoretical text is chosen to stimulate the exchange, debate, and reflections at our meetings. Following our exploration of Brian Holmes’ Flexible Personality last year, this year’s prompt is Jacques Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator (Art Forum March 2007 [Lecture, also available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLlZ-l8FZh0]; Verso 2009 [book]) . This choice also reflects the radical expansion of our understanding of ‘collective creation’ within the group, to reflect the spectators’ role and involvement in the event of performance as well.
We invite existing and welcome new members to (re-)join us at TaPRA’s 6th Annual Conference at the University of Glamorgan from 9–11 September 2010. We call for submissions which use Rancière’s essay as a stimulus to reflect on research and practice in directing and dramaturgy, both contemporary and historical, on methodological and conceptual aspects of and discourses on directing and dramaturgy, on working practices, production contexts, and pedagogies of directing and dramaturgy. Contributions might be in one of the following formats:
• provocations, reflections, statements
• discussion of a paper, essay, or chapter, previously circulated to the participants
• project presentation of practice-as-research
Please submit an abstract of approx. 250 words along with a brief biographical note and an indication of technical requirements by 30 April 2010. We specifically encourage the participation of postgraduate and early career researchers in the area. Members who are interested in joining us without presenting, or who are unable to attend this conference, but would like to stay in touch with us through our mailing list should also contact us.
Please send any correspondence to both WG co-convenors for the 2010 conference:
Lourdes Orozco, University of Leeds, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ;
Peter M Boenisch, University of Kent, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Working Group Co-Convenors:
David Barnett, University of Sussex
Una Bauer, Zagreb
Peter M Boenisch, University of Kent
Lourdes Orozco, University of Leeds
