The relationships between performance, identity and community are of significant critical concern in theatre and performance studies. This working group explores the ways performance can allow constituencies of interest to be realised and to gain social efficacy.
The group understands that each of our three key terms is complex, and that the terms and consequences of their intersection pose challenges for both critical and political practice. We wish to encourage research that engages the rubric of the group inventively and interrogatively, building on a number of key issues and problems:
• The basis on which performance may be linked with concerns of identity and community
• The ways in which relationships between performance, identity and community are materialised and gain theatrical and social efficacy
• The intersection between performance, civil society and democracy
• The historical and geographical inscription of this relationship
• The challenges and opportunities for critical practice posed by examining this relationship.
CFP 2011: Failures
For 2011, we would like to invite contributors to reflect on the contentious, yet very timely, notion of failure(s). In the current political and social climate, the space for failure is closing: paradoxically, at the same time as systems of thought and of social organization are either failing or in crisis, a greater burden is placed on individuals, communities and organizations to be demonstrably successful (profitable, efficient, streamlined, responsible, flexible, adjustable and so on). Many aspects of public life are now governed by discourses about the need for success as a survival strategy in the current context.
However, it could be said that the processes of performance require or occasionally demand failure(s); workshops open a space for it, performers accept it as an ever-present possibility, a state to embrace, or as the foundation of a set of aesthetic practices. In performance, failure might variously or simultaneously be a burden, an opportunity, a strategy, a moment of crisis and a generative act. From Beckett’s theatre - which obeys the injunction ‘fail better’ - to the Marxist and poststructuralist celebration of ‘errors of presentation’ as a radical alternative to bourgeois culture, theatre and performance can be analyzed as a space, which deals with and allows accident, embarrassment and failure.
We would like to invite 250-300 word proposals for 15 – 20min papers, presentations or panels on the topic of theatrical, performative and cultural failure. Topics might include:
Failure as space of excess: What is the relation between failure and systems of knowledge/aesthetic categories/social expectations?
Failure as critical discourse/critical discourses of failure: What is the relation between politics, aesthetics and failure?
What is the relation between failure and time/temporality? Can we talk about processes of failure rather than moments of failure?
Failure of/as intentions: Are there purposeful failures? Can failure be conceptualised as resistance? What is the potentiality of failure as resistance and intervention in a culture of success? What is the place of performance within such an axiological system of understanding the world and theatre?
Failure as exposure and risk: What examples of performance challenge the dominant hierarchical opposition of success vs. failure? What are the role of performers, participants and audiences in producing or assessing failures? What is the relation between accident and failure?
Failure of performance/Performance of failure: What are the means of producing failure on the theatre stage and the context of performance? How is failure emerging through different performance elements? What is the link between failure and body, language, image or sound?
Feelings of failure/Failure of feelings: Can failure generate affect or is it limited to producing failure of empathy?
Communities of failure/Failure of communities: Is failure an individual experience or can communities fail? Can failure produce new communities?
Failure or failures: The multiplicity of failure as aesthetic and/or conceptual category;
The relation of failure to identity, gender, race, class and age; who qualifies as a ‘failing subject’?
The link between failure, excellence and training practices; can one be trained to fail?
Narratives of failing vs narratives of losing; what is the difference between failure and defeat? How is this difference articulated in performance?
Also, we invite 150-word proposals for short (no longer than 10 minutes) provocations that will reflect on any of the above and/or on wider questions of failure(s):
• What does it mean to fail (in performance or in other contexts)?
• Why is it good/bad to fail?
• How can failure be measured?
• Which failures can be read as successes/generative acts?
Additionally, the working group invites proposals for a joint session with the Applied and Social Theatre working group on the area of ‘the failure of resources’. Proposals for 15-20min papers or presentations should be 250-300 words. We strongly suggest that that proposals for the joint session creatively engage with call for papers from both groups, particularly we encourage proposals that find exciting connections between the two.
Please indicate on your proposal which section you wish to contribute to: a paper, panel or a short provocation for the working group, or a paper for the joint session.
Forward all proposals by Tuesday 3rd May 2011 to:
Co-Convenors
Stephen Farrier This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view itDavid Pattie This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Marilena Zaroulia This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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