Details | - Dates: March 3 - 6, 2005
- Location: Kansas City, MO
- Submission Deadline: November 15, 2004
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Join us in March 2005, as the Mid-America Theatre Conference celebrates its Silver Jubilee! To mark MATC’s twenty-five years as a leading venue for the promotion of scholarship in theatre history, theory, and criticism, the 2005 theatre history symposium seeks papers that broadly interrogate the notion of theatre as celebration. What roles do music, dance, the visual arts and special effects play in heightening or enhancing the celebratory nature of the text? |
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From the simple to the complex, from the organized to the anarchic, celebrations are inherently theatrical. Theatre and dramatic spectacles have often been staged to celebrate public events, relive historical moments, acclaim achievements, commemorate sacrifices, glorify nations, worship the sacred, and prophesy the future. From praising Dionysus to portraying Christ’s passion, from restaging Little Big Horn to resurrecting Little Eva, the theatre of celebration reifies, codifies, and establishes community. We invite proposals that question, document, or deconstruct theatrical events as diverse as classical theatre and docudrama, improv and agit-prop, vaudeville and musicals, futuristic fantasies and historical reenactments. Questions to consider might include: how is a dramatic text manipulated for celebration? What roles do music, dance, the visual arts and special effects play in heightening or enhancing the celebratory nature of the text? Might works that purport to celebrate their subjects actually indict them? How does a text affirm a culture’s identity, reinforce its values, and mythologize its history and heroes? To what degree do portrayals of history reflect fact, legend, or revisionist claims about a culture’s past? How does the satiric nature of the comic text, genre, or performer form or question communitas? What historical events, cultural assumptions, and technological developments serve as the basis for a text’s celebration of the future? What is the role and contribution of spectators as participants at these events? Abstracts should be 150 – 250 words long and must include the applicant’s name, academic affiliation, address, telephone number, and e-mail address. Final papers should not exceed 2500 words. Papers will be limited to 15 minutes. Please send abstracts, via e-mail attachment or post, to BOTH symposium co-chairs. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: November 15, 2004 - Stacey Connelly
- Department of Speech and Drama
- One Trinity Place
- Trinity University
- San Antonio, TX 78212
| - Mark Cosdon
- Department of Communication Arts and Theatre
- Allegheny College
- Meadville, PA 16335
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