Online Conference:
Vilnius, Lithuania, September 23-24, 2021
Deadline for paper proposals:
April 15, 2021
Acceptance notifications:
June 30, 2021
Registration:
All participants at the conference must be EASTAP members. Membership of EASTAP includes conference attendance. No additional fees for presenting papers and attending the conference will be collected. Registration of attendance, however, will be required.
Languages for the Conference:
English, French
Conference website: http://www.eastap.com/
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eastap2021
Founded in Paris in October 2017, European Association of the Studies of Theatre and Performance (EASTAP) seeks to bring together researchers and artists, to promote the multiple methods, approaches and languages employed by theatre and performance scholars and makers.
It would be an understatement to suggest that the world has changedsince early 2020. The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has transformed so many realities, that the true extent is yet to be estimated. It is especially true in the case of theatre, the making and spectating of which have been confronted with an altogether unprecedented set of challenges, issues and – ultimately – solutions. Restrictions and risks caused by the pandemic have revealed the multiple vulnerabilities of theatre: the physicality (famously known as the ‘liveness’) of its making and spectating became the key reason why the show simply could not go on, to quote Peter Gelb of the Metropolitan Opera.
Part of the theatre world indeed stood still as if at Aulis, waiting for the wind to change; another part, however, carried on embracing new, safer and in most cases digital formats. The mediatization of existing forms of theatre, as well as the proliferation of new forms of performing, resulted in the unprecedented availability of theatre online in 2020 and early 2021.
The theatre, now more frequently accessible without leaving ones’ home and screen, in its turn has produced a particular kind of experience, which has triggered extensive debate and discussion. For some, watching theatre online does not deserve the name. For others, this change is a thrilling opportunity to make and to enjoy the art of performance (sometimes for the first time). Ranging from streamed live or pre-recorded full-scale productions to micro-acts on the TikTok, theatre has undoubtedly found a way to attract new audiences.
One of the major questions for many theatre-makers during the pandemic is how the theatre will look after social gatherings are permitted again. How will this affect the ways in which theatre is made and indeed engaged with? As Peter Kümmel asks in Die Zeit (12.11.2020), does the pandemic indicate an eternal change in the way we perceive theatre? One change could be related to a postdigital situation in theatre, which can be defined by the interaction between digital and analogue ways of performance, in the sense that real-time action or performative readings in physical space can be combined with electronic transmissions in multidimensional spaces. This was very much the case in the festival Oktoberdans organized by BIT Teatergarasjen in the autumn of 2020. Postdigital theatre can also refer to analogue technology used in performance lectures or memory presentations, which were already present in pre-pandemic times: the small performative staging by the co-founder of Baktruppen, Tone Avenstroup, living and working in Berlin. Examples of postdigital productions were part of the EASTAP conference programme in Lisbon. These performances use “oldfashioned” sound recording systems or non-digitalized film recordings. Exploring post-digital theatre should be connected with the question of new authenticity and memory readings, which could even be defined as predigital. However, it is post-digital in the sense that it may turn into a reaction to the digital. In a post-pandemic context, a consequence of the crisis may lay in expressions marked by the analogue as a re-action to the massive streaming.
The aim of the 2021 EASTAP conference in its digital iteration is to register, discuss and reflect on the most recent developments in global theatre culture(s). Focusing on the (forced) mediatization of theatre, the conference will address questions of digital theatre-making and (new) spectating, with the intention to articulate and conceptualize the experiences learned as the world found new ways of making and engaging with theatre during a pandemic.
You are invited to send a 250-word abstract of your proposed paper in English or French, indicating the sub-theme of the conference with a brief biography using link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eastap2021
Proposals for curated panels are also welcome. Please, send a description of your idea and a list of presenters using link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eastap2021
List of Subthemes
The sub-themes of the conference include, but are not limited to, issues of:
digital spectatorship and the digital theatre experience
digitally immersive theatre
the mediatization of theatre
the development of digital audiences
the digital divide in theatre
the labour conditions of (digital) theatre makers
post-digital theatre
Organizing Committee
Asta PETRIKIENĖ (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, LT), Bryce LEASE (Royal Holloway University of London, UK), Clare FINBURGH DELIJANI (Goldsmiths University of London, UK), Daniele VIANELLO (University of Calabria, IT), Josette FÉRAL (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, FR), Jurgita STANIŠKYTĖ (Vytautas Magnus University, LT), Knut Ove ARNTZEN (University of Bergen, NO), Maria DELGADO (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, UK), Maria João
BRILHANTE (University of Lisbon, PT), Martynas PETRIKAS (Vilnius University, LT), Peter M. BOENISCH (Aarhus University, DK), Rasa VASINAUSKAITĖ (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, LT), Stefania Lodi RIZZINI (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, FR), Timmy DE LAET (University of Antwerp, B).
Invited Speakers
Sarah BAY-CHENG, is the Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University in Toronto, Canada. She was formerly Chair and Professor of Theatre and Dance at Bowdoin College, teaching theatre history and theory, dramatic literature, and intermedia performance. Her research focuses on the intersections among theatre performance, and media including histories of cinema, social media, and digital technologies in performance. Her recent publications include Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (2015) and Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010) as well as essays in Theater, Contemporary Theatre Review, and Theatre Journal, among others. She is a co-host for On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies podcast. Bay-Cheng frequently lectures internationally and in 2015 was a
Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She has served on the boards of Performance Studies international and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and is currently a member of the Executive Committee for the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR). Bay-Cheng has also worked as a director and dramaturg with particular interest in intermedial collaborations and a fondness for puppetry.
Gabriella GIANACCHI, FRSA, MAE, is Professor in Performance and New Media, and Director of the Centre for Intermedia and Creative Technologies at the University of Exeter, which promotes advanced interdisciplinary research in creative technologies by facilitating collaborations between academics from a range of disciplines with cultural and creative organisations. Her publications include: On Directing, ed. with Mary Luckhurst (Methuen 1999); Staging the postavantgarde, co-authored with Nick Kaye (Peter Lang 2002); Virtual Theatres: an Introduction (Routledge 2004); Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, ed. with Nigel Stewart (Peter Lang 2005); The Politics of New Media Theatre (Routledge 2007); Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated, coauthored with Nick Kaye (MUP 2011), nominated in Theatre Library Association 44th Annual Book Awards (2012); Performing Mixed Reality, coauthored with Steve Benford (MIT Press 2011); Archaeologies of Presence, co-edited with Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks (Routledge 2012); Archive Everything: Mapping the Everyday (MIT Press 2016) and Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic and Scholarly Practices, co-edited with Jonah Westerman (Routledge 2017). She is currently working on a monograph researching technologies for selfportraiture for Routeldge and, in collaboration with Annet Dekker, she is working on an edited collection in the field of digital art documentation.
Gareth WHITE, BA, PhD, FHEA, is teacher, researcher and a theatre director specialising in participatory practice and known in particular for research on so called Immersive Theatre. His teaching and research overlaps in focus on collaborative creative processes and participatory practices. Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation, a monograph theorising how spectators are transformed into performers, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. Applied Theatre: Aesthetics, a short monograph with accompanying essays from other researchers, was published by Bloomsbury Methuen in 2014: it explores the idea of the aesthetic in performance practice with social aims. Currently he is writing a new monograph, to be published by Routledge,
provisionally titled Dialectics of Participation: Meaning in the Midst of Performance. He has a chapter awaiting publication in Colette Conroy and Nic Fryer’s Rancière and Performance, discussing the application of Jacques Rancière’s theory to game-based performance practices. His other publications include: The Audience in Intermedial Theatre’, in Intermedial Theatre, Principles and Practice, Edited by Mark Crossley (Red Globe Press 2019); ‘The Promise of Participation Revisited’ in Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances: Commit Yourself!, Edited
by Doris Kolesch, Theresa Schutz and Sophie Nikoleit (Routledge 2019); ‘Theatre in the “Forest of Things and Signs”’, The Journal of ontemporary Drama in English, 4:1 (2016); Applied Theatre: Aesthetics (Bloomsbury Methuen 2015); Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the
Invitation (Palgrave Macmillan 2013); ‘On Immersive Theatre’, Theatre Research International 37:3, pp. 221-235 (2012); ‘Noise, Conceptual Noise, and the Potential of Audience Participation’ in Theatre Noise, Edited by Lynne Kendrick, L. and David Roesner (London: Cambridge Scholars’ Press 2011).
Venue
The conference will be hosted online by the Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University.
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to eastap2021@gmail.com
Sponsors
• Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University
• Operomanija