1

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 INTRODUCTION
Theatre and Migration: Theatre, Nation and Identity: Between Migration and Stasis
Welcome to Belgrade to the World Congress IFTR 2018!

The term migration immediately invokes one of the beyond human migration to include other kinds of
central political, social, humanitarian and cultur- migrating bodies—inspiring us, perhaps, to think of
al issues of our time.  It conjures images of people migration as a kind of a performative ecology that
on cramped boats approaching the Italian island of involves a wide variety of agents, processes and ge-
Lampedusa and of people trying to jump on board ographies.
lorries to cross the English Channel; images of dead
bodies floating in the sea and of places left behind, Migration understood as an act—a form of being/do-
turned to rubble; images of refugee camps from ing—unfolds within different socio-political scenarios
Dadaab in Kenya, the size of Minneapolis, to the in- and through a repertoire of performative and affec-
famous ‘Jungle’ in Calais. The notion of migration is tive gestures making possible for both individual and
intrinsically linked to questions of mobility and access collective aspects to emerge. Dictionary definitions
as it evokes various performances of borders—for also describe the term ‘as movement from one part of
some they are porous, almost flexible, and for others something to the other’ — which includes both spa-
they are impenetrable. The fences erected along the tial and temporal dimensions, individuals, communi-
US and Mexican border and the India and Pakistani ties, animals, but also forms, ideas, aesthetics, and
border, the checkpoints and walls separating Israel conventions. Thus, migration emerges as ultimately a
from the West Bank, the razor-barbed wire the Hun- relational category. In chemistry, it means a change
garian government installed on the border with Ser- or movement of atoms in a molecule. In physics, it
bia to stop the influx of refugees: all map the most ex- means diffusion—the intermingling of substances by
treme aspects of migratory geographies, playing out their natural movement. Applied to culture, these
over and over again the Derridian hospitality/hostility attributes of migration also suggest the spreading,
paradox.  mixing and remixing of forms and ideas. Hence, mi-
gration does not unfold in a straight line; it is rath-
The term migration is also closely linked to the con- er a process of moving from one point to the other
struction of the Other, the figure of the foreigner in that necessitates meandering, wandering, changing
our everyday realities, in the media, and on stage.  of pace, transformation, negotiation, and adaptation.  
The uprooted person, the migrant figure, whether
political, economic or spiritual, often triggers ten- We would like to approach the topic of Theatre and
sions between the familiar and the unknown, native Migration  from several broad angles, asking:  How
and foreign, us and them.  Within the current global have theatre and performance responded to issues
political climate, marked by the increasing rise of the of exile, displacement and Otherness both historical-
right and of xenophobic sentiments, the term migra- ly and in our times? How has the process of migration
tion prompts us to grapple with a variety of contra- been shaped and reshaped through various political,
dictions of hospitality and hostility, of solidarity and social, cultural and artistic scenarios? How can the
security, of activism and passivity, of movement and notion of migration be employed to grapple with is-
stasis.  sues of cultural cross-fertilization, transfer, appropri-
ation and mutation?  What constitute ecologies of
Beyond its immediate, topical invocations, the term migration in theatre and performance (and beyond)?
implies, more broadly, a body of persons or animals
migrating together. These moving migrating bodies Prof. Ivana Vujić
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

range from the political to the economic and to the and Belgrade organizing committee

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

spiritual; from refugees and asylum seekers to tour-
ists, guest-workers, and visiting scholars; and even

2 3
 KN

Goran Stefanovski
Canterbury Christ Church University

Goran Stefanovski is a Macedonian playwright and screenwriter. He was one of the leading playwrights of
ex-Yugoslavia. Stefanovski is also a teacher of scriptwriting. In 1986 he founded the playwriting course at the

Keynote
Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje, Macedonia, where he was a full professor until 1998. Between 1998 and
2000 he was a visiting professor at the Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm. He is now a freelance writer, living
in Canterbury, UK, where he teaches at the Canterbury Christ Church University.

The Spark which Escapes

(Narratives between Hammer and Anvil)

The presentation analyses the binary opposites of Migration and Stasis, Journey and Home. Powers-
that-be usually manipulate these opposites and turn them into irreconcilable ideological narratives
to wield control over family and society. This hammer and anvil operation often leads to identity
crises and trauma. However, sometimes, this violent process forges a magic spark which escapes as
theatre. The presentation gives examples of the author’s own creative articulation of these issues.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

4 5
 KN KN

Silvija Jestrović James Thompson 

University of Warwick University of Manchester
Silvija Jestrović is Reader of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick (UK) and a play- James Thompson is Professor of Applied and Social Theatre and Vice President for Social Responsibility at
wright. She is the author of Theatre of Estrangement: Theory, Practice, Ideology (U of Toronto Press, 2006) the University of Manchester. He leads the University’s social responsibility goal which includes how the
and Performance, Space, Utopia: Cities of Wars, Cities of Exile (Palgrave, 2012). With Yana Meerzon, she has university orientates its research, teaching/learning, community engagement, and processes to making a
co-edited the collection Performance, Exile, ‘America’ (Palgrave, 2009). She has published widely on a range positive social, environmental and cultural impact on society. He is the Founding Director of In Place of War
of topics, most recent include: ‘Murderous Maids: Reading Contemporary Migrant Domestic Labour Through – a project researching and developing arts programs in war and disaster zones. He has developed and run
Genet’s ‘Maid’ (in Gender Citizenship Manifestations and Performances, Palgrave 2017), ‘The Maid Vanishes’ theatre projects in Africa and South Asia (principally DR Congo and Sri Lanka). He has written widely on the-
(for Lateral: Special issue on Levering Justice, 2016), ‘Reading into Soundscapes: Between Ma and Concreti- atre applied to conflict, peacebuilding, and reconciliation and his most recent books are Performance Affects:
zation’ (in Recherches Sémiotique/ Semiotic Inquiry, 2017), ‘Theatricality vs. Bare Life’ (in Grammar of Politics Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (2009) and Humanitarian Performance: from Disaster Tragedies to
and Performance, Routledge, 2015), ‘University as Public and Autonomous Sphere: Between Enlightenment Spectacles of War (2014).
Ideas and Market Demands’ with Milena Dragićević Šešić (in International Performance Research Pedagogies:
Towards and Unconditional Discipline, Palgrave 2017) and others. Her plays include Noah’s Ark 747 and Not Aesthetics of Care
My Story. She is currently leading the British Academy funded project Cultures of the Left: Manifestations and
Performances, co-editing (with Milija Gluhović, Shirin Rai, and Make Saward) The Handbook of Politics and This paper will set out the case for care aesthetics as a counter to the focus on an aesthetics of
Performance for Oxford University press and working on her next monograph The Author Dies Hard. suffering, trauma, loss and crisis. It represents a move away from James’ last 15 years work in war
and humanitarian disaster settings to propose an artistic practice that prioritizes relationality and
The Eternal Immigrant and Aesthetics of Solidarity interdependency. Based in an adaption of feminist care ethics, the aesthetics of care seeks to locate
a community-based performance practice in the connections made between participants and within
art making processes. It is an aesthetics focusing on mutuality and attentiveness - not on individual
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s model for the sculpture called the Eternal Immigrant (1995/2004) depicts capacity or skill. In seeking an art making practice that responds to the cruelties and violence of
a body lumped over a wall’s edge, upper-half on one side, lower-half on the other—neither able contemporary life, it proposes an aesthetics that attends to care as a source of politics that aims to
to cross over nor to fall back. Running away from precarity and towards a promise of the good life, make lives more equitable and fulfilled. While originating in Thompson’s work in situation of violent
the Eternal Immigrant is forever stuck in the liminal space of her journey. Resilient, wounded, or conflict, he will outline the aesthetics of care with examples taken from contemporary performance
even lifeless, the Eternal Immigrant has become a reoccurring figure of the 20th century exile and practice. His will argue for an overflow of acts of affective solidarity rather than a frequently individ-
has entered the 21st in overcrowded makeshift boats, her body washed ashore sandy beaches to ualized attention to suffering and loss.
the astonishment of sunbathing holiday makers. We have seen various reiterations of the wall, too.
Some have crumbled and its pieces sold as tourist memorabilia. New ones have mushroomed —in
concrete, as electrical fences, or as barbed wire. More are promised to be built. There is an addi-
tional figure in Kabakov’s model, though, standing opposite, looking at the body frozen in the act of
climbing the wall. Who is this figure that is watching? A hostile guard? A kind host about to extend a
helping hand? Another immigrant who has managed to make the crossing?

This talk will take Kabokov’s image as a point of departure to examine the reoccurring tropes and
experiences of exile, as well as the emerging difference in configurations, responses and representa-
tions of the exilic figure marked by the recent refugee crisis. The constellation of figures in Kabakov’s
model—the space between the person stuck in her attempt to get to the other side of the wall and
the one standing opposite—charts a demarcation line, a rift, a gap, sometimes even a minefield
between precarious life and good life. A number of works, artistic, academic and journalistic, have
emerged in the last few years as a reaction to the refugee crisis that directly or unintentionally pres-
ent us with the question: how to speak about ourselves and the Other from this position, with this
gaping hole between us—the rift between the Eternal Immigrant and the relative safety of being at
the other (presumably) better side of the wall? This is not only about how we relate to the Other in
solidarity, but it has also been defining the good in good life.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

6 7
 KN KN

Ana Vujanović
Ana Vujanović, Ph.D. (Berlin/Belgrade) is a cultural worker: researcher, writer, dramaturge and lecturer, fo-
cused on bringing together critical theory and contemporary art.
She is a team member and mentor at SNDO in Amsterdam. She published numerous articles and authored
four books, most recently Public Sphere by Performance, with B. Cvejić. She was a member of TkH [Walking
Theory] and editor of TkH Journal for Performing Arts Theory (2001-2017). Currently, she is doing a research
on trans-individuality and landscape dramaturgy, edits the collection Live Gathering: Performance and Politics
with L.A. Piazza, and works on the documentary Freedom Landscapes by M. Popivoda.
www.anavujanovic.net

Stage as a Transnational Re(s)publica

I wish I had no origin. However, I come from Belgrade. And wherever I go my Serbo-Croatian-Mon-
tenegrian, Yugoslav, Balkan, Eastern-European origin follows me like a ghost. Sticky like destiny, it
smells of the colonies and minorities. Heavy like love, it sounds communism… and nationalism. Cer-
tain like death, it has a taste of revenge.
I wish I had no identity. However, I come from Belgrade…
I wish I had a choice…

This is the point from which I want to commence my lecture. In what follows I will draw an overview
of the contemporary European performing arts scenes, which is deeply soaked in my own life jour-
ney through Europe – from Belgrade over Amsterdam to Berlin – where I’ve been and I’ve been seen
both as an insider and outsider, sometimes even simultaneously. From that complex and minoritari-
an perspective, I will identify some of the key tendencies around the issues of migration, identity and
nationality, and offer their rereading. While referring to the authors and performances such as Esz-
ter Salamon’s Monument 0: Haunted by wars, Ligia Lewis’s minor matter, Janez Janša’s Republic of
Slovenia, Doris Uhlich’s More than Naked and Boom Bodies and Ivana Müller’s Edges, I will discuss I
discuss the stage as a democratic re(s)publica, through the conceptual constelations such as theatre
as heterotopia, identity in a minor key, politics of the opaque and shared gaze. Eventually, speaking
about the migration and the nation in particular, that discussion suggests that the international looks
like but is not a real alternative to the national; while a far-reaching proposal offered by the afore-
mentioned performances – among others – may be found in the somewhat opaque, non-capitalist
transnational, which leaves the nation, while we are still not sure where it lands…
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

8 9
 GP

Satomi Abe
Theater Museum, Waseda University

Education: Completed doctor course, School of Theater and Film Arts, Waseda university, 2009, and preparing
my dissertation on traditional Japanese dance. Research Student, School of Theater and Film Arts, Waseda

General
university, 2000-2003. M.A. in Arts, Graduate School of Arts, Nihon university, 2000. Academic Experience:
Researcher, Theater Museum, Waseda University, 2009-present. Publications—Books: Abe, Satomi multiple
Chapter of Takarazuka Dance and Kabuki Dance in edited book Kabuki and Takarazuka Kageki , Tokyo: Kaisei
shuppan, 2014. Abe, Satomi multiple Chapter of the study of Act Michiyuki Dance Scene The Journey of the
bride in edited book ChushinguraThe treasury of Loyal Retainers, Hyogo Japan: Akoh-city, 2011.

Villains Become Heroes: Reversed Narratives in the Dance of

Conquest

Panels
Recently, narrative clichés have been reinterpreted in unexpected directions. Villains have acquired
starring roles and heroes have been depicted as scheming in-fighters. A few popular Disney movies
provide obvious examples, and there are many similar examples in postmodern novels that decon-
struct episodes in larger stories. In this paper, I will examine the case narrative reinterpretation in
Japanese classical dance, which has been seen as a highly conservative and conventional perfor-
mance. Just as in other world mythologies, Japanese myths contain many tales of expeditions to
chastise villains. Those marked for social exclusion are often demonized and depicted as nonhuman
beings, such as ogres, vindictive ghosts, and monsters. A drama called Tsuchigumo, based on an
eighth-century legend, is an example from Japanese classical theater. The protagonist is a legendary
demon slayer. He is seriously ill when a monstrous spider attacks him. He narrowly escapes and or-
ders his swordsman to kill it. The warrior and his company succeed in slaying the spider. The word
Tsuchigumo was a derogatory epithet for local clans who did not pledge allegiance to the emperor
and who were regarded as “others” by the imperial elite. In this way, “others” have been depicted as
destroyed villains before in the traditional theater. Another example of conquered “others” in the
classical dramas is Atelui, an ancient leader of northern Japan who was executed in 802 CE. Although
he was once a villain, he is now often treated as a hero who bravely confronted the tyrannical Im-
perial Court—and as a tragic icon of those who are excluded by the brutality of the powerful. This
interpretation has spread to various genres of performance. This paper will discuss how these re-
versed interpretations of traditional stories operate in the context of the traditional techniques and
styles of Japanese classical dance.

Key Words
others, dance, tradition, reinterpretation, villains
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

10 11
 GP GP

A. Bernard Adjirackor Taiwo Afolabi

Mendel University in Brno Department of Theatre, University of Victoria

A. Bernard Adjirackor is a Ghanaian by birth and Nationality, a graduate of the School of Performing Arts, Taiwo Afolabi is a PhD Candidate at the University of Victoria. Taiwo’s doctoral research broadly focuses on
University of Ghana, Legon, Accra with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Arts and Sociology. He majored forced migration, border, displacement and the role of arts in engendering effective resettlement for both ref-
in Directing and for a final project work, directed ‘Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music’ – the first ugees and internally displaced persons for citizen participation. He has undertaken both artistic and research
of its kind on any stage in Ghana. After that, he worked with an internationally recognized advertising agency projects in China, Ireland, Burkina Faso, Denmark, Nigeria, Spain, Sri Lanka, Iran, Croatia and Sudan. He is an
Origin8 Saatchi & Saatchi before enrolling at the Mendel University in Brno to pursue a Master’s Degree pro- alumnus of the International Visitor Leadership Program of the United States of America. He founded Theatre
gramme in International Development earning a Master of Science Degree in 2017. He is currently studying for Emissary International and co-coordinates the Network of Emerging Arts Professionals of the UNESCO’ s Inter-
a PhD in Business Management and Economics at the Mendel University in Brno. national Theatre Institute (ITI/UNESCO). His articles have been published in highly reputable journal in theatre
and performance. He teaches at the Department of Theatre, University of Victoria. He is a Queen Elizabeth
Migration & Cultural Adaptation Theories in Kobina Seki’s Scholar, and a Graduate Fellow at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria.
“The Blinkards”
Performing border within ethos of displacement: theatre in the
From the very earliest of times, man has been nomadic by nature. Movements of individuals, fami- forgotten corridor of internally displaced people in Africa
lies, groups or indeed entire villages in search of greener pastures is as old as the existence of man.
These movements could be either permanent, semi-permanent or temporary. They could also be Borders and boundaries seems to constitute and define nation-state relations. However, with the
either voluntary or non-voluntary forced. These movements of man are simply known as migra- recent human advancements and happenings in this ‘post-normal’ times, there lies aterritorial bor-
tion. National Geographic Society defines Human Migration as “the movement of people from one ders that are invisible but highly impactful. The physical walls, borderland and bordering process
place in the world to another for the purpose of taking up permanent or semi-permanent residence, stands within the fabric of our present society. This dichotomy of a/territorial border is privileged in
usually across a political boundary” and goes on further to opine that “migrations have occurred our rhetoric of migration, intervention and how border is performed and represented. For example,
throughout human history, beginning with the movements of the first human groups from their the world’s attention focuses more on refugees who have crossed internationally state recognized
origins in East Africa to their current location in the world.”  ‘Socialisation’, ‘Culture Shock’ and ‘Ad- border while less attention is given to displaced people who are within the state border. Theatre’s at-
aptation’ are some of the universal cross-cultural adaptation theories. With a pervading diversity in tention seems to focus on refugees and asylum seekers while little attention is given to IDPs who are
cultures and the ever increasing globalization of the world, one need not necessarily move an inch not protected under the law except through a non-binding legal document dubbed the ‘UN guiding
away from his home to experience a totally new culture. The way an individual deals with the shock principles on internal displacement’. In this paper, I argue that theatre consciously or unconsciously
of new cultures is what accounts for various adaptation process theories. In Kobina Sekyi’s comedy advances popular discourse which makes theatre become an instrument to maintain status quo. I
The Blinkards, written in 1914, he deals with the issue of migration and adaptation on different reflect on some migration
levels. From an entirely sociological perspective, he deals with the effects of migration on the adap- and refugee theatre projects and scholarship in Canada against the backdrop of theatre in the for-
tation of the individual. Issues like culture shock as well as reverse cultural shock are poignant in the gotten corridor of internally displaced people in Africa.
play. This paper shall attempt to identify the extent to which migration affected the adaptation of the
main characters in the play. This shall be done mainly by juxtaposing a character analysis of the main Key Words
characters in the play against Berry’s acculturation model. Berry 1994 proposed a model of accul- border, displacement, Internally displaced persons, performance boundaries and imagined com-
turation that suggests that it is possible for an individual to preserve his original ethnic identity and munities
behavior while attaining proficiency in a foreign culture. He believes that the results of acculturation
can vary from assimilating the host culture to integrating aspects of both the host and original cul-
ture. In his view, integration is the best possible outcome and the less stressful of the acculturation
process. For Berry assimilation is one of four acculturation strategies - the others being marginaliza-
tion, separation and integration - an individual may use during the acculturation process and defines
it as “when individuals do not wish to maintain their cultural identity and seek daily interaction with
other cultures” Berry, 1997, p. 9.

Key Words
Migration, Cultural Adaptation Theories, Acculturation, Assimilation, Marginalisation, Separation,
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Integration

12 13
 GP GP

Laura-Elina Aho Tomoko Akai

University of Helsinki Kobe Pharmaceutical University

Laura-Elina Aho is PhD student in theatre reseach in the University of Helsinki, Department of Philosophy, Tomoko Akai is an Associate Professor at Kobe Pharmaceutical University, where she teaches liberal arts in-
History, Culture and Art Studies. In her thesis she examines the Finnish Theatre in the second half of the 19th cluding theatre and film studies.  Her current research interest is intercultural relationship between British
century from the perspective of nation building and genderd representation of a nation. Besides her PhD and Japanese popular musical theatres in the 1910s and 1920s the Taisho and the early Showa Eras.  Her pub-
studies she has been writing about Finnish cultural history and worked in different projects on cultural history lications in Japanese includes Charles B. Cochran and the Musical Revue in London in The Age of Stage Show
archives in Finland. Shinwasha, 2015 and London Coliseum: from the Music Hall to the Theatre in Theatre and Theatre World in
London: A History of Modern British Theatre Asahi Shuppansha, 2015.
Transnational aspects of the Feminine Representation of a Nation
Cultural Transfer between London and Takarazuka: Translation
in the repertoire of the Finnish Theatre Company
and Adaptation of Western Comedy in Late 1910s-1920s Japan
In my doctoral thesis I am studying how the Finnish Theatre 1872–1902 participated in the con-
struction of the Finnish national culture and identity by examining the ways the theatre produced This paper examines Shiko Tsubouchis early work in Takarazuka Girls Opera in relation to his stay in
the representation of ”the Finnish Maid”– the embodiment of the Finnish nation. The theatre 1902 London.  Shiko Tsubouchi 1887-1986 wrote a number of comedies for Takarazuka Girls Opera during
onwards the National Theatre was found by the nationalist Fennomans and was deeply connected its earliest period, i.e. in the late 1910s and 1920s.  Some of these were adapted from European
to its social environment and involved in the creation of the national imagery.    My interest is to originals, some were based on kabuki pieces, and others were original pieces.  This paper shows that
perceive how the feminine representations in the repertoire relate to the developing personification his inclination toward comedy during this period can be traced back to his experiences in London. 
of Finland/Finnishness at the time. I am exploring the boundaries that were produced by using the After studying English drama and theatre at universities in both Japan and America, Tsubouchi lived
concept of female body: what is considered natural and unnatural, pure and dirty in the concept in London from 1911 to 1915.  While in London, he was able to build up his experience in theatre and
of nation and national identity. Drawing the line between “us” and “them” was and is essential for performance as a writer, a translator, an actor, and an audience member.  At that time, he became
nationalist vision of how to build a homogeneous culture and feminine representations had a central interested in how theatrical performances were adjusted to fit the audience.  He found that a lot
role in the process. The personification of the Finnish Maid was and is part of the imagery used in of entertainment was catered to emergent audiences such as white-collar workers, who preferred
constructing this division as well as the gendered cultural power structures in Finland.  My first out- musical theatre to serious drama.  When he witnessed Bernard Shaws one-act play How He Lied to
come is that the plays the theatre introduced as Finnish by origin strongly produce and reinforce the Her Husband at a variety theatre, he was struck by how a dramatist like Shaw wrote such an enter-
representation of the Finnish Maid. As I have proceeded I have noticed that producing the national taining play as this.  He began to translate Western comedies by dramatists such as Shaw, Barrie, and
originality had a paradox in itself the boundary between the desired and pure “Finnishness” and the Wilde into Japanese.  Soon after starting to work for Takarazuka Girls Opera after returning to Japan,
“un-Finnishness” created by using the feminine representation seems to be based on the transna- he wrote about a new audience in his article for the company’s magazine, Kageki.  He observed
tional imagery and ideals. In my paper for the IFTR Conference 2018 I aim to perceive the connec- the importance of adjusting performances to the taste of these new audiences including emergent
tions the representation of the Finnish Maid had with to the possible models adopted elsewhere by white-collar workers and local students.  In this paper, I will show how Tsubouchi used what he
drawing comparisons between the representations transmitted by the ”domestic” and the ”foreign” learned in London to experiment in comedy that would appeal to the new audiences in Japan.
repertoire of the Finnish Theatre.
Key Words
Key Words Takarazuka Girls Opera, Shiko Tsubouchi, cultural transfer, new audience, comedy
The Finnish Theatre Company, nationalism, nation building, feminine representation, gendered
nation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

14 15
 GP GP

Aristita I. Albacan Mia Amir

Playwrights Theatre Centre
Dr. Aristita I. Albacan is an independent theatre scholar/artist based in the UK. Her research interests are
connected to intermediality, contemporary spectatorship, contemporary performance making processes and Mia Susan Amir works at the intersection of creative and community practice as an educator, cultural orga-
applied theatre, subjects on which she published several journal studies. She also specializes in Robert Lep- nizer, writer, director, dramaturg and theatre artist creating immersive, interdisciplinary works. Born in Israel/
age’s theatre, on which she published the monograph Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Teatre Work of Occupied Palestine, mia lives on the unceded and occupied territories of the x?m?θkw?y??m Musqueam,
Robert Lepage: the Solo Shows 2016. She lectured in Theatre and Performance the University of Mainz, DE Skwxwu?7mesh Squamish, and S?l?i?lw?ta?/Selilwitulh Tsleil-Waututh Nations. mia is the Creative Director
2003–2005 and at the University of Hull, UK 2006-2015, where she, also, initiated and led the Interdisciplinary of The Story We Be, an Associate Dramaturg with the Playwrights Theatre Centre, and a Dramaturg with the
and Collaborative Practices Research Cluster 2010–2013 and served as a Director of Studies for Theatre and Virago Play Series. A recipient of the 2018 Bly Creative Fellowship of the Literary Dramaturgs and Managers of
Performance 2008–2014. As a theatre practitioner, she has developed contemporary performances in various the Americas, mia’s current research explores the intersections between Crip and Indigenous Dramaturgical
settings in Romania, Germany, the United States and the UK in the past 20 years. Practices in the studio, on the stage, and in the street.  In her creative practice, mia explores the ways in which
sociopolitical events are manifest intergenerationally in the spaces of the home and the body the narrative
hauntings that emerge when our stories go untold. Her practice, hybrid in form, engages juxtaposition as a
To Be or Not to Be Political: The Ritual of Affective Citizenship critical strategy to bring breath to the unnamed, or ineffable. mia’s new work, Geologic Formations premiers
May 2018 at the rEvolver Festival, Vancouver, Canada.  mia’s writing has appeared on SpiderWebShow, Lemon
This paper could also be entitled “To See or not to See Politically…” as it discusses the relationship Hound, Digging Through the Fat, and in Sustenance: An Anthology of Writers from B.C. and Beyond on the
between performativity Butler, 1993, the cultural politics of emotion Ahmed, 2004, perception - Subject of Food, Anvil Press.
with special focus on “seeing”/observing Crary, 1990 & 2000, the politics of surveillance Foucault,
1975 and their impact in relation to citizenship. I propose as case study “Va Vedem” – an ongoing Geologic Formations: A performance-based case study of the
citizen’s movement initiated in Sibiu RO in 2017,  in response to the establishment’s recent illiberal
tendencies and the preoccupation to obstruct the judiciary system through the so-called “legal re-
politics and limits of perception and empathy in the fight against
form.” The movement manifested itself through a combination of sit-ins, occasional agoras and daily the global rise of fascism
flashmobs, in sum a performance of endurance meant to re-claim the power of citizenship, while
putting under scrutiny the notion of corruption, in its various guises. The movement gained, almost The words fascia & fascism share an etymological root, the Latin word, fasces, which means, “bun-
instantly, recognition via social and mass-media, throughout the country and in diaspora, while vis- dle.”  Geologic Formations is a performance installation premiering May 2018 at the rEvolver Fes-
ibly unsettling the establishment’s post-factual discourse. The ocular focus of the movement, its tival, Vancouver, Canada. A response to the contemporary refugee crisis and global rise of fascism,
flexible, fluid combination of performative and political tactics addressing key values pertaining to this work traces the ways socio-political events haunt the site of the body when the impacts of such
the culture of democracy and the attempt to overturn symbolically the balance of power through a events are denied public narrative & are forcibly “bundled” & isolated into the space of individual
performance of endurance and ritualic citizenship became quickly a model that spread throughout memory, becoming the “present-unseen.” This work reflects on the ways the resulting historical,
the country and abroad, thus reinvigorating active citizenship and contributing in various, affective cultural, physical, & spiritual voids foster space for repressive ideologies that extinguish empathy to-
and effective ways, to the wider # Rezist movement in Romania.  This paper is a follow-up to “Flash- ward & perception of the “other” to take hold of the national body & collective imaginary.  The work
mobs as Performance and The Re-emergence of Creative Communities” Albacan, 2014 in which I ar- is based on the lead playwright’s lived experience of the “present-unseen”: • the invisible sensorial
gued that flashmobs constituted a novel and flexible model for performance for the 21st century and experiences of her body, disabled by fibromyalgia, a condition of the myofascia & • the invisibilized
signaled their potential to develop in the most diverse contexts, including the political, with visible, antecedents of her chronic illness: the intergenerational impacts of war, attempted genocide, & geo-
ongoing impact. The flashmobs performed by “Va Vedem”- a re-enactment of Turkey’s “Standing graphic displacement, specifically the 1942-43 liquidation of the Białystock Ghetto.   Through senso-
Man” 2013 -and their impact verify the hypothesis articulated then. rialy driven, audience immersive performance design, combining movement, projection, set-interac-
tion, & sound, Geologic Formations approaches the play-space as a practice space where performers
Key Words and audience together activate the questions: • What do I perceive? •  What shapes the ways I per-
performativity, citizenship, surveillance, perception, affect, flashmobs ceive my perceptions?  •  What are the limits to my perceptions of, & empathy toward self, & other? 
Development of this work is guided by what cognitive neuroscience terms co-presence: the ways in
which “emotional transmissions” “mediated by autonomic synchronization”, “can occur” even “in
the absence of direct communication” “resulting in shared emotional [& somatic] experiences”1.
Geologic Formations explores what new political, social, & cultural, possibilities/responsibilities
open when find new ways to perceive, & to perceive what we perceive when we bring awareness of
this synchronization to the fore.  Presented as an interactive performative lecture this presentation
will combine dissemination of findings from the first run of performances, an experiential exercise
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

used in development of the work, as well as a brief excerpt of the performance.

Key Words
Theatre, Migration, Refugee Crisis, Fascism, Neuroscience, Empathy, Perception, Political Transfor-
mation, Play-Space as Practice Space, Disability Arts
16 17
 GP GP

Lidija Andonov John Andreasen

Talas Creative Therapies Aarhus University

Lidija Andonov Belgrade, 1982 is a Berlin based actress and singer who graduated from University of Novi Sad, John Andreasen, Associate professor at Dramaturgy, Aarhus University in Denmark. Inventor of ÅrhusSpillet
Academy of Arts, with a degree in acting. She took part in various short films as a screenwriter and actress, as (The Aarhus Plays) and founder of the new community play archive (Egnsspilarkivet) at The Royal Library in
well as in theatre plays, and co-organised of theater workshops for children in Berlin. In addition, Lidija per- Copenhagen 2018. Selected publications: Odin Teatret 2000 (co-ed. with Annelis Kuhlmann), Multiple Stages
forms as a singer all across Europe with her music project “Sixth June”. In December 2016 she finished 3 years (2007), Multiple Stages 2 (2012), Drama Teaching & Mnemonics - an extended version (2015) and Nordic Dra-
dramatherapy program Weiterbildung at the Institut für Theatertherapie in Berlin, after she organized and led ma Pixi - Drama Teaching & education in the Nordic countries - a short cut (2015).
dramatherapy groups in Belgrade and Berlin. One of the main focus is working with refugees and migrants.
Eutopia Stage – a counterpoint to a ghetto?
In/Visible Faces - Dramatherapy as a tool for creating a space of “Eutopia Stage” (ES) became a part of the European Cultural Capital 2017 in Aarhus, Denmark. Origi-
possibilities with refugees nally ‘eutopia’ is Greek meaning a beautiful, nice place to be - in this pun upon Europe, EU, Denmark
and multi culture. The stage is situated in an earlier closed theatre in one of the biggest so called
The traumas refugees have suffered often leave them isolated and alienated. In Serbia, many of ghettoes - a home of many nationalities. Due to their artistic manifesto from 2016 ES will create a
these people find themselves in limbo, either unable to travel further or uncertain how to establish mental agora for new European multi cultural folk art and music relating to the 2017 motto ‘RE-
a life here. Many refugees arriving in Europe face distrust from the local communities. In such a thinking’. They still carry on at least until summer 2018. How will they succeed and probably survive
context, the establishment of communication with refugees becomes an important, even radical inside or outside a contemporary complex municipal masterplan for altering the local community
act. Dramatherapy facilitates the processes of healing, integration, and growth,  and can help restore very physically and demografically over the coming years?
communication through creative and often non-verbal means.   Between June 2017 and October
2017, Serbian NGO Talas Creative Therapies conducted dramatherapy workshops with 8 male refu-
gees in Belgrade, between the ages of 14 and 30. We used fictional characters, dramatic enactment,
Key Words
poetry, art, and music. Working with a fictional realm helps traumatized people rewrite their stories
as people who can overcome and cope with real life struggles, while focusing on the healthy compo- Multi culture, art and integration
nents of the personality.  Using our experience in the field as a guiding thread, this paper reveals the
strong potential of the dramatherapy method when working with refugees. We examine three key
aspects of our process: the development of a model of dramatherapy for refugees in Serbia lessons
learned the positive outcomes of the work. Our project resulted in the substantial improvement of
the wellbeing of our group, over the course of 20 workshops and 1 performance at Bitef Festival in
September 2017. With this paper, we aim to contribute to the sharing of knowledge about drama-
therapeutic work with refugees.

Key Words
dramatherapy, creative therapy, refugees,
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

18 19
 GP GP

Evelyn Annuß Annette Arlander

Theater Studies, Free University of Berlin Stockholm University of the Arts

Evelyn Annuß is currently Professor of Theater Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She was a research fel- Annette Arlander, DA, MA, is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue. She was professor of performance art
low at the International Research Center Interweaving Performance Cultures in Berlin, has taught as Professor and theory at Theatre Academy Helsinki 2001-2013, professor of artistic research at University of the Arts
of Theater and Media at the LMU Munich, the Center for Interdisciplinary Womens and Gender Studies of the Helsinki 2015-2016 and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies 2017.
TU Berlin and in Bochum. Forthcoming book on Nazi mass stagings: Volksschule des Theaters Fink 2018. At present, she is professor of performance art and theory at Stockholm University of the Arts engaged in the
artistic research project performing with plants and visiting researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts, University
On the Move. Outperforming Trench Warfare of the Arts Helsinki. She is principal investigator of the Academy of Finland funded research project How to do
things with performance? Her research interests include artistic research, performance-as-research and the
Mass Theater under the Nazis is used as a specific governmental technique after the seizure of environment. Her artwork moves between performance art, media and environmental art. For publications
and works see https://annettearlander.com
power. It does not just narrate the becoming of a Volksgemeinschaft, but relies on movement choirs
suggesting immersion to the audience. My paper focuses on early experiments with modern mass
theatrical aesthetics after the Nazi takeover and the propaganda efforts to design an allegedly gen- Migrating concepts in performance: Authorship, agency and
uine National-Socialist theater of the people. These experiments re-perform the Nazi takeover as performing in “Year of the Dog - Sitting in a Tree”
collective movement in reference to the First World War. Bodies on the move become a tool to imag-
ine salvation from having been stuck in positional warfare. I will discuss the theatrical forms quoted This paper is part of a panel, which brings together approaches to performance from separate disci-
and how they are used to re-signify war as a prerequisite to a collective body on the move –a dy- plinary discussions like performance philosophy, dance history, and artistic research. The purpose is
namic soldierly unification of the German people. Taking Gustav Goes’ 1933 stadium play Aufbricht to show how material-discursive practices, migrating concepts and translations have a direct bearing
Deutschland/Brot und Eisen Germany Awakens/Bread and Iron as a starting point I want to show on how we make, experience and understand performances.  If we assume with Karen Barad, follow-
how mass choreography foreshadows the violence the Nazis will have unleashed. My argument is ing Niels Bohr, that concepts are material arrangements, which are productive of the phenomena
that it is not only the allusion to spatial politics of stasis within theater that calls for critical inquiry, they measure, that is, determine what matters and what is excluded from mattering, concepts like
but also the notion of collective movement as empowerment. authorship and performerhood, if such a term can be used, influence our understanding of agency,
of who and what can perform. As pointed out by Diana Taylor in her introduction to the Archive and
Key Words the Repertory, to explore alternative terms for performance used in various languages can call into
Mass Theater Nationalsocialism Movement Choir question our taxonomies and point to new interpretive possibilities. For her the untranslatability of
terms like performance has a positive function as a reminder that we do not understand each other
and that we should start from there. This presentation focuses on two notions in Finnish, on one
hand the single term for author, maker and factor, tekijä, and on the other hand the two different
terms used for performing, the transitive esittää and the intransitive esiintyä, which can be used to
expand our understanding of agency. They are particularly helpful in understanding the practice dis-
cussed as an example, namely performing with plants, which is here approached through returning
to Year of the Dog - Sitting in a Tree 2007 twelve years later.  Comment by Pilvi Porkola

Key Words
performance, performing, authorship, agency, performerhood, plants
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

20 21
 GP GP

Sharon Aronson-Lehavi Izumi Ashizawa

Tel Aviv University Izumi Ashizawa Performance/ State University of New York at Stony Brook

Sharon Aronson-Lehavi is Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts, Tel Aviv University, and Academic Director Izumi Ashizawa is an artistic director of Izumi Ashizawa Performance. She serves as an Assistant Professor in
of the University Theatre. She was elected as a member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences 2012-2017 Directing and Devising at State University of New York at Stony Brook. Izumi Ashizawa explores global diplo-
and has served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley 2013-2014. Her research focuses macy through theatre, especially in the form of physical story-telling and unconventional puppetry and object
on the relations between religion and theatre in late medieval and modern cultures. In this context she has animation. Based on Japanese physical performance techniques, Ashizawa’s devising theatre techniques and
published Street Scenes: Late Medieval Acting and Performance Palgrave Macmillan 2011 and Biblical Theatre physical acting method are taught around the world her past commissioned collaborative projects occurred
in Israel: Identity and Otherness Israel Democracy Institute 2016, Hebrew, as well as essays about medieval in the U.S.A., Japan, the U.K., Canada, the First Nation in Quebec, Turkey, Iran, Norway, Austria, Bulgaria, Slo-
theatre, the Oberammergau 2010 passion play, and modern theatrical adaptations of religious texts. She is venia, Romania, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Australia, the Cayman Islands, Greece, Cyprus, and Peru. Ashizawa
also the author of Gender and Feminism in Modern Theatre Open UP 2013, Hebrew, editor of Wanderers and holds a MFA from Yale School of Drama. Izumi Ashizawa won numerous awards including the Medal of Honor
Other Israeli Plays Seagull Books 2009 and coeditor with Atay Citron and David Zerbib of Performance Studies for Cultural Excellence from the City of Piura in Peru, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival
in Motion: International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century Bloomsbury 2014. Faculty Achievement Award Excellence in Directing and Technology, Capital Fringe Director’s Award, UNES-
CO-Aschberg Award, IIFUT Best Performance Award, Tehran Municipality Culture and Arts Organization Award,
A Theatrical Tour: The Migration of Images in The Ohel Theatre’s Australian Government Fund for the Arts, and Norwegian Cultural Fund, National Endowment for the Arts
Fund, APAP Cultural Exchange Fund. Ashizawa has served as a guest artist lecturer in various universities such
1928 “Jacob and Rachel” as Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, UCLA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
the U.K., Central School of Speech and Drama the U.K., National Academy of Theatre and Television Bulgaria,
In preparation of the Ohel Theatre’s 1928 production in Tel Aviv of the play Yaakov ve Rachel Jacob Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Estonia, Cyprus National Theatre Cyprus, National Academy of the
and Rachel, based on a play titled The Tears of Rachel by the Russian playwright N. Kreshnenikov, Arts Norway.
the director of the play and artistic director of the theatre, Moshe Halevy, took the ensemble on a
special tour to visit Bedouins in the desert. This tour was initiated in order to experience an authen- A case study of the intercultural production of “Väike jumalanna
tic image of the Biblical Land the play depicted and that the ensemble was hoping to reimagine and The Little Goddess” at Eesti Draamateater, Tallinn, Estonia
“reconstruct” in its biblical performance. According to Halevy’s description of this tour, the meeting
with the Bedouins had such impact on the group, that some of the images they encountered on this As a Japanese female intercultural devising theatre practitioner who resides in the U.S.A., I have
trip became part of the performance. In this paper, I will examine this case study, arguing that the been creating multi-lingual/ intercultural original works in various venues in different countries for
theatrical process of constructing an “authentic” biblical identity was in fact based on sublimation, the past 16 years. Each project has its own unique developmental process based on the specific
embodiment, and re-performance of the local Other. Thus, rather than instigating a coherent sense traits of the local actors, designers, and technicians in each different country. In this essay, I exam-
of identity, I suggest that the multi-referential images that were constructed in this performance in ine the collaborative creative process of an original intercultural musical puppet play, Väike jum-
fact problematized any ability to do so. alanna The Little Goddess” that I wrote and directed at the National Estonian Drama Theatre Eesti
Draamateater in Tallinn, Estonia in January, 2018. The essay investigates the creative process of a
Key Words multicultural/ multilingual musical production from an artist’ perspective. This presentation will be
biblical, performance, image, identity, the other, theatrical tour a part of the curated panel Dramaturgy of Migration: Staging Multilingual Encounters in Contempo-
rary Performance

Key words
Intercultural performance creation, Multi-cultural devising
Theatre Puppetry, Japan/Nepal, Asian Theatre, Estonian Theatre, Collaboration of the East and
the West
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

22 23
 GP GP

Elaine Aston Nataliya Atanasova

Lancaster University Sofia Puppet Theatre

Elaine Aston is Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University, UK. Her monographs include Nataliya is Master of Arts in Arts and Visual Culture, awarded by the University of Westminster (United King-
Caryl Churchill 1997/ 2001/ 2010 Feminism and Theatre 1995 Feminist Theatre Practice 1999 Feminist Views dom) and currently working at the Sofia Puppet Theatre (Bulgaria) as International Relations Officer and Sec-
on the English Stage 2003 Performance Practice and Process: Contemporary [Women] Practitioners 2008, with retary of Arts. She was raised in Italy, where she first started to develop deep interest in the field of Contem-
Geraldine Harris A Good Night Out for the Girls 2013, with Geraldine Harris and Royal Court: International porary Art and Communication and to research methods and different media of expression. She focused her
2015, with Mark O’Thomas. She is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Play- practical and theoretical preparation on the use of Photography, Illustration, Digital and Performing Art, to
wrights 2000, with Janelle Reinelt Feminist Futures: Theatre, Performance, Theory 2006, with Geraldine Harris understand the function and influence of the mass media in the production of contemporary culture. Fond of
Staging International Feminisms 2007, with Sue-Ellen Case and The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill the topic of multiculturalism, in London, she has curated an exhibition involving artists from four continents,
2009, with Elin Diamond. She has served as Senior Editor of Theatre Research International and is currently a who were asked to narrate and show their habitual realities and to build common imaginaries, liveable by all.
Vice President of IFTR. At the moment, Nataliya organises the tenth edition of the International Festival for Street and Puppet The-
atre  - the “Puppet Fair”, which will be held in Sofia, this coming September.
Socialist-feminist Be/longing and the Theatre of Caryl Churchill
The construction of the Other through mediatic dissemination as
As the late Stuart Hall observed, the political situation in the UK has been dominated by ‘the long
march of the Neo-liberal Revolution’ 2011. Dating back to the 1970s and the advent of Thatcherism,
a form of myth What we say about the Other – creates us and them
this ‘march’ has carried on through successive governments on the Right and the Left under New The way in which the media constructs the identity of the Other – is a way based on the common
Labour. As a consequence, socialism and feminism have both been major casualties. Of relevance to acceptance of what is normal, what is habitual and where. The mediatic discourse is a myth, in the
this paper is the way in which the socialist-feminist culture that grew out of Second Wave Feminism sense that it initiates its statements and truths from within the discourse it delivers, based on a com-
increasingly found itself displaced or immobilised by the upwardly mobile, individualistic, neoliberal monly accepted reality - recreated at the moment of its announcement. On the one hand, the myth
‘top girl’. However, post the global banking crisis 2007-8, deepening inequalities and injustices have of the mass media sees the Other, as an inconvenient part for the integrity of the notion of a defined
seen a groundswell of feminist activism. This momentum has carried over into British theatre where identity. A disturbing force. On the other hand, the Other’s myth of identity and of the knowledge of
women playwrights newcomers and established writers included have produced a raft of new plays “the better”, mobilises them into the pursue of a different reality. Myth is about setting definitions
that auger a renewal of socialist-feminist claims-making. After briefly surveying this field of work and of identities and frontiers - places of origins. Its function is fundamental in this construction of iden-
headlining the political and aesthetic strategies of socialist-feminism’s renewal, I turn to the theatre tity, as Jean-Francois Lyotard states in The Postmodern Condition. Nonetheless, scholars as Roland
of Caryl Churchill. With reference to her latest, full-length play, Escaped Alone 2016, I observe her Barthes, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault had shed light on how certain types of discourse create the
critique of: global capitalism the shoring up of ‘empathy walls’ Arlie Hochschild, 2016 and man-made subject, by inserting new categories of realities and truths within the objective perception of reality.
weapons of planetary destruction. This consolidates my argument for the capacity of her theatre to Accordingly, talking about the Other, unfolds from a commonly agreed knowledge of normality. In
release an affectively realised sense of longing to belong in a world marching to a different, socially the past, we have come to know of different cultures and social structures, as a result of the stories,
progressive tune. In the final analysis, since Hall argued neoliberalism as a hegemonic project – one narratives and testimonies, brought by anthropologists and their studies. This is explained by the
that requires work to maintain it – I posit Churchill’s long-standing and enduring socialist-feminist fact, as Nicholas Mirzoeff points, that the concept of the Western World has been defined as an
labour as an alternative, counter-hegemonic work-in-process. Ideology – narrated through a common myth – a story of origins and belonging. Consequently, by
reiterating it in our cultural production, we identify ourselves with it.
Key Words Within the notion of integration, there is always the question of difference. The difference created
Belonging Gender Socialist Feminism Neoliberalism Caryl Churchill by the contrast of the knowledge of reality and normality and the awareness of what does not fit
into its usual characteristics, according to the dominant ideology. The myth normalizes reality and
its concepts, but it can exclude its opposite (the different) outside its own ideology, categorizing it as
non-nominal, non-existent and not applicable.

Key Words
Myth, identity, discourse, cultural production, narrative, ideology
 
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

24 25
 GP GP

Michael Bachmann Ewa Bal

University of Glasgow Uniwersytet Jagiellonski Krakow

Dr Michael Bachmann is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. Ewa Bal - adjunct professor of Performance Studies at Jagellonian University in Cracow Poland. She has got a
professor habilitation in 2018 and a PhD in 2006 at Jagellonian University. In the years 2004-2008 she was a
Return of the Diorama: Scenes of Migration in Vox Motus’s “Flight” lecturer of Polish culture and language at University „L’Orientale” in Neapol Italy. Author of 2 monographies:
Corporeality in drama. Theatre of Pier Paolo Pasolini and its continuations Cracow, 2006, Locality and cultural
(2017) mobility of theatre. Tracing Harlequin and Pulcinella Cracow, 2017 and of over 20 papers in scientific jour-
nals and readers. She co-edited two readers: Performance, performativity, performer. Definitions and critical
In their 2017 adaptation of Caroline Brotherss novel Hinterland, Glasgow-based company Vox Motus analysis 2013, Performance studies. Territories 2017. She’s the Polish translator of Italian plays by Pier Paolo
tell the story of two Afghan boys and their desparate attempts to reach Western Europe. Premiered Pasolini, Emma Dante, Davide Enia, Annibale Ruccello, Enzo Moscato, Fausto Paravidino. She edited a Polish
at the Edinburgh International Festival, the production had spectators sit in individual booths before anthology of Italian drama: Na jeden i kilka głosów Cracow, 2007 and Italian anthology of Polish modern dra-
a rotating diorama which showed miniaturised scenes from the iconography of migration: e.g., an ma: Polonia-New Generation Napoli, 2007. Her major academic interests are: gender and queer studies, inter-
overcrowded refugee boat on the Mediterranean, the Calais Jungle camp and a refrigerator truck cultural translation and cultural mobility of performance and theatre. She fluently speaks 5 languages: Polish,
as last means of transport. The show was praised for its innovative form between puppetry, theatre Italian, Spanish, French, English. She’s a member of IFTR, EASTAP European Association for Studies of Theatre
and installation art, even though critics noted that the “solitary viewing experience” lost “some of and Performance and of Polish Association for Studies of Theatre.
the emotional potency of a shared theatrical event” Anna Winter and that the “studiously non-po-
litical tone” of the production Michael Billington did not do justice to the realities of forced migra- Does Theatre really reflect the contemporary migratory policy?
tion. While many reviews of Flight mention this disconnect between content and form, they do Nostalgia for locality in contemporary theater in Upper Silesia in
not explore its larger cultural, aesthetic and ethical implications. Against this background, my paper Poland in the face of migration policy and nationalism
proposes to understand Flight’s scenes of migration in light of what could be called a contemporary
return of the diorama and its history as a nineteenth-century theatrical and exhibitionary form often Before the 1989, the institutional Polish theater was subjected, similarly like in all countries of the
used to submit exoticized people and locales to the Western gaze. Eastern bloc, to the centrally guided cultural policy of the state and indirectly designed its audience
as a homogeneous, national community. After 1989, the situation definitely changed, because the
Key Words governance over the majority of theaters was taken over by the municipal local authorities. How-
diorama puppetry adaptation migration Scottish theatre nineteenth-century contemporary perfor- ever, this significant change especially impacted the Upper Silesia – an area partly belonging to the
mance German Reich before World War II. Over the last 10 years theatres in Silesia - as never before in the
20th century - have attempted to rebuild the identity of the indigenous population of this territory
by a nostalgic turn to the mythologized history of plebeian Silesia from before the First World War.
But this very vision paints a picture of a non-existent community that had forgotten its own dialect
and had spread throughout the world in the last decades as a result of economic and political mi-
gration or had been assimilated with other waves of the immigrant population. In my talk, I will try
to answer the question whether the nostalgia for the past of indigenous communities inhabiting
a given territory also often driven by global tourism indirectly contributes to denying the cultural
processes related to migration of people in the last 50 years. Or does it rather serve to organize new
heterogeneous cultural audience around a fantasy of belonging to the territory? Perhaps in order to
grasp the migration phenomena in theatre, it is necessary today to substitute the metropolitan gaze
usually more cosmopolitan with the local perspective, and on the fragmentary example notice the
unstable and mobile nature of communities inhabiting a given territory? Answers to these questions
will be given by the analysis of plays produced by Silesian theaters and by deploying Theatre Studies
discourses and theories.

Key Words
nostalgia, locality, migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

26 27
 GP GP

Sruti Bala Christopher Balme

University of Amsterdam Ludwig – Maximilian University of Munich

Sruti Bala is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her Christopher Balme holds the chair in theatre studies at LMU Munich and is past-president of IFTR.
teaching and research interests are in performance theory, participatory art, translation, and feminist and
postcolonial scholarship in the Humanities. She is principal investigator of a research project on artistic and Suppliant Guests: Hikesia and the Politics of Asylum
cultural practices of citizenship in the context of the Dutch Caribbean. Recent publications include: The Ges-
tures of Participatory Art Manchester University Press, 2018 International Performance Research Pedagogies: This paper discusses the Greek concept of hikesia – the granting of sanctuary to strangers – against
Towards an Unconditional Discipline? Co-edited with H. Korsberg, M. Gluhovic, K. Röttger Palgrave Macmillan, the background of current debates on refugees and asylum. By looking at ancient Greek textual and
2017 and The Global Trajectories of Queerness: Re-thinking Same-Sex Politics in the Global South. Co-edited
iconographical depictions of hikesia which features frequently in the extant corpus of Greek trage-
with A. Tellis Brill/Rodopi, 2015.
dies on the one hand, and at Elfriede Jelineks text Die Schutzbefohlenen on the other I will argue
that the ritual of hikesia then and its current manifestation as political asylum now place consider-
Can the European translate? able pressure on the polity confronted with the dilemma of according strangers/refugees sanctuary.
Can the European translate? Sruti Bala, University of Amsterdam The title of this contribution ref- The argument is framed by a theoretical discussion of Derridas essay Hostipitality.
erences a classic 1988 essay by Gayatri Spivak titled ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, wherein she argued
that the problem is not that the subaltern needs to be taught how to speak, as is often assumed, but Key Words
that nobody knows how to listen to subaltern articulations, i.e. that subaltern speech only becomes asylum, Elfriede Jelinek, Greek tragedy
perceptible when re-presented through hegemonic voices and languages. Three decades of a per-
sistent critique of Eurocentrism have acutely attuned scholars and practitioners in theatre and per-
formance to issues of appropriation, orientalism, othering, as well as the problems of a depoliticised
interculturalism. The chapter re-visits Spivak’s call to decolonise Europe by rephrasing her question
in terms of translation. By asking if the European can translate I am less concerned with how Europe
appropriately or otherwise translates its Others, and more with how it allows itself to be translated.
The case under consideration is Bertolt Brecht, arguably the most canonical ‘European’ figure of the
theatre in the 20th century, a name almost synonymous with political theatre. What would Brecht
be without his creative appropriations from Japan, China, England, Russia and other parts of the
world? What would remain of Brecht’s oeuvre without the translational and editorial efforts of his
dramaturges, all not coincidentally female? Can we think of the place of Brecht in theatre history to-
day without also thinking of the radical translations of Brecht as undertaken by theatre figures such
as Augusto Boal, Wole Soyinka, Habib Tanvir or Sa’adallah Wannous? These are well-known legacies,
yet they are largely read in terms of a one-way translation of the history of ideas, from Europe to
the rest of the world, from the original coded as male to the female supplement. The chapter argues
that the task of understanding Brecht might also be read as the task of rescuing Brecht from Euro-
peanness, and even from Brecht the man himself. How then might the European translate itself?

Key Words
translation, Brecht, performance, post-coloniality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

28 29
 GP GP

Trina Nileena Banerjee Avital Barak

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences India Tel Aviv University

Trina Nileena Banerjee b. 19.03.1981 After completing her MA in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Avital Barak is a movement and performance scholar and a PhD candidate at The Porter School of Cultural
Trina Nileena Banerjee proceeded to complete a Masters of Studies M St. in English at the University of Ox- Studies, Tel Aviv University. Her research deals with forms of resistance in public Movement Performances.
ford. For her PhD she worked on a history of women in the group theatre movement in Bengal between 1950 The book The Mountain, The Dome and The Gaze - The Temple Mount in Israeli Visual Culture that was recent-
and 1980. She has also been researching the interfaces between womens protest movements and political ly published by Minerva Humanities Center and Pardes Press, is an outcome of a three years project that dealt
theatre in contemporary Manipur for several years now. Between 2011 and 2013, she taught at the Theatre with images of Temple Mount / Dome of the Rock in Israel/Palestine visual culture. This project was collabora-
and Performance Studies Department at the School of Arts and Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University. She tion with Dr. Noa Hazan from the center for Media, Culture and History in New York University and included an
is currently Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her exhibition on the same subject. She is the curator and the head of Thoughts about Gesture research group, at
essays have been published in several edited volumes and national/international journals. She writes in both The Institute for Public Presence, in the Center of Digital Art, Holon. Since 2014, she is the coordinator of Living
Bengali and English. Her research interests include Gender, Performance, Political Theatre, Theories of the Together research group at the Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University.
Body, Postcolonial Theatre and South Asian History. She has also been a theatre and film actress, as well as a
journalist and fiction writer. Moving Sounds at a Migrated space: The Audio-Walk Echoing Yafa
as a Performative Act of Memory
The Migrating Aesthetics of Revolution: “Kallol” and the Design
of History Walking tours have been a common form of action in urban performance since the mid-twenti-
eth-century, especially in view of the activity of avant-garde and new-avant-garde groups of urban
This paper will look at the conversations around the stage design and sets of Utpal Dutt’s plays strolling and drifting. Some of them typically take part in resisting the organizing and disciplined
during the late 1950s and mid 1960s. Most of these conversations, within the left-leaning artistic cir- order of space and create alternative spatial narratives. With the development of technology, au-
cles of Calcutta, concentrated on the ethics and politics of ‘spectacular’ staging in Dutt’s plays from dio-walks have become popular as a sub-genre and offer a multiple-sense experience that enables
the time. Controversies that raged within conservative leftist groups in the city sought to impose a multitude of voices to create the interwoven walk narrative. The essay focuses on the audio-walk
the imperatives of aesthetic austerity on Dutt’s vision of a popular urban revolutionary theatre. The Echoing Yafa, created by artist Miriam Schickler in collaboration with Palestinian artists and social
creation of an underground coal mine in Dutt’s play Angar in 1959 along with the visually stunning activists from Jaffa Yafa, Yafo in 2014. The walk tells the story of the Manshiya neighborhood and
spectacle of its flooding in the climactic scene followed by the overwhelming presence of the ship its Palestinian inhabitants prior to and during the 1948 war which consequently altered national,
Khyber on stage in his revolutionary play Kallol 1965 simultaneously stunned audiences and an- cultural and social space from the former Palestinian to the present Zionist-Jewish one. The walk’s
gered certain critics. Dutt was accused of trying to overwhelm people with formal tricks and sheer soundtrack is a collage of testimonies and sound fragments that revive the silenced voices of the
technical brilliance, and such aesthetic/financial extravagance was seen as somehow antithetical past. The voices, testimonies and sounds create a temporary auditive world for the walkers and the
the notion of an authentic ‘people’s theatre’. This paper will carry forward my earlier work on the participants in the tour – a world, a culture and a language that were erased, and silenced ever since.
alleged aesthetic minimalism of IPTA’s Nabanna 1944 but it will also move beyond these debates to The essay addresses the relation between the senses: between seeing and hearing and space itself,
look at the legacy of leftist thought on aesthetics and theatrical design from which Dutt’s ideas of mediated by the moving body. It contains the claim that if the gaze is the agent of force, hearing and
revolutionary spectacle drew. We will discover complex historical trajectories of migration for these movement are the agents of resistance. In this situation, a sharp dissonance arises between the gaze
political and aesthetic ideas moving between the Soviet Union, Europe and the Indian subcontinent. viewing the pastoral landscape and the sound that brings into one’s awareness the various materi-
This is a journey that will take us back, I believe, to the aesthetic traditions of both Soviet construc- al remains of the neighborhood buried underground, with its ghosts. The act of walking becomes
tivism and socialist realism, but also towards Brecht’s formal experiments with stage design and the an active, dynamic and subversive act of memory. Part of Curated Panel: Performing Migration,
traditions of melodramatic staging of popular theatre within India. Dis-Mobility and Displacement in Israel-Palestine

Key Words Key Words

Scenography, Aesthetics, Left theatre, India, Historiography Audio- Walk, Movement, Resistance, Performance in public space
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

30 31
 GP GP

Helena Bastos Priyanka Basu

University of São Paulo USP The British Library London
Maria Helena Franco de Araujo Bastos - Helena Bastos: Choreographer and dancer. PhD in Communication Dr. Priyanka Basu is the Bengali Cataloguer/Researcher for the AHRC-funded project, ‘Two Centuries of Indian
and Semiotics from PUC / SP. Researcher, Department of Performing Arts at ECA / USP at graduation and was Print’ at the British Library, London. She was awarded with her PhD degree in 2016 from SOAS London (Depart-
elected head of the CAC for two consecutive terms in 2011-2012 and 2013-2014. Develops, by the Program of ment of South Asia). Her doctoral research—‘Bengali Kobigan: Performers, Histories and the Cultural Politics
Graduate Studies in Performing Arts / PPGAC -ECA, the research line titled “Text and Scene”, focused on techni- of “Folk”’—was funded by the Felix Scholarship and involved extensive fieldwork in India and Bangladesh.
cal innovation, artistic and literature of intellectual production in the field of performing arts. Coordinates the Currently, she is working on her monograph based on her doctoral thesis. She has published in international
research group LADCOR Dramaturgy of the artists body, which since its founding in 2006, promotes rehearsals, journals and edited volumes and her most recent publications include articles and book chapters in the Journal
performances, urban interventions and research aimed at creating and making scenic from the discussion of of South Asian History and Culture and The Moving Space: Women in Dance respectively. She has presented
ideas interwoven between body, city and his affections. in international conferences including IFTR (2014), ECSAS (2014, 2018), BASAS (2012), WDA (2009, 2012) and
others. Her research interests include Folklore and Performance, Dance Studies, Gender Studies, Book History
The mask as a dramaturgical device in contemporaneity and Performance Historiographies. She occasionally lectures at the South Asia Department in SOAS in courses
including the ‘Politics of Culture in Contemporary South Asia’. She is a trained Odissi dancer and has performed
Nufricar ventures into a choreographic adventure that takes memory as a critical-political device in the UK, India and Japan. In 2016, she was one of the participants at the month-long Summer Dance Resi-
in portraying how we absorb our experiences in the body. We wonder: does everything begin and dency in Nrityagram, India.
end in memory? The word memory comes from the Latin memor-oris, which translates as what
you remember. The poet, novelist and historian Fernando Baez is punctual when he writes and Theatre at War and Beyond: ENSA, Entertainment and World
remembrance comes from re-cordis, which means to return to the heart. Thus the word memory, War II: The Prelude to Geoffrey Kendal’s Shakespeareana as an
etymologically, is a return to the heart. Still Baez, The memory is multiple: as instrument and sig- Itinerant Touring Company in India and the Far East (1930-1980)
nification it is filial asymmetry, resurrection, inheritance, plexus and connection. Nufricar proposes
a dip in the study of the temporalities in dance brought by memory. In this clipping we ask three ‘In company with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker, actors, singers and musicians
questions: What to remember? How to remember? Why remember? From these inquiries, we went forth to the Second World War’, writes Basil Dean who set up the Entertainment National
challenge ourselves in compositional actions of a dance move that break the normalizing shims of Services Association in 1939 along with Leslie Henson for the entertainment of British Troops during
the present. World War II. The role of the ENSA performers was crucial in ‘audience-making’, promoting the
national morale and in giving shape to later itinerant performing troupes like the Shakepeareana.
This paper wishes to explore the nuances of national identity and theatre through war-time en-
tertainment and the legacies that ENSA produced in post-colonial India and the Far East. Theatre
personalities like Geoffrey Kendal, Laurence Olivier and Sir Ralph Richardson joined the ENSA and
performed Shakespearean plays for the army. What was the nature of such performances? Did it
initiate wanderlust in performers who channelized entertainment theatre to pedagogical ones? In
another account of the ENSA, Andy Merriman states; ‘ENSA circled the world- and everywhere on
earth where British troops were stationed, there too was ENSA’. While scholarship on post-colonial
theatre in the erstwhile colonies focusses on indigenous traditions, there is a need to study the
legacies of colonial entertainment as a bridge in theatre histories. It is here that I choose to study
Shakespeareana as a phenomenon that addresses issues of mobility, patronage, language and iden-
tity as theatre travels from princely states, to schools and to local rural venues. Further, the legacies
of Shakespeareana included individual radio artists like Ralph Pixton of Radio Hong Kong fame whom
Shakespeare brought to the East. Focussing on performer autobiographies and other archival mate-
rial, this paper aims to look the theatre performer as an entertainer, educator and worker and how
these roles emerge and change during the War and their aftermaths if one intends to understand
mobility and cultural labour.

Key words
World War II, ENSA, Shakespeareana, Geoffrey Kendal, entertainment, theatre histories
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

32 33
 GP GP

Una Bauer Daphna Ben-Shaul

Academy of Drama Art, University of Zagreb Tel Aviv University

Una Bauer is a theatre scholar and writer based in Croatia. She holds a PhD from Queen Mary, University Dr. Daphna Ben-Shaul is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of the Theatre Arts, Tel Aviv University. Her re-
of London. Her research interests include dance, physical theatre and experimental performative practices, search deals with reflexive performance, performative voiding, analysis of contemporary theatre and perfor-
history of ideas, theories of affect, networked publics, public sphere, travel writing, community, death studies mance groups, and spatial practices. Her research on contemporary Israeli site-specific performance is funded
and crime fiction. She is assistant professor at the Academy of Dramatic Art Zagreb. She writes theatre and by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation.
dance reviews, analysis, travelogues and essays, which have been published and radio broadcasted in Croatia,
Slovenia, Romania, Italy, Canada and UK. Her first book on theatre and everything else, including tea cosies and Harnessed to Performance: Will-Powering Movement and Migrated
bicycles, Priđite bliže: o kazalištu i drugim radostima Come Closer: on Theatre and other Joys was published
in 2015.
Memory in The Walk
[Curated Panel: Performing Migration, Dis-Mobility and Displacement in Israel-Palestine] The Walk, a
Transparency in BADco.’s production “The Stranger” work created in 2017 by Palestinian artist Rabi’a Salfiti, is performed by twelve people harnessed to
each other with ropes, walking for three hours along the seaside promenade from Jaffa to Tel Aviv and
This paper will focus on a BADco. production of Camus’ L’Étranger from 2015. BADco. is probably the back. Most of the participants are blindfolded, while the seeing artist leads the procession together
best known Croatian performing arts company on the international arts circuit. Their focus is on the with sight-enabled cooperators. The work was performed at the Foothold festival that took place in
investigation of the protocols of performing and on the problematization of communication struc- Israel – in Tel Aviv and the ‘mixed’ Arab-Jewish cities of Jaffa and Lod Lydda, in cooperation with the
tures in performances. According to Croatian law, they were not allowed to give their legal company international project B-_Tour begun in Berlin in 2013 and defined as a “nomadic curatorial platform”.
an English name, so they transformed the name BADco. into an acronym of Bezimeno Autorsko On one level, the performance will be discussed as a radical paradigmatic double-bind of force and
Društvo Nameless Author’s Society. Their name is indicative of numerous paradoxes that their work movement. The restraints placed on the body by its apparatus shape the will in their image and on the
produces and is drawn to. In The Stranger 2015, BADco. probes the demand even injunction for contrary – the exertion of force is possible because of the aesthetic dimension and the motivation to
transparency: the one who, as the Other, is expected to endlessly explain herself, state who she is and yield to the performance. This duality, hereby named will-powering, is a social experiment which bonds
what her intentions are, elaborate on her affects, legitimize herself emotionally, in order to reveal each of its subjects to systemic interpellation. This is also an embodied metaphor of the connection
what is hidden, what is unknown, what makes her the Other, so that she would become less of the between the heightened freedom of movement of the liberal subject, and the heightened need for
Other. This injunction is intrinsically linked to the issue of migration and the pressure towards trans- regimenting movement and migration. On another level, the site-specific performance trajectory
parency in search for protection. Yet the attempts at extreme transparency produce further mythol- activates the double-bind of negating belonging while evoking migrated memory, whose immediate
ogization and opaqueness, further lack of clarification, further need for questioning, explaining and reference lies under the feet – the erased Palestinian neighborhood of Manshiya, which following
revealing. My paper will look into various dramaturgical and choreographic strategies that BADco. the 1948 war was Judaized, evacuated and turned into a park. The blocked blinded movement – an
has employed in The Outsider in order to play with the logic of what can be forcefully seen and what image of immigrants caged in a loop, a procession of refugees or of prisoners of war – is the sign
refuses visibility, which is deeply connected with the very logic of theatre machine, with processes of an established oblivion. However, and without direct contextualization, the march of the twelve
of watching, perceiving, observing, understanding and a futility of attempts at absolute revelation. ‘apostles’ is literally tied to the evocation of spaces of belonging beyond that which meets the eye.
Key Words Key Words
transparency, BADco., opaqueness, The Stranger performative walk site-specific will-powering movement Palestinian migrated memory
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

34 35
 GP GP

Diana Benea Henry Bial

University of Bucharest University of Kansas
Diana Benea is Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Bucharest, Romania, where she teaches Professor at the University of Kansas. Author: Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage University of
courses in 20th and 21st century American literature, including a course in contemporary American drama and Michigan, 2015 Acting Jewish University of Michigan, 2005. Editor: The Performance Studies Reader Rout-
social change. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Award at the City University of New York, Martin E. ledge, 2004, 2nd ed 2007, 3rd ed 2016. Co-Editor: Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions University of
Segal Theatre Center, with a research project entitled The Politics and Aesthetics of Contemporary American Michigan, 2010. Past-President, Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
Community-Based Theater (September 2017-June 2018). She has recently published articles on the works of
Ayad Akhtar and Ping Chong and Company, and presented conference papers on Cornerstone Theater Com-
pany, Tectonic Theater Project, and Rimini Protokoll. She is currently working on a monograph devoted to The Gatekeepers: New York Theatre Critics and the Reception of
community-based theater projects. European Theatre on the American Stage, 1920-1940

“No more living in the shadows”: Performing Undocumentedness This paper considers the period from 1920 to 1940, during which European drama enjoyed a level of
in Recent U.S. Documentary Theater critical and commercial acceptance in the United States unequaled before or since, and details the
ways that New York’s theatre critics facilitated and shaped American audiences’ reception of Europe-
In recent decades, documentary theater has reinforced its relevance as a space for critical reflec- an productions. In these years, newspaper critics, including but not limited to Brooks Atkinson of the
tion addressing some of the urgent concerns of our times – in particular, the condition of individ- New York Times, John Mason Brown of the Evening Post, and Richard Watts, Jr. of the Herald Tribune,
uals and communities experiencing various forms of socio-political and cultural marginalization. played an outsize role in determining what plays and productions enjoyed success in New York, and
One of the hot button issues that have been centered in recent U.S. docudramas is the status of the economics of the industry dictated that shows which failed in New York were unlikely to be
young undocumented immigrants, particularly in the current climate of anxiety surrounding federal toured or produced elsewhere, and unlikely to be published in the US. This means that, in a very
immigration laws and the future of the DACA program. My paper discusses several recent theater real sense, theatre critics in New York determined which European plays theatregoers in the rest of
projects highlighting the experiences of these immigrants, such as Motus Theatre’s Do You Know the United States had the opportunity to experience. Through analysis of the critical responses to
Who I Am? (2013 -), Ping Chong and Company’s Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018), plays such as Karel Čapek’s R.U.R., Ferenc Molnár’s Lilliom, and André Obey’s Noah, I will show how
and En Garde Arts’ Undocumented (2018, currently in development), among others. Scripted from the New York newspapers generated a kind of narrative in which European theatre was hailed for
interviews with undocumented youth of diverse backgrounds and, in some cases, performed by aesthetic innovations that critics hoped would have a revitalizing influence on the American stage.
the interviewees themselves, these productions give richly textured accounts of lives led in the Yet this celebration of European aesthetics coexisted uneasily with critics’ reluctance to endorse the
shadows and under the specter of deportation, thus departing from the oftentimes reductive and politics of those same plays and playwrights. This results in a curious and, I argue, peculiarly Ameri-
problematic media narrative which associates documentation status with criminality. Firstly, my can critical tradition in which poetics and politics are unnaturally separated. This in turn accounts for
paper examines the ways in which such productions rethink the notions of citizenship, belonging, why many European plays of this era were and are understood differently in the US than they are in
and “home” through the lens of undocumentedness, in their effort to serve as platforms of visibil- Europe.
ity, empowerment, and community building for this group. Secondly, I analyze the ways in which
this social justice agenda shapes the processes of play development and production, with a special Key Words
focus on the role of the documentary format (in all its variations) as a productive vehicle for such theatre history, criticism, European drama, New York, Capek, Molnar, Obey
explorations.

Key Words:
undocumented immigrants, citizenship, social justice, documentary theater.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

36 37
 GP GP

Debanjali Biswas Dieneke Bittermann

Kings College London
With my artistic view, clear vision, solid professional knowledge, organizational and analytical skills, I am a
Debanjali Biswas is presently pursuing her doctoral studies at India Institute, King’s College, London. As a professional with a wide range of possibilities. I think outside the box, I am social, and I have strong commu-
Commonwealth and a Felix scholar, she has previously read theatre and performance studies from  School of nication skills. I also have a strong commitment to inclusion, and my positive attitude in life is my motivator. I
Arts and Aesthetics, JNU and social anthropology at School of Oriental and African Studies. A skilled dancer in can contribute valuable input to the existing organizational dynamic. Where a fresh approach to an on-going
Manipuri and a choreographer, she has scholarly interests in anthropology of dance, anthropology of violence processes is needed, or a new boost should be given, I am the right person. I am capable of working concepts
and everyday lives, photo-ethnography and south Asia. and refreshing existing and new projects. Based on thorough analysis, I work methodically. I am an academic
who is practically active in the theatre field as coach, consultant and moderator
In the name of the dancing deer: Performing the State in Manipur
Disabled body in perspective
This paper discusses how a cultural festival – the Sangai – provides an interface between the local
communities, visitors and the state of Manipur in India. The Sangai – named after a critically endan- The way in which we talk about, we look at and we make use of images is expressed within a mech-
gered deer found only in Manipur, stands for the framework of patronage, governance and tourism anism of normalcy: a discourse, as defined by Foucault 1972. By a system of exclusion there is a
via which the the local arts are viewed. Currently a state-funded festival, here vernacular identities distinction made between right and wrong. In terms of the body this distinction is indicated with the
are articulated through performing arts, craft and indigenous sports. Traditional dances become an disabled and the abled body within the academic discipline disability studies. According to Thomas
enterprise to bolster tourism which ensure a steady influx of visitors on one hand and strive to bring Mitchell theatre can function as an alternative reality a heterotopia in which the mechanisms of con-
in economic opportunities to the cultural industries on the other. Drawn out of everyday practices as trol concerning the concept of normality can be decomposed by using codes, images and language.
well as rituals, the small communities and tribals reiterate their vernacular identities in the festival The question that is researched within this thesis is to what extent the performance Limitless can
as the State attempts to administer diverse cultural policies at the level of governance. This paper change the perception of the body. The theoretical framework of this thesis defines the form and
analyses the Sangai Festival as a celebration of citizenry, ethnicity, heritage and as a political ritual meaning of normalcy. Then by this theoretical framework the performance is analysed. Within the
as the state of Manipur is performed.  In addition, the paper narrates how the festival hide the po- performance the mechanism of normalization is not disturbed. Instead, the concept of normalcy is
litical and cultural anxieties created by the State itself, thus giving birth to a ‘culture of silence’ along investigated and illustrated in form and meaning through the bodies of the dancers. The dancers
with ‘celebration of indigenous cultures’ within the Indian northeast. This paper is an ethnographic explore the conditions of an included identity, instead of investigating the concept of an exclud-
narrative that questions how the paradigm of diversity/unity in the state, as performed in the Sangai ed construction, as they appear to be in normalized reality. The mechanism of normalcy remains
Festival, might be both homogenizing and divisive, producing its own other”. the same during the performance, but the conditions required to achieve the intended form and
meaning are reconsidered. Instead of aiming for the ideal representation of the ‘undeviating’ truth
Key Words in which normalcy is reflected, the dancers look for alternative truths and expose them during the
festival tourism vernacular identity othering India performance. The concept of normalcy stays the same, but the conditions to achieve the concept are
changed within the performance. The mechanism of normalcy is expanded.

Key Words
Discourse, Disabled, Non-disabled, Normalcy, Diversity, Hetrotopia
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

38 39
 GP GP

Tove Bjoerk Brigitte Bogar

Saitama University York University

Tove BJOERK is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Saitama Brigitte Bogar recent stage appearances include Lenora in Beethoven’s Fidelio for Oshawa Opera, Agathe in
University. She earned a doctorate in Japanese literature from St Paul’s Rikkyō University, with research focus- Der Freischutz, Elektra in Mozart’s Idomeneo, and Getrune in Wagner’s Götterdammerung for Opera by Re-
ing on the diary of the Edo Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō II and the development of the early modern enter- quest. She has also sung the part of Romeo in Bellini’s I Capuletti e i Montecchi for the Toronto Summer Op-
tainment industry. She has, amongst other things, previously presented “The Edo Audience – a Study of Early era Lyric Theatre, and, as well as presenting music composed by Bernard Shaw and his mother at the Lincoln
Modern Japanese Theatregoers” and “The Literacy of an Early Modern Kabuki Actor – Browsing the Library of Centre in New York. Currently a PhD candidate in the Music Program at York University, Brigitte also organizes
Ichikawa Danjūrō II” at the IFTR. Among her publications are ”Ni daime Danjūrō to Edo no kaichō kōgyō - Fudō conferences for MAPACA in the USA. An elected member of the Toronto Rotary Club, she conducts the Toronto
myōō wo chūshin ni”, in Taishū bunka Popular Cullture, No. 9, 2013 and ”The Economic Structure of Edo Kabuki Swedish Singers. She founded Nordic Opera Canada and has directed and performed in August Enna’s Little
Theatres – Ichikawa Danjûrô II as a Kyôhô Period Manager” in Japonica Humboldtiana Vol 16, 2013. Matchgirl, and The Princess and the Pea. Upcoming operatic performances include Senta in Der fliegende
Hollander, and a soloist in Schutz’ Johannespassionen. She has performed/presented at invited public lec-
When the Gods come to Town – Enacting Rural Deities on the Early tures/concerts in the USA, UK, Canada, Sweden and Denmark, as well as at various international conferences,
including three consecutive Plenaries for the Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore, and a Keynote
Modern Kabuki Stage at the NEMLA conference in Toronto. Brigitte has also sung a CD on Shaw’s Music, produced together with
Christopher Innes.
This paper will discuss how and why rural deities were enacted on the urban kabuki stage. Since
ancient times, Japanese religious institutions have incorporated elements of performing arts in their
rituals with the double purpose of explaining the potency of their deity and attract followers. During
Come from Away - perception and national identity
the medieval era, due to the persistent warfare, the religious institutions could rely less on the sup- The award winning the musical Come From Away CFA opened on Broadway in 2017. It is set in the
port of the imperial court or the patronage of particular warlords, and thus came to conduct so- small Newfoundland town Gander with a population of 11.000 people. The story deals with how the
called ‘kanjin’ subscription events for funding. The ‘kanjin’ events showed the holy votive images to locals all of a sudden have to reacted to the closing of US airspace and the emergency landing of
the public for a fee, but artistic performers were also employed to attract a larger audience. Further, almost 7000 people on September 11, 2001. The show firstly developed in Canada, then in the US,
distant rural temples started to send their treasures to the urban centers and conduct their ‘kanjin’ received positive critical and popular reviews. Although reported about in the US in 2001, and in
events there. During the early 17th century, when the first permanent kabuki theatres established Canada in 2002, the story was not part of popular memory regarding 9/11. The critics’ responses to
themselves in Kyoto, legends surrounding these deities became fodder for the stage. This was both CFA accentuated this shift, suggesting that CFA diverts from a narrative of trauma, aided by its taking
economically beneficial for the temples, because it promoted their deities in the urban centers, and place outside of the US. The NYC critics in particular were struggling with the focus being taken away
for the theatres, because it attracted rural pilgrims to the theatres. The most famous case of kabuki from the NYC experience and NYC-based descriptions of 9/11 and definitions of first responders. As a
successfully promoting a rural deity is the Ichikawa Danjūrō acting house’s promotion of the Acala memory text, however, CFA creates emotional connections between 9/11 and contemporary North
deity of the Narita Shinshō-ji temple. However, the Danjūrō family did not exclusively promote only American socio-political issues such as immigration and hospitality. By being set in Canada and deal-
the Narita Acala. In this presentation, I will first look at how the Danjūrō family established its re- ing with the sudden appearance invasion of 7000 people CFA challenges broad frameworks used
lationship to the Narita Shinshō-ji temple in the late 17th century. Secondly, I will, by analyzing the to describe 9/11 in the US. This paper examines how CFA, press coverage and criticism of the show
diary of Danjūrō II from 1735, concretely show how also the Ichigatsu-ji and the Jōkoku-ji temple memorialize and remember the events of 9/11, and how nationality and national identity affects the
sought Danjūrō II’s cooperation, and discuss how the promotion of these rural institutions on the perception of an event in this case 9/11.
Kabuki stage created a unified social awareness between the urban center and the rural periphery.
Key Words
Key Words National Identity, Musical Theatre, Politics, Music
Kabuki, early modern theatre, religion
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

40 41
 GP GP

Paola Botham Sara Brady

Birmingham City University UK City University of New York /Theatre Drama Review

Dr Paola Botham is Lecturer in Drama at Birmingham City University, UK. She has published several journal ar- Sara Brady is Associate Professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. She is Man-
ticles and book chapters on modern and contemporary political theatre, both in Britain and Chile her country aging Editor of TDR: The Drama Review and co-editor with Lindsey Mantoan of Performance in a Militarized
of origin, including The Twenty-First Century History Play, in Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now, Culture Routledge, 2018. She is the author of Performance, Politics, and the War on Terror: Whatever It Takes
edited by Siân Adiseshiah and Louise LePage Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 and Caryl Churchill, in Modern British Palgrave, 2012.
Playwriting: The 1970s, edited by Chris Megson Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2012. She is currently working
on a monograph for Bloomsbury, titled Political Theatre Reconstructed, and co-editing a new collection of March On: Movement and Stasis in the Performance of Politics
essays by the Political Performances Working Group at IFTR.
This paper considers two meanings of the word ‘movement’: first, the political movement and sec-
Beyond the “Affective Turn”? Post Avant-Garde Political Theatre ond, the movement of a performance. The first aims for social change efficacy perhaps social justice,
and maybe revolution. The second captivates—or distracts—it’s the visual cue that catches the eye,
Rationality has been a longstanding source of suspicion in theatre studies, which is not surprising the scene, the scenario that arouses emotion. The first type of movement is the one that we either
given the discipline’s focus on embodied forms of presentation and representation. In the last de- want to be part of, to participate in, to march with, or to evade, ignore, avoid, dismiss. The second
cade, the ascendancy of the ‘affective turn’ in arts and humanities has placed even greater emphasis is the show that we stop to watch—the movement that makes passive spectators of us all. To think
on the emotional dimension of the theatrical event. At the same time, discourses on political the- through these two types of movement I engage chosen sites of performance including contemporary
atre in particular seem to be inflected by a neo-Adornian slant, where considerations about content U.S. political movements on the right e.g., the so called alt-right and on the left e.g., the anti-Trump
are abandoned in favour of form as the only bearer of any radical promise. Counterbalancing both movement as well as specific examples of performances of politics e.g., Trump’s tweets Oprah’s 2018
these trends and as a response to the conference subtopic ‘Affect and Efficacy’, this paper proposes Golden Globes speech. My analysis looks not only at how these two conceptions of movement differ
a reconsideration of the Habermasian concept of ‘post avant-garde art’ as a productive formula to it also seeks to articulate the points of contact between the two. When do we move with a political
understand contemporary political theatre in a more comprehensive manner. In his essay ‘Philoso- movement by standing in place? When do we dig in our heels lest we are swept up in the “rising
phy as a Stand-In and Interpreter’, Habermas discusses the possibility art offers for an interrelation tide” marching past? When do we catch ourselves watching the trainwreck of political theatre—the
between the cognitive, moral and expressive domains of experience after the modernist revolution. theatre that is 21st-century U.S. and global politics—and when do we step out of that space of
More specifically, he claims that “in realistic and politically committed art, elements of the cognitive distraction to parse the truth from fiction and lies? When do we decide to watch and listen to the
and the moral-practical come into play once again, but at the level of the wealth of forms unloosed political movement that we don’t agree with? Is that when we are woke?
by the avant-garde” 18. I will use this insight to analyse illustrative examples of contemporary British
plays, from different genres, where the interface between form and content, as well as emotion and Key Words
reason, is vital to assess their political potential on stage and beyond. performance studies performance of politics
Key Words
Rationality, affect, post avant-garde, contemporary political theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

42 43
 GP GP

Tessa Buddle Rebecca Caines

University of Glasgow University of Regina

Tessa Buddle is a theatre practitioner-researcher undertaking an Arts and Humanities Research Council PhD Rebecca Caines is an Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Programs in the Faculty of Media, Art, and Per-
studentship at the University of Glasgow. Her practice-as-research is carried out as part of her work with The formance. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of New South Wales. Her research
Suitcase Ensemble, a theatre company she co-founded with Andy Gledhill in 2008.   Tessa’s PhD research con- examines socially-engaged theatre and performance and creative technologies, with a focus on critical studies
tinues the exploration of utopia in her professional collaborative devising practice, and follows her MA in Con- in improvisation. She is director of the Regina Improvisation Studies Centre, which is one of five sites of the2.5
temporary Arts Manchester Metropolitan University which was a practice-as-research project titled ‘Yuletide million dollar Canada based research network, the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. 
Paradise: A Contingent Dramaturgy of Utopia’.  Tessa has a BA in Theatre Studies from Lancaster University, She has developed large-scale, interdisciplinary, socially-engaged performance projects in Australia, Canada,
and trained as a performer on Hope Street Limited’s Apprenticeship programme. Tessa is an associate artist Northern Ireland, the Netherlands and China Her. most Canada Council for the Arts funded project partners
with The Lantern Company and Fool Size Theatre, and works as a freelance performer, director, dramaturg and with community agencies and families in the Yukon, Canada Belfast, Northern Ireland and the Sunshine Coast,
project coordinator. Australia to examine theatre and music improvisation as support, training and advocacy for/with individuals
with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and their families.
Utopia on Tour: The Suitcase Ensembles Travelling Show
Fragile Devices: Migrating Across and Between Through
Utopia on Tour is a practice-as-research project exploring intersections of dramaturgy and utopia in Improvisation
collaboratively devised touring theatre. Initially conceived as ‘a search for utopia’, the project inves-
tigates a form of collaborative theatre that travels and creates stories with the people and places it This paper examines new approaches to theatrical improvisation, with a focus on recent internation-
encounters.  Through the development of a new performance titled Travelling Show, the research al socially-engaged theatre projects. Defining improvisation as the artistic embodiment of the prin-
has revealed a collaborative process that constitutes a mediation with the unknown other, and a dra- ciples of risk, collaboration, offers, real-time decision making, and the reconfiguration of mistake,
maturgical structure in which the world of the performance is continually born again, inviting both the author argues that improvising artists and facilitators are finding new ways to migrate across
performers and audience to infiltrate its provisional processes of construction and critique. These disciplines and identities, and between competing artistic and social imperatives. Caines’ draws on
experiments suggest that rather than searching for utopia, this practice aims to open a space of con- a combination of core literature on improvisation in rehearsal, performance and pedagogy, from
tingency where utopia becomes more possible.  In this paper, I will address a key question plaguing theatre, dance and performance studies Spolin, Sills and Close Johnstone Bharucha Boal Paxton 
this research, which is: how does this opening of contingency operate in motion? The company of Foster Halprin  Rosenthal Etchells Gomez-Pena, and contemporary perspectives from the emerg-
travelling actors evokes an image of freedom from constraints and conventions, traversing borders, ing interdisciplinary field of Critical Studies in Improvisation Heble, Fischlin and Lipsitz Waterman
communicating across cultures, expressing a universal borderless utopia. And yet, under the scrutiny and Siddall. She will utilize research from her recent book to frame an interdisciplinary approach to
of a research inquiry, this supposedly utopian space appears empty, and the migratory character of improvisation research Caines and Heble, Routeldge, 2015. Her presentation will include examples
the practice has proven to be the most elusive.  While Travelling Show does physically move from from a series of socially-engaged, multimedia theatre projects she has been facilitating in partner-
place to place, utopia perhaps emerges in the virtual encounters produced between audiences in ship with communities in Australia, Northern Ireland, Canada and China, where improvisation has
different places. Sharing a selection of documentation from Travelling Show’s first touring experi- been shown to be a vibrant “fragile device” for migration across and between conflicting imperatives
ment, I will ask whether this journey is less about the migration of people, and more about how in social practice theatre, including artistic innovation, post -structured community building, and the
theatre practice can enable the migration of generosity, imagination and hope. The utopian travels critical engagement with difference.
of the strolling players are here secondary to the flow of dreams and desires released in Travelling
Show’s space of contingency. Key Words
improvisation social practice socially-engaged interdisciplinary community
Key Words
dramaturgy, touring, utopia, contingency
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

44 45
 GP GP

Angela Campbell Roberta Carpani

Federation University Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan
Angela’s teaching, research and published work in theatre and performance has been both practical and the- Roberta Carpani is Associate Professor of Performing Arts at Catholic University of Sacred Heart in  Milan. Her
oretical. She has investigated performance from the archives, site-specific theatre, the politics and poetics of research interests span the theatre  and festivities in Lombardy during the Spanish and Austrian period and 
place, Indigenous theatre, and practice led research. Her research interests have developed from 15 years theatre performance during 20th- and 21 th centuries. Her publications include Drammaturgia del comico.
of experience as a freelance actor and theatre creator in a range of industry environments from mainstream I libretti per musica di Carlo Maria Maggi nei theatri di Lombardia,  Milan 1998, and Scritture in festa. Studi
theatre, film and TV to independent production. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, sul teatro tra Seicento e Settecento, Pisa – Rome 2008. She co-edited La cultura della rappresentazione nella
teaching undergraduate and post graduate students at Federation University in Australia. Milano del Settecento. Discontinuità e permanenze, Rome 2010, with Danilo Zardin and Annamaria Cascetta.
She has participated in numerous conferences internationally and in Italy Venice, Fondazione Levi  Venice, Ac-
Big Walk to Golden Mountain cademia di Belle Arti Milan, Accademia Ambrosiana Milan, Teatro alla Scala  Milan, Archivio Storico Diocesano
Rome, Academia Belgica Mantova, Fondazione “Umberto Artioli” University of Reading, UK Queluz, Lisboa,
Walking has emerged as a significant performative practice in the 21st century (Solnit, 2001, Wrights Coloquio Internacional  South Bend, US, University of Notre Dame . She has been invited to lecture and teach
in Paris Institut National pour l’Histoire de l’Art, INHA Université Paris – Vincennes , in New York Italian Cultural
and Sites, 2006, Hancox, 2012). The walking artist maps, step by step, stories and sensations of
Institute of  New York , in Milan for ECREA, European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School
their journey claiming quiet but radical access to sites and destinations of the everyday and of the 2016  and  2017, in Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla.
extra-ordinary. Through embodied performance and in real time, their actions reclaim and re-nego-
tiate places and spaces to link people, geographies, histories, economies, even life and death, across
Italian Migration during 20th century on stage:  Italian narrative
a range of landscapes and countries.
It has been 160 years since the Victorian Parliament in Australia restricted the passage of Guangdong theatre as an instrument for shaping consciences
migrant workers from Southern China, requiring them to pay a 10 pound Poll Tax to disembark in
The paper aims to explore how narrative theatre in Italy has represented the Italian migratory phe-
Victorian ports. To avoid this, thousands of gold seekers from China were set down in Robe, South
nomenon. Over the past three decades, between the twentieth and twenty- first centuries, in Italy
Australia to walk 480 km across Australian bush, semi-arid desert and farmland to the Central Vic-
the narrative monologue emerged as an independent theatrical genre, which roots are based in the
torian Goldfields. Big Walk to Golden Mountain, a curated collection of performance and visual art
long tradition of Italian actor- writers such as Eduardo de Filippo and Dario Fo. The actor storytellers,
works, programmed in the inaugural Asia TOPA Festival (Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts) in
in particular Laura Curino and Mario Perrotta, have interpreted narratives monologues for solo voice
Melbourne in 2017, captures a range of artistic and community responses to this shared heritage
about different migration stories: italian migration towards the US and Belgium.
between China and Australia. This paper assesses attempts of participating performers and artists to
filter their own experiences of migration, tracking feelings of ‘estrangement’ within a new landscape
Key Words
and an emerging sense of ‘strange belonging’ through their work. Importantly, the paper considers
european migration narrative theatre monologue italian contemporary theatre
how these artists place themselves within Indigenous country, that since white settlement has been
transformed by numerous and reiterated migratory pathways.
As colonialism gives way to globalisation, Big Walk to Golden Mountain investigates a deep history
of cultural and economic exchange between Australia and China as it works within Asia TOPA’s brief
to engage and new and diverse audiences, to reflect Melbourne’s changing population, emerging
demographics and shifting global perspectives.

Key Words
Walking practice, Live Art, migratory pathways, performing landscape
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

46 47
 GP GP

Zahava Caspi Mary Caulfield

Ben Gurion University State University of New York at Farmingdale State College
Prof. in Hebrew Literature Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Area of specialization: Modern Mary P. Caulfield is Assistant Professor of English and Drama at SUNY, Farmingdale State College. Her research
Hebrew literature and Israeli theater in both socio-political and theoretical perspectives. Books in Hebrew: combines the political and the performative specifically with regards to contested figures in Ireland’s past.
Those Who Sit in the Dark: The Dramatic World of Hanoch Levin: Subject, Author, Audience 2005, Translated Mary has published extensively on these topics. Her most recent publications include two edited collections
to Polish by Warsaw University 2010 Behold, The Days Come: Apocalypse and Ethics in Israeli Theater 2013 ‘Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination’ Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 and The ‘Theatre of
Another View: Israeli Drama Revisited, Co-editor with Gad Kaynar 2013. Articles in English Selection: “Sources Enda Walsh’ Carysfort Press, 2015. Currently, she also serves as Book Reviews Editor for the Americas for ‘The-
of Pleasure in the Theater of Hanoch Levin,” Theatre Research International 2007 “The Apocalyptic Move- atre Research International’.
ment: From Traumatic Experience to Ethical Action”, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2012. Black
Rain: The Apocalyptic Aesthetic and the Spectators Ethical Challenge in Israeli Theater, Substance 2013. Editor Devising a Hyphenated Heritage on the Nineteenth-Century Stages
2005-2013 of Mikan, a Journal of Israeli and Jewish Literature and Culture, published by Heksherim Institute
in Ben-Gurion University. of New York
At the start of the nineteenth century, New York City, a former British stronghold during the Ameri-
Anti-war literature and the concept of the beautiful death
can Revolutionary War, was renegotiating its newly de-colonized identity as it witnessed the arrival
This year, 2018, we will mark 100 years after the ending of World War I. This is a great opportunity of thousands of Irish immigrants that migrated from Ireland’s rural provinces. The image of the West
to reexamine the anti-war literature, which broke out immediately after the war, and observe the Coast Irish peasant—as romanticized and politicized by W.B. Yeats and Augusta Gregory—has now
characteristics of such writings. In 1929, Avigdor Hameiri published the anti-war novel, The Great has traveled farther West to a foreign urban exile suffered for want of work. The rural Irish may have
Madness. It was one of many pacifist books that flooded the literary arena after World War I, the been unaware of its theatrical and political potency in Ireland however, as the Irish in America began
most famous of which is Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, published in the to negotiate their own cultural and political spaces in New York, so too did the dramas of the Irish im-
same year. In 1936, just three years before the outbreak of World War II, Hameiri adapted his novel migrant playwrights that reflected and shaped this process. These plays would serve as the cultural,
for the stage. The play, directed by Y. Daniel, was performed in Israel by the Sadan Theater, although social, and political blueprints for the inherited images and identities of an Irish-American heritage.
the script itself was never published. The fact that the book was part of a global trend has raised two The term heritage has always been and continues to be a complex idea in both cultural and institu-
main questions among the critics: Is The Great Madness an example of a universal western phenom- tional practice. Regardless of the challenge its definition or lack thereof presents, it has mainly come
enon or does it also contain something uniquely Jewish or Israeli? and, did the novel give rise to a to suggest something that is either or both material and inherited—these items are embedded with
tradition of anti-war literature in Hebrew? My talk focusses on the second of these issues. In order cultural, familial or even perhaps political value and are implicit in the practice of both individual and
to answer the question, I will first attempt to define the essential core of anti-war writing, beyond national preservation. A closer look at these formative nineteenth-century texts reveals that these
historical and cultural differences, by means of Lyotard’s concept of the beautiful death. Secondary, plays were less concerned with national preservation and more with individual assimilation. With
I intend to show that the anti-war satires of Hanoch Levin, the most important play writer in Israel, a specific focus on John Brougham’s ‘Irish Yankee, or the Birthday of Freedom’ 1840 and ‘The Irish
written after the Six-Day War, indeed follow in the footsteps of Hameiri. Emigrant 1856’, this paper seeks to locate Irish immigrant and Irish-American anxieties and considers
how the New York stage served as scaffold for this hyphenated heritage’s evolution.
Key Words
World War I, Beautiful Death, Antiwar Literature Key Words
Irish Immigration, Heritage, Performance, New York, Nineteenth-Century Immigrant Drama,
Irish-American
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

48 49
 GP GP

Plessiet Cedric Tithi Chakroborty

Université Paris 8 Budge Budge Institute of Technology

Associate Professor and head of ATI training, specialized in 3D animation video games, and virtual reality, my Tithi  Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities in Budge Budge Institute of
background led me to work in R & D in special effects studios, and in motion capture. Having focused my in- Technology, India. She has done M.Phil from Jadavpur University in India. She has participated in many
tention on the on set preview for the cinema, I am particularly interested today in intelligent interactive virtual national and international conferences on theatre. She has been one of the committee members in the annual
actors and their interaction with real actors for the theater, which brings me to work around multiple fields conference of Indian Society for Theatre Research, 2013. . She aspires to pursue her research on theatrical
like motion capture, rigging, modeling and in particular 3D scan reconstruction, real-time engines and artificial forms of Bengal.
intelligence for video games. I am also developing in parallel a support platform for the creation of interactive
3d device, AKeNe which has been the support for the creation of innovative virtual actors devices for theater The Impact of Globalisation on the Wandering Minstrels of Bengal:
and live shows.
the Bauls
Experiencing avatar direction in theatrical mixed reality setup The “Bauls” are a religious sect found primarily in West Bengal and Bangladesh. Their religious prac-
tices are a concoction of tantrism, Vaishnava Hinduism, and Islam. The Bauls are well known as wan-
Connected with the  project « Masks and Avatars » supported in 2017 and 2018 by french Labex dering minstrels or singers who travel around the region and perform their mystical music for alms.
Arts H2H and universities of Paris 8 and Warwick,  Georges Gagneré, Cédric Plessiet both Paris 8, They travel from one region to another, thus carrying the local culture and colour. Baul is a popular
Andy Lavender and Tim White both Warwick propose a workhop on a framework for mixed reality form of Bengali folk and in Bengal they have attained the status of representing quintessentially
theatrical performance, using gamepad and midi controller, Perception Neuron mocap suits, Axis Bengali folk culture. They are believed to be free-spirited mystics who revel in flouting social and
Neuron software for motion capture, Unreal Engine for rendering, and AkeNe, a specific library for religious conventions. However, this popular Bengali folk art seems to be slowly surrendering itself
avatar direction and autonomy exploration. We first propose a short technical demo. A second part to the clutches of globalisation. Their songs have undergone noticeable modification in composition
will start by practical exercises about avatar direction involving a mocaptor wearing a mocap suit and and tune that has substantially erased the original flavour of the traditional songs. With the onset of
a manipulactor using a gamepad controller. And well experiment basic body movement in a 3D scen- globalisation, Baul-ism has transcended the borders to reach out to the global audience. My paper
ery involving two avatars controlled by two mocaptor/manipulactor tandems. Well finally explore shall attempt to study the effects that globalisation has had on the poetic and musical renditions of
the scenic address issue between 3D and physical stage with a body presence quality perspective these wandering minstrels.
and some creative control combinations. We propose to perform the exercises with volunteers in an
applied research context and well conclude the workshop by a discussion about the feelings of the Key words
performers and spectators, an exchange about improvements, and an introduction by Cédric Plessi- Baul, globalisation, folk, minstrels, travel, Bengal
et to work-in-progress tools for improvising with autonomous virtual actors.  The workshop last
two hours and need one short focal videoprojector, a projection screen or a white wall, and 4mx4m
space in front of the screen for practicing.

Key Words
mixed reality, motion capture, avatar, movement quality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

50 51
 GP GP

Wai Yam Chan Anke Charton

International Association of Theatre Critics Hong Kong University of Vienna

W.Y. CHAN William is a Hong Kong base performing arts critic and media producer. He has been writing reviews Anke Charton is Assistant Professor of Theatre with the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the
and feature articles on modern dance and theatre productions since 1998, which have been published in University of Vienna. She studied at the universities of Leipzig, Bologna and Berkeley and received her PhD
various newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong and Macau.   After getting his B.A.Hon. degree in Language from Leipzig University, with a study on gender representation in opera prima donna, primo uomo, musico.
& Communication from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2001, and MFA degree in Media Design & Leipzig 2012. She has been a Lecturer with Leipzig University and with the College of Music Detmold/Univer-
Technology from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong in 2003. After 10 years of working sity of Paderborn, and previously held a position as Research Associate at the School of Music and Theatre
in the field of cultural, art and education, William has back to school and completed his double MA in Inter- Hamburg. Her work is centered at the intersection of Performance Studies, Musicology and Gender Studies,
national Performance Research at the University of Warwick UK and University of Arts in Belgrade Serbia in pursuing research in Theatre Historiography and Anthropology as well as Voice History and Music Theatre.
2015.   William is also the founding Artistic Director of amateur theatre group “Friends’ Theatre” as well as the Recent publications include papers on migration, agency and queerness, the historicity of gendered vocal
founding President of a creative collective William et al. Creative Lab. He has created more than 20 original aesthetics, and the emerging language of theatre in Early Modern Spain. She is currently writing a book on
productions of studio theatre and multi-media performances. He has also worked with different directors, theatre cultures of the Siglo de Oro.
being a devising physical performer in various productions.
Revolving Doors: Performing nationhood as unstable history
Reviewing the process of “Archive and Oral History Project on
A Catalan university student from the 1880s – a woman – stepping into a fight between Miguel
Hong Kong Drama” Phase 1 and its prospect for Phase 2
de Cervantes and Lope de Vega about who is the more important stage author, scoffing at them
“Archive and Oral History Project on Hong Kong Drama” Phase 1 is a 2.5 years project organized by for their vision of a national canon: an unlikely encounter that occurs in a scene of El ministerio
the International Association of Theatre Critics Hong Kong, which aimed at creating a centralized del tiempo The Ministry of Time, a show whose time travel premise – patrols guarding ‘history’
database about all drama activities happened between 2006 and 2014, as well as presenting oral through a set of doors, at the discretion of the Spanish government – garnered international atten-
history interviews of 46 dramatists who were active in the scene from around 1950s to 1990s. The tion when it premiered in 2015. Its focus on confronting hegemonic narratives of history and nation
result is an online platform for public access: http://www.drama-archive.hk  Previously there were in a fictional format hit a nerve with audiences, although research so far has concentrated on the
hardly any historical studies on Hong Kong drama development, one of the reasons might be due to show’s transmediality and participatory culture Sánchez/Galán 2015, Cascajosa/Molina 2017. The
the lack of history records available. This project could be seen as the first attempt to gather stories series’ approach of staging history and identity as constant interrogations of each other is, however,
in the early stage of the development of professionalism in Hong Kong drama.   The online platform of greater interest from a perspective of postcolonialist theatre historiography. Not only does the
of the project has been officially launched in September 2017, which consists more than 10,000 show question centralist narratives of national identity by largely choosing marginalized figures as
pieces of event data and over 600 audio and video clips of oral history interviews are available on its protagonist lenses, making them ‘migrants in time’, it also addresses supremacist performance
the site, altogether more than 200 hours materials.  With these wonderful and interesting stories of culture and self in reaction to fascism, misogyny and colonialism. A curious position is taken up
collected from the oral history interviews, we are thinking ways to not only present them online for by the Siglo de Oro as a cultural setting: it is repeatedly evoked on EMdT as positive core imagery
people access, but also in different forms to arose interest to a wider public about Hong Kong drama and highlights the theatre of the era, including fictionalized versions of both Cervantes and Lope.
in Phase 2.  During the conference, I would be pleased to share what we have achieved in Phase 1 of The paper discusses Early Modern Spanish theatre practices and their retrospective canonization as
this project, and might be some fascinating stories from dramatists migrated from Mainland China a site of nation-building, taking into account the tensions between regional and itinerant practices
as well. In addition, I would also like to discuss with the panel about how we could re-present these and urban centralism. In this vein, it draws from EMdT’s particular conceptualization of history as
records in different forms, like exhibition, art piece and verbatim theatre performance. an ultimately fractured, embodied practice. Could migration then be read not just as a geographical,
but also a temporal motion, in trying to question a performance of nation as history?
Key Words:
Archive, Oral History, Hong Kong, Online Database Key Words
Theatre Historiography, Performance of Nationhood, Siglo de Oro, Early Modern Theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

52 53
 GP GP

Priyanka Chatterjee Ravi Chaturvedi

Budge Budge Institute of Technology Indian Society for Theatre Research
Priyanka Chatterjee has done M.A. and M.Phil in English from University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India. Her M.Phil Ravi Chaturvedi is senior professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Manipal University,
topic was Malefriendship in the plays of Samuel Beckett: a study of Waiting for Godot and Endgame. She is Jaipur and founder head of the Department of Culture and Media Studies at Central University of Rajasthan;
working on a research project for the Doctorate programme. Her topic is Beckett between Cultures: reception Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University; and the Department
of Samuel Beckett in the theatres of India. She was the Convener of Indian Society for Theatre Research’s of Dramatics at the University of Rajasthan. He is founder president of Indian Society for Theater research.
(ISTR) IXth Annual International Conference in 2013. She was the Research Assistant of University Grants There are several publications to his credit, including World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theater (ed), Eth-
Commission’s (UGC) project Ibsen, Chekov and Brecht in Bengal: Negotiating Differences in University of nicity and Identity, Theater and Democracy, Contemporary Indian Theatre, etc. He was member of the editorial
Calcutta. She has presented research papers at University of Oxford, UK, University of Gdansk, Poland, Osaka, board of TRI for more than 10 years.
University of Reading, UK, University of Lapland, Finland University of Warwick, UK, Stockholm University,
Sweden and so on. She is one of the Board members of Jura Soyfer Society, Vienna (Austria). Currently, Indian Theatre and Migration: A Panoramic View - Case of King Lear
she is the Dean, MBA and Head of the Department of Humanities at Budge Budge Institute of Technology
(BBIT), Kolkata. She is one of the Managing Committee members of BBIT Public School, Kolkata. She is the in Migration
Joint Secretary of Indian Society for Theatre Research, India. She is one of the Faculty members of Central
Detective Training Institute, Kolkata which is under Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. She has Migration of various disciplines within and outside is an inherent phenomenon of Indian theatre and
many national and international publications. performing arts. With the coming of western influence during the colonial as well as postcolonial
periods, the character of modern Indian theatre has metamorphosed, and this is often reflected
Transcending form of Jatra: an Evolution in the realistic theatre of the country. The larger sections of the Indian theatre scene belong to
the experimental theatre, which derives its energy and motivation from the classical and folk/tribal
The Folk Theatre in Bengal (a State of India) which is known as Jatra has an  impact on the socio-eco- theatre, and is basically an interdisciplinary theatre or theatre of migration in other words. Music,
nomical scenario of the State. Having its history since the 15th Century AD Jatra carries the long dance, acrobatic movements, gesticulation of emotions are the integral aspects of such theatre. The
cultural heritage of Bengal. It is interesting to note that, for the Urban audience, this folk idea of artistic crossovers in the performing arts does not solely refer to exchanges between artistic
form is no less than an extended circus due to lack of promotion or out of sheer ignorance. disciplines. Art itself, as a whole, can be seen as a discipline in an interdisciplinary relationship with
But for the rural audience, this folk theatre has given them the only form of entertainment. At times other fields, such as education or the social sciences (anthropology, politics, sociology and so on)
it acts as the messenger of the society in the remotest part of Bengal. The loud stage-direction in and the pure and applied sciences. We also see a lot of negotiations between art and questions that
respect of light and music along with loud acting always leave the audience with awe and wonder. are already interdisciplinary, such as feminism; spirituality; the environment; and political issues
However, the semiotics generating from this folk art as represented without is revolutionary most of gender, race, class, sexual orientation; etc. which are reflected in migrating boundaries not only
of the times. The migratory element of this performing art is adapting to the recent trends of the across the national borders but within the regional borders of the country.
society for its existence. My paper shall seek the importance of Jatra in unveiling the various facets The proposed paper is an effort to present a varied panoramic view of migrating theater in one way
of Bengal in the last two decades. The performances amidst reality shall be the primary concern in or the other. There is specific focus on the production of King Lear, which was adapted in the feudal
my paper. environment of Rajasthan, a ruling state in western Indian with all its colors, music and custom, later
translated in Korean, staged by Korean actors maintaining the originality of the adaptation, and then
Key Words: again in different parts of India, swallowing the local traditions.
Folk Theatre, Jatra, Migratory, Bengal, Semiotics

Key words:
experimental theatre, folk/tribal theatre, artistic disciplines, migrating boundaries
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

54 55
 GP GP

Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri Andreea Chirita

Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam, India University of Bucharest
Currently Professor at the Department of English, Gauhati University my broad areas of interest are postco- Lecturer University of Bucharest, Oriental Studies Department, teaching Chinese Yuan drama, classical and
lonial theatres and intercultural performance. Among my publications are Mahesh Dattani, New Delhi: Cam- contemporary Chinese Literature, research interest: contemporary Chinese avant-garde theatre, 2016-2017
bridge University Press Foundation Books, 2005 and Ideas of the Stage: Selections from Drama Theory, Ghy: New Europe College fellow, project title: Experimenting with realism in contemporary Chinese Theatre.
GUPD, 2010. Besides, I have a number of articles in various scholarly journals and books. My Ph.D. was on
the American dramatist, Edward Albee. Awarded the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Constructing and destroying boundaries in a Chinese transcultural
Award for the year 2015-16, I worked on a research cum lecture project called Theaters, Spectacles, Audienc-
es: Indian and American Cultures of Viewership, at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, New York. I present- performance of Kafka’s “The Great Wall”
ed as part of a panel with Professor Marvin Carlson and Professor Xiaomei Chen at the Stockholm Conference
of the IFTR, 2016. In September 2016, I curated the first Guwahati Theatre Festival and brought to Guwahati In 2017 The Paper Tiger Theatre, an independent performance studio from Beijing, displayed on the
some of the most well known theatre groups of India. Along with academia, I also do research and scripts for Hamburg and Shanghai stage a unique interpretation of Kafka’s short story ‘The The Great Wall of
television documentaries and films. China’, named ‘500 Meters-Kafka-The Great Wall-Images from the unreal world and daily heroism’.
The heavy physical performance brings forward the question of geographical and physical boundar-
Migrating Macbeths: Tracking Travelling Texts ies between cultures and how people around the world interrelate, without succumbing to the limit-
ed horizons enforced upon them by the politics of boundaries. My paper analyses the aesthetic ways
The notion of migration is integral to the idea of an intercultural performance - the text, the context, in which The Paper Tiger Studio re-constructs on the stage from   trans-historical perspective cultural
the body of the actor, the mise en scène, the audience - all of these elements partake of the alterity boundaries e.g. from the construction of the Great Wall to the Belt and Road initiative or Trump’s
of both the narrative and the discourse while at the same time rendering it unstable, as any perfor- Mexican border projects, only to have these same boundaries crushed, ridiculed and dismissed by
mance is wont to do. Shakespeare in this sense is by far the most migrated playwright his plays forev- people’s inner force to transgress them. Director Tian Gebing’s use of parody and pastiche through
er rise in new forms and spaces. This paper tracks five different versions of Macbeth all performed in strong performative physicality will also be analyzed by the study, with an emphasis on the simula-
2017 at three different spaces: two urban, one rural. While all of these reference Shakespeares play, crum effect brought by China’s fabricated forms of pop art. The analysis also focuses on the aesthetic
the site of the performance largely determines the shape of the interpretation. At a theatre festival ways in which this transcultural performance recreates and then anihilates the cultural Babel tower
in the forests of Agia Goalpara, India Macbeth was a Rabha chieftain, playing to a largely tribal audi- characterizing the migrating world today, leaving, in Zen Buddhism fashion, no clear-cut answers to
ence the play having migrated into the Rabha dialect, while in another instance, a Manipuri Macbeth the spiritual global crisis of the contemporary world, but only insights into painful revelations.
evoked palimpsests of the Japanese Akira Kurosawa. Using this migrating Macbeth as a trope to read
the phenomena of travelling texts that move through intercultural productions, the paper explores Key Words
specific contextual performative material. transcultural performance, Paper Tiger Studio, Great Wall of China, physical performance

Key Words
migration, Macbeth, travel, intercultural spaces, contexts, audience, site-specificity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

56 57
 GP GP

Alessandra Cianetti Rachel Clements

performingborders.live & Something Human Ltd UK University of Manchester
Alessandra Cianetti is a London-based curator, creative producer, and writer. She has worked in-ternationally Rachel Clements is a Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Manchester. She has
on multi-disciplinary live and visual art projects across the UK, Europe and Southeast Asia in partnership with published articles and chapters on a range of contemporary theatre makers, particularly the playwrights Caryl
arts organisations and institutions such as the Barbican Centre, the Live Art Development Agency, Tate Brit- Churchill and Martin Crimp. She is the current Book Reviews Editor for the journal New Theatre Quarterly.
ain, South London Gallery, City of Skopje, Ikona Gallery Venice, FEFÈ PROJECT Rome. Her activities have been
supported, among others, by the Arts Council England, the European Cultural Foundation, and the Fire Station “Not bogged down in old-fashioned agit-prop”: Rapid responses
Artists’ Studios Dublin. From 2013 to 2018 Alessandra has been co-director at the London-based arts organ-
isation Something Human. She is the founder of the online curatorial research platform ‘performingborders. and austerity politics in the case of Theatre Uncut and Take Back
conversations on live art | crossings | europe’ Theatre

performingborders. Live art, Crossings, Europe. Theatre Uncut, formed in 2010, and Take Back Theatre, formed in 2015, are political theatre compa-
nies, which were both set up in the wake of – and explicitly in order to react to – austerity politics in
‘performingborders. conversation on live art | crossings | europe’ is an ongoing curatorial research the UK. This paper explores two case studies – Theatre Uncut’s 2016 season and Take Back Theatre’s
platform initiated by Alessandra Cianetti that explores the relations between the notion of border 2017 Be//Longing, which were made, in the case of the former, in response to the migrant crisis with
and live art. Inspired by political theorists Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson’s approach to borders plays by writers from Denmark, Turkey and the UK, written in six days in Copenhagen, and in the case
as methods (2013), the performingborders research looks at the ephemerality, flexibility, and resil- of the latter, as a commission from the Migration Lab based at the University of Manchester. The
ience of live art practices as a privileged way to investigate urgent current socio-political changes and paper situates these refugee-related projects in relation to both companies’ modes of making and
struggles within and across borders. producing work, and will explore the place of the scratch event, the rapid response, and the porta-
ble performance in contemporary political theatre. When, in 2017, Take Back were presented with
The performingborders project is disseminated as an interview-based research-blog and series of a Manchester Theatre Awards Stagedoor Foundation Award for Excellence, they were described as
related events and writing commissions which interrogate the practices of international live art- ‘[b]ravely and unashamedly a political theatre company but not one bogged down in old-fashioned
ists that are responding to the challenging notion of contemporary borders and the shifting con- agit-prop.’ This paper therefore aims to interrogate anxieties around the history and legacy of agit-
cept of Europe. From February 2016, each month the blog publishes an interview with a performer, prop, seeking to understand the negative associations that seem to have adhered to the term. It sets
aca-demic, thinker or art professional, as a way to explore the debate on what the contemporary out to unpack some of the critical gestures and movements of respondents and reviewers who are
mean-ing of ‘border’ in live art is, how live artists are addressing this issue within Europe, and how negotiating – and often seemingly struggling to grapple with or describe - these companies and their
the cu-ratorial tool of the interview as research method can be challenged. The multimedia free to works as both activists and artists.
access interviews take a discursive and conversational approach in order to delve into the bound-
aries of the ever-developing notion of Europe and its proliferating and increasingly heterogeneous Key Words
borders. political performance, agit-prop, anti-austerity, rapid-response theatre
Alessandra Cianetti presents the project’s first two years of activity, the artists involved, the related
understandings of movement across borders, and the role that live artists and performers have with-
in this pressing discussion. https://performingborders.live

Key Words
live art - performance art - borders - crossings - Europe
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

58 59
 GP GP

Sarit Cofman-Simhon Christopher Collins

Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv University of Nottingham
PhD in Theatre Arts, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. Academic head of the Theatre Department at Chris is an Assistant Professor of Drama and Performance at the University of Nottingham. He has published
Emunah College of Arts, Jerusalem. Teaching at Kibbutzim College of Education and Arts, School of Performing widely on collective memory in Irish performance including a recent co-edited collection of essays with Mary
Arts, Tel-Aviv. Main fields of research: theatre aesthetics, theatre and Judaism. Currently completing a book on P. Caulfield entitled Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination. He has published two mono-
multilingualism in the Israeli theatre. Selected Publications: Casting Ethiopian Actors in Israel. Negotiating the graphs on the plays and performances of Irish playwright, J.M. Synge. He is also Secretary General Communi-
Imagined Jew in the Riga Ludus Prophetarum: Medieval Missionary Theatre on the Baltic Frontier. Performing cations for IFTR.
Jewish Prayer on Stage: From Rituality to Theatricality and Back. Two Theatre Entrepeneurs in Iaşi in the Nine-
teenth Century: The Plays of Vasile Alecsandri and Avraham Goldfaden African Tongues on the Israeli Stage: A Slavery, Trafficking and Performance
Reversed Diaspora, Onstage Be Peacocks and Offstage Be Modest? The Dilemma of Israeli Orthodox Actresses,
From Alexandria to Berlin: The Hellenistic Play Exagoge Joins the Jewish Canon,
How should charities navigate anti-slavery performances to minimise risk/reputational damage? To
what extent can a real-life narrative be shaped for performance and still remain persuasive? How far
The Suitcase in the Israeli Theatre: Between Migration and can a survivor’s testimony be edited, abbreviated, or combined with other representative narratives
Memory and not be criticised as ‘fake’? How acceptable is it to use actors rather than survivors in dramatised
portrayals? And how acceptable might it be to present an entirely fictional character and situation
Suitcases abound on Israeli stages. One finds them in mainstream theatres as well as fringe theatres. in order to cast light on particularly sensitive or confidential real-life events? As video-editing tech-
They appear in shows staged in a variety of languages: Hebrew, Amharic, Arabic, Yiddish, and others. nology becomes ever more sophisticated, to what extent will the public continue to trust in such
Israeli theatre is thus responding to the geographical ephemerality that characterizes almost all of dramatised evidence at all? This paper considering what effects (if any) the historical representation
its spectators consciousness: almost every single person in Israel has experienced either migration of slavery has had on contemporary performative mediums of slavery and trafficking, and how an-
or exile—if not they themselves, at least their parents. These are not fashionable, functional suit- ti-slavery videos used by charities can learn from investigations in theatre and performance.
cases of travelers or tourists, but containers of suffering and anxiety that encapsulate the identity
of their owners. On Israeli stages they are utterly emblematic. I would like to explore a number of Key Words
Israeli shows that tackle deterritorialization: It Sounds Better in Amharic by Yossi Vassa presents the Slavery, trafficking, spectatorship, affect
immigrants suitcase Suitcase Packers, a canonic Israeli play by Hanoch Levin deals with the Jewish
Israelis emigrant suitcase Longing, a collaborative work by Palestinian and Israeli actors relates to the
Palestinian exile, and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett staged by Joshua Sobol at the Yiddishpiel
Theatre in Tel-Aviv, relates to the Jewish refugees suitcase. Finally, Rina Yerushalmis He Went/And
Said, part of her Bible Project, closes the circle with the biblical exodus. All productions centre on the
suitcase as a stage-prop, and as a discourse of human mobility: in each play the suitcase performs
a different metaphor, according to the characters various epistemological and ontological positions
immigrant, emigrant, exiled, refugee.

Key Words
Migration, Israeli theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

60 61
 GP GP

Rasmus Cromme Felisberto da Costa

Ludwig – Maximilian University of Munich University of São Paulo USP, Brazil

Rasmus Cromme studied Dramaturgy, English Literature and Economics at Ludwig-Maxi-milians-University and Felisberto Sabino da Costa holds a Master in Arts from the University of São Paulo 2000 and a PhD in Arts
the Bavarian Theatre Academy August Everding, Munich. He wrote his Diploma thesis “In between reality from the University of São Paulo 2006. In 2011, he completed a post-doctorate internship at the Université
and fiction“ about Arthur Miller‘s mind and vision plays of the 1980s and 90s. In the Season 2006/07 he was Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3. He is currently a professor at the University of São Paulo, and has experience in
a staff member of Dramaturgy, Press and Public Relations at the State Theatre at Gärtnerplatz, Munich. From the area of Performing Arts, working mainly in the following subjects: dramaturgy and performing objects.
2007 until 2009 he worked for the Young Audience Program of the Bavarian State Opera and in 2012 finished Coordinator of “O Círculo – Grupo de Estudos Híbridos das Artes da Cena”, a research group based at Per-
his PhD in Theatre Studies at LMU with the thesis “The Legacy of Thalia at the Gärtnerplatztheater, Munich. forming Arts Department.
Positioning by programming with regard to contents: historic-empirical case study on the development of rep-
ertory and product potential of the State Theatre at Gärtnerplatz“. From 2013 until 2016 he was a postdoctoral The Mask as a Dramaturgical Device in Contemporaneity
research fellow of the joint research project “History of the Bavarian State Opera 1933-1963“ (published 2017)
at the Institute for Theatre Studies, LMU, where he is employed as a lecturer. From 2015 until 2017 he was The research aims to reflect on mask, as a contemporary poetic device, based on the concept of
the General Coordinator of the PhD-Counselling and service Unit dokunstLMU (LMU Excellence Initiative) that dramaturgy in an extended perspective. From this idea, the question at stake is: how to operate
offers a diverse and systematically structured range of courses for doctoral candidates at the Department of with the mask device in the increasingly volatile space of the contemporary metropolis. In the face
the Arts, LMU Munich. Currently he is the Project Coordinator of the DFG-funded Research Unit “Krisengefüge
of todays demands that are based on the precariousness of the body and the consumption of all
der Künste: Institutionelle Transformationsdynamiken in den darstellenden Künsten der Gegenwart“.
order, this device reveals its power through insurgent action. In addition to an aesthetic view of
language, acting dramaturgically involves ethics as the founding attribute of the process. As theo-
Medea: “I’m alien here. You were alien where I was loved.” retical framework, references of the performing arts and anthropology were chosen among which
– (un)familiar theatrical concepts and projections of a refugee we can highlight: Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Érika Fischer-Lichte, Gilbert Durand, José António
Sanchez and Giorgio Agamben. The investigative process encompasses scenic and social events
Escape and migration can be seen as the central theme and dilemma in theatrical represent-tations emerging in the city of São Paulo during the first two decades of the 21st century, especially those
of Medea, if one succeeds in widening the gaze beyond the Eurocentric perspective. Since Euripides that are resistant to the injunction of neoliberalism.
and Seneca there have been various successful Medea adaptions, in literature and on the stage, by
authors such as Pierre Corneille, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, Hans Henny Jahn, Jean Anouilh and Key Words
Heiner Müller that put new emphasis on matters of topic, structure and language.The lecture starts dramaturgical device, insurgency, contemporary theatre, theatricality.
with Grillparzer‘s Medea (third part of the trilogy The Golden Fleece, 1821) where for the first time
the character of Medea is being highlighted and discussed fundamentally as a political stranger und
refugee (”Metternich Restauration“; culture clash vs. recommencement and negation of a personal
past). The focus of the lecture lies in two additional considerably later adaptions, scarcely known in
Europe, that present the main character exclusively as a refugee or migrant in exile: The Wingless
Victory (1936) by American Maxwell Anderson and Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman – A Mexi-
can Medea (2001). Both have as yet not been introduced to major European theatres. From the per-
spec-tive of the fine arts and cultural history they especially offer a lot more innovation and debate
regarding theme, dramaturgy and aesthetic approaches (immigration and discrimination on grounds
of religion; racism against Hispanic Americans; homophobia / diversity) than the so-called German
New Drama of the new millennium (for example Manhattan Medea by Dea Loher or Mamma Medea
by Tom Lanoye).The lecture will show and discuss this particular wider freedom of design in theat-
rical terms which goes far beyond the current state of directing (re- interpretation or adaption of
well-known play versions). These two dramas indeed transform allegedly formerly unapproachable
culture areas / groups on the stage

Key Words
Medea New Drama dramaturgy aesthetic approaches immigration discrimination on grounds of reli-
gion racism against Hispanic Americans homophobia diversity freedom of design in theatrical terms
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

transformation of allegedly formerly unapproachable culture areas / groups on the stage

62 63
 GP GP

Maryam Dadkhah Vinia Dakari

University of Tehran Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

I got my B.A. and M.A. in dramatic literature in University of Tehran. My thesis which was on Iranian modern Vinia Dakari is Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her doctor-
theater and how the social-political context had effects on it and was influenced by it, finished in May 2017. al dissertation, “Performing Cancer: Toward an Aesthetic of the Unpresentable,” explores the aesthetic aspects
My fields of research are Iranian dramatic literature and social-political reading of them. of the unpresentability of cancer in performance and its impact on spectators. Her current research focuses
on the scope and implications of the critical turn in the cross-disciplinary field of the Medical Humanities with
The Self and The Other: How Immigrant Dramatists Shaped National special emphasis on the aesthetics and reception of cancer-related performance in and beyond Greece. Her
scholarly work has been presented in a number of international conferences and published in such academic
Identity in Modern Iran journals as Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Critical Stages/Scènes Critiques, and Gramma/Γράμμα
Journal of Theory and Criticism, as well as edited collections. She recently organized a special topic panel, “Ill-
Iran has a peculiar geographical situation: being the threshold of east and west. This had its long- ness, Medicine, and the Arts:  Rethinking the Human Across Spaces of Knowledge, Creation, and Healing” as
standing influence on how Iranian intellectuals conceived their identity. For analyzing this reaction part of the International Conference “The Politics of Space and the Humanities”, Thessaloniki, 17-19 December
towards the other and the forming of national identity, one can examine the relatively short history 2017. She is co-editor of a special topic issue, “Medicine and/in Theatre,” of Critical Stages / Scènes Critiques,
of “importing” western theater to Iran which was done by Akhundov, an Iranian immigrant in Geor- the online journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics, which will be published in June 2018.
gia. He was the first dramatist who understood the binary between the self and the other and tried
to define the Iranian self regarding the western other. For considering this new definition of iden- Emigrating to the “kingdom of the ill”: Territories of the
tity and how theater was its vehicle, the different waves of immigration among Iranian dramatists unpresentable in cancer-themed performance
should be studied. The first wave was in the late nineteenth century. The next was before WWII and
the third one was after the war. The fourth wave happened after the Islamic revolution and the last Departing form Susan Sontag’s proverbial trope of cancer as an involuntary migration to the “king-
one, which is still in the process, began after the protests in 2009.  This essay tries to examine these dom of the sick,” this paper seeks to examine the un/making of the self in its encounter with the
different immigration waves and how they shaped the national identity in Iran. Indeed, each wave destabilizing forces of illness in the context of contemporary performance.  As one of cancer’s most
formed this identity applying the reflection of the self in the mirror of the other on it. Though this pervasive metaphors, migration also pertains to the mechanics of expansion through frantic prolifer-
process wasn’t a smooth one: sometimes the immigration began for finding new forms and methods ation of cells and migration metastasis to faraway places of the body through the lymphatic system.
for expressing the self in the new world it was witnessing, and some other time it was more like an It is also a metaphorical configuration of stasis, in the sense of a civil strife, or the self at war with
exile. But this confrontation between the self and the other has in fact developed the sense of the the self. Much more that merely an entity, cancer constitutes a lived experience that reflects Heide-
self in Iranian theater and through this self, influenced the conception of nation identity. I will look gger’s concept of “being-towards-death,” triggering the emergence of a hermeneutic and aesthetic
through this significant influence and the ups and downs of forming the national identity through manifold in the conceptualization, creation and reception of performance. Being a disease of space
immigration. in the sense that it radically alters both the visceral depths of the body and the subject’s perception
of being in the world, cancer evades containment through representation and stimulates, I argue, a
Key Words sublime response in our effort to apprehend its insidious workings. Performance, likewise, tests the
Immigration, Iranian theater, Self and Other, National Identity limits of its own ontology once the erosive impact of the unpresentable invokes the death of rep-
resentation and the birth of affective experience. Spectatorship is also reconfigured, once the audi-
ence’s formerly fixed territory is challenged by the unpredictability of their own empathic response.
Under this light, the emergence of the unpresentable as a conceptual and stylistic hybrid proposes
a more inclusive aesthetic idiom mined out of the artists philosophical venture, as Lyotard suggests,
and crossing the borders of performance, relocating itself within a newly transformed community
of active interpreters/participants in Ranciere’s words, this new kind of emancipated spectatorship
becomes a formula “for embarking on a new existence,” radically affecting being-in-the-world and/
as being-with-others.

Key Words
unpresentable, cancer, performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

64 65
 GP GP

Mia David Milton de Andrade Leal Jr

University of Novi Sad State University of Santa Catarina

Mia David was born in Belgrade in 1974. She graduated from the Belgrade Faculty of Architecture and re- Milton de Andrade is full professor at the Department of Performing Arts and the Postgraduate Program in
ceived her MA and PhD in Scene Design from the University of Arts in Belgrade. She works in the field of Theater of the Arts Center CEART - State University of Santa Catarina UDESC, Florianopolis - Brazil. He holds a
contemporary visual and performing arts, as well as management in culture. She is a member of the Ser- master and a doctorate in performing arts and dance at the University of Bologna Italy and a post-doctorate
bian Chamber of Engineers, Association of Architects of Belgrade, Independent Journalist Association of degree in cultural anthropology at the University of Palermo Italy. Leader of the research group Performativity
Serbia (NUNS) and Independent Curators Network.  She worked on a number of project in the fields of ar- paths: Mediterranean, Africa, America, he has worked as a visiting professor in the Department of Eurythmy
chitecture, design, scenography, and arts. Additionally, she is the author of numerous texts published in at Alanus University Germany and Universidad Nacional da Costa Rica UNA and he maintains collaboration
different forms of media. She has exhibited in Berlin, New York, Vienna, Paris, Rennes, Sarajevo, Zagreb, with Italian universities and institutions such as the University of Palermo and Academy of Fine Arts in Turin.
Ljubljana, Frankfurt, Moscow, Rome, Venice, Prague, etc.  She has been awarded for her work, includ-
ing the Gold medal for Provoking a Dialogue at the Prague Quadrennial 2015, as a curator of the Nation- Zoomorphism and Corporeal Hybridism in Brazilian Performativity
al exhibition (as a member of Serbian team). She worked at architectural studios DSZ and Blok and was a
founder and the head editor of the Kvart magazine, as well as one of the founders of Blokovi (NGO). She Zoomorphism and corporeal hybridism in Brazilian performativity Migration, miscegenation and cul-
authored the radio program entitled Life as such (Zivot kao takav) at the Radio B92. David was a lecturer tural hybridism are at the origin of the zoomorphism fantastic in Brazilian arts. Amerindian mytholo-
at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. She was the director of the Belgrade Culture Centre from 2010 till 2014.
gy, African mystical-religious figures, European customs and fundamentally the exotic regard of trav-
Since 2016, Mia David is the Head Curator of the Navigator gallery in Belgrade. From 2017. she is the author
of the Spaces of Freedom (Prostori slobode), an online video show on the Remarker web portal. Currently she
elers on popular traditions template theatrical and chimeric pictures in Brazilian scene: monsters,
is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Technical Sciences at the University of Novi Sad where she teaches dances of giants, exceptional sounds, extraordinary plants, fabulous animals, sculptural and sensual
subjects in scene design, contemporary architecture, arts, and culture. bodies are ordinary figures in the most popular carnivals, traditional festivities, television shows as
well in the contemporary art. The carnival parades and the dance rituals offer frequently fruitful ma-
Migrations into quasi identity - or how to survive а life terials for anthropological studies and the spectacular and allegoric appropriation of cultural hybrid-
isms produces curious and peculiar transmutations of sense in intercultural keys. This paper aims to
Reality became more dramatic than theatre. Thus, theatre is forced to reassess its own role and reflect about the artistic echoes of this allegoric mechanism. It inquires how the zoomorphism and
the ways in which it operates in the contemporary society. The phenomenon we are witnessing the corporeal hybridism play a fundamental role in the identity process of the Brazilian culture and
nowadays is the reversion of the tools used in reality and in theatre. To fabricate the news, the performance.
daily politics uses the theatre language, while theatre more and more often uses the language of
reality, of documentary. In order to escape populism in everyday life, a Western man builds exempt Key Words
environments. In order to make these environments resemble reality, he uses scenic tools. Brazilian performance hybridism zoomorphism

Huge waves of migrations into Europe since 2015. forced Western world to re-examine the no-
tion of humanism and its relation to the “Other”. In the Euro - American world, the ideologies of
democratic values and human rights, which in their essence have an attempt to equalize with the
“Other”, are dominantly accepted. Unable to equate with the “Other”, “I” try to treat “Other” with
empathy, seeking to feel good with the image “I” sends about himself/herself. The fear from the
loss of cultural values, conquered (or acquired) life-styles, comfort and privileges, leads to the com-
modification of the left ideas, the ideology of human rights and democratic values. From inability
to overpower the politics of populism, and for the sake of the stability of “One’s” own identity, “I”
runs into micro-worlds and constructed realities. At the same time, in order to exist in the world
of media and images, the Western “I” still wants to be seen as humane and responsible - towards
society, community, planet Earth... The actual deed becomes irrelevant and is replaced by an image
or representation -  if “I” has not been seen by anyone, it does not actually exist. This is how Insta-
gram, YouTube or FB become new stages for the “I” to build quasi-identities. By using the tools of
theatre, “I” arranges the real-life scenographies and becomes a new type of theatre - since “I” does
not live such a life and it only records it, it becomes an illusion, like any theatre.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key words:
identity, politics, space of freedom, scene design, scenic tools

66 67
 GP GP

Laurens De Vos Stephen Di Benedetto

University of Amsterdam University of Miami

Laurens De Vos is assistant professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD Stephen Di Benedetto is Chairman of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Miami. His books
in 2006 from the University of Ghent.  He is the author of Cruelty and Desire in the Modern Theater. Antonin include The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre Routledge, 2010 An Introduction to Theatre
Artaud, Sarah Kane, and Samuel Beckett Dickinson Fairleigh UP, 2011 and Shakespeare Lannoo, 2016 and the Design Routledge, 2012 and Designers Shakespeare Routledge, 2016. Current research and publications ex-
editor of Sarah Kane in Context Manchester UP, 2010.  He has published articles on contemporary theatre and plore scenographic design in various cultural contexts, and examine the ways in which the five senses are
drama in Modern Drama, PAJ, Journal of Beckett Studies, Neophilologus, Journal of Contemporary Drama in harnessed by artists in performance from a phenomenological perspective. He is pleased to be working again
English and Documenta. His current research is centred on the legacy of Artaud and the dynamics of the gaze with Scott Palmer, with whom he and Joslin McKinney edit the book series Performance and Design Blooms-
in the theatre. bury Methuen Drama.

The homely and national identity in contemporary theatre Who Owns the Land? Experiments with digital technologies in the
The concept of home has been deprived of its sense of belonging. it has lost its familiarity that used
development and preservation of immersive performance at a
to be crucial in building up one’s identity. This is very well exemplified in e.g. Simon Stephens’s Song Cultural Heritage Site
from Far Away, in which an Amsterdam expat in New York returns home for his brother’s funeral, and
is confronted with the shallowness of an existence that left behind every trace of a national identi- ESTATE - a site-specific collaboration 2017 was described as an experience challenging the laws of
ty. Also the first two parts of Peeping Tom’s trilogy, Father and Mother, have as one of their central the land through a journey through time, space, and culture, its attendants followed, among others,
themes the dissolution of an identity that is called home.   My presentation will be informed by what a Bootlegger, a Bride, and an Indigenous Guide across a Florida estate through history. One of the
Marc Augé has called ‘non-places’, not dissimilar to Foucault’s notion of heterotopias. Remarkably, production teams goals was to experiment with digital technologies in its planning, development,
both Stephens’s plays and Peeping Tom’s theatre productions are often set in or make reference to and execution. The theatrical event was exploited to explore how 3-D modeling could be used as a
transit places such as hotels, museums or airport lobbies, postmodern purgatories that on the one tool to augment the exploration of the site in the conceptualization and design of the event, and ex-
hand break up boundaries but on the other hand also create the illusion of the possibility of a life plored how technology could be harnessed to leave a trace on the site after the performance ended.
without national identity. I will try to find an answer to the question what home and national identity Through digital scanning, a 360-degree virtual tour was created of the site and architectural blue
mean in contemporary plays and performances and what position they take towards the concept prints were generated and 3-D printed.  These processes led to further collaboration with interactive
of homelessness in the figurative sense. In addition, how does this stance relate to the uncanny or film artists who tested whether immersive theatre technique would work as a non-linear 360-de-
un-heimlich as set out by Freud almost exactly 100 years ago? Do we need to update Freud’s defini- gree VR film. The unfolding experiences of scripts characters different socio-political scenarios posed
tion in light of a changed interpretation of ‘home’ in the 21st century? questions to those present about who owns the land and how the land shapes who they are and
what they might become through their interaction with those who came before. The digital products
Key Words rendered for performance demonstrated the ways our familiar local landscape can be revealed as
homely, uncanny, Simon Stephenson, Peeping Tom, psychoanalysis, Freud something other-- something rich with a history, perhaps long forgot. During the production process,
as ideas migrated from one medium to the next and influenced the script, the technological render-
ings transformed into potential new byproducts of the original immersive theatre experience. The
products of the digital experiments transform the original event with each new viewers interaction
with the performance.  The archival process echoes the themes of the piece no one owns the land
because each new contact transforms the land into some new and simultaneously something old.

Key Words
Scenography, Performance Design, Intermediality, Digital Technology, site-specific, interactive,
Immersive
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

68 69
 GP GP

Isabella Draghici Milena Dragićević Šešić

Institute of Art History, Romanian Academy, University of Bucharest University of Arts in Belgrade

Research Assistant, Department Dramatic Art and Cinema, G. Oprescu Institute of Art History, Romanian Acad- Milena Dragicevic-Sesic is a former president of the University of Arts, Belgrade, where she now holds the UN-
emy. Ph. D. student, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, M.A. in Cultural Studies, University of ESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management. Dragicevic-Sesic received master’s degrees in Theatre Studies
Bucharest 2013, B.A. in Acting at UNATC Bucharest 2001. She has participated to national and international Paris VIII, Cultural policy University of Arts Belgrade and a PhD in Sociology of Culture University of Belgrade.
conferences e.g. IFTR Stockholm University, 2016 “Theatre as Critique”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main Her research interest covers wide scope of topics in cultural policies and management, urban policies, cultural
and Giessen, 2016, and she published scientific articles in academic journals. She combines scientific research and media studies, popular culture. Dragicevic-Sesic is the author of 16 books and 150 essays, translated in 17
and theatre practice, using a transdisciplinary approach. Actress, poet, and writer, awarded to several national languages. She has been editor of numerous journals and book series. Member of National Council of Science
literature festivals. 2006-2010 Member of Advisory Boards of Interuniversity Centre, Dubrovnik European Diploma in Cultural
Project Management, Brussels, etc. Expert in cultural policy and management for the EU, European Cultural
Migration, Theatre and New Technologies. A Case Study: Tele- Foundation, Council of Europe, UNESCO. She has guest lectured at numerous universities Lyon, Grenoble,
Moscow, Budapest, Krakow, CUNY and Columbia University NY, University of Buffalo, Jyvaskyla, Vilnius, Lasalle
Encounters Singapore. Dragicevic Sesic is a civil society activist offering her volunteer support to the development of
critical thinking and artivism in country and abroad. In 2002, she received the Commandeur dans l`Ordre des
The topic of migration and identity inspired a young stage director from Romania, Marina Hanganu Palmes Academiques the Ministry of National Education and Research of France.
M.A. in experimental performance at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London to create a
project, together with other partners from Spain and Portugal, that has won European Union funds Transitioning Yugoslavia: migrants and migrations in
through Creative Europe Program. The project is called “Tele-Encounters” and is implemented for
performing art practices and activism
2 years at “George Ciprian” Theatre in Buzau and in the other spaces of the partners, starting Sep-
tember 1st, 2017. The relevancy of the project and of the theatre play included consists not only in Crossing briefly through the history of migrating performing practices in the former Yugoslavian cul-
the highly important topic of migration for the national and international contexts, but also in the tural space from the creation of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, through KPGT experiences to nomadic
theatrical methods and tools used to explore it. Marina, “an interdisciplinary artist”, as she presents works of Kokan Mladenović, Oliver Frljić and Jernej Lorenci, focus of this research is on the period
herself, creates a telematic theatre play by using new technologies: video-conferencing, immersive from 1990 till today when practices were challenged by wars, new frontiers, migrations of artists
technologies VR –virtual reality, and Kinect animations. The paper is a case study, an exploration of and intellectuals and especially by the nationalization of cultural policies of new independent coun-
the process of creation and reception of this play that overcomes the boundaries of the classical tries. Through activism new spaces have been created open to performative and other engaged art
theatre. Investigating the social contribution of this artistic product to the issue of migration, on one practices they have developed but also disappeared while intercultural dialogue today transitioned
hand, and the aesthetics of the tele-presence as the basic concept of the telematic theatre play, on towards more public spaces. The research will focus on civil society strategies in reestablishment of
the other hand, we will propose a debate on the influence of new technologies on the conceptuali- dialogue networking, mobility, partnership in three distinctive phases of performing arts develop-
sation of theatre in the 3rd Millennium. ment since 1990s 1 from Dibidon in 1994 till new performative spaces such as Mama in Zagreb, CZKD
and REX in Belgrade, Bunker in Ljubljana or Kibla in Maribor 2 social theory and art activism in a proj-
Key Words ect like Nomad Dance Academy 3 transdisciplinary collaborative projects of art collectives such as
Immersive theatre, telematic theatre, new technologies, tele-presence, Kinect animations, migra- Shadow casters in Zagreb, Kontekst collective in Belgrade, etc.. The study will analyse five different
tion, migrating patterns: a collaborative projects, co-productions and joint training b festival participation
exchange c guest participation of theatre artists d collaboration on theoretical performative scene
conferences, journals and seminars and e individual mobility and artistic migrations. The research
will explore meaning of Yugoslavia and reasons of its transitioning and debating within performanc-
es that question solidarity, social justice, peace and reconciliation putting in the heart of analysis the
culture of memory about Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav experience.

Key Words
Yugoslavian cultural space performing art activism performing arts migrating patterns memory pol-
itics collaborative projects
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

70 71
 GP GP

Aleksandar Dunđerović Susana Egea

Affiliation Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University Institut del teatre - Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya

Dr. Aleksandar Sasha Dundjerovic is Professor of Performing Arts at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Bir- Susana Egea Ruiz Barcelona actress, stage director and researcher in performing arts. She obtained her PhD
mingham City University). He is a professional award-winning theatre director and author with international in Performing Arts at the Autonomous University of Barcelona 2016. For her work entitled Actor training in
experience working in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Serbia, Iran, Russia, Colombia, and Brazil. He is visiting the opera: Analysis of a specificity she was granted the “Artez Blai International Award for Performing Arts Re-
professor in University of São Paolo (Brazil), and University of Arts, Belgrade (Serbia). He holds PhD from Royal search” 2011. She is graduated in Romance Philology at the University of Barcelona 1996 and received training
Holloway, University of London, MA from The University of Oklahoma, USA and BA from Faculty of Dramatic in music, dance and drama. As an actress she has worked with directors such as: Adolfo Marsillach, Calixto
Arts, Belgrade, Serbia. Over the years he published a number of books and articles on contemporary theatre Bieito, Ferran Madico, Hansel Cereza, Hasko Weber or Malena Espinosa, amongst others. As a stage director,
practice, interdisciplinary and collaborative theatre and performing arts in Brazil and on the creative practice her work is mainly interdisciplinar. She has been invited to attend several courses at centers as the Guildhall
of Canadian theatre and film author Robert Lepage. School of Music and Drama or the Gnesin Academy of Music of Moscow. She is professor at the “Escola Su-
perior de Música de Catalunya”, where she currently teaches Lyric Theatre and where she has been in charge
“4:48 Macbeth” of the stage direction of the Opera Workshop since 2009 and she teaches also at the “Institut del Teatre de
Barcelona”. She is the author of titles as Actor training for opera Bilbao: 2012, and Stanislavski, Meyerhold,
The practice led research project will engage with adaptations allowing connection between differ- Chaliapin: operatic interpretation Madrid, 2017
ent dramatic forms and experiences through deconstruction of stasis, performing migratory geog-
raphy and transformation, migration, mutation and appropriation of theatrical forms. The perfor- Fedor Chaliapin: the development of the Acting in the Operatic
mance practice and subsequent research presentation are based on an interdisciplinary installation Scene in the framework of the Russian Revolution
combining visual and performing arts migrating form a dramatic texts. It antecedent two dramatic
texts: 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and Macbeth Projecto based on Shakespeares Macbeth. The In May of 1917 Fedor Chaliapin, -who was for years trying to improve the acting and scenic habits
research could be presented as a solo-performance, and a research paper. The phases of the proj- in the operatic stage, was in Crimea-, choosing the place where he wanted to build his Center of
ect, premiering in Belgrade, were previously seen in Madrid Reina Sofia, Spain and Birmingham Creation. At this tame, Meyerhold had been during ten years director of the Mariinski Theatre and
Centrala, UK. The new performance 4:48 Macbeth Projeto explores migration of dramatic texts into Stanislavski was working on the theatrical version of The Village of Stepanchikovo 1859 by Fyodor
installation / live art events, in which the narrative is fragmented and presented as a multi sensorial Dostoievski. From this moment, how the events of the Russian Revolution conditioned Chaliapin’s
aesthetic journey, provides a new performative experience. Performance and visual art can be pre- reforms and the development of the operatic scene? How his exile conditioned the transfer of his
sented as two different geopraphies defined by the language that each artistic media uses. In the heritage? We analyze the main advances and transformations that Chaliapin introduced in the Op-
case of conceptual art it is the space, texture, atmosphere combined with the atemporality of the eratic Scene, attending to his influence over theatrical actors and directors as Stanislavski or Mey-
artistic piece. In theatre, the moving body of the actor, the dramatic text and the temporal line of erhold and the consequences of his exile, in the subsequent implementation of his reforms and the
the dramatic action which define its geography. The different artistic forms and media are related transmission of his legacy.
to each other within rizhomatic structures 1998, G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, they can be transformed
and migrate from one to another following different processes, not just through a linear hierarchi- Key Words
cal process. The research aims to: • investigate strategies of offering audiences new experiences Chaliapin, Russian Revolution, Opera, Actoral Training
combining elements of performance and visual arts • defining the geographies of interdisciplinary
aesthetic journeys • investigate methodologies in transforming dramatic text into a multisensorial
aesthetic performing arts experience and • engage with cross-cultural collaboration and migration
of classics though interdisciplinary visual and performing art.

Key Words
Interdisciplinarity, Installation, transformation, mutation, Sarah Kane, Shakespeare
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

72 73
 GP GP

Theresa Eisele Serap Erincin

University of Vienna Louisiana State University

Theresa Eisele is a PhD candidate with the Dpt. of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna Assistant Professor of Performance and Performance Studies, since 2016. Affiliate Faculty Women’s and
PhD title: “Performing Jewishness in Fin de siècle Vienna”. Since June 2016, she has been working as doctoral Gender Studies Louisiana State University
researcher and university assistant for Stefan Hulfeld Dpt. Chair of Theatre Studies. She received BA degrees EDUCATION 2013 Ph.D., Performance Studies, New York University
in Theatre Studies as well as in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Leipzig GER, includ- SELECTED AWARDS
ing an Erasmus semester at the Complutense University of Madrid and an MA in Theatre History from the 2017 David Keller Award ASTR; 2016 Top Paper Award in Performance Studies NCA; 2014 Dwight Conquergood
University of Leipzig. Theresa Eisele has been a Research Assistant at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History Award PSi; 2013 Best Paper Award in Theatre, Film, and New Media NCA; 2006 Emerging Scholar Award,
and Culture Simon Dubnow GER and was a member of the project team »European Traditions – Encyclopedia Debut Panel Winner ATDS
of Jewish Cultures« at the Saxon Academy of the Sciences. Her research interests and teaching experience SELECT PUBLICATIONS
include Fin de siècle Vienna and theatricality, interdependence between theatre and Jewish experiences of 2011 Editor, Solum and Other Plays from Turkey. Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press.; 2017 Guest
modernity, and narratology in relation to cultural performances. Editor, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 12, No.3. Issue on “Resistance and Stillness *
peer-reviewed; 2017 * “Digital Media and Performance Activism: Technology, Biopolitics, and New Tools of
Of Coffeehouses and Card Games: Staging Notions of Belonging in Transnational Resistance” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 12, No.3. 2015* “«Reperformer»
Hamlet: definer la reperformabilité à l’aide des methods du Wooster Group” Théâtre et intermédialité.
Fin de siècle Vienna Ed. Jean-Marc Larrue.Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, pp. 128-143. 2012 * “Dance in Translation:
Subjectivity, Failed Spectatorship and Tolerance” Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics.
Three Galician Jews and one Bohemian meet in a shabby Viennese coffeehouse to play cards. What 2: pp. 156-170. 2011 “Performing Rebellion: Eurydice’s Cry in Turkey” Antigone on the Contemporary World
may sound like the beginning of a popular joke, actually outlines the storyline of one of the best- Stage. Eds. Erin Mee, Helene Foley. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 171-184.
known burlesques in fin de siècle Vienna: the so called “Klabriaspartie”. Named after the famous
card game “Klabrias” and first staged in 1890 by the “Budapester Orpheumsgesellschaft” – a the- Politicized Body as Site of Resistance: Stillness as Peaceful Protest
atre company whose members migrated from the margins of the Habsburg monarchy to Vienna
themselves – the burlesque addressed notions of Jewishness with artificial acting styles. By per- In one of the most iconic images of twentieth century, a man stops in front of tanks in Beijing in
forming imaginations of “otherness” with jargon, gesticulation and expressive physicality on stage, 1989. This man, whose name is unknown, became the icon of the Tienanman Square protests. He is
the burlesque questioned concepts of self-construction and belonging offstage thereby, provoking in plain clothes, a white shirt and black pants. His vulnerability as a human being made of flesh and
and including highly controversial debates alike. Through those debates, fueled by the omnipres- blood sits in stark contrast upon tanks made of steel that would crush him into seconds His civilian
ence of migration issues in multi-ethnic Habsburg, a short burlesque by a popular theatre ensem- body immediately becomes a site of resistance upon the militaristic performative tanks universally
ble blundered into the middle of identity politics.  The paper takes this micro historical event as a inhabit. In this paper, I discuss four cases of how the human body becomes politicized through acts
starting point to trace a multilayered cultural constellation in fin de siècle Vienna, where motions of of resistance that halt the power of the police state. I specifically consider cases where individuals
migration and notions of belonging as well as cultural and theatrical stages merge gradually. Putting perform nonviolent protest by sitting, standing, kneeling in still poses to disrupt the performances
the concrete performances of Jewishness within the burlesque into context, they shed a light at of state power. The images of the Tank Man of Tiananmen Square, the Standing Man of Taksim Gezi
European Jewish experiences of Modernity and socio-political debates in the Viennese Modern Age. Square, the politician Sirri Sureyya Onder in front of bulldozers in the emergence of Occupy Gezi, and
In addition, the particular situation of artificiality within the performance setting offers a specific, American football player Colin Kaepernick taking the knee while the US national anthem is played
embodied visualization of otherwise intangible negotiations of migration and processes of othering have become iconic performatives of the broader social movements they inhabit by capturing the
in relation to the conceptualization of the self. In this manner, the embodied experiences may result strength of silent and still resistance at the site of the vulnerable, singular, human body upon the
in a unique surplus of usually inaccessible knowledges. oppressive state actors. Here, I analyze how these movements migrated across different parts of the
world as individual performances achieved transnational and affective impact and how the bodies
Key Words of the performers became politicized sites of resistance.
Belonging, Performing Jewishness, Fin de siècle Vienna, notions of migration
Key Words
Resistance, Protest, Civil Disobedience, Performing Stasis, Police state, Biopolitics, Migrating Aes-
thetics, Affect, Efficacy,
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

74 75
 GP GP

Wolf-Dieter Ernst Maria Estrada-Fuentes

University of Bayreuth University of Warwick
Wolf-Dieter Ernst is Professor of Theatre. He has published widely on postdramatic theatre, performance and I am Teaching Fellow at the School of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick. My research
media art. He is review editor of the journal Forum Modernes Theater, and his books include Psyche-Tech- interests are conflict transformation, peace-building, applied theatre, politics and performance. I have worked
nik-Darstellung. Schauspieltheorie als Wissensgeschichte with Anja Klöck, Meike Wagner, Munich: ePodium with government institutions and NGOs implementing theatre, dance and performance practice in the social
2015, Der affektive Schauspieler. Die Energetik des postdramatischen Theaters Theater der Zeit 2012, Perfor- reintegration of ex-combatants in Colombia. My publications include Affective Labors: Love, Care, Solidarity
ming the Matrix – Mediating Cultural Performance with Meike Wagner, Munich: ePodium 2008, and Perfor- in the Social Reintegration of Female Ex-combatants in Colombia’ in  ‘Leveraging Justice’  a special issue for
mance der Schnittstelle. Theater unter Medienbedingungen. Passagen Publishers 2003. Wolf-Dieter Ernst has Lateral, online journal of the American Cultural Studies Association. Co-edited with Professor Janelle Reinelt,
also contributed substantially to the development of the IFTR Intermediality, Theatre & Performance research 2016 ‘Performing Bogotá: Memories of an Urban Bombing’ in Performing Cities, ed. Nicolas Whybrow, 2014
group and he is convenor with Anja Klöck of the Society for Theatre Research working group on Actor’s train- and ‘Becoming Citizens: Loss and Desire in the Social Reintegration of Ex-combatants in Colombia’ in Gendered
ing. Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance, eds. Bishnupriya Dutt, Janelle Reinelt and Shrinkhla Sahai, 2017.

Cosmopolitanism and mobile scenography. How to sense Border crossing in the Colombo-Venezuelan border: a Porous Left
difference in Isaac Juliens “WESTERN UNION: small boats” (2007)
Border crossing in the Americas is a regular practice: commonly associated with the US-Mexico bor-
In light of current studies of mobility and migration Urry, Appiah, this paper discusses the installation der—the rich history of cultural productions and political tensions that characterise this place and
WESTERN UNION: small boats 2007 by the London based artist Isaac Julien. Taking into account both continue to affect the continent—porous and militarised borders are present throughout the Amer-
the literal and metaphorical mobilization of the beholder, I wish to contribute to the conference’s icas. This paper moves beyond popular ways of exploring narratives of migration and dispossession
subject theatre and migration from a rather phenomenological point of view. In order to do so, I in the continent and explores political migration in the Colombo-Venezuelan border in relation to
will confine myself to two important aspects of the work in question, one being that of perception the rise of the Latin American Left in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I am particularly
becoming self-reflexive, while the other deals with the representation of the refugees. interested in creative explorations of Cultures of the Left and social movements that characterise the
Colombo-Venezuelan border, a geographical and politically fraught territory, and how they inform
Key Words current political debates and foreign policy.  The shared territories between Colombian and Venezu-
Mobility, migration, performativity elan citizens have been performative sites of revolt and tension in the past decade affecting social
mobility and economic growth in both countries. The recent militarisation of sections of this border
also respond to social and political changes such as the peace negotiations with the FARC Revolution-
ary Armed Forces of Colombia, 1964-2017 and ELN National Liberation Army, 1964-  guerrillas, and
also the economic and political crisis in Venezuela under the presidencies of the late Hugo Chávez
and Nicolás Maduro. This paper explores migrating histories of Cultures of the Left in this border
through the works of Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza short stories, Arturo Alape testimonial literature and
Teatro La Candelaria plays, and how they inform contemporary social and political constructions of
this shared territory.

Key Words
Border Crossing, Cultures of the Left, Revolt, Latin America
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

76 77
 GP GP

Osita Ezenwanebe Rakel Marin Ezpeleta

University of Lagos Autonomous University of Barcelona
Osita Catherine Ezenwanebe Ph. D is a Professor of Theatre Arts in the Department of Creative Arts Theatre She has a BA (Hons) in Art History from UPV/EHU, a postgraduate course in History of Contemporary Art and
Unit, University of Lagos, Nigeria. With a B.A in English Education, two Master of Arts Degrees in English Lit- MPhil in Performance Studies from UAB and IT. She is currently a PhD candidate at UAB with the trans-disci-
erature Drama and Society and in English Language Nigerian English, and a Ph. D in English Literature Drama plinary project The Configuration of Identity in the Contemporary Experimental Basque Theatre Scene.
and Society, Osita teaches dramatic theory and criticism among other courses. She is a Senior Fulbright Scholar She combines professional work as a performer (either in classical, experimental or popular forms), with
Scholar-in-Residence and Visiting Professor of Dramatic Arts, 2011/2012 in the Department of English and For- teaching (specially in areas related to voice technique, Castilian diction and oral expression) and with theo-
eign Languages, Winston-Salem State University, North Carolina, USA. In addition to numerous articles in local retical research: in 2007-09 she was awarded grants from KREA to conduct a study on contemporary Basque
and international journals, she has written and produced nine stage plays: Withered Thrust 2007, The Dawn theatre historiography; during 2012-13 she was a Research Assistant to Project Barca, lead by Dr. Henry Daniel
of Full Moon 2009, Giddy Festival 2009, Daring Destiny 2011, Adaugo 2011, Shadows on Arrival 2012, Egg (SFU-Vancouver). She is member of IFTR since 2013 –usually participating in the PaR WG and in NSF-. Her proj-
without Yolk 2014, Debris and Greatness 2015 and String of Tales 2016, out of which seven are published. She ect conflates historical, anthropological and sociological approaches to the concept of identity, a case study of
is a member of International Federation of Theatre Research IFTR, Society of Nigeria Theatre Artists SONTA, some current Basque mise-en-scènes, and her own artistic practice.
African Theatre Association AFTA, among others.
Erbeste: exile, precariousness and estrangement
Identity Beyond Boarders: Contesting Gendered Space in Modern
African Drama Erbeste, means «exile», «foreign land» and «alien» in Basque language. It is also the title of a satir-
ical documentary-fiction created within the framework of my PhD project on the Configuration of
Abstract In most communities in Africa, marriage demands cultural assimilation of the bride. A Identity in the Basque Contemporary Experimental Theatre Scene. The overall project deals with
popular Igbo saying has it that a woman has no town or religion until she is married. This highlights how cultural and personal identity is performed, and it includes some case studies of Basque current
the level of socio-cultural dominance privileged to the bridegroom. The nuptial space is predicat- artists and companies and, among them, my own artistic practice. In this paper I will present the
ed on the cultural hegemony of the male, quashing every contradiction and resisting change. The research/creation entitled Erbeste and I will explain how it informs us about the embodiment of es-
woman is expected to relinquish not only her personal desires but also her culture and imbibe that trangement and otherness. The process of creating Erbeste started with the idea of playing around
of her husband’s people, without a corresponding demand being made from the man, her husband. the consequences of exile and migration on the subjective and cultural identity of the researcher/
Marriage in most African countries is still entrenched in traditional culture, and this makes cultural performer, a Basque actress-singer who tries to make a career in Barcelona, after having lived tem-
pluralism highly problematic. This paper uses Aidoo’s play, The Dilemma of a Ghost to explore the porarily in the USA and Paris. However, during the research/creation it was discovered that in the
place of women identity, gendered space and cultural pluralism in a male dominating space that is exploration of her identity, more relevant than belonging to a territory, a language, a culture or a
Africa traditional family. Using my Fulbright experiences as well as relevant African plays and perfor- country, what most influenced her sense of belonging (or, actually, the lack of it), was her continuous
mances it is argued that the issues in the play would have been less contentious and better managed living in uncertainty. The work presents precariousness as a hindrance against a satisfactory personal
if the players have applied the Womanist principle of coordination and harmonization of differences identification: the continuous pursuit of stability, a job, time, training and knowledge, recognition,
which embraces the spirit of pluralism, and it is the task of this paper to uncover how such strategy a welcoming place... favors vagueness and the IFTR 2018 Belgrade. Theatre and Migration Theatre,
would work in the play. Nation and Identity: Between Migration and Stasis distancing from one’s own previous sense of
identity. In this sense, the image that portraits Erbeste is also a reflection of the reality in which we
Key Words live, flooded with “liquid identities”. Being alienated can be understood as loosing one’s mind or
Cultural identity, gendered space, modern African drama and theatre loosing one’s identity, but also, it can be understood as being exiled from one’s self. The paper will
tie the concept of ‘exile’ to the process of ‘estrangement’. Eventually, it will argue how identification,
distinction, estrangement, and otherness are abstract concepts that might very well be concretized
through artistic research.

Key Words:
Basque; identity; autobiography; women artists; estrangement; research/creation; alienation; pre-
cariousness.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

78 79
 GP GP

Patricia Fagundes Catriona Fallow

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul University of Birmingham

Theatre director, producer, teacher and researcher. Professor of theatre directing at Federal University of Rio Dr Catriona Fallow is a Research Fellow based in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the
Grande do Sul Porto Alegre – Brazil. Phd in Science of Spectacle by Universidad Carlos III Madrid, with the University of Birmingham working on the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies project, funded by the Arts
thesis The Ethics of Festivity in Theatre Creative Process. Master in Theatre Directing by Middlesex Universi- and Humanities Research Council. Broadly, her research specialises in contemporary British and European
ty London.  Researches performing arts creative process, devising theatre, political aspects of contemporary playwriting, theatre history and historiography, and contemporary Shakespearean performance. As part
theatre, contemporary Shakespeare, methodologies of rehearsal, urban intervention, art as social encounter. of the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies project, her current research focuses on Pinter’s relationship
with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Catriona’s work has been published in Studies in Theatre and
In transit between worlds: experiences of an anthropophagic Performance and has been presented internationally at Harvard’s Mellon School for Theatre and Performance
Research, Performance Studies International, and the International Federation for Theatre Research.
theatre director in South Brazil
Like many countries, Brazil is a diverse mix of cultural references and identities. In the South, a signif- What Goes Around Comes Around: Theatregoround and the
icant immigration movement in the late XIX and early XX centuries from Germany and Italy defined Dramaturgy of Mobility
a comprehensive part of the population and created an important cultural legacy. In the arts, the
European influence continues to deeply impact practices and theories. Facing the XXI century and In response to what John Urry has termed the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ Urry, 2007, David Overend
the importance of decolonizing knowledge, making theatre in South Brazil offers special adventures emphasises the ‘dramaturgies of mobility’ Overend, 2015 at work in touring theatre. That is, the
and challenges. This paper exposes and analyses the creative process of two theatrical productions ways in which the material conditions of touring shape both the dramaturgy of what is presented
developed in Porto Alegre from 2017 to 2018 that demanded dialogues between German and Brazil- on stage, and how an audience comprehends such performances. In the case of touring produc-
ian cultural references. Conference about words is a solo piece developed by a German descendant tions initially developed within building-based institutions, Overend’s observation can be usefully
Brazilian actor in connection with his PhD research about language, poetry and identity, which mixes extended to ask: how do touring initiatives shape the working practices and public perception of
biographical and theoretical material to consider our border crossing identities. Beben is a contem- the institutions they originate within? This paper examines the role of regional touring at the Royal
porary German play written by Maria Milisavljevic proposed by the Goethe Institute in an open call Shakespeare Company RSC in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically Theatregoround, a small-scale tour-
with an intercultural intention. In different ways, both productions explore territories of migration, ing operation established in 1965 under the name Actors Commando. In addressing questions of
shifting identities, displacement and translation. In addition, both are directed by the same Brazilian mobility and access, this paper explores the work of Theatregoround as an expression of the compa-
woman, with no German roots or special connections, at Cia Rústica, a theatre company based in ny’s emerging identity and its supposed civic responsibility, reflected in its desire to connect with a
Porto Alegre that seeks connections between art forms, open and intimate spaces, politics and per- broader range of regional audiences in the UK. What impact did this mobile initiative have on what
forming arts, textual and physical approaches, and theoretical and artistic perspectives. To navigate has come to be regarded as one of the UK’s national theatres and where might we find its legacies
in those moving and polyphonic lands of making theatre and being a Brazilian artist, dealing with today?
many contradictions, dangers and intersections, the notion of cultural anthropophagy offers a possi-
ble tool to imagine and compose fluid identities, mixed art and contemporary forms of political and Key Words
festive theatre in dialogue with decolonizing urges. Touring, dramaturgy, regional theatre, mobility, theatre history, Theatregoround, Royal Shake-
speare Company
Key Words
Brazilian theatre. Creative process. Theatre directing. Contemporary dramaturgy. Cultural anthro-
pophagy.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

80 81
 GP GP

Gustavo Fijalkow Mark Fleishman

Centre for Dance Research C-DaRE, Coventry University University of Cape Town

Initially trained as a dancer, Gustavo’s performing career stretched from modern dance productions to ex- Mark Fleishman is Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of Cape Town and co-artistic direc-
perimental, site-specific, multimedia and physical theatre projects in co-creative environments. 2004 – 2012 tor of Magnet Theatre, an independent theatre company established in 1987 in Johannesburg and based in
he was creative producer for mixed-abled, transnational dance-theatre productions in several African, Latin Cape Town since 1994. He has created and directed many performance works for the company that have been
American and Asian countries. 2006 – 2011 he was artistic co-director and curator of the Crossings Dance performed nationally and internationally over the past 30 years and is involved in development projects in
Festival tanzhaus NRW / Düsseldorf, and 2012-2014 he co-conceived and produced the project UPHEAVAL on urban townships and rural communities using theatre as a tool for social justice and transformation. His arti-
three continents. 2010 he got his M.A. in International Arts Management DE with the thesis Bloodbath-Blood cles have appeared in the South African Theatre Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review and Theatre Research
bond. About the work of the Goethe-Institut Tel Aviv. 2014 he conceived and carried out the Symposium Heim. International as well as in numerous edited collections, most recently in Sruti Bala et al eds., International
at tanz.t. The Body and Identity Politics in Sri Lanka German Sports University Cologne. Gustavo is a visiting Performance Research Pedagogies: Towards an Unconditional Discipline? Palgrave - 2017, Jenny Hughes and
lecturer in Germany and the UK and has moderated countless talks with artists in festivals, congresses and Helen Nicolson eds., Critical Perspectives on Applied Theatre Cambridge University Press - 2016 and Mary
theatres worldwide. Furthermore, he has presented his work in several conferences, both traditionally and Luckhurst and Emilie Morin eds., Theatre & Human Rights after 1945: Things Unspeakable Palgrave - 2015. He
as performative interventions. 2017 he was invited as international dramaturg to the Festival TransAmériques is editor of Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows in the Studies in International Perfor-
Canda and by the project Flausen as a mentor for the project Bodies we Fail Germany. Since 2015 he is a doc- mance series at Palgrave 2015. He is an active member of the Performance as Research Working Group of the
toral candidate at C-DaRE, UK. His research focuses on national dance platforms. IFTR, and was co-convenor from 2009-2013.

National dance platforms in a globalised dance world Migrating Mia: Strategies of Translation Across the Borders of
Genre and Nation
National Dance Platforms NaDaPs are annual or biennial dance festivals that are framed as ‘national’
and are aimed primarily to an audience of international guests. These are offered a curated pro- Over more than a decade from the year 2000, I engaged in a project to translate the short sto-
gramme, often defined as ‘the best’ of the country’s productions in the field of dance in the time- ries of the Mozambican writer Mia Couto to the stage. This work resulted in the production Voices
frame in-between the successive platforms. With a programme framed as national and aimed at a Made Night different versions of which were performed in Cape Town, Grahamstown, Maputo and
foreign audience, NaDaPs inherently suggest a narrative of nationhood that becomes representative Edinburgh between 2000 and 2013. Mia Couto has been acclaimed as one of the most original
for the nation. However, NaDaPs are, at the same time, market places and have as such the aim of Mozambican writers. Along with one or two others, Couto has begun developing a new and deeply
enabling trade and generating turnover. There is a long chain of festivals of industry and culture creative literary language based in the African oral tradition and on African transformations of spo-
representing nations, initiated with the establishment of the nation-state as unit of governance. ken Portuguese. Coutos writing is rooted in the strange and often bizarre realities of life in contem-
However, NaDaPs are a product of the globalised neoliberal world, in which the hyphen between porary African societies in transition. His stories confront head on the difficulties facing postcolonial
the nation and the state increases, not least thanks to phenomena like mass media, digitalisation societies in the process of transformation, offering unique insight into the psychic damage, which
and migrations Appadurai 1996. While NaDaPs assert ways of deploying meaning through dance, has been the legacy of both colonial history and the wars of decolonisation. The stories have been
they create contemporary national traditions Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992, thus contributing to the linguistically translated into English by David Brookshaw and these are the versions from which the
imaginary that holds together a community Anderson 1983. Meanwhile, they might respond to the stage production was adapted. Part of the ongoing project has been to discover ways in which to
logics of strategic nation branding Aronczyk 2013, thus playing a role in the legitimisation of opti- make the stories align with the particular context of their original creation and to migrate this con-
mised, normalised dancers as commodity following strategies of governmentality in a neoliberal en- text and the particularities of the linguistic register employed in the original versions to audiences
vironment. This paper will thus problematize the conflation of disparate imperatives that originate in other countries, initially in Africa but also in other parts of the world. The paper recounts the
out of the multi-layered-ness of the NaDaP. References Anderson, B. 1983 Imagined Communities: experience of the director trying to engage Mia Couto directly regarding the work of adaptation and
reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Appadurai, A. 1996 Modernity at Large. Cultural translation as an indication of the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of ever being able to reach back to
Dimensions of Globalisation Aronczyk, M. 2013 Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National the original author in the process of translation or to traverse borders between nations and genres.
Identity. Brown, W. 2003 ‘Neoliberalism or the End of Liberal Democracy’ Hobsbawm, E. & Ranger,
T. 1992 The Invention of Tradition Key Words
Translation Migration Asymmetry
Key Words
National Identity, Festival, Neoliberalism, Dance, Body Politics, Curation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

82 83
 GP GP

Luke Forbes Rebecca Free

Monash University Goucher College
Luke Forbes is a Ph.D. researcher and dance scholar at Monash University’s Centre for Theatre and Perfor- Rebecca Free is Associate Professor of Theatre and holds the Hans Froelicher Professorship in the Arts at
mance. His research interests include Australian and Indigenous Australian contemporary concert dance prac- Goucher College Baltimore, MD, USA, where she teaches acting and theatre history. She received her PhD in
tices and historiography, and the ways in which dance is often understood through notions of race and national Theatre from Indiana University-Bloomington. Her scholarly work has focused on place, acting, and the body,
culture. His research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program RTP Scholarship in early twentieth century and contemporary France a forthcoming article on mapping and theatre pedagogy
and a National Library of Australia Norman McCann Summer Scholarship. Luke’s published research papers in study abroad will appear in IJHAC: A Journal of Digital Humanities. She is also a practicing director, choreog-
appear in the World Dance Alliance’s 2016 Journal for Emerging Dance Scholarship and forthcoming German rapher, actor and dancer.
Dance Archives Cologne and Runway Australian Experimental Art publications.
Sited Theatre and Representations of Migration in Contemporary
Expansive choreography: (de)coloniality and spatiality in Marseille
Australian and Indigenous Australian concert dance
What is the singularity of theatre as a mode of representing migration? I focus here on the anchored,
The paper demonstrates how European settlement of Australia and the dispossession of Indigenous sited nature of theatres in the communities in which they are located. This issue is important in
Australians is enacted and challenged in concert dance and dance discourse. From a dance studies Marseille, a “city of villages” composed of many distinctive, longstanding neighborhoods and a city
perspective, informed by postcolonial and critical race theory, I examine non-Indigenous Australian in which repeated waves of immigration, as well as internal relocations owing to forces such as
dance and argue that it is frequently entangled with colonialism and Australian nationalism. I go on deindustrialization and urban renovation, have produced great flux in terms of neighborhood demo-
to consider how Indigenous Australians’ increasing participation in the concert dance industry un- graphics. I investigate how localized theatre spaces and institutions embody and articulate some of
settles colonialist and nationalistic projects in dance. the tensions around rootedness and transiency that characterize Marseille’s urban geography.  Many
It is widely acknowledged by dance scholars that uninterrupted movement associated with Euro- arts organizations in the city claim and support a mission of engaging with their local communities.
pean imperialism and concurrent industrial developments, such as the introduction of locomotives Although I consider large, prominent institutions, I focus especially on Théâtre de la Mer and Théâtre
and conveyor belts, is constitutive of ‘Western’, modern notions of choreography (Dempster, 1999; de l’Oeuvre, smaller companies that support a particular emphasis on neighborhood engagement
Lepecki, 2006; Foster, 2011). Running parallel to dance scholarly observations, many Australian and work with immigrant constituencies. One strategy these theatres have used to engage local
dance critics, historians, and makers uncritically emphasise the bond between Australian landscapes communities has been exterior site-specific projects, initiatives intended to reveal, and to elicit par-
and the national dance identity: vast, open space that invites athletic and expansive choreographic ticipation in, neighborhood life outside the theatre’s walls. Bearing in mind questions from recent
displays (McKechnie, 1991; Stock, 1993; Card, 2001; Burridge & Dyson, 2012). This paper seeks to scholarship on site-specificity, I will discuss the sitedness of the theatre building itself. What is the
initiate a discussion about the colonial legacy of an Australian concert dance identity that embodies local footprint of the theatre as defined by and also extensive beyond its walls? How do the actuali-
free movement in ‘empty’ spaces. ties of the neighborhood as a place “leak” to use Pearson’s term into the artistic practice, or how are
I complicate my critique of the Australian dance identity through the choreographic-political analysis they filtered out? How can the theatre be sited in terms of the connections the institution articulates
of concert dances by Indigenous Australians. I provide examples of choreography that trouble both to more distant locales? How are the theatre sites important to the ways in which these institutions
Australian dance’s implicit and dance studies’ explicit conflation of coloniality and modernist dance. represent migration and what can this tell us about the role of theatre in urban culture in Marseille?
This draws attention to the limitations of Eurocentric aesthetics and critical dance studies’ method-
ologies in the reception of Indigenous Australian contemporary concert dance. Key Words
Site-specificity, Marseille, France, Neighborhood, Urban Geography
Key Words
contemporary dance, colonialism, appropriation, indigeneity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

84 85
 GP GP

Ayumi Fujioka Raffaele Furno

Sugiyama Jogakuen University Arcadia University
Ayumi Fujioka is professor in Theatre Studies, School of Cross-Cultural Studies at Sugiyama University Japan. Raffaele Furno is adjunct faculty of Performance Theory and History of Italian Theatre at Arcadia University,
Her research is centred on various aspects of the Edwardian Theatre. She currently conducts research on Rome Campus. His areas of expertise include migration studies, inter-cultural studies, and experimental the-
the intercultural relationship between British and Japanese theatre in the early 20th Century. She has edited atre. His first book appeared in 2010 and is titled Intra-cultural Theatre: Performing the Life of Black Migrants
a book: ‘Dan Leno and Pantomime-Wonderland’, ‘An Imagined National Theatre: the Royal Court Theatre’, to Italy. He has published articles in journals and edited books on the relation between theatre, society, pol-
Theatres and Theatre-World in London: A History of Modern British Theatre, Asahi Press 2015, and co-edited itics and gender in Italy.In 2015 Furno served as Visiting Scholar in the Drama Department, National Taiwan
books: ‘The Birth of Repertory Theatre Movement’, Critical Aspects of Theatre Studies vol.2, Sankei-sha 2015, University. He has given lectures on commedia dell’arte and Italian experimental theatre in various European
‘The Emergence of an Actress Who Tells the Story of Herself Elizabeth Robins in British Modern Theatre’, Crit- countries, USA, China, South Africa, and the UK. He is founding member of the International Network of Italian
ical Aspects of Theatre Studies vol.1, Sankei-sha 2011. Her research is aided by grants both from Sugiyama Theatre, serves as reviewer for The Theatre Times and The Arts Journal, and is an active member of the In-
University and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. ternational Federation of Theatre Research, and of Performance Studies International. Furno is also a theatre
director, founder of the company Imprevisti e Probabilità. In the last three years, he has been awarded as best
Theatrical Migration in Modern Japanese Musical Comedy: New director at Premio Mecenate - Rome, Premio Augusteo - Napoli, Premio Allocca – Portici, Festival Aenaria –Is-
Ideology and Democracy Under the Monogamous Marriage System chia, Premio Guglia d’Oro – Ancona, among others. His poetic is a mix of visually compelling story-telling and
the adaptation of tradition and classics in contemporary style. As an actor and director he worked in Italy, USA,
Ai’ as a translation of love, was first enacted in the realm of theatre at the beginning of the Taisho Senegal, Republic of Macedonia, Austria, France, Switzerland, Germany and Taiwan.
era. It had emerged as a translation of ‘love’ along with the modernisation and Westernisation of
Japanese literature, drama, and philosophy. Although other words such as ‘koi’ and ‘nasake’ were From Savonarola to ISIS and Trump: When Cultural Becomes the
previously used to translate love for the stage during Meiji era, a new wholistic concept of the word Enemy
‘ai’ that included aesthetic appeal, sexual lustiness, and spiritual aspects began to be introduced out
of the tensions of translated Western dramas, shocking audiences and raising controversy. Ibsen’s Although the application of technology to the arts may seem a recent phenomenon, one could ar-
A Doll’s House (1911), Sudermann’s Magda (1912), and a play from Mérimée’s Carmen (1918) stim- gue that in time there have been multiple technical advancements which changed the crafting of an
ulated much debate in the 1910s, whilst Japanese playwrights, such as Kan Kikuchi and Momozō artwork. However, the current rush towards an increasing virtualization of all human experiences
Kurata, simultaneously started to promote a broadened concept of ‘ai’ to large audiences. Around and interactions is putting into question the core elements of culture, that is to say its solidity, per-
1920, there were a number of popular performances that highlighted the issues of ‘ai’, one of which manence and production of a community. According to advocates of the Singularity philosophy, in
was a satirical musical comedy ‘Philosophy of Love’ (Rabu Tetsugaku) written by Tarō Masuda and a few years the majority of all professional activities will be carried out more efficiently by robots.
performed at the Imperial Theatre in 1922. The form of this musical comedy was heavily indebted to Based on this perspective, the creative and artistic world will be the least affected by mass unem-
that of British musical comedy and the issues of love depicted in the play reflected much of Victorian ployment created by robots, as human beings will be better fit to represent empathy and feelings
sexual double standard. The issue of love=ai provides a new lens to understand transnational forms through the arts. Nonetheless, mass media and social networks are transforming the fruition of a
of performances, which attracted large audiences in Taishō Japan. live experience, putting into jeopardy the very idea of a stable community of reference. On top of
this, we are currently witnessing a backlash against the very notion of culture as openness, bridging
Key Words or crossing through differences, in favor of a protective and restrictive ideology made of violent
theatrical migration, modern theatre, Japanese theatre, love, marriage, sexual double standard, mu- erasure of archeological artifacts in Syria, the use of fear and ethnic substitution rhetoric in the US,
sical comedy and so on. This paper is a first theoretical attempt to make sense of these opposing forces that are
challenging the value of culture as a unifying element: from one side the need to resist the increas-
ing individualism of a media-based fruition of the arts, on the other side the imperative to oppose
forms of political neo-barbarism focused on the notion of culture as substitution / division rather
than culture as shared vision / unity.

Key Words
singularity, resistance, community, cultural protectionism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

86 87
 GP GP

Georges Gagneré Azadeh Ganjeh

Paris 8 University University of Tehran

Georges Gagneré is stage director and member of the collaborative platform didascalie.net, focusing on real Azadeh Ganjeh is a playwright, theatre director and Theatre Scholar born on 1983 in Tehran Iran. She got her
time intermedia environments in performing arts. In 2007, He initiated the project VIRAGE ANR French Nation- PhD in Theater studies from University of Berne Switzerland. Her special interest in theater for development,
al Research Agency about methods and software prototypes for cultural industries and for the arts. He direct- Social Theater and Women rights lead to achieving several national and international prizes for her immer-
ed productions in national theaters Théâtre National de Strasbourg, La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse, sive theater Productions. She is specialized in Iranian Theater History and because of her interest in Cultural
etc. and organized numerous workshops on the impact of real time new technologies on theater and scenic mobility topic she wrote her dissertation on Performing Hamlet in Modern Iran 1900-2012 effects of major
writings. He collaborated with Stéphane Braunschweig and Peter Stein as stage director first assistant on more Iranian revolutions on performing Hamlet. After receiving her Master in Civil Engineering in Isfahan University,
than 20  opera productions. He is lecturer in performing arts at the University Paris 8 and teaches acting and She earned a Theater directing M.A degree from Tehran Art University. She teaches directing workshops with
directing in digital environment. concentration on Environmental Theater and Interactive Theater as well as theater therapy workshops for
Afghan immigrant children in Iran. She is a lecturer in Tehran Art University and a member of Iranian Theater
Puppet, golem, autonomous avatar: a journey towards mixed directors forum.
reality stage
Migration: a Cultural Birth; Effects of Migration on Iranian
We propose to expose some results ensuing a pratice-as-research work-in-progress involving actors, Modern Theatre
stage directors and digital artists. This research adresses acting conditions for inhabiting 3D world
and works out theatrical relationships between physical actors and avatars on a mixed reality stage. This paper explores the possibilities that Migration gave to emergence of Modern theatre in Iran.
It was used in the « Mask and Avatar » artictic project supported by french Labex ARTS H2H with Migration is not only an act of transporting a body over geographical borders but also a process
theater departement of Paris 8 and Warwick Universities in 2017 and 2018. Well describe how we of mobilising cultures through cogitative and active ambassadors emigrants. Using the manifest of
connect in realtime physical actors to digital avatars with the purpose of building theatrical perfor- Cultural mobility by Stephan Greenblatt, the paper tries to find the trace of a theatrical exchange
mances adressing scenic co-presence and movement quality issues. Well sketch out bridges between through human mobilisations in the history of Modern Iran. Modernisation process in Iran began
theater and video game worlds about the way of understanding movement and intentionnality, Well in 19th century and its first drive was by sending Iranian students to Europe. This wave of elite’s
resort to the metaphores of the puppet and the golem to figure out acting constraints and solutions migration and their return to their homeland is very important in case of modernising Iran. The fact
for enhancing avatar expressivity, by relying on acting exemples from « Mask and avatar » project. that scholars, elites and foreign missioners imported modern theatre to Iranian stages as a cultural
Well study some video game strategies for approaching avatar autonomous behaviour with the view commodity to function as a tool of refinement, the dissemination of ethics, imposing modern social
to opening authoring possibilities in mixed reality performing stage context. moralities and democracy could be analysed on the basis of cultural studies and, specifically, the
“cultural mobility theory” by Stephan Greenblatt. The survey questions the encounter of cultures
Key Words through migration and the theatricality of this interaction, which led to birth of modern Theatre and
hybrid acting, avatar, mixed reality, motion capture, movement quality future artistic innovations in Iran. The research has a descriptive method and analysis this matter
through qualitative Data collection, social analytics and archival documents.

Key Words
Iran, Cultural mobility, Modernisation, Migration, Theatricality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

88 89
 GP GP

Ulrike Garde Heike Gehring

Macquarie University Rhodes University
Ulrike Garde is Head of International Studies: Languages and Cultures at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her Heike Gehring is a senior lecturer at the Drama Department of Rhodes University where she teaches both
research interests range across Intercultural German Studies, German theatre and performing arts as well theory and practice. Her teaching and research areas are diverse, but can often be connected to contemporary
as German literature. She is investigating how we create and perceive cultural identities in theatre, literature concerns related to a South African context. She is also interested in contemporary performance as well as
and film. Past research projects and publications have included studies on: Bertolt Brecht, the reception of gender, postcolonial and intercultural studies. Apart from her role as lecturer, she fulfils multiple managerial
German-speaking playwrights in Australia Brecht & Co: German-speaking Playwrights on the Australian Stage functions, such as being the director of the Rhodes Theatre complex (2008 – 2014). For this role she has been
and on the creation of cultural identity in inter- and transcultural contexts. Her research has contributed new awarded with a Rhodes University merit award for outstanding work. She is also involved as theatre maker in
insights into Australian-German cross-cultural relationships and into the Arts’ engagement with cultural diver- the capacity of creator, director and producer. For this she has won several awards, amongst them the Sanlam
sity in German-speaking countries and beyond. Her latest publications offer fresh perspectives on our current Prize for Afrikaans Theatre (SPAT), in the categories Best Director and Best Production and the Rhodes Women
fascination with ‘Real People’ narrating their lives and sharing their memories on stage. Her recent co-au- of the Year Award for her contribution to the performing arts in 2006. Recently (2013 – 2015) she has been a
thored monograph explores how innovative documentary theatre, such as Theatre of Real People, has created guest lecturer at the universities of Stockholm, Vienna, Olomouc (Czech Republic) and the University of the
a sense of the real and authentic, asking whether this aesthetic strategy contributes fresh ways of perceiving Arts (UdK) in Berlin.
culturally diverse and unfamiliar people. Current Research Projects include: - “Film as Intercultural Facilitator
of Knowledge / Film als interkultureller Wissensvermittler , Trilateral Strategic Partnership Program Macquarie, Third space as meeting point: beyond first space/second space
Hamburg and Fudan University. - “World Literatures and Cultures”, a cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental
project in the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University. dualisms
The proposed paper aims to explain how “third space” theory can be applied to create theatre that
International Festival Co-Productions as “Migrating” Theatre: is able to reflect on a South African society “united in diversity”. Such theatre lends itself to the
Exploring the Interplay of the National and Transnational in the open-hearted exploration of difference in terms of both form and content. To do so it employs a
Production and Critical Reception of Falk Richter and Anouk van generative rather than fixed approach: in the case of the production Ekspedisies [Expeditions], each
Dijk’s “Complexity of Belonging” version of the play produced material from which the next production could be made, opening a
space for exchange as new versions emerged. The interaction that this allows can in turn be viewed
International Festival Co-Productions as ‘Migrating’ Theatre: Exploring the Interplay of the Nation- in terms of the “third space”, understood to be a “meeting point” and “hybrid place” (Soja, 1996). In
al and Transnational in the Production and Critical Reception of Falk Richter and Anouk van Dijk’s Homi Bhabha’s (1990) terms, the third space is one in which the cultures of colonisers and colonised
Complexity of Belonging Complexity of Belonging is a work with a fundamentally international can come together, offering opportunities for the formation of new cultural forms in post-colonial
character: Created by German director-playwright Falk Richter, Dutch choreographer Anouk van Dijk contexts – forms that are neither representative of the one nor the other. Edward Soja (1996) ex-
and members of her culturally diverse Australian dance company Chunky Move, this intercontinen- plains that it is a place “where old connections can be disturbed and new ones emerge” (56): some-
tal co-production has been touring internationally since its premiere at the Melbourne Festival in thing vital within a South African context where many connections and relationships are still based
2014. This paper explores the degree to which underlying poetological and dramaturgical concepts, on a black/white apartheid mind-set. The search for a third way, then, is an attempt to cross borders
as much as specific details of the show’s mise-en-scène might be seen as enabling the transnation- so as to transcend strict and well defined oppositions in an attempt to create future possibilities. The
al appeal of a show, which was created with the aim to ‘migrate’ to a range of different countries manner in which this can be done will be explained using examples from the various iterations of the
and cultures Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Taiwan. The paper com- production Ekspedisies.
bines textual and performance analysis with an examination of journalistic reception in the countries
where Complexity of Belonging has toured to date in order to explore the interplay of national and
transnational factors in this show. Complexity thus serves as a case study for asking when and how
compelling transnational and international narratives of literature and drama transcend the local
and national and when and how the transnational is re-localized in journalistic reception.

Key Words
internationalization transnational contemporary German theatre and performance cultural diversity
reception audience festival Falk Richter
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

90 91
 GP GP

Pujya Ghosh Milija Gluhović

Jawaharlal Nehru University University of Warwick

I am pursuing my PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawarhar- Milija Gluhović is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, his research
lal Nehru University. I am also teaching Sociology and Theatre at the Shri Ram School for the last two years. interests include: contemporary European theatre and performance memory studies and psychoanalysis dis-
My research interest lies in the relation between politics and performance. I am especially interested in the courses of European identity, migrations and human rights religion, secularity, and politics. His recent publica-
period of 1960s and 70s and the way it marked the cultural, intellectual and political shift, which has been tions include Performing European Memories: Trauma, Ethics, Politics 2013, Performing the Secular: Religion,
the consequence of that period. Currently I am working on the contemporary Maoist movements and its rep- Representation, and Politics 2017, co-edited with Jisha Menon and The Oxford Handbook of Politics and Per-
resentation through performance. I have been trying to work towards a critical methodological approach to formance forthcoming, co-edited with Silvija Jestrović, Shirin Rai, and Michael Saward.
political and theatrical event working with oral history, cultural memory and Badiou’s philosophy and trying
to create an apt theory-history interface. My work deals with spaces of political, performance interventions, Europe in Crisis, Refugees, and the Challenge of Migration
civil society, spectatorship, community engagement, and citizenship.
Taking as a point of departure recent writing by theorists such as Étienne Balibar, Seyla Benhabib,
Know Your Activist!! and Slavoj Žižek, who in their different ways have argued that the ongoing refugee crisis presents a
unique opportunity for Europe to redefine itself, the paper traces the ways in which the crisis and
In the last couple of years India has witnessed a massive change in it’s political life since the far-right related issues are broached in a range of recent performances such as Elfriede Jelinek’s Charges The
political party BJP came into power in 2014. Since then the country has been facing unprecedented Supplicants, 2015, Milo Rau’s Empire 2016 [the final part of The Europe Trilogy], and Brett Bailey’s
and spectacular violence along the lines of caste, religion, and of course gender along with economic Sanctuary 2017 and Nermin Hamzagic’s Welcome 2017. How do such performances succeed – or
decline brought about through demonetization and the Goods and Services Tax. In line with such fail – in the contested context the increasingly repressive European migration regimes? What possi-
political events of the recent past, university spaces like Hyderabad Central University, Hyderabad, bilities of a ‘new foundation’ of the European project/ reconstructed Europe can be discerned in the
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Jadavpur University, Kolkata have come in to focus European political arena? And what’s the role of the Left in reclaiming the material, social, and legal
through the forms of protest against the institutional killing of lower caste students like Rohith Vem- conditions for the acceptance of refugees in Europe? What can be done from the Leftist standpoint
ula and for the right to free speech and dissent. This has created a space of the emergence of youth to establish unity, solidarity, and hospitality in Europe against a transnational front of the forces
leaders as a strong voice of opposition to this government. This is especially important for my ongo- rejecting refugees?
ing PhD because this current situation has brought up questions of identity and legitimacy of activ-
ists and politically marks a historical moment of the coming together of the Left students’ movement Key Words
and the Dalit or Ambedkarite students’ movement. Therefore, I would like to address the following Europe, the Left, Crisis, Migration, Refugees, Solidarity
questions through this paper:  1.       the creation of the revolutionary youth icon and leader: what
it means to be a student/youth activist, the thrust on the identity of activists, and the restructuring
of the Communist dream. 2.        The performative strategies used to ‘know your activists/student
leaders’ and how it gets reflected in popular modes of representation.

Key Words
Activism, Identity, Nation, Youth icon
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

92 93
 GP GP

Tomoko Goto Barbara Gronau

Tottori University Berlin University of the Arts

Tomoko Goto is a professor at Tottori University. Her research interests include arts management and commu- Barbara Gronau is Professor for Theatre Studies at the University of Arts Berlin and Spokesperson of the Re-
nity developments through arts and culture. Before joining the academia, she worked at a theater company search Training Group „Knowledge in the Arts, funded by the German Research Fund DFG. After studies in
for several years as a manager. Her current research is about regional theater management and related human philosophy, theatre and literature, Gronau held a position as research associate in the Collaborative Research
resources. Centre, “Cultures of the Performative“ at Freie Universität Berlin, from 2002-2010. In 2006 she received her
Ph.D. for her dissertation on installation-art as interference of theatre and visual arts, for which Gronau ob-
Potentials of Amateur Theater Production in Super Aging Society: tained the “Joseph Beuys Award for Reserach“. Since her interest is also in theatre practice, Barbara Gronau
worked as a dramaturg for several theatre productions and as a curator for international theater festivals.
A Case Study on Theater Activities by the Elderly Her publications include: Theaterinstallationen. Performative Räume bei Beuys, Boltanski und Kabakov 2010
Global Ibsen. Performing Multiple Modernities, New York/London: Routledge 2011 co-ed. E. Fischer-Lichte, C.
This paper examines diversity and development of theater productions among Japanese senior cit- Weiler HOW TO FRAME. On the Threshold of Performance and Visual Arts. Berlin/New York 2016, Aesthetics
izens and proposes three hypnoses to consider in understanding amateur theater productions in of Standstill, co-ed. R. Goerling, L. Schwarte upcoming.
super aging society.   Japan is one of the most rapidly advancing aging societies. The Japanese aging
population ratio the proportion of people over 65 or above to the total population in 2016 is 27.3 % Aesthetics of Standstill as Countertemporalities
and it is the highest in the world. The ratio is projected to be over 30% by the year 2030. With such a
growing senior population, enhancing their quality of life is one of the most challenging tasks in the In a society that self-referentially claims that “modernity is speed,” Eriksen 2001 the role of standstill
society of Japan.   In this context, the senior citizen’s participation in theatrical activities has been is met with deep ambivalence. Embodying the fear of stagnation, it threatens the economic and po-
increasing rapidly. For example, over 40 theater groups by seniors are listed by a website special- litical imperatives for constant growth. As leisure time or otium, it has become the formulaic longing
izing in senior theaters. In 2011, the National Senior Theater Network was established and twelve of a thoroughly scheduled society. Finally, as an act of disobedience or strike, it serves as a tool and
senior theater groups participated in its 2017 annual festival.  One remarkable characteristic of these battle cry of all emancipation movements. In my talk I would like to draw attention to the aesthetic
senior-citizen theater productions is their diversity. Some, such as Saitama Gold Theater Group by potentialities of stasis: How is standstill evoked in art? How does that, in turn, affect the perception
Yukio Ninagawa, an internationally well-known director, are more professionally oriented, aiming at of time? And to what degree do artistic practices of arresting movement hold aspects of resistance?
creating finest theatrical works. Others, however, have different goals and agendas. For example, in Along different positions form theatre and performance art, the lecture will draw attention to the
“Aging and Theater Project,” Naoki Sugawara, a licensed care worker and actor, works with amateur fact, that the performing arts indeed play host to numerous aesthetic processes of deceleration,
actors, including one who is 91 years old, and presents productions featuring aging, senile dementia, stopping, pausation and stasis – directed against hegemonic time regimes.I will argue, that artistic
and death.   By taking several examples of theater productions by seniors, this paper illustrates their practices of stasis can be seen as work towards “countertemporalities.” Their objective is not to
wide range of agendas and objectives as well as artistic expressions. The paper, then, posits three negate or abolish time, but to reflect and multiply experiences of time. Especially in the arts, such
key points to consider in examining senior theoretical productions. Those points are 1 degrees of multi-layered temporalities are tried out, for the reflection and criticism of temporal orders is one
openness of the productions to senior participants and audience, 2 relationships between theater of the characteristics of modern aesthetics. Their procedures and effects vary according to genre,
groups and their local communities, and 3 theoretical dimensions that productions aim to attain. medium, material and audience.

Key Words Key Words

Amateur Theater, Super Aging Society, the Elderly, Community Stasis, Aesthetic of Standstill, Countertemporalities
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

94 95
 GP GP

Gustavo Guenzburger Pía Gutiérrez

Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Universidad Católica de Chile
Gustavo Guenzburger is an artist, activist, researcher and professor of Theater and Literature. Since 2015, he Assistant Profesor at the Literature Faculty and Drama School of Catholic University of Chile. PhD in Literature.
works at the Federal State University of Rio de Janeiro UNIRIO, where he teaches and develops postdoctoral Actually, working about the community archives around creative precesses in Chilean performing arts www.
research on Theater, aesthetics and fostering policies, with a FAPERJ scholarship since 2016. He also teaches proyectoarde.org. She has researched Chilean theater of the 20th century, especially its marginal circuits po-
interpretation for singers, in the Casa do Choro. He holds a Master’s degree in Literary Theory and a PhD in litical, didactic, indigenous theater in relation to the official archive. Editor of the book Composición de un
Comparative Literature, both from the State University of Rio de Janeiro UERJ – 2011/2015. In 2014 he held a memoria, Archivo Isidora Aguirre USACH, 2015
split-site program at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris III as part of his doctoral research on the relations
between the aesthetics and socio-economics of the theater in Rio de Janeiro. Working since 1989 as an actor, Archives of The Other: Violence and Racism in representations of
singer and producer, he has also directed many shows such as “Crônicas de Nuestra América”, by Augusto Boal.
Mapuche people in Chilean Theater
Melodrama in Brazil and the politics of traveling affective forms I propose to review the scenic construction of the Mapuche as an other that has been evicted from
This paper discusses the political implications of corporal forms which travel in space and in time. their land and forced to migrate or enclosed by the hegemonic power. For this I will focus on the
Exploring Aby Warburgs concept of affective formulae, it follows the process of comical inversion of scenic uses of the archival material incorporated in two recent plays: Galvarino by Paula González,
melodramatic forms in the play A Maldição do Vale Negro The Curse of the Black Valley, in Portu- 2012 and Noche Mapuche by Marcelo Leonart, 2017. I maintain as an entrance to these works that
guese, presented in Rio de Janeiro, 1988. The play satirized the melodrama genre of the 19th centu- the exhibition of documents not only operate as a denunciation of conflicts over the territory but
ry by making a pastiche of all its formulae. In the process of Brazilian importation and adaptation of also about the prejudices of race and violence with which Chilean society in general continues to
the corporal canons of French melodrama, a certain irrational side of European culture had served, operate.
in the 19th century, as a bridge to the smuggling of moral values. Especially for the rising national
bourgeoisie, this was also a bridge to the very sentiment of belonging to foreign standards. Despite Key Words
the stigma of an alienating, lesser art, melodrama has spread worldwide, particularly in Brazil, re- Indigenous Migration Archive, Mapuche Contemporary Chilean Theatre.
vealing an extraordinary renovation capability by metamorphosing into the most varied narrative
formats - feuilleton, circus-theater, cinema, radio-theater, radionovela, telenovela. Every time a new
type of mass communication technology is invented, a new melodramatic form immediately springs
up to utilize that support. Through the perspective of the 1988 play, this article seeks also to prop-
erly place the repossession mechanism of the old forms in the context of the Rio de Janeiro theater,
which reformulated itself facing a crisis created by a new cultural scenario. Two factors were decisive
in this crisis: the post-modernist wind promoting the disbelief in great political narratives, and the
universalization of telenovelas, whose naturalist acting style replaced the romantic corporal formu-
lae in order to try to attenuate the melodramatic aspect of the plots.

Key Words
affective formulae melodrama Brazilian theater telenovela
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

96 97
 GP GP

Susan Haedicke Ken Hagiwara

University of Warwick Meiji University

Susan Haedicke is Associate Professor Reader in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Uni- Ken HAGIWARA [email protected] is professor of the School of Global Japanese Studies, Meiji University in
versity of Warwick, UK. Her research has focused on performances in public spaces and democratic partici- Tokyo and former research associate of the Tsubouchi Memorial Theater Museum, Waseda University in To-
pation. She published Contemporary Street Arts in Europe: Aesthetics and Politics in 2013 as well as several kyo. He gives courses on Japanese theater history and does research on modern and contemporary German
articles and book chapters on street arts and applied theatre over the last ten years. Her current work expands and Japanese theater. His activities include translation and preparation/operation of subtitles for guest per-
this research to look at performance and agriculture. She is currently working on a book entitled Performing formances by companies from German-speaking countries in Japan, and he has worked for Rimini Protokoll,
Landscapes: Farmlands, to be published with Palgrave Macmillan, and a practice-as-research performance Christoph Marthaler and René Pollesch et al.
project on women’s contributions to UK agriculture. She also works as a professional dramaturg, most recently
with the Polish street theatre company, Teatr Biuro Podróży’s The Winter’s Tale, performed in the Coventry Hara Sachiko’s Body in Her Recent Works in Germany Regarding
Cathedral ruins in 2017.
Migration
Migrant Farmscapes: Performative Interventions into US Japanese actress Hara Sachiko, the one and only full-employed Japanese actress in the ensembles
Agriculture of different municipal theatres in Germany and Austria in these two decades, has developed re-
markable individual activities since 2010. Her original event Hiroshima-Salon in Hanover has been
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that six out of ten farm workers in the United States are held since 2010 every year. The first aim was to promote the unknown partnership between the
undocumented, and the National Agricultural Workers Survey claims that up to 78% of the agricul- two cities through various contents such as documentary movie, lecture, cosplay show, and karaoke
tural workforce in the twenty-first century has crossed a border to till American soil. Without these by Japanese and German participants while Japanese foods were offered. But the Great East Japan
mostly invisible migrant workers, the US food system would be paralysed as farmers would not have Earthquake and the following accident of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima in 2011 changed the
enough hands to harvest the crops. And yet, the farm labourers, predominantly but not solely from content. After her colleagues had recommended her strongly to persuade her family living in Tokyo
Mexico, lack decent working conditions and basic rights and are afraid to report exploitation and to flee to Germany, she used the event to inform German residents about where in Japan and how
abuse for fear of deportation. For decades, agricultural labour activists have used art-based tactics to safe was by showing her interviews conducted on Japanese locals. Before the creation began, she
fight injustice: the activist/artist collaboration between Cesar Chavez, founder of what became the must have been forced to have the idea that her family in Japan would have to emigrate to Germa-
United Farm Workers Union, and Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino in the 1960s immediately comes ny. After she had moved to Hamburg in 2013, she often engaged herself to the projects related to
to mind. In the early twenty-first century, a leading voice in farm labour activism is the Coalition of the theme emigrants/immigrants. An installation Bibi Challenge 2014 made refugees sailing on an
Immokalee Workers CIW, first organized in 1993 in Immokalee, Florida. Unlike Valdez’s actos to raise ocean its theme, and New Hamburg 2015 was a collaboration with immigrants living concentrated in
awareness, CIW relies on performative interventions, public events in ‘open and mobile spaces of a particular district of Hamburg. The latter was soon developed and invited to Venice Biennale after
performance’, to challenge existing working conditions and improve the plight of migrant tomato Hara’s workplace Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg had offered its building for temporal staying
pickers. This presentation interrogates the performativity and efficacy of CIW’s interventionist strat- for refugees arriving from Syria when Hara had cared them voluntarily with her colleagues. Hara’s
egies in two of its campaigns linked to the ‘Fair Food Program’ launched in 2011: tightly choreo- body in the performances in Germany functions as a continuously developing symbolic medium. It
graphed ‘Fasts for Fair Food’, from 2012 to today, to increase wages above the poverty line and end often demonstrates otherness cf. her collaborations with director René Pollesch and reflects recently
forced labour, and the ‘Harvest Without Violence’ Mobile Museum, begun in 2017, to expose and her solidarity with immigrants who are forced to find their new home as a minority.
end sexual assault against women farm workers.
Key Words
Key Words body, Japanese, German, earthquake, Fukushima
migrant farmworkers, agriculture, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, performativity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

98 99
 GP GP

Kristina Hagström-Ståhl Nicole Haitzinger

University of Gothenburg Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg

Kristina Hagström-Ståhl is a professor in performance research at the Academy of Music and Drama and PARSE Nicole Haitzinger is Professor at the Department of Art History, Musicology and Dance Studies at Universität
Platform for Artistic Research Sweden, University of Gothenburg. She has a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Salzburg. She conducted her doctoral studies at the Insitute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies TFM at Uni-
UC Berkeley, and has since been a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University and a visiting professor at Stock- versität Wien. Co-convenor of the university course Curation in the Performing Arts with Christopher Balme
holm University of the Arts. Kristina works at the intersection of critical theory and performance practice, with and Sigrid Gareis. Co-speaker of the interdisciplinary Doctorate School gender_transcultural. Recent books:
research interests in feminist performance as well as interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts. Kristina also Resonanzen des Tragischen Zwischen Ereignis und Affekt Turia + Kant, 2015. Recent articles: Afro-Futurism or
works as a director, with recent productions at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Folkteatern in Gothenburg, and Lament? Staging Africas in Dance Today and in the 1920s. In: Dance Research Journal 49/1, Cambridge Uni-
Scenkonst Sörmland. She is an editor of PARSE journal. versity Press April 2017 Performative Contours. In: Susanne Foellmer, Katharina Schmidt und Cornelia Schmitz
Hg.: Transfer in the Performing Arts: Moving Between Media. London: Routledge [2018] Amanda Piña is a
We Were to Live Here, Together: Notes on Strangeness, Othering, choreographer, dancer and cultural worker living in Vienna, Austria and was born in Chile during the military
dictatorship from a Mexican-Chilean-Lebanese family. Her choreographic work is concerned with the decoloni-
Dramaturgy, Ethics, and Aesthetics zation of art, focusing on the political and social power of movement, introducing non-western references and
perspectives in contemporary performance. Amanda Piña is interested in making art beyond the idea of prod-
In “What is Epic Theatre?”, Walter Benjamin reflects on the act of interruption as a political, drama- uct and in developing new frameworks for the creation of and encounter with artistic aesthetic experiences.
turgical, and aesthetic strategy for the theatre. To exemplify he outlines a scene of bourgeois family
conflict, into which a stranger enters – interrupting the action and providing a new and defamiliariz- DANZA Y FRONTERA: choreography of resistance at the border
ing perspective on the situation at hand. With this point of departure, I would like to propose a paper between Mexico and the US
outlining the political and aesthetic potential of Kristian Hallberg’s We were to live here, together,
which I directed at Folkteatern in Gothenburg in 2017. Set in contemporary Sweden, this play subtly A group of 40 young men from the Mexican border city of Matamoros, twin city of Brownsville, Texas
brings the private sphere of a married, middle-aged, middle-class, white couple into a confrontation US, perform a contemporary pop-cultural appropriation of a historical ‘danza de conquista’ conquest
with social precarity and exclusion. Here, the entry – onto the stage, into the middle-class home, dance in the public space. The dance, in which indigenous practices, colonial narratives, pop-culture
and by extension into the arena of public life – of a stranger/Other, in the shape of a homeless and spirituality resonate, is an expression of resistance in a context of extreme violence related to
Eastern European Roma woman, disrupts and makes strange the course of everyday life, the politics drug trafficking narcotrafic at the border between Mexico and the US. The influx of weapons and
of hospitality, and not least the relation between Sweden’s majority population and so-called ”EU the outflux of opioids at bargain prices erase the security of public space. The dance reclaims it by
migrants.” In my presentation, I will analyze the drama and its contextualization in the social sphere the temporal presence of ‘other’/alternative male group formations – a re-presentation of ‘other’
and migration politics of contemporary Sweden/Europe, while simultaneously considering the aes- bodies different from militarized drug cartel hierarchies but similar in terms of the performance of
thetic, ethical and technical/practical challenges involved in working with this text as a director. potency, virility and energy: “The don’t hold a weapon – just a shaker in their hand – Green, white,
red, the colors of my land” quote from a Hip Hop song about the dance. Significantly, the exposure
Key Words of their dancing bodies serves as a kind of shield which protects and gives them a certain ‘symbolic’
directing, dramaturgy, gender, othering, Verfremdung power in the social context of the violent border region. Moreover, the spiritual aspect of the dance,
which is today dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe – the contemporary costumes include for ex-
ample the image of the Virgin – contributes to the sacralization of this collective act of resistance.
In our co-presentation we want to present and analyze this border-choreography, understood as an
agent and catalyst for socio-cultural strategies of resistance by means of dancing and performing.
This staging of bodies beyond theatrical representation draws into question cultural, racial and aes-
thetic borders.

Key Words
border-choreography, resistance, contempo-traditional, pop-culture, embodiment, narco-culture
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

100 101
 GP GP

Anita Hallewas Rachel Hann

Griffith University University of Surrey

Anita Hallewas has taught and facilitated drama and theatre programming for almost 20 years in Australia, Dr. Rachel Hann is Lecturer in Scenography and Deputy Associate Dean at the University of Surrey. Her re-
New Zealand, the UK, Turkey and Canada.  She completed her Masters in Applied Theatre at the University of search is focused on the intersections between costume, scenography, and architecture. Rachel is co-founder
Victoria, Canada and is currently undertaking her PhD at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia with a research of the research network Critical Costume. In 2018, Rachel’s first monograph will be published entitled ‘Beyond
focus of refugee theatre.  She is an active applied theatre practitioner and the founding managing artistic Scenography’ Routledge.
director of Flying Arrow Productions based in Revelstoke, Canada that specializes in applied theatre program-
ming for the whole community, with a special interest in encouraging intergenerational collaboration that Scenographics and Microstates: Arguments for a renewed politics
encourages social change.
of border
Theatre in refugee camps: a survey of current practice as a tool I argue that ‘scenographics’ are formative to all acts of theatre-making. In this presentation, I chal-
for social change lenge the deterministic assumption that stages precede scenography to isolate how other staged
or situated worldings are also manifested through scenographics: including the place orientating
Theatre in times of war, conflict and in encampments is not new Balfour, 2001 Balfour, Thompson, affordances of light, stage geography, costume and sound. Or more precisely, I argue that there
& Hughes, 2009 Conquergood and yet, when assessing the needs of refugees in camps and transit are no stages without scenographics. This, in turn, reveals how land borders are enacted and felt
it is easy to presume that only food, shelter and safety are truly necessary.  Two British playwrights through the orientating traits of scenographics: as that which irritate, other and complicate orders
saw a need at the Jungle refugee camp and established Good Chance Theatre as an opportunity to of world. Whether Una Chaudhuri 1995 or Sophie Nield 2008, the stage as a form of ‘border space’
feel “human” as the need for expression is as vital as food and shelter.  Good Chance Theatre be- is now well established within theatre & performance studies. Yet, the negotiated social contracts of
came part of the very act of migration and in turn, their practice offered a mirror to this migration borders have, I argue, been devised according to what Marshall McLuhan describes as the compart-
allowing a personal growth movement from one part to another, for “the artist’s freedom is his mentalisation of ‘visual space’. Scenographics complicate the politics of border by reviewing how
sense of distance from this world…His [old] world ceased to exist, he must find his feet in the new speculative microstates, such as the Republic of Molossia, declare and affirm their borders both in
one”Clarke, 2001, p. 89.  In Lesbos, an access point for thousands of refugees, two groups have terms of ideology and materiality through the material and immaterial orientations of scenograph-
established support for refugees: MOSAIK offers art, craft and performance opportunities to set a ics. Situated within the Nevada town of Harmony Province, the self-declared microstate of Molossia
counterexample of what is possible, whilst Angels Relief Team offer cultural programming with the is composed of three properties and covers approximately one acre. To manifest this declaration of
goal of peace and belonging.  In a digitial exploration of six continents and twenty countries, it can nation, the borders of Molossia are enacted through crafted materialities such as changes in ground
be confirmed that although these two Lesbos groups are special, they are not unique.  This paper texture, architecture and signage. While the politics that these scenographics enact are specula-
highlights the enormously varied theatre practice in refugee camps as tools for cultural identity, tive in intention and legality, they are no less orientating that any other land border. Moreover, the
revolution, entertainment and education.  Theatre allows potential for “creativity and the power of scenographics of Molossia manifest the politics of this microstate:  where scenographics can enact
the arts in building hope in times of despair… to think that they can change the world and create speculative worldings and, in doing so, invite what Hannah Arendt The Human Condition, 1958 de-
miracles”Abusrour, 2013, p. 232.  But, are ethical considerations being made, in particular relating to scribed as a ‘space of appearance’. Consequently, I argue that scenographics can enact a renewed
survivors of trauma?  Is the practice culturally sensitive, valuable to participants and is there geniune politics of border through the affirmative act of being with world.
informed consent?  How can this practice move “beyond harm” to benefit all Mackenzie, McDowell,
& Pittaway, 2007? Key Words
scenography border microstates stages scenographics
Key Words
refugee theatre theatre in refugee camps beyond harm ethics of refugee theatre applied theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

102 103
 GP GP

Wells Hansen Dror Harari

National Taiwan University Tel Aviv University

Professor of Classics at National Taiwan University, former head of Classics at Milton Academy, lecturer at Dror Harari is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Theatre Arts, Tel Aviv University. His book, Self-Perfor-
University of Chicago. Trained at Boston College BA, University of Chicago MA and University of Massachusetts mance: Performance Art and the Representation of Self, was published in Hebrew 2014. His current research,
EdD, past fellow of the American Academy in Rome, current editor of Amphora at the Society for Classical funded by the Israel Science Foundation, focuses on the historiography of performance art in Israel, from its
Studies and Contributing Editor at Dickinson College Commentaries. origins in the 1960s and through the 1970s.

Defining Imperial Rome through Public Performance: The Trial of Migration, Transplantation and Utopia in the Early Action Works
Piso of Israeli-Moroccan Artist Pinchas Cohen Gan.
There are few performances as dramatic as a show trial, and none was more riveting in first century When Israeli artist Pinchas Cohen Gan b. 1942 gives an account of his life story, he begins with the
Rome than the trial of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso on the charge on poisoning Tiberius heir-apparent, fact of his compelled uprooting from his native land Morocco and migration to Israel in 1949, a year
Germanicus, in far away Syria. This was, without doubt, the trial of its century. Tacitus renders the after its foundation. Migrating from a Muslim country, Cohen Gan, the Oriental Jew, “Easterner”
trial, and the events surrounding it, the centerpiece of Book Three of the Annales, and it remains in Hebrew Mizrahi, was struggling to find his place and integrate in the newly born country whose
one of antiquitys most noted accounts of public engagement. Much has been written about these cultural identity and social hegemony were and still are European oriented. Although he has lived in
events, and Tacitus account of them, but the narrative has not yet been analyzed for what, at the Israel most of his life, Cohen Gan still considers himself to be a Moroccan Jewish refugee who lost his
core it is: an account of a public performance. Indeed, a close analysis of Tacitus own language, home. Between 1971 to1975 Cohen Gan performed a series of distinctive environmental projects
particularly in contrast with other sources, shows that he envisions many elements as exemplars of which he termed “activities.” As I see it, a prominent characteristic of these activities was his use
how public performance constructs borders between Roman and foreign, imperial and republican, of “transplantation” as a performative method: the insertion of a foreign element into a particular
supporters of/collaborators with the regime, and conspirators/freedom fighters. These questions ecological, cultural, or aesthetic environment in a hopeless attempt to assimilate it within that envi-
come on stage in public. Tiberius, himself considered by many to have ordered the murder, must re- ronment. For example, in 1972 he mounted an exhibition of his paintings at the cowshed of Kibbutz
invent himself for the public as the grieving uncle. In striking view is the careful staging of the arrival Nirim in The Dead Sea Project 1972 he attempted to transplant fish into the Dead Sea and in 1973
of Germanicus widow from Syria, the engagement of the soldiers on the night of the funeral, and the he traveled alone to Alaska to explore life and assimilation in a different geographical and cultural
reports of Germanicus final days, in which his friends must enact the dead mans role. The characters environment. I maintain that these conceptual projects were autobiographical in essence and, more
dont just explain or promote their versions of reality they visually reify them by acting parts, and the importantly, purposely futureless from the start as they reflected Cohen Gan’s own failure, as a Jew-
trial is profoundly influenced not by oratory, but by the adoption and performance of personae. The ish immigrant from a Muslim country, to assimilate in the fabricated utopian Israeli “melting pot.”
was not a mere play or diversion, it was a carefully-planned performance and counter-performance These activities were critical of Israel’s ethnocentrism and nativist social policies.
that tried to answer that most vexing of problems: Who was truly part of an imperial Rome, and who
was a dispensable extra? Key Words
migration, action art, identity, utopia
Key Words
Rome, Empire, Public Performance, Classical
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

104 105
 GP GP

James Harding Ozlem Hemis

University of Maryland Kadir Has University
James M. Harding is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Born in Istanbul, 1969, Ozlem Hemis studied at Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy Department, Istanbul Univer-
During the 2016-2017 academic year he was a research fellow at International Research Center / “Interweav- sity, 1996-2000. She completed her MA in Performing Arts Department at Dokuz Eylul University in 2006. She
ing Performance Cultures” at the Freie Universität, Berlin. He is the author of Performance, Transparency and received her PhD with “An Analysis of a Mindset Through the Forms of Representation” at Theatre Criticism
the Cultures of Surveillance Michigan, 2018 The Ghosts of the Avant- Gardes: Exorcising Experimental Theater and Dramaturgy Department, Istanbul University in 2012. She taught at Istanbul University Theatre Criticism
and Performance Michigan, 2013 Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American and Dramaturgy Department and State Conservatoire, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatoire.
Avant- Garde Michigan, 2011 and, Adorno and a Writing of the Ruins SUNY, 1997. His coedited anthologies in- She teaches at Kadir Has University Theatre Department. She is a member of The International Association of
clude: The Sixties, Center Stage: Mainstream and Popular Performances in a Turbulent Decade Michigan 2017 Theatre Critics and worked as Afife Theatre Awards jury member. Her reviews and critiques have appeared in
The Rise of Performance Studies: Rethinking Richard Schechner’s Broad Spectrum Palgrave, 2011 and Restag- the following periodicals: Tiyatro Tiyatro, Milliyet Sanat, Hürriyet Gösteri, Sanat Dünyamız, Artimento, Doğu-
ing the Sixties: Radical Theaters and Their Legacies Michigan, 2006 with Cindy Rosenthal. He is currently writ- Batı, Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturgi, Tiyatro Araştırmaları, Mimesis, Hece and the newspapers: Cumhuri-
ing a new book tentatively entitled Performance Beyond the Pale: Creative Activism and Bodies in Extremis. yet and Radikal. She also participated in the common project books: Çocuk ve Sanat, Çocuk ve Edebiyat and
Kahramanlar Kitabı with her articles. In the meantime, she is member of editorial board of Mimesis, Journal of
Staging Sedition and the Politics of Immobility, Theorizing Theatre/Translation-Research, University of Bosphorous Publishing and the art council of Kadikoy Municipality,
Istanbul.
Guerrilla Equivocation
The allusion in the IFTR conference theme to an undefined space “between migration and stasis” po- Aestheticization of Suffering
sitions theatre squarely within contentious debates about the political significance of mobility and
In this article, I will ask what kind of language can deal with the aestheticization of suffering where violence,
immobility. Drawing upon those debates, my paper echoes Darin Barney’s critique of Tim Cresswell’s
influential essay “Towards a Politics of Mobility” and of its key assertion that politics “involve[s] the identified with power, is exalted—a  question which I asked, for the first time reading Ariane Mnouch-
production and distribution of power.” Barney proposes instead an activist understanding of politics kine’s expression “to avoid dramatising the subject” which she used while working on The Last Cara-
not “as the distribution” but “as the disruption of power” and thus as something countering social vanserai– I would like to question the purpose of projecting an ethical case which may be disregard-
formations that structure mobility as a reinforcement of existing political orders Barney 16. Barney’s ed in performance where the victims of this violence are the subject matter. How can language deal
argument equates politics with “resistance” itself – and correspondingly with “stasis” – since “resis- with exposure to intensifying violence, the threat of war, war itself of perpetually moving of being
tance” literally means a “group action in opposition to those in power,” or more simply put, “a force an outsider, not hearing your language in public of facing an existence in another land, being surplus,
that obstructs or opposes motion.” Here, “the politics of immobility” suggests a principled, disrup- while having significant value in your own land? Can such an existence possibly be observed from
tive refusal to move along the paths of social mobility that fortify existent mechanisms of power. an external perspective? Can an internal perspective truly show reality? As human actions establish
My paper asks: how do the politics of this resistant immobility – of this disruptive stasis – perform? life strategies, further questions arise: would the internalized violence produce an alienating effect?
Addressing this question, my paper considers the disruptive force of a performative that I identify as Would the artist’s concern about visibility result in a further sacrifice of the victim, this time on the
“guerrilla equivocation” and it focuses on two case studies as its primary examples: the declaration stage? How would the means of transferring the practicality of ‘survival’ into the language of art, in
of a “Dada Republic” by the Berlin Dadaists in 1918, and the students-led demonstrations in Paris both metaphorical and denotational senses, be realised in lands which are “undeveloped”, perhaps
in May 1968. I am interested in how these profoundly disruptive events performed what was and “doomed-to-remain-undeveloped” playgrounds of diverse political tendencies far from the “civilized
simultaneously was not a moment of sedition. Theorizing such moments of staging sedition as an world”? I will develop various definitions within this context: to exemplify these issues, I will try to
example of guerrilla equivocation, my paper offers it a viable tactic in the repertoire of creative activ- explain through an insiders view Muhammad Al-Attar’s and Omar Abusaade’s Iphigenia, and Yeşim
ism, a tactic that in the final section of my paper I argue was espoused in 2007 by the group known Özsoy’s Yaşlı Çocuk The Old Child discuss the outsiders view with regard to “avoiding dramatising”,
as the Tarnac Nine. as I consider that the culture of confrontation in Milo Rau’s Hate Radio has a distancing effect which
must overlap with the need to make the audience feel the intensity of what has been experienced.
Key Words
Mobility, Immobility, Sedition, Dada, Avant-Garde, May 1968, Tarnac Nine Key Words
Aestheticization, suffering, immigration, violence
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

106 107
 GP GP

Caroline Herfert Emma Heron

University of Hamburg Edge Hill University

Caroline Herfert, born in 1983, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies, as well as Arabic Studies at Vienna Emma Heron is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Edge Hill University and co-Artistic Director of Theatr Gadair
University, where she also completed her PhD. Her research focus is mainly Theatre History of the late 19th Ddu, a bilingual Welsh/English company based in Liverpool and North Wales.  Before joining Edge Hill, Emma
and early 20th century and Orientalism. 2011–2014, she received a DOC sholarship by the Austrian Acad- worked as a freelance actor and director and has taught acting, feminist theatre and theatrical violence in a
emy of Sciences and was a project employee at the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Vi- wide range of contexts.  Currently, alongside her teaching at the university, Emma leads Theatr Gadair Ddu’s
enna University. Her PhD thesis explores stagings of the ‚Orient‘ in Vienna’s performance practice and Daughters of Gwenfrewi project, researching the use of theatre practice as a means of chronicling female his-
the manifestations of the vogue of Orient around 1900. Since 2016, she is a researcher at Hamburg tories in the Liverpool Welsh community.
University’s research centre „Hamburg’s (Post-)colonial Legacy / Hamburg and Early Globalisation“. Her
current project investigates the Mise-en-scène of the Other in Hamburg’s theatre and entertainment Exiled Across the Mersey: Performing religio-cultural identity at
(1869–1945).
the borders with the Liverpool Welsh
Performing the Bulwark of Europe: Notions of Nation and Identity This paper discusses the hybridised, religio-cultural distinctiveness that characterises traditional ar-
in 19th-century Vienna ticulations of Liverpool Welsh identity.  The Liverpool Welsh are a community of Welsh ‘ex-pats’
living in Liverpool, England.  Historically tremendously influential, both economically and culturally,
In 2006, the Austrian right-wing party FPÖ, that is known for its fierce nationalist poli- many Northern Welsh were drawn to Liverpool for work and education.  By the turn of the twenti-
tics and a long history of ongoing anti-Muslim campaigns, called the perceived flow of mi- eth century, Liverpool’s status as the unofficial capital of North Wales had seen the establishment of
grants coming to and living in the ‘fortress of Europe’ the ‘Third Turkish Siege’. The dras- small but influential Welsh language enclaves across the city.  Local eisteddfodau were regularly held
tic image of this slogan not only conveys simplified notions of nation and identity that throughout Liverpool until at least the mid-twentieth century and the Welsh National Eisteddfod
aggressively exclude the Other, but even more significantly, draws on one of the most promi- was held on Merseyside six times between 1878 and 1929.  Yet today, despite their significant mate-
nent events of Austrian history kept alive in the cultural memory: The Sieges of Vienna in 1529 rial impact on the city of Liverpool, the community is largely invisible to other Liverpudlians. Self-de-
and 1683. Especially the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Second Siege and the relief of Vienna has scribed exiles, the Liverpool Welsh still view themselves as a Welsh language community located in
been glorified since 1683 – be it in school books, memorials in Vienna, commemorative ceremonies or in England, with key aspects of this diminishing community’s identity chronicled by a predominantly
dramatizations. Turned into a religious war between Islam and Christendom, the Occident’s male leadership and expressed almost exclusively through the prism of Welsh Calvinist Methodist
‘triumph‘ over the Orient has thus been remembered for centuries. Both metaphorical- chapel life.  Within this framework, the significance of a gendered understanding of the community’s
ly and literally, Vienna was repeatedly staged as Europe’s bulwark. Taking into account the histories has hitherto been overlooked. Theatr Gadair Ddu’s Daughters of Gwenfrewi project seeks
topicality of the performance of borders, in Austria and beyond, this paper takes a perspec- to address this by exploring and documenting personal and community narratives through a series
tive into past performances of the bulwark of Europe: It investigates the theatricality of these of performances and community events.  Grounded in discoveries made during the performance of
commemorations of 1683 in Vienna and the role of theatre in re-enacting history, keeping Cartref/At Home and the company’s Cegin y Capel/The Chapel Kitchen tour, this paper re-examines
the memory of the past alive. Focusing on Vienna’s historical performance practice around 1900 and the the significance of more traditional articulations of the Liverpool Welsh community’s distinctiveness,
genre of ‘Türkenstücke’ (Turks’ plays), this paper discusses the topics of nation and identity, as well as the calling for a more inclusive, multi-vocal approach to chronicling its histories, one that better rep-
construction of Self and Other through the performance of borders and bulwarks on the basis of particular resents the range of experiences contained within the community in the twenty-first century.
productions and their reception in Imperial Vienna.
Key Words
Key Words: Liverpool Welsh, religio-cultural identity, performance, community histories, PaR, feminist, postco-
theatre history, 19th century, Vienna, Orientalism lonial
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

108 109
 GP GP

Takayuki Hioki Chieko Hiranoi

Shirayuri University Hosei University

Takayuki Hioki is Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature, Shirayuri University, Tokyo. He received BA degree Professor in the Faculty of Sustainability Studies, at Hosei University in Japan, teaching comparative theatre
in Theatre Studies from Waseda University and earned MA and PhD degrees at The University of Tokyo. His and regional theatre in Japan. Research interests include British theatre, Japanese theatre, regional theatre,
research interests include the modernisation of kabuki and the relationship between theatre and society in theatre festivals and dramatic works applied to education. Her recent publication related to the presentation
the Meiji era 1868-1912. His recent publication is Kabuki in the Transforming Era: A History of the Kabuki in the are A Shameless Priest Travelling Overseas -The Entertainment of Hokaibo, or Sumidagawa Gonichi no Omok-
Late Edo Period and the Meiji Era in Japanese, Published by Kasama Shoin, 2016. age-2013 and Aida as a Drama: Aida Directed by Olivier Py and Noda Kabuki Version of Princess Aida2017. She
conducted a research on Edinburgh festivals, being associated with the University of Edinburgh, from April
The losers in the late 19th-century kabuki plays 2016 to March 2017.

This paper aims to point out how the late 19th-century kabuki plays depict the losers of the Japanese Shakespeare in Bunraku puppet theatre
civil war from 1868 to 1869. The losers as are defined here means not only the samurai warriors who
participated the combat but also the citizens of the defeated domains. Kawatake Mokuami, the most The presenter will discuss a cultural migration which has caused cross-fertilization between perform-
eminent Japanese playwright in the late 19th century, created two roles in his play Meiji Nenkan ing Shakespeare and Bunraku puppet theatre. I would understand the word of cultural migration as
Azuma Nikki The Meiji Years, an Eastern Diary in 1875. Although both of them have participated successive introduction of the other culture until forming a new genre, while both of original cultures
combats against the Imperial Force, one of them works for the new government as a policeman and remain. The trend of adapting Shakespeare into Japanese traditional performing arts has formed a
the other declines the positions. Nevertheless, in the final scene, they gather at the former battle- genre in performing Shakespeare in Japan since 1990s. Following the trend, The Tempest and King
field with a former officer of the Imperial Force and they look back on the civil war. Matsushima Sen- Henry IV had also been adapted into Bunraku puppet theatre. The Tempest was transformed into
ta, the leading role of Mokuamis Shimachidori Tsuki no Shiranami Island Plovers and Moonlit Waves a Bunraku piece as Tenpesuto Arashi nochi Hare and was performed in 1992 and in 2009, in Osaka
is a robber. He was born in Northeast Japan and he is certainly a war orphan. His former accomplice, and in Tokyo. Another Bunraku adaptation of Shakespeare is Farusu no Taifu, based on King Henry IV
Akashi no Shimazo, make him reform in the last act. In the time of the First Sino-Japanese War 1894- and Merry Wives of Windsor. It was performed in 2014 in Tokyo. Tenpesuto Arashi nochi Hare was
5, Takeshiba Kisui, a desciple of Mokuami, described the Battle of Aizu in 1868 in his play Aizu San originally included in the 100th anniversary programme for the Japan Society in London in 1991.
Meiji no Kumiju Aizu-made Lacquer Boxes of Meiji. In this play, the people who escaped cowardly However, it had not been complete for the event and its first performance was delayed to the next
from the battlefield of Aizu join the army to compensate their past. While the former losers recover year. The performance in 2009 was based on the original script and partially abridged and revised
their honour, new losers are depicted in this play. One of them is a Chinese man, and he is forced to by the same Bunraku dramatist, Yamada Shouichi. The plot carefully follows Shakespeares Tempest
go back to China leaving his Japanese wife and a little son.This paper will clarify how the image of the and introduces a variety of Bunraku techniques including narratives and puppet characters. On the
loser in the kabuki plays changed thorough the transformation of Japan into a modern nation state. other hand, Farusu no Taifu, written by a Japanese Shakespearean, Kawai Shouichirou, describes the
character of Farusu Falstaff mainly based on King Henry IV with the well-known love letter episode
Key Words from Merry Wives of Windsor. In this work, the conflict between nation and individuals and the con-
Japanese Theatre, kabuki, war, modernization trast between Stoicism and Epicureanism are explicit. For this performance, Bunraku puppets and
costumes for major characters had newly been created. The author would discuss the two types of
cultural migration from Shakespeare to Bunraku.

Key Words
Performing Shakespeare in Japan, Bunraku puppet theatre, adaptations
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

110 111
 GP GP

Jen-Hao Hsu Edina Husanović

Theatre Arts Department, National Sun Yat-Sen University University of Reading
Jen-Hao Hsu holds a Ph.D, in Theatre Arts from Cornell University. After working at Shanghai Theatre Academy Edina Husanovic is a researcher, educator and a multimedia artist. Her interest in cultural politics and per-
as a postdoctoral fellow, he is now an assistant professor in Theatre Arts at National Sun-Yat Sen University. His formance art practice led her to complete a PhD at the University of Reading in 2017. Her thesis ‘Dis-Orient
research looks as modern and contemporary Chinese theatres in the global context. Express: Belly Dancing, Hybrid Identities and Performances of the Oriental Feminine Other’ deconstructed the
politics of the Oriental Other through analysis of belly dance performances in various European geographies,
Staging Migration, Performing Alterity: On Zhao Chuan’s Grassroot along the route of the Orient Express. Echoing the same interest, her multimedia performance practice has
Stage often employed repetition and satire to subvert identity politics, which led to a review warning: ‘Orientalists
will be disoriented and Disorientalists reoriented. Her mystical eyes are full of irony so beware!’ She explores
the issues of memory, exile and personal history that stem from experiencing the Bosnian war as a young
Founded and based in Shanghai since 2005, the Grassroot Stage, led by Zhao Chuan, has been ex-
adult, to playfully subvert them in her multimedia art practice. Her work has been shown across UK and
ploring issues of migrant workers in contemporary China. For example, his most frequently staged Europe in a range of venues, from the Brighton Fringe Festival to the Centre for Cultural Decontamination
play, Shijie Gongchang World Factory foregrounds the difficult living conditions of Chinese migrant in Belgrade. She has held lecturing and educational support posts in the University of Arts London and the
workers in the larger historical context of global industrialization and urbanization. By situating the University of Reading since 2004.
personal stories of these migrant workers in the ongoing historical processes of global capitalism,
Shijie Gongchang on the one hand evokes feelings of inevitability and despair among the audience Dis-Orient Express: Moving Places, Hybrid Identities
on the other, it attempts to open up moments of critical thinking for the audience to contemplate on
the possible solutions for the conundrums of ruthless capitalization happening in China now. Its style Positioning the female Oriental ‘Other’ as the speaker and the agent of the discourse on belly danc-
of performance meshes realistic representations with presentational confrontations with the audi- ing, rather than solely the object of a Western male gaze, this paper investigates the politics of
ence its stage aesthetics reminds us of the purposeful amateurism deployed in early avant-garde cultural difference through the prism of belly dancing. Stemming from my field research and the
theatre as tactics against the dominant bourgeois culture.   This paper seeks to discuss the cultural research performance Dis-Orient Express, this study re-visits the context of the current migration
significance and aesthetic value of Zhao Chuan’s Grassroot Stage. Against the larger historical back- crisis in Europe to emphasise the inequality between its citizens in shaping the current debate on
ground of the rise of China’s post socialist avant-garde theatre in the midst of neoliberalist develop- cultural difference and the Oriental ‘Other’. The analysis will focus on belly dancing as one of the
ments, this paper will analyze why and how Zhao Chuan deals with the issues of migrant workers in main signifiers of the feminine Oriental ‘Other’, and on the inequalities brought about by the pro-
this unique theatrical form? How avant-garde could his group be when judged against the dominant cesses of appropriations and counter-appropriations of this globalised cultural practice. It emphasis-
cultural order of contemporary Shanghai? Does his aesthetic intervention offer any significant in- es how multi-directional processes of migration and of cultural interweaving that pertain both to the
sights into the social problem he discloses? Do they achieve any social effects locally and globally? movement of people and of cultural practices such as belly dancing can be traced to more concrete
Last but not the least, why and how is the ethics of alterity presented in his aesthetic choices? examples of hybrid identities, and specific conflicts and collisions that pertain to these states. I will
trace the multi-directionality of migratory processes, written about by Marwan Kreidy as processes
Key Words of trans-culturation 2005, back to the example of my background and my art practice. Noting that
The Grassroot Stage Zhao Chuan migrant workers global capitalism ethics of alterity as a refugee I followed the same migratory route that migrants and refugees are following during
the current crisis, I will contrast this with the direction that I followed as a researcher in the field
research of this project, indicating a vastly privileged position. In the analysis of my art practice I try
to express the complex contradictions and clashes of worlds that pertain to the experience of hybrid
identity. The analysis of these contradictions could point ways towards navigating more a responsi-
ble political existence in the modern world. It highlights that living one life in one culture and then
being transposed to another can result in an ambivalent position of seeing this both as a possibility
of emancipatory change and of personal loss. These dual and conflicting states can exist both at the
same time, as my artistic practice illustrates.

Key Words
hybridity, post-colonialism, practice-as-research, the Other, orientalism, feminism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

112 113
 GP GP

Nesreen Hussein Naomi Inata

Middlesex University Oberlin University, Tokyo

Egyptian performance maker and scholar based in London. A Lecturer in Contemporary Theatre at Middlesex Education: PhD. in Literature, Graduate School of Literature, Waseda University, 2010 Dissertation: Study on
University. She holds a BFA in Scenography and Interior Architecture from Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan Uni- Tatsumi Hijikata: Ankoku Butoh - a riot against the body as a system M.A. in Literature, Graduate School of
versity, Cairo. Completed her MRes and PhD degrees in Drama and Theatre from Royal Holloway, University Literature, Waseda University, 1998 Academic Experience: Associate Professor, Ballet research center, Showa
of London. She worked internationally over the past years with a number of acclaimed theatre companies College of Music, 2011-2014 Visiting associate researcher of Institute for Theatre Research at The Tubouchi
and design studios Improbable Theatre Company, Opera East Productions, Fisher Productions, as well as in- Memorial Theatre Museum Waseda University, 2002 - 2005 Part-time lecture, Faculty of Science and Tech-
dividual directors and designers Nagy Shaker, Richard Gough, Vanio Papadelli. Her current research focuses nology, Keio Gijuku University, 2001-present Professional Experience: Dance critic, 1997-present Dance Pro-
on performance and activism in relation to issues of agency, identity and belonging. Her publications on this gramme Officer of Japan Arts Council under Agency For Cultural Affairs, 2011-present Honors and Awards: The
topic include ‘Cairo: My City, My Revolution’ in Performance and the Global City, eds. D.J. Hopkins and Kim 14th AICT, Association International des Critiques Theatre, Theatre Critic Award Japan Publications-- Books:
Solga Palgrave 2013, and ‘Gestures of Resistance between the Street and the Theatre: Documentary Theatre in Tatsumi Hijikata - The Body One and for All , NHK Publishing: Tokyo, 2008 co-writer of Keywords in Theatre
Egypt and Laila Soliman’s No Time for Art’ in Contemporary Theatre Review 2015. This is in addition to a num- Studies , Pericansha: Tokyo, 2007 Ballet Gallery 30, Gakken: Tokyo, 2006 20th Century…dance…Choreogra-
ber of conference papers and invited presentations delivered internationally. In 2011, Nesreen was awarded pher…Works, Yugisha* Tokyo, 1999 Professional Affiliation Japanese Society for Dance Research Japanese So-
the Helsinki Essay Prize and the New Scholars’ Prize from the IFTR for her essay ‘Patagonia: Rearticulating an ciety for Theatre Research
Experience as a Site of Estrangement.’
A reversal of cultural recognition: The ballet choreography of
Performing Utopia / Reclaiming the Public Sphere Ishida Taneo and Japanese dance culture in the 1960s
After the January 2011 revolution in Egypt, Tahrir Square, the central piece of urban landscape in Ballet was first introduced to Japan in 1911, when a Japanese theater-affiliated training school in-
Cairo that became stage to grassroots political movements, eventually fell back into the grip of the vited Italian ballet instructor Vittorio Rossi to teach. In his short time in Japan, Rossi failed to train
state. And with it, the position and accessibility of public space as a site of protest became in flux. a single ballet dancer. Ballet, developed in the cultural context of the West and Russia, was clearly
Since the military takeover of July 2013, mass protests are being quickly suppressed. The increas- “foreign” to the Japanese. Those who quit the school, rejecting its severe methods of ballet instruc-
ing state control over Tahrir Square and the surrounding area, in addition to the protest law intro- tion, became the country’s first generation of modern dancers. Yet ballet did gradually spread in
duced in November 2013 that restrains freedom of assembly led to thousands of protesters being Japan, after Russian émigré Eliana Pavlova opened a private ballet studio in 1927. In the decades
detained, severely restricting participation in public demonstrations. However, when streets and after World War II, ballet came to seem no longer foreign to Japanese dancers. Japanese traditional
squares became inaccessible, certain artists in Egypt worked to find alternative ways to reclaim the folk and classical dance, on the other hand, became increasingly unfamiliar—not only to dancers
public space, and with it, their authorship of the narrative of history that’s being rewritten by the who trained in ballet and modern dance, but also to ordinary people, In the 1960s, ballet dancer and
state. By doing so, the artists through their work created spaces of resistance that lead to reanimat- choreographer Taneo Ishida 1929-2012 began physically, musically, and spatially using Japanese folk
ing the public sphere. Building on Paul Ricœur’s notion of ‘utopia’ as a ‘[…] leap outside—the way dance and traditional culture in his choreography. His original ballets were rooted in the local climate
in which we radically rethink what is family, what is consumption, what is authority, what is religion, and culture, which he believed made them authentically Japanese. Like Ishida, other ballet choreog-
and so on?’, and drawing on examples of works of performance and visual arts in Egypt today, this raphers of the 1960s also drew on Japanese traditional culture, rather than imitating Western dance
paper seeks to demonstrate how those works and the creative strategies underpinning them form styles. Instead of making this kind of dance more familiar to Japanese audiences and dancers, how-
interventions that challenge the dominant narratives surrounding the current sociopolitical land- ever, these indigenous cultural elements puzzled young dancers and put off strongly Western-ori-
scape in Egypt at a time when its social and political histories are being gradually deconstructed. ented audiences. Neither dancers nor audiences accepted this now “foreign” style, which they were
trying to forget. In this paper, drawing on Ishidas choreography material—his notes, scripts, and
Key Words other writings—I analyze how Japanese ballet absorbed “foreign” dance styles, to the point that
Revolution, Egypt, resistance, art, public space, alternative Japanese traditional dance itself became “foreign.” Focusing on the 1960s, I show that this reversal
of cultural recognition pervaded Japanese ballet during the postwar era of intense Westernization.

Key Words
others, ballet, choreography, tradition, Westernization
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

114 115
 GP GP

Giulia Emma Innocenti Malini Yukari Ito

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Yamanashi Prefectural University

Phd in Theatrical Studies, Researcher in the Department of Communication and Performing Arts at the Yukari Ito is Associate Professor of Yamanashi Prefectural University. She earned a BA and an MA in literature
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano Italy, social theatre facilitator and trainer. Author of essays from Keio University and has been researching contemporary American drama. She has written papers on
and papers about social theatre, including Incontrarti.  Arti performative e intercultura, Milano, Franco Edward Albee, Paula Vogel, Adrienne Kennedy, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Her current interest is the plays dealing
Angeli 2012 ““Like me”. Mimesis and dramaturgic play in early childhood”, Comunicazioni sociali, 2 2016: with mass deaths caused by natural disasters as well as genocide. The Great East Japan Earthquake renewed
249-260 “Il teatro sociale”, in Grasso Aldo ed., Storia della comunicazione e dello spettacolo in Italia. Vo- her interest in the social and ethical role of theatre with Tomoko Kusuhara, Hayato Kosuge, and Mariko Hori
lume III. I media alla sfida della convergenza 1979-2012, Milano, Vita&Pensiero, 2017, 268-271. “Les lan- Tanaka, she formed a research group to investigate theatre representing and memorizing the colossal loss.
gages théâtraux dans les écoles maternelles, entre éducation et cohésion sociale. La politique petite en- This will be her first participation in a general panel at IFTR.
fance de la municipalité de Milan”, in L’éducation artisticque dans le monde, Toulouse, L’attribut, 2018.
The Theatre of Ghosts and the Other under the Threat of Mass
Social Community Theatre with Refugees in Italy Deaths: The Theatre of Mobility and Stasis of Toshiki Okada
Within the system of protection and reception of Migrants and Refugees in Italy, the use of artistic The Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 has given playwrights many artistic challenges, two of
practices plays an important role. The cultural participation, field of expression and elaboration of which are particularly significant: one is how to deal with mass deaths, the other is how to render
the subject’s complex identity and of his relationships, is an important mediator in the relationship people who have had to move from their home town. Toshiki Okada used the latter motif when
between the subject and the host society and one of the driving forces to activate the community he wanted to create something “straightforward” in response to the Tohoku earthquake. His play
participation. Since the 1990s, in Italy many theatrical experiences have responded to the need to Current Location 2012 is set in one village, where strange occurrences have taken place since blue
raise people’s awareness by creating opportunities for migrants and locals to meet up. In the same clouds appeared in the sky. There is a rumour that it is an omen of the ruin of the village, and the
years, Social Community Theatre was spreading a practice in which the well-being of the person, seven female characters have to decide whether to believe the rumour and leave or to remain in the
the group and the community is the main objective of the theatrical experience itself. Thanks to village. As the play goes on, the women are beginning to exclude friends with different opinions.
these different forms and to their most recent contaminations, theatre is becoming a vehicle for At the end, one group of villagers leaves the village on the spaceship. The antagonism between
social inclusion. Starting from these historical and contextual premises, the speech aims to highlight people who choose to move and those who stay in Current Location presents a striking contrast
the benefit of Social and Community Theatre in proposing the ritual, festive and performative di- with affections between the couple in Time’s Journey Through a Room 2016. The wife is spiritually
mensions, alongside the aesthetic one, aimed at the maximum involvement and at the wider active transformed by her experience of the Tohoku earthquake, but dies of a disease soon she remains
participation of community life. In particular, referring to two recent Social and Community Theatre in a room of their flat as a ghost. She believes she will be forever happy with her stasis, and so will
experiences: I don’t travel alone, Crotone, June 2017 “Per un teatro vulnerabile” Gradisca, July 2017. his husband. However, the husband has decided to change his life. He invites a female friend to
The here presented themes are the result of the integration of two research actions currently un- the room and confesses his love to her. Thus we can find a divide between mobility and stasis in
derway in our Department of Communication and Performing Arts: 1. “Migration and Mediation”  a both plays, which poses several questions. How does the divide affect the characters? Is the divide
three-year research project carried out by our University 2. “Performing the Social. Education, care permanent? This paper will consider these questions and examine how Okada represents the world
and inclusion through theatre”, a three-year research project of national interest supported by MIUR after the Tohoku earthquake.
Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research.
Key Words
Key Words Toshiki Okada, the Great East Japan Earthquake, ghosts, mobility, stasis
Social community theatre, refugees, intercultural performances, community participation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

116 117
 GP GP

Masami Iwai Eszter Jagica

Meijo University University of Toronto
Address: 4-9-15, Daianji, Nara, 630-8133, Japan Date of Birth: 17 Dec. 1959 Gender: male Education: 1987 Eszter Jagica studied Drama and Modern Languages at Bishop’s University,  Lennoxville, Quebec, and received
March graduated master course of Art, Waseda University Japanese theatre arts 1990 March graduated doc- her M.A. in Drama at the University of Toronto, Canada where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. entitled: Aes-
tor course of Art, Waseda University Japanese theatre arts Professional experience: 1991 April - 1994 March thetics of Subversion: From Heiner Mueller to Contemporary Performance Art. Beside her academic pursuits,
Lecturer of Fukuoka -Jo-Gakuin University Fukuoka, Japan 1994 April - 2003 March Assosiate professor of she has been a long time collaborator of Istvan Kantor, a Hungarian/Canadian Governor General Award winner
Fukuoka Jo-Gakuin University 2003 April - 2016 March Professor of Fukuoka Jo-Gakuin University 2016 April multimedia artist. Eszter has also worked as a performance artist, translator and curator in North America and
- Professor of Meijo University Nagoya, Japan Presentations: 2010 July Imaginary revenge on State: a margin Europe.
of individuality on the threshold of modernizing Japan, IFTR in Munich 2011 August Collectivity and Female
Figures in “A Travel Game while Crossing Iga”, IFTR in Osaka Rage Without Judgement – A Call for Justice “Beyond the Face”
Revenge through ages: politics of “Yoshitune and the Thousand Elfriede Jelinek’s last play, Wut Rage was written at the time when,  Agamben declared, “we live in
Cherry Trees” a permanent spatial arrangement of the concentration camp” as super-power agendas manipulate
bare life biopolitics under the guises of capital. The camp as the space of exception becomes an im-
Yoshitune Senbonzakura Yoshitune and the Thousand Cherry Trees is a well-known bunraku play first manent condition present within the political order. Wut, an experimental textual pastiche is based
performed in 1747. It describes a famous battle between Genji and Heike clans in the 12th century. on the recent fatal terrorist attacks in Paris on the editorial team of the satirical magazine “Charlie
However, the play is not a historical representation in a modern sense, combining events in the past Hebdo” and a kosher grocery store among others. The dense prose text is nearly unintelligible, as
with those in the present, ordinary life of the 18th century people. In the second dan of the bunraku the incongruent modes of discourse evoke a myriad of voices that rage in the midst of their displace-
piece dan roughly corresponds to act in the western theater, but much longer and relatively inde- ment and exile against: fanatic self-empowerment, helplessness, the presence of terror, the rage,
pendent of the rest of the play, the dramaturgy is further elaborated by reference to a nô play “Funa the demagogues, and the inability to rupture the present political landscape. Theatre as the space
Benkei” written presumably in the late 15th century, giving to this dan a metatheatrical taste. The of liminality par excellence becomes the container for this rampant rage as it continually insights
bunraku version, based on a cross-genre intertextuality, emphasizes a sense of “history repeats itself a re-thinking of its relationship to politics. In this paper I aim to address the question whether this
first as tragedy, second as farce”. It aims to give the audience a sense of déjà vu because Tomomori, multi-layered rage can be seen as a subversive act or it is a movement toward a moral stance of a
hero of this dan, not knowing on stage that what he is doing is a reiteration of the things already new kind?  Jelinek’s disjointed chorus of voices evokes a painful image of the crises in today’s world
happened, tries to deter the action of Yoshitune, his enemy. However, at the final moment he is be- that begs the question of the “humanism of the other.” In Levinasian terms, this rage is ultimately
trayed by the little empress who decides to join the winners, the Genji clan. In an elaborated three- against the otherness of the other, a war that arises from the possible indeterminacy between I and
fold temporal structure, this bunraku play gazes a fate of the losers how they are excluded from a Thou. Levinas’ concepts of the “hostage of the other” and justice “beyond the face” are the two
legitimate history, marginalized and eliminated. If they are given a second chance, this turns out to pillars of his marking the way towards the understanding of the “humanism of the other.” And this
be a farce, hence a tragedy. might be the only way to move beyond the rage against the violence we are so often faced with.

Key Words Key Words

Japanese theatre, kabuki, bunraku, revenge play other, migrant, rage, humanism, justice, subversion, liminality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

118 119
 GP GP

Indu Jain Yvette Jankó Szép

Jawaharlal Nehru University Babes-Bolyai University

My name is Indu Jain and am a Doctoral Candidate at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru Uni- JANKÓ SZÉP Yvette is currently working as an assistant lecturer at the Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of
versity, Delhi India. I am particularly interested in probing the lacuna in the ‘space’ ‘representation’, and ‘meth- Letters, Department of Hungarian Literary Studies Finnish Studies, and a PhD student at the Hungarology
od of documentation’ of the presence of women in the Indian theatre. My particular investment is to examine Studies Doctoral School at the same university. As a translator she specializes in contemporary Finnish
the contemporary women’s theatre in India in its historical, social and cultural context. I seek to explore the dramatic and stage texts. Her research interests include: the translation and stage adaptation of
inter-relationships between feminist theatrical theory and practice, its historical antecedents, ethnographic contemporary plays, auteur theatre in contemporary Finland, as well as drama and theatre pedagogy.
conditions and performative articulations.
The Colours of Burnt Orange. Language and Culture through
Representing the Migrant Body and Performing Displacement: Drama and Theatre
Contemporary Indian Feminist Interventionist Ecology
In this joint project we propose to explore the possibilities of adapting the methods of drama and
The migrant tribal communities in India are forced to lead a nomadic existence on the fringes of the theatre pedagogy in academic education, however, the practical results and conclusions may be
society due to economic deprivation, social-legal ostracisation, and coercive displacement. These hopefully integrated into a larger framework of experimental research in the field of drama in edu-
marginalized groups have primarily remained outside mainstream modes of politics of represen- cation, more specifically the teaching/learning of intercultural communication through drama and
tation, particularly the theatre that has come to be associated with a middle class urban cultural theatre. The techniques and strategies of theatre and drama may be adapted naturally in commu-
practice. If any serious dialogue has to ensue between the marginalized communities and its medi- nication-focused language teaching. Using theatre as a method of learning a new language allows
ated representation, the dramaturgical process remains fraught with anxiety, anomaly and potential the students to see language in real use, and by stepping outside of their everyday roles they might
conflict. This presentation intends to probes the hypothesis that feminist directors deliberately seek experience the use of the target language simultaneously utilizing their whole being and body as
to present the subject matter that does not conform to conventional patriarchal discourse and thus part of their linguistic performances. In our previous teaching and research work at the Babeș-Bolyai
opens up a space for resistance by depicting the migrant tribal groups. The paper would specifically University Romania we have explored the use of improvisation practices, drama methods and ki-
focus on the work of Anamika Haksar and her landmark production ‘Ucchaka’ 2008. Haksar belongs nesics alongside more traditional language teaching methods, and, at the same time, felt the need
to a family of Kashmiri migrants a politically targeted and vulnerable minority in the Indian popula- to apply the interactive method, the improvisational and creative techniques in a broader field of
tion till date and has intensely worked on the figure of the Other in her works. By the depiction of philologist education: including the teaching of aspects of literature and culture. Laying emphasis
the migrant figure’s fears, anxieties, habitat, survival, and livelihood through the ‘abject body’, she on the cultural dimension of language learning in accordance with Michael Byram’s ideas about
acts as a mediator who makes these narratives travel into spaces of middle class civil society, thus intercultural communication competence we intend to enhance the students’ in-depth knowledge
giving visibility to the figure of the ‘stranger-danger’. Some key critical questions further examined of the target culture, and thereby their socio-cultural competence, by combining two apparently
will be Is the choice of a multi-lingual and multi-regional cast, a text written in a regional language distinct fields: teaching literary in our case mainly dramatic texts in combination with creative tasks
but performed in the national one a deliberately political one? How does the psychophysical the- as well as theatre pedagogy rooted in improvisation philosophy and methods formulated by Keith
atrical trope where the inner and outer worlds come together on stage allow her to translate the Johnstone 1979, 1999 and Gary Peters 2009. The practical course of Finnish drama and theatre
embodied performative vocabulary into potential agency of the theatrical gestures? designed around the joint application of these principles and methods is meant to be open and in-
teractive – the students and teachers working as partners in a team and the course project should
Key Words evolve dynamically and flexibly, taking into account the contribution of students in the form of in-
Migrant Body, Performing Displacement, Feminist vocabulary, Feminist theatre terpretive and creative tasks fulfilled at different stages of the process. Our aim is to demonstrate
that traditional, memorisation-oriented methods may be significantly improved through the use of
improvisation, role-play and creative writing, as well as a task-in-process approach throughout the
learning process.

Key Words
drama and theatre pedagogy, cultural learning, improvisation, creative writing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

120 121
 GP GP

Hanna Järvinen Jackï Job

Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki University of Cape Town

Dr Hanna Järvinen works as a Lecturer at the Performing Arts Research Centre of the University of the Arts Jackï Job lectures in the Centre for Dance, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Cape
Helsinki, Finland and as a Senior Researcher in the Academy of Finland research project How to Do Things with Town. Her predominantly independent performance career has been eclectic, including solo perfor-
Performance?, 2016-2020. She is docent in dance history at the University of Turku and an Honorary Visiting mances, choreographies of classical operas, directing theatre works, as well as hosting television shows
Research Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester. A specialist in early twentieth-century dance, her inter- in South Africa. job lived in Japan from 2003-2011. During this time she developed the application of Bu-
ests lie in the epistemology and ontology of dance, particularly issues of authorship and canonisation. Besides toh principles to her performance methodologies. Her PhD study interrogates liminality from a corporeal
works in her native Finnish, she is the author of Dancing Genius Palgrave Macmillan 2014, and her articles have perspective and how it can contribute to the meaning of personhood and transformation in South Africa.
appeared in e.g. Avant, Dance Research, The Senses and Society and Dance Research Journal.
Daai za Butoh Lady: A description of a series of dance performance
Migrating concepts in performance – restaging, remaking, that translate hybrid South African identity
reconstructing, reimagining
This paper links migration to translation and illustrates it as a transformative process by examining
This paper is part of a panel, which brings together approaches to performance from separate disci- how a particular physical articulation of dance combined with butoh philosophies re-imagines sin-
plinary discussions like performance philosophy, dance history, and artistic research. The purpose is gular categories of identification and embodies notions of liminality. It discusses a personal mode
to show how material-discursive practices, migrating concepts and translations have a direct bearing of performance that researches how the body itself can inhabit ideas of difference, with the inten-
on how we make, experience and understand performances. My contribution focuses on how, al- tion of arriving at a heightened proprioception and more complex understanding of identification. A
though we take for granted that any performing art exists in the moment of performance and chang- self-created fable called Daai za Lady is the original source of a body of solo performance work that
es at each performance, the past of performing arts are reiterated through practices of restaging, holds a central theme - identity cannot be fixed as the body itself holds and transforms memories
remaking, reconstructing and reimagining that all still largely rest on a formalist discourse of work of multiple origins within and beyond itself. These ideas are further understood by analysing per-
and authorship where a canonical work of art has to re-emerge on stage as ‘the same’ as a historical formance processes, sonic and physical memories, and experiences that grapple with Sara Ahmed’s
precedent. The lexical differentiation between various degrees of change to whichever is considered notions of strangeness from a corporeal perspective. It extends to Elizabeth Grosz’s sense of bodies
the ‘authentic’ iteration of the ‘original’ work is different in re-staging, re-making, reconstruction, that are conscious of both animate and inanimate elements within and outside of itself, which in
and so on. But what happens if these lexical differentiations – these re-doings – are taken as the fic- turn, developed a dance language that affords significance to what may be perceived as peripheral
tions that they are: as attempts at creating a canon of art that would incorporate earlier performance in the self, other people, objects and the surrounding environment. These include how a particular
practices whilst ignoring corporeal difference between past and present bodies as well as how ‘art’ way of thinking about performance has developed through an appropriation of butoh, itself carried
or ‘work of art’ or ‘author’ are understood? Does translating the vocabulary have an effect on the from Japan and requiring a re-rendering within a South African context. The paper does not hold the
practice? What happens when these translated concepts and the understanding of performance notion of migration or translation as one completed act, instead, repeated acts of performance that
they contain are re-translated into English? This presentation offers one case study of a re-imagining engage with difficulty, unfamiliar and difference are presented. Tracing these migrations and associ-
of a Russian choreography performed in Paris and London in 1913 and reimagined in Finland in 2016. ated translations from one corporeal perspective over a period of time can provide a clear trajectory
of transformation in multiple ways. Ultimately, an argument for a perpetual migration towards and
Key Words from the self, is valuable in re-imagining what it means to be a person in transformation in South
repetition, reperformance, dance Africa.

Key Words
Translation, South Africa, Performance, Butoh
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

122 123
 GP GP

Rantimi Julius-Adeoye Andres Kalawski

Redeemer’s University (RUN), Nigeria Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Julius-Adeoye‘ Rantimi Jays is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre Arts, Redeemer’s University (RUN), Nigeria. He stud- Andrés Kalawski. Associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s Faculty of Arts. His research
ied at the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria and obtained a PhD at Leiden University, areas include Chilean theatre history and playwriting. Recent publications are the Chilean entries from the The
Netherlands. He was with the African Studies Centre (ASC, Leiden) as LeidenASA Visiting Fellow in 2017, and Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, written with Milena Grass and «Acción, verdad y sentido:
also served as a Visiting Associate Professor at International Business School, The Hague potencia y límite de la performance en el ejercicio historiográfico.» Atenea Concepción, no. 513. He is also
(IBSH), Netherlands. Dr. Julius-Adeoye is a member of the Society of Nigerian Theatre Artists (SONTA), fore- a staged and published playwright and the artistic director of his university’s professional theatre Teatro UC
most scholar on the drama of Ahmed Yerima, and has presented papers at conferences in many countries of
the world. At present he teaches theatre history, African literary theatre, voice improvisation and acting skills, Heritage, identity and care: theatrical performance of domestic
media and dramatic criticism.
work in recent Chilean theatre
Exile and Resistance Narrative in Nigerian Historical Drama: A study This paper focuses on the lingering topic of the “nanas” in recent Chilean theatre. “Nana” is a col-
of Ahmed Yerima’s “The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen” and “Attahiru”. loquial term used in Chile for the women on domestic service. It is a conflicting word, for it carries
affection, a patronizing view of the worker and a blurring of the limits of their work. The emotional
The British colonialists arrived the part of West Africa that metamorphosed into Nigeria during the labor, their role in taking care of the children while cleaning and cooking is contained on those two
second half of the nineteenth century, and by 1914, they had succeeded in the annexation of the syllables. Paid domestic work was key in the Chilean modernization process 1920s- 1940s and in the
many ethnic nationalities and kingdoms together under one country. However, the colonialists’ foray formation of its middle class. During the 20th century the nana was profusely staged in theatres.
into these territories was not without violent resistance from the indigenous people of the area. The These characters combined the inheritance of the servants of classical theatre with the clichés of
resistance and eventual amalgamation of the areas have become living materials in the hands of Chilean identity and the development of a modern political consciousness. Domestic work in Chile
many Nigerian dramatists including Ola Rotimi and Ahmed Yerima. This paper interrogates the con- has been profoundly transformed since the 90s of last century, due to the arrival of migrants, greater
cept of resistance, exile and power play in two plays -The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen and Attahiru by ideological awareness of their position and new regulatory frameworks. Chilean theater has ex-
Ahmed Yerima. It will look at how the playwright represents historical events and figures in dramatic pressed these changing relationships. The work of Luis Barrales “Topografía de las lágrimas” 2017,
texts. It will attempt to use the plays to respond to the issue of massacre, imprisonment, displace- focuses on the relationship between a modern and guilty patron and a nana equally modern and
ment and local migration that are the fallout of the British annexation of the indigenous peoples’ self-conscious. A key moment of the play depicts the patron accepting a loan from the nana, subvert-
land. In conclusion, this paper will also examine the effect of the British contraption narratives on ing the economic dependence that their roles imply. Curiously enough, “Año Nuevo” García, Gijón
the present Nigerian situation. and Lorca, premiered also in 2017, exhibits the same plot twist. Even more: in Mama Rosa Debesa,
1957, a classic of Chilean theatre, there is the same scene. The same plot point in different plays
Key Words: from decades apart. It is not a quotation, nor a parody. The country has hanged, theatre has changed
History, text, massacre, displacement and exile and, somehow, the scene remains. How can we elaborate this rest, this uncomfortable inheritance?

Key Words
history, domestic labour, women, Chile
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

124 125
 GP GP

Hasibe Kalkan Nilu Kamaluddin

IFTR, IATC, GIG University of Oslo
Hasibe Kalkan studied Germanistik and Drama in Ankara and Istanbul Turkey. Her Ph.D. was about Documenta- Kamaluddin Nilu is an independent theatre director and researcher affiliated with Centre for Ibsen Studies,
ry Theatre in Turkey. Since 1994 she works at the Department for Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy of Istanbul University of Oslo. At present, he is a Research Fellow at The International Research Center “Interweaving Per-
University. In 2011 she was a fellow of the Intercultural Performance Center in Berlin. Her research arias and formance Cultures”, Freie University, Berlin, working on his project ‘No Local is Anymore Local: A Transcultural
teaching interests are Turkish Theatre in Germany, Stage Analyses and Dramaturgy. She wrote books about Adaptation of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt’. He has been Chair Professor of Theatre Department, Hyderabad University,
Documentary Theatre and Theatre Semiotics. India, and Artistic Director of Centre for Asian Theatre CAT, Dhaka.

Beyond Belonging “An Enemy of the People”: A Narrative Discourse of Time and Space-
The Emergence of Codominant Dramaturgy
In this study, it is aimed to handle the work of some artists with a migration background to explore
how the roots determine their identity and the work they reveal. This presentation draws attention In this presentation, I will argue that Arthur Miller’s adaptation from 1950 strengthened An Enemy
to Shermin Langhoff, the creator of the term post-migrant theatre, to Nurkan Erpulat who has pro- of the People as a political play within the spatiotemporality. The backdrop was the McCarthy period
duced a variety of plays within the post-migrant theatre, to Neco Çelik and Tamer Yiğit, the film and in USA, and Miller’sadaptation has a strong focus on the conflict between authorities and individual
theatre directors who do not give importance to the definitions of the origin. The people mentioned freedom of expression. In the film Ganasatru from 1989, the Indian film maker Satyajit Ray creolized
above drew attention to their work at Beyond Belonging festival which was first held in 2006 at the Ibsen’s text with Miller’s adaptation through the process of transculturation which aimed at adjust-
HAU. As the name of the festival reveals, the focus of its productions was primarily on issues such ingwith Indian socio-political conditions and cultural conceptions during the 1980s, particularly in
as belonging and identity. In cultural theory, terms such as hybridity Bhaba, metissage Glissant and West Bengal. Ray focuses on “temple politics” - how water, in the name of religion, becomes part
patchwork Keupp have been used to describe forms of identity of people who have been socialized of the local economic and political power game. The metaphoric dimension of this screenplay can
in different cultural environments and created possibilities for their own conceptual positioning. be seen as a strong political expression against the Hindu fundamentalist party that gained sub-
In this context, it will be dealt with how the artists mentioned above define their own identity and stantial strength in the Indian parliament after the 1989 general elections as well as a satire of the
how they deal with the society in which they live. The identity issue is not simply made up of parts communist-led Left Front that had ruled the state of West Bengal since 1977. Thomas Ostermeier
that arbitrarily selected or put together as needed, but rather it has been discussed many times by and Florian Borchmeyer developed a new form of dramaturgy of An Enemy of the People in 2012,
negotiating in a power-filled room see Foroutan, Yildiz, Türkmen, Terkessidis. Therefore, this study characterisedby transformation between rigidity and flexibility through a combination of closed and
examines individual forms of reaction of these prominent artists and the impact of their point of open modules of dramaturgy. This also allows for partial adjustment to country specific political
view on their work. The methodological approach will be the critical discourse analysis. contexts through continued negotiation between Ibsen’s text and the performance text. Ostermeier
and Borchmeyer transformed Ibsen’s text into a new reality which Ostermeier has called ‘capitalist
Key Words realism’.  I will investigate the contemporaneity of this new ‘playtext’ by focusing on the conditions
Identity, Belonging, Postmigration of facts and ethics in a world interlocked with a politico-economic system characterised by power
and control. My view is that their dramaturgy, which I will term codominant dramaturgy, facilitates
global-local dialectics through a process of democratisation.

Key Words
Adaptation, Ibsen, Enemy of the People
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

126 127
 GP GP

Valerie Kaneko-Lucas Jovana Karaulić

Regents University London Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade

Dr. Valerie Kaneko-Lucas is a scholar-practitioner, whose current research focuses upon the post-empire dias- Jovana Karaulić - graduated manager – a producer in theater, radio and culture, and a PhD candidate at the
pora.  She has published on Black British and British Asian performance, gender politics and scenographic prac- scientific study of management culture and the media at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, University
tice.  Dr. Kaneko-Lucas  works professionally as a  director and scenographer.  Most recently she has designed of Arts, with research focusing on relationship  between public policies and culrtural performances, in the
Sahar Speaks: Voices of Women From Afghanistan for Londons Theatre 503. period of Yugoslavia.  Practical presume consists of experience in the position of a producer on projects in the
field of stage events, among which are: RS appearance at the world exhibition EXPO in Shanghai, the opening
The Migrants Tale: Voices of the Dispossessed ceremony of the Serbian event - Universiade, etc.  Her papers were published in relevant journal articles and
post conferences publications. Jovana was coatuthor of the exibition  «To Be a Falcon Is to Be a Yugoslav» in
Museum of Yugoslav Histroy. She received the City of Belgrade award for achievements in the field of cultural
Three year-old Aylan Kurdi lies dead on a beach near Bodrum.  The establishment of ‘The Jungle’
production Universiade 2009.
at Calais sparks politicians to denounce ‘swarms’ of migrants threatening Europe. Media represen-
tation of the current migration crisis has variously depicted migrants as victims, opportunists and
dangerous aliens.  This presentation examines the theatre’s response to such mediatized represen-
Performing Trauma at the turn of the 21st century: Theatrical
tations of migrants through an analysis of three contemporary plays.  Suzan Lori-Parks’s Venus 1996 responses to the (European) migrant crisis
addresses the migrant’s tale through a focus upon the racialised body of the Black ‘Hottentot Venus’,
lured to Paris by promises of work, only to find herself the object of a fetishized male gaze.  Hideki Contemporary theatre practices face various challenges in the face of the migrant crisis, thus ex-
Noda’s Red Demon 2003 considers the attempts of a newly arrived migrant to overcome the xeno- amining the role and the effects of the theatre in regards to the community it is created in. Per-
phobia of suspicious villagers.  The Jungle 2017 was devised by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson and formances that engage with the political are socially aware theatre forms, and they usually gen-
produced at the Young Vic .  Founders of the Good Chance Theatre at Calais’s ‘Jungle’, this verbatim erate a direct communication with the community, as they give voice to the vulnerable through
play is drawn from the life stories of the men, women and youths who they met there.  The discus- different forms of (self) representations, by creating social bonds and advocating open discussion.
sion of these plays will also consider how theatre presents counter-arguments to prevalent media We will look at the question of (i)migration and some theatrical responses to the most recent (Europe-
images and if it may serve as a forum for social advocacy. an) migrant crisis as both traumatic and political event that urge for (collective) re/action. More spe-
cifically, this presentation will analyse three case studies dealing with the same topic and using trau-
Key Words ma testimonies based in the real-life experiences and/or documentary material: Lampedusa Beach by
migrant race suzan Lori-Parks Hideki Noda Good Chance Theatre refugee diaspora Senka Bulić/ Lina Prosa (Kazalište Hotel Bulić, 2016), Compassion. History of a machinegun by Milo Rau
(Schaubuhne, 2016), by Creation of human by Ivona Šijaković and Tijana Grumić (Atelje 2012, 2018).
We will analyse these three performances by employing the concepts like liminality (Turner, Fischer
Lichte), which is an important notion in performance studies, stemming from anthropology and
tackling the interconnectedness as well as the fragile boundaries between the social and the artistic,
between the ethics and aesthetics; empathy in relation to the testimony- one of the crucial con-
cepts in trauma and memory theory (LaCapra, Hirsch, Oliver); homo sacer (Agamben) as one of the
fundamental notions dealing with migration from both philosophical/ethical and political perspec-
tive.   We will argue that these concepts are important starting points when thinking about staging
both the ongoing traumas, as well as representing the oppressed and subsided. Finally, we will ex-
amine this suggestion in the interviews with the authors and present the discussion and the findings.

Key words: migrant crisis, homo sacer, liminality, empathy, socially engaged theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

128 129
 GP GP

Fatine Bahar Karlidag Mampreet Kaur

Yeditepe University Columbia University

Bahar Karlıdağ is an adjunct professor of theatre and literature in Yeditepe and Isik Universities in Istanbul, Tur- EDUCATION: Currently pursuing PhD in Religion, Columbia University in the City of New York M.Phil. in Theatre
key. She has a Ph.D. from the School of Drama, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Also, a Fulbright Visiting and Performance Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2009 M.A. in
Research Program alumna 2012-13, her research concentrates on the historical representation of the radical English Literature, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
left in English and American theatre and performance, and contemporary Labor activism in Turkey. Her disser- 2006 B.A. in English Literature, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, Delhi, 2004
tation reclaims/retrofits the Labor cause manifest in Workers’ Theatre Movement as the interpretive frame FELLOWSHIPS:select IRCPL Graduate Fellowship, Summer and Fall 2016 – to conduct preliminary fieldwork
in appreciating Joan Littlewood’s theatrical style. She has presented at ASTR and IFTR conferences’ working and archival research in India, in preparation for the dissertation prospectus Alliance Travel Research Grant
groups, and taught courses on civilization history, English literature and drama at various levels in universities for the IRCPL/ CERI Shared Sacred Sites Project, 2016 – to conduct collaborative fieldwork along with a team
has a book project in progress, revising her dissertation for popular readership in Turkey, a forthcoming con- of graduate students and senior scholars for the projects emerging interest in the shared sacred sites within
tribution to IFTR Political Performances Working Group Anthology, along with a peer-reviewed essay, a book South Asia, specifically Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat Peer Teaching Consultant Fellowship, GSAS Teaching
translation and several theatre reviews. She is a regional editor of The Theatre Times. Center, 2015-16 – a doctoral-cohort based annual program to enhance design, implementation, & assessment
of graduate student instruction American Academy of Religion’s Collaborative International Research Grant,
From East End to the West End: Theatre Workshops immigrant 2014 – to research in field and workshop on the topic “Contesting Untouchability in Islam: the Religious Histo-
ry of Dalit Muslims in India” Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant in 2010 and 2012 – to cover research and travel
productions expenses to present papers at the biennial conference of EASA European Association of Social Anthropologists
Howard Goorney wrote that the Theatre Workshop’s actual demise was due to its becoming a ‘trans-
fer theatre,’ for, “once you need a West End success in order to pay to keep going, you’re doomed, Performing Community Identity Crisis
because you’re looking for something different” Goorney, 1981. Especially after settling in Strat-
ford, East London, Littlewood’s strategies for sustaining her theatre and working-class mission relied A Sangat of Tanks in the DargahConsider this scene from what the classified government documents
heavily on transferring her productions to the West End, five of which were successfully exported of the Indo-Pak 1965 war call the “Punjab Theatre”: a row of American Patton tanks, displayed at
to Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl’s long-eschewed enemy grounds: Middle-class entertainment the border town of Khem Karan, where one of the climactic battles of that war were fought. The
row, the West End. Upon these transfers, or migrations for they happened for want of survival and war itself, while waged in the name of the then burgeoning Kashmir dispute, played out a few hun-
sustenance of the ensemble, Littlewood had to re-produce her successful shows, in a limiting way, to dred kilometres south of Kashmir— in the freshly partitioned Punjab border, divided by the British
match the talents and capabilities of the West End actors. In one case, Littlewood complained about along religious lines. Despite the massive technological military assist from the U.S., Pakistan lost
the need to train the hired West End actors, whose feet were earthbound by the West End realism the battle as well as that huge row of machinery, which India decided to display on the border for a
in its heyday “she had to run from show to show to ‘combat the artist’s deadly enemy – slowness, few months, an on-site exhibit if you will. Eventually, a new small town called Patton Nagar emerged
milking the part,” [as they had] ‘never been called upon to move except in his own individual way,’ around that spot in Khem Karan. Specifically, this scene was set in Khem Karan where a Chishti Sufi
[their feet,] ‘stuck in a slough of naturalism’ Harry Greene, 2007 Joan Littlewood, 1994. Apart from is buried the most important event on its social calendar being the annual pilgrimage of devotees
losing the advantages of her well-trained actors in most of these shows, I argue that Littlewood was from both sides of the border for the Sufi’s urs death anniversary. In this paper, I explore the rela-
also stepping in for middle-class, or in our day, neoliberally-complicit processes of enquiry, crown- tionship of space to community in context of this town—particularly the competing communities
ing and meaning-making which make up the theatre industry that Baz Kershaw brilliantly calls the that converge around it annually for the festival. From the vulnerable yet faithful Pakistani devotee,
‘theatre estate’ Filewod, 2015. As Ric Knowles elucidates, local meaning-making processes generat- the local artists enthusiastically performing for a temporary swell of audience-listeners, to the rare
ed through the “performance text” modify the contexts of works and bring variance to the mean- curious ethnographer, the shrine and the row of tanks share a space yet evoke very distinct pasts,
ing-making processes different audiences and different settings will set new criteria for appreciating, just as both contribute to commercial and congregational spatial arrangements within this festive
what I may call immigrant productions Knowles, 2004. Once these productions reach the attention landscape. In particular, this paper is interested in both the stories of the Sufi and of the war that
of the ‘theatre estate’, they become, I argue, immigrant pieces in mandatory efforts of adaptation energize the spatial aspects of the idea of community formation for a brief three days every year in
dismembered, for want of their intended, local audiences, bound for processes of neutralization this town.
from their politics. Raymond Williams’ and Ric Knowles’ expositions of short circuits in the creation
of meaning during theatrical production and reception processes Knowles as well as methodological Key Words
pitfalls in apolitical, objectifying academic inquiries Williams, 1995 contribute to the neutralization Punjab, Sufism
of the cultural/political other, in my case the immigrant productions of the Theatre Workshop in the
1950s. Given these brief contexts, how can the context and template of migration help complicate
the ways of looking at the transferring of the Theatre Workshop productions, originally meant for
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

and produced, acted, designed by people of leftwing and communist inclinations, to the heart of
middle-class theatre-goers’ taste and expectations?

Key Words
Theatre Workshop, Joan Littlewood, working class, transfer, immigrant, West End.
130 131
 GP GP

Gad Kaynar Raivo Kelomees

Tel Aviv University Estonian Academy of Arts
Gad Kaynar-Kissinger is a retired Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University, where he also served as Chair of Raivo Kelomees, PhD art history, artist, critic and new media researcher. Studied psychology, art history, and
the Theatre Arts Department. He has been Visiting Professor at Hebrew, Munich LMU, and Venice Interna- design in Tartu University and the Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Has published in main cultural and art maga-
tional Universities. He was the Chairman of Israeli Society for Theatre Research, and currently serves as the zines and newspapers of Estonia since 1985. Book author, “Surrealism” Kunst Publishers, 1993 and an article
President of the Israeli Centre of the International Theatre Institute I.T.I. He has published numerous articles collections “Screen as a Membrane” Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007, Social Games in Art Space Estonian
on such topics as Dramaturgy, Israeli, German and Scandinavian Drama, Jewish Theatre, Holocaust Theatre, Academy of Arts, 2013. Doctoral thesis „Postmateriality in Art. Indeterministic Art Practices and Non-Material
Theatre and Education, and Acting and Directing Theory. Recent publications include: The Cameri Theatre of Art“ Dissertationes Academiae Artium Estoniae 3, 2009.
Tel-Aviv Cameri Theatre, 2008 Another View: Israeli Drama Revisited with Zahava Caspi Ben Gurion University
Publication, 2013 Habima: New Insights on National Theatre, as co-editor Resling, 2017 as well as chapters in Performing and Contemplating Indentity on the Border of EU
The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy Routledge,2015 and New Dramaturgies: International Perspectives
Methuen,2014. Kaynar has been editor or co-editor of books on Sturm und Drang, Brecht and Ghelderode. The major source for my presentation is interactive documentary we realized a few years ago, which
In 2004 and 2010, he won grants from the Israel Science Foundation for researches on Pragmatic Dramaturgy
was based on material recorded in the North-East of Estonia. This is the region of the oil shale in-
and Political Theatre. He is co-editor of the quarterly Teatron. For over 25 years Kaynar was dramaturg in
residence and head of the pedagogic department of three major Israeli repertory theatres: The Habima Israels dustry, where electricity for whole Estonia is produced. But there is located the borde rcity of Narva,
National Theatre, The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv and the Jerusalem Khan Theatre, and curated several festivals exactly on the border of Estonia/Russia, where 90% of the population are Russians. I made several
in Israel and abroad. Kaynar is a stage, TV and film actor, poet, and translator of 70 plays from English, German, expeditions in this regions: first trips were made with the film crew. We were recording material
Norwegian and Swedish. For his Ibsen translations and research he was designated in 2009 by the Norwegian around Eesti Energia power plant, secondly another trip was done alone in the dachas country cot-
King as “Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit.” tages area behind the plant where you can find these houses build in bricolage manner from various
material. You can find there some sort of Little Russia, this area is even more detached from the
Entvremdung instead of Verfremdung: Epic Practices of Changing country of Estonia as Narva, which as a Russian speaking town doesnt remind you Estonia at all.
Attitudes towards Migrants on the New German Stage People on the river, mostly from the city of Narva, have dachas there practically 50 meters from the
Russian border. I was interested in their attitude towards Estonia and Russia. They didnt feel them-
Yael Ronens Common Ground, Milo Raus The Dark Ages, and Christine Umpfenbachs Urteile – rep- selves accepted in Estonia and at the same time they lost connections to Russia. Despite of that they
resent a prevailing trend of German theatre makers to transform and manipulate constituents of defined themselves as Russians. As a result of these expeditions we had several multimedia prod-
Brecht’s epic theatre practice – by refuting their aesthetic and ideological intents from within – as ucts: interactive film, DVD, video documentary. In connection with this material many questions
a meta-strategy to humanize the migrants social image. This strategy includes alienating storytell- arise: how people are adapting to the changes in the region after change of society, from the Soviet
ing means of re-migrating the already Germanized performers, such as reconstructing a voyage of Union to Estonian Republic from 1990ties and onward? What is their relation to the country of their
the Bosnian performers of common Ground to their origin homeland and identity and reconcile it nationality and language, to the country which is 50 meters away? How inhabitants of these dachas
with their acquired one. The productions furthermore apply Brecht’s distancing historiciazation are defining their relation to their homeland? How they are performing their identity in architecture
practice to the performers’ own biographies: they quote themselves, demonstratively stage their of these bricolage houses?
biographies, reduce their complexity into a schematic Gestus, and intermingle their delivery with
a song or dance. Thereby they comply with Brecht’s indoctrinate dictum of abolishing the hypnotic Key Words
magic of Realism, by paradoxically enhancing it, namely, putting Reality itself - consisting in their EU border, living on the border, bricollage, identity, interactive narrative
own non-fictional presence - on the stage, thus demanding the spectators’ emotional involvement
in their narratives. My test-case is the multi-ethnic Common Ground production, performed by Bos-
nian, Serbian, German and Israeli migrants in Berlin. The show is inter alia constituted upon a struc-
ture of abruptly intercepted presentative Brechtian situations which facilitate revelations about the
complex nature of human beings, thereby disproving the condescending German stereotypes of the
Balkanese migrants. Consequently, the transcodification of epic measures relates to two of Brecht’s
key-notions: Verfremdung and Entfremdung. Whereas the V-Effekt denotes emotional alienation in
order to allow the spectator to reflect, Entfremdung might refer to the abolition of defamiliarization,
depersonalization and estrangement since the prefix Ent denotes in German obliteration, abortion.
In other words, the new German theatre replaces the E - with the V-Effekt: Instead of defamiliarizing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

the familiar, these productions familiarize the defamiliarized.

Key Words
Verfremdung, Entvremdung, re-migrating, epic practices, historicization, emotional reception,
multi-ethnic

132 133
 GP GP

Lily Kelting Anja Keränen

FLAME University Pune, India University of Tampere

2017-Present Assistant Professor, Literature and Cultural Studies, FLAME University, Pune / 2014-2016 Post- Anja Keränen is currently working as a visiting lecturer of Finnish language at the Babeş-Bolyai University,
doctoral Fellow, Interart, Freie Universität, Berlin / 2014 Ph.D. University of California, San Diego and U.C. Faculty of Letters, Department of Hungarian Literary Studies Finnish Studies. She is doing her postgrad-
Irvine, Theater and Drama / Publications in Theater Journal, Performance Research, European Stages, Food, uate studies in the University of Tampere in the doctoral program of Communication, Media and Theatre
Culture & Society, Paragrana in the discipline of Theater and Drama research. Her research interests are focused in the drama and the-
ater pedagogy, multimodal communication through improvisation, conversation analysis and the multiple
resources students use in foreign-language communication.
Eating racism, eating history: UNBORDERED at Berlins Neue
Nationalgalerie The Colours of Burnt Orange - Language and Culture through
“Die Bundesrepublik ist kein Einwanderungsland,“ the CDU political program succinctly stated in
Drama and Theatre
1982, laying bare an ideology that Germany has at once grappled with, contested, and put on ban- In this joint project we propose to explore the possibilities of adapting the methods of drama and
ners in the decades since: „Germany is not a country of immigrants.“ In this paper, I turn to a 2015 theatre pedagogy in academic education, however, the practical results and conclusions may be
performance staged at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin by two artists who themselves trouble hopefully integrated into a larger framework of experimental research in the field of drama in edu-
easy equations of Germanness with native, ethnic whiteness: Anne Duk Hee Jordan, a transnational cation, more specifically the teaching/learning of intercultural communication through drama and
Korean-German adoptee, and Shira Wachsmann from Tel Aviv. The interactive performance, UN- theatre. The techniques and strategies of theatre and drama may be adapted naturally in commu-
BORDERED, plays on the relationship between German history and contemporary transnational mi- nication-focused language teaching. Using theatre as a method of learning a new language allows
gration. A table is decked with a tablecloth, embroidered with a map of the European Union—it was the students to see language in real use, and by stepping outside of their everyday roles they might
made for this performance by a refugee from South Sudan. On it are scattered euro coins among experience the use of the target language simultaneously utilizing their whole being and body as
historical German cultural objects, many borrowed from leading archives and cultural institutions: part of their linguistic performances. In our previous teaching and research work at the Babeș-Bolyai
phrenological measuring tools used in Nazi eugenics experiments from the Charite medical archives, University Romania we have explored the use of improvisation practices, drama methods and ki-
a menorah from the Centrum Judaicum. Damning artifacts of Germany’s genocides stand alongside nesics alongside more traditional language teaching methods, and, at the same time, felt the need
proof of immigration and resistance racist tchotchkes next to objects brought to Germany by Turks to apply the interactive method, the improvisational and creative techniques in a broader field of
and Palestinians. And there is also German food: cold boiled potatoes, dark bread with butter. The philologist education: including the teaching of aspects of literature and culture. Laying emphasis
sterility of the museum is replaced by the lush sensuality of a feast or wake. Though a small bell rung on the cultural dimension of language learning in accordance with Michael Byram’s ideas about
by museum guards warns the audience, the audience disregards it, slowly eating from and disassem- intercultural communication competence we intend to enhance the students’ in-depth knowledge
bling the tableau throughout the evening. By inviting the audience to a buffet laden with objects and of the target culture, and thereby their socio-cultural competence, by combining two apparently
foods both painfully and enticingly “authentically German”, Jordan and Wachsmann pose the ques- distinct fields: teaching literary in our case mainly dramatic texts in combination with creative tasks
tions “What is Deutschtum? Who is German?” in a visceral and material way. By joining strangers as well as theatre pedagogy rooted in improvisation philosophy and methods formulated by Keith
around this table, there is no outside to the question. Johnstone 1979, 1999 and Gary Peters 2009. The practical course of Finnish drama and theatre
designed around the joint application of these principles and methods is meant to be open and in-
Key Words teractive – the students and teachers working as partners in a team and the course project should
migration, identity, food, history, Berlin, Germany, performance art evolve dynamically and flexibly, taking into account the contribution of students in the form of in-
terpretive and creative tasks fulfilled at different stages of the process. Our aim is to demonstrate
that traditional, memorisation-oriented methods may be significantly improved through the use of
improvisation, role-play and creative writing, as well as a task-in-process approach throughout the
learning process.

Key Words
drama and theatre pedagogy, cultural learning, improvisation, creative writing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

134 135
 GP GP

Marisa Keuris Zahra Khosravi

University of South Africa Tarbiat Moddars University

Marisa Keuris is a Full Professor in Theory of Literature and currently the Chair of the Department of Afrikaans Zahra Khosravi is a playwright and theatre scholar born on 1979 in Tehran Iran. She is Ph.D student of art re-
and Theory of Literature at the University of South Africa UNISA. Her main field of interest is in contemporary search in Tarbiat Moddares University Iran. Her special intrest in theatre for sociology and historiography of
drama and theatre theory. She has published books, chapters in books and articles on drama and theatre theatre lead to achieving some prizes for her researches on Iranian theatre historiography.  A study of Iranian
semiotics, dramatic language, ecocritical approaches to drama, as well as translation studies in drama. These theatre historiography: A critical discourses analysis approach of is title of her in M.A. thesis in fine art faculty
works incorporate discussions of the work of well-known Afrikaans Deon Opperman, Pieter Fourie, Reza de of Tehran University winner of academic research in international theatre festival in 2011. She was jury mem-
Wet, Harry Kalmer, as well as English South African playwrights Janet Suzman, Athol Fugard, Yael Farber. ber of Hawler international theatre festival in Erbil 2012. She is a lecturer in Tehran University and teaches”
literary schools” and “contemporary theories in western theatre”. She is a member of dramatic literature
Migration theatre in South Africa with reference to Mike van group of children’s book council.
Graan’s “When swallows cry”
Representation of migration in Iranian post-revolution theatre
Abstract: International focus is often on migrants from Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and
Asia, who try desperately to find a new and save home in the UK and Western Europe. Within the Af- This research deals with two plays by two Iranian playwrights who belong to two different gener-
rican context the plight of mainly Northern Africans Libyans, Sudanese, Ethiopians, etc who endan- ations: “Mac Adam Café” by Mahmoud Ostad Mohammad (1950-2013) emigrated to Canada after
ger their own lives by crossing over land and sea to get to the shores of Europe, usually receive daily Iran Islamic revolution and “Amid the Clouds” by Amir Reza Koohestani (1978- ) emigrated to En-
news coverage from international news channels. Although some people will be aware of the fact gland for two years. During post revolution political and social crisis many playwrights and artists
that migration from various African countries do not only include migration to the North, but may chose migration. Both case studies consider migrants in a metaphoric position. This paper explores
also include migration to the South namely to South Africa , the scale of this migration is not always an immigrant as a speaking being based on the semiotic and the symbolic in Julia Kristeva’s approach
known or realized. It is not only migrants from South Africa’s direct neighbours notably from Zimba- to the subject in process.
bwe and Mozambique who come to South Africa, but migrants as far away as Ethiopia, the Demo- “Mac Adam café” is a resort of some Iranian migrant who are belonging to opponent political ten-
cratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Malawi and other African countries, have also been searching dencies like Monarchist, Communist, Guerrillas and refugees but have to commute in this dead-end.
for a beter life in South Africa in the past twenty years. This paper will first contextualize, not only On the other hand, Mac Adam is the local name of die-hard plant that can grow in hard situations.
the scope of these migrations, but will focus especially on the complexities and conflicts associated They have landed to Canada as a goal but not acquiescent. Mac Adam is the metaphor for migrant
with these migrations. A discussion of Mike van Graan’s play really three ‟playlets”, When swallows identity.
cry, will be used to show the how contemporary theatre in South Africa reflects these realities. “Amid the Clouds” have been in tour from 2005 to 2014 and was successfully welcomed in Europe.
The play illustrates illegal migrant on the way to indistinct destination in a boat. Despite of the real-
Key Words istic space of the first play, the second case illustrates a poetical and sophisticated metaphoric situa-
South Africa, migrant theatre, Mike van Graan tion in a box of full filled water, which the actor and actress perform their role in it.
The survey tries to study metaphoric aspects of these plays whilst their concrete conditions can clar-
ify to image of Iranian migrant playwright of migration.

Key Words
migrant identity, cognitive metaphor,Macadam Cafe, Amid The Clouds.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

136 137
 GP GP

Candan Kızılgöl Anja Klöck

Ankara Universiy Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig
Candan Kızılgöl received her B.A. in English Language and Literature from Boğaziçi University, Turkey and is cur- Anja Klöck, Prof. Dr. habil., is Professor of Drama at the HMT Leipzig, Germany. She was Principal Investigator of
rently a PhD candidate studying on her thesis entitled “The Formation of the Subject in Contemporary British the DFG-research project “Systemic Bodies? Cultural and political constructions of the actor in public training
Drama: Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, Philip Ridley” in the Department of English Language and Literature programmes in Germany 1945-1989”, investigating the bio-politics and the institutionalization of actor training
at Ankara University, Turkey where she is also working as a Research Assistant. Her areas of interest include and aesthetic pedagogies in Germany during the Cold War 2006-2012. She collaborated as Associate Partner
the interdisciplinary study of literature and philosophy, the experience of modernity and its manifestations on „Homeland Biladi“ -- funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation 2009-2011 – a programme that
in literature, Early Modern, Modern and Contemporary British Drama, and memory and subjectivity which explored the concept of “homeland” with young people from Leipzig and from the Jenin refugee camp Pales-
have so far resulted in papers she presented in various conferences: “Butterflies and Archive Fever: The Loss tinian territory. Her teaching includes performing history, performing gender, theatre and the East-West-con-
of Memory in Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur”, “Crow’s Songs, Being’s Poem: Ted Hughes’ Crow as Heideggerian flict, theatre and cultural performance, theatre history, acting and performance theory, performance analysis
Poetry”, “Do I Dare to Eat A Dog? J. G. Ballard’s High Rise: A Too Familiar Dystopia of Modern Technology in and dramaturgy. Her research centers on bio-politics, performance as cultural transmission, history and legacy
Heideggerian Sense”, “‘Was that the time or was that another time’: Memories of Listener Dissected in Beck- of theatre and theatre training institutions in Germany, theatre and politics. Prof. Klöck holds a B.A. in Drama
ett’s That Time”, “‘O no, it is an ever-fixed mark’: Memory and the Persistence of the Subject” and “Love It/ & Theatre Studies from the University of Kent at Canterbury U.K., M.A.- and Ph.D.-degrees in Theatre Histo-
Write It/Burn It: Ways of Relating to the Past in Philip Ridleys Ghost From A Perfect Place”. riography from the University of Minnesota USA and the German postdoctoral qualification “Habilitation” in
Theaterwissenschaft from the University of Munich GER. She has worked at the universities of Mainz GER,
“As A Stranger Give It Welcome”: A Derridean Encounter with the Vienna AT, Frankfurt, Giessen, Leipzig, and Munich. She co-convenes the working group „Acting Theory“ of
the German Association of Theatre Research. At the HMT, she closely collaborates with regional theatres and
Other in Philip Ridley’s Moonfleece interdisciplinary performance projects. She also serves on jury panels, such as at Wildwechsel Festival of East
German Children’s and Youth Theatres September 2017.
The question of identity is always a question of similarity and difference. Hence it is a question of the
other, too, which belongs with and extends beyond the question of selfhood. This is because defining
the self requires a consistent attitude towards the things to be excluded from, besides the ones to be Negotiating Public Space: European Democracy, Migration and
included in the identity –with which the self is identified, and which is supposed to remain identical Public Theatres in Germany
during the lifetime. Philip Ridley’s play Moonfleece 2010, as a dramatic exploration of the proposi-
tion above, addresses the issue of identity by juxtaposing homosexuality with conservative politics. The formation of modern European nation states since the 18th century has been interlocked with
Raised to be a Conservative by his right-wing politician step-father, Curtis chases after the ghost of the foundation of various national theatres e.g. Stockholm 1773, Vienna 1776, Mannheim 1777/78,
his brother that begins haunting him. Then he learns that his brother was gay and purged out of Munich 1818, Prague 1881. In many places, the drive to perform national unity, identity and cit-
their new family, so as to protect their step-father’s political career. This knowledge shatters the safe izenship gave rise to concepts of an exclusive national culture based on a standardized national
ground beneath his feet, leaving Curtis unsure whether to embrace the truth about his brother, or to language, normed speech, and a specific canon of dramatic literature. Many of these theatre insti-
hold on to the pseudo-memories that so far conserved his family alongside with his identity. Through tutions are still operating today. Although contemporary performance practices offer negotiations
this paradox, the play emphasizes that the conservative tendency towards the stranger is a single of multilevel concepts of citizenship rather than proliferating uniform ideas on national identity and
attitude that manifests itself in the creation of various others such as foreigners, or homosexuals. cultural belonging, the recent migration of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan to member states
This study, therefore, aims to approach Moonfleece following Derrida’s footsteps as he differentiates of the European Union have intensified a re-evaluation of national theatre institutions: How are
between ‘absolute hospitality’ and ‘hospitality by right’. It argues that the unwritten laws that run they perpetuating in the present aspects of the historical moment of their foundation? How demo-
the society may provide the ground where absolute hospitality seems less impossible, rather than cratically organized are they? What sense of cultural belonging are they performing and for whom?
the official laws of the governing bodies. The study, therefore, attempts to acknowledge the urgency How is the access to their stages regulated e.g. by the entrance examinations of state funded acting
of the matter, for today any chance of hope depends upon the openness of the people towards the training programs and their standards of normed speech and acting prerequisites? This paper will
absolute other, as the rights given to the lawful foreigner keeps proven deficient. address these questions by positing migration vise-à-vis the static ideal of a homogenous national
culture implied in the founding notion of many national theatres in Europe. It will do so by focusing
Key Words on the particular situation in Germany, using the foundation of the Nationaltheater Mannheim in
Identity Self The Other Contemporary British Drama 1777/78 to historicize the utopian idea of performing a static ideal of culture linked to a concept of
national unity, in order to then re-read this history against the backdrop of migration, both past and
present, and a contemporary critique of these institutions as recently posed by members of the en-
semble netzwerk, a movement of professional theatre people questioning the working conditions,
autocratic organization, discrimination of women, disabled and ethnically diverse people at subsi-
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

dized theatres in Germany.

Key Words
national theatre, critique of institutions, citizenship, democracy, public space, Europe, Germany

138 139
 GP GP

Pirkko Koski Raman Kumar

University of Helsinki Jawaharlal Nehru University

Pirkko Koski retired as Helsinki University’s professor of theatre research in 2007. Since that time, she has ac- Raman Kumar is currently pursuing his PHD in Theatre and Performance studies from Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-
tively focused on research work and expert consultation. Throughout her career, she has specialized in theatre versity. He is researching on the Reception and role of State, Market and Civil Society in the context of the
performance analysis and historiography, as well as historical analysis of the Finnish theatre tradition. She has works of the contemporary Women Directors in India. He completed his MPhil from JNU and submitted his
written and edited several articles and books for the domestic and international market, and published perfor- Dissertation titled “Gender Body Space- Exploring Aesthetics & Politics in the Works of  Select Contemporary
mance analyses in the journal European Stages. Her most recent work includes 2013’s monograph “Näytteli- Women Directors. Amal Allana, Anuradha Kapur, Maya K Rao, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry. His areas of inter-
jänä Suomessa” “Being an actor in Finland”, editing with Melissa Sihra of 2010’s The Local Meets the Global ests include Postcolonial theatre, Modernism, Post modernism, Digital Cultures and Theatre History.
in Performance, and articles in the journals Nordic Theatre Studies 2015, Synteesi 2016 and Näyttämö ja tut-
kimus 5 2017. She has also translated Christopher B. Balme’s book The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre What Happens when a Process Migrates: Performing Offshore
Studies into Finnish under the title Johdatus teatteriin, which was released in 2015.
Business in India, a case study
The theatre as a refuge: Other Home from the audience In this paper I approach the functioning of organization from the notion of performativity as it es-
perspective tablishes that how an organization is constantly performed and produced  through various com-
munication flows, set processes, governance structures which get migrated to the offshore centres 
The Finnish National Theatre’s Touring Stage production of Other Home sees refugee thespians, and function independently. For more than two decades, Urban India has been a site of choice
professional actors in their former home countries, interpret the events of their lives and encoun- for multinational companies to set up their call center operations Business Process Outsourcing,
ter a new culture together with their Finnish peers. The performance also has ramifications for the BPO which caters to the needs of ever increasing appetite of the globally connected capitalism by
surrounding community with interactive elements that actively draw the audience members into maximizing profits and minimizing cost. These organizations outsource certain processes in part/full
the production. The performance takes place in the Omapohja studio, where seating surrounds which need to be managed offshore.   I would be looking into these migrated processes in particular
the stage and provides close access to the actors. The production is multi-lingual Finnish, Arabic which involve the complex network of technology and human actors  workers and try to explore its
and English is spoken, and Finnish and Arabic text is projected on the walls. The performers also performative role in different perspectives.
translate some of their lines into different languages as part of the production. My research focuses
on observing the audience response. Results are compared with the Touring Stage’s 2011 Paper An- Key Words
chor production, also created in cooperation with refugees in Finland. The sudden influx of asylum Offshoring  BPO, Posthumanist Performativity, Affective role, Non representational theory
seekers to Finland in 2015 meant that Finns throughout the country were more likely to share ex-
periences with the newcomers at the individual and group level in their own neighbourhood. Public
discourse on the topic expanded, and in part grew more polarised. My work will examine the Other
Home production as part of the cultural environment in light of its public reception. It will touch on
such things as cultural characteristics, the acceptance of diversity, the meaning of community, and
the theatre’s role in exploring painful subjects. Viewers make contact with a new form of artistic
expression in Other Home: the principles of identity politics, the humanism of the other, and perfor-
mances of belonging, among other things. The material under review consists of the performance
and its documentation, media reviews, feedback to the theatre, and social media commentary. The
analysis is further framed by associated research on asylum policy and the theatre.

Key Words
refugee, identity politics, reception
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

140 141
 GP GP

Sanjay Kumar Radka Kunderová

Central European University, Budapest Charles University Prague and Theatre Insitute in Prague
Sanjay Kumar is a faculty at the Department of History, Central European University CEU Budapest. Sanjay has Dr. Radka Kunderová is a theatre academic, critic and editor. She has a longstanding interest in the political
been teaching and working with refugee and asylum seekers students at CEU. He also teaches a course in Nar- aspect of theatre, she has analyzed how authoritative discourse revealed itself in theatre and theatre criticism
ratives and is researching modes of storytelling and narratives. His fields of interest are City and Performance, in Czechoslovakia during perestroika (1985-1989), or hierarchies among various national theatre discourses
Refugee theatres, Narratives and Storytelling. He is also an academic podcast host for South Asian Books in during the Cold War. She was a director of the Institute for Theatre Research and assistant professor at the
the NBN. Theatre Faculty of JAMU in Brno, Czech Republic. Currently, she works as a researcher at the Arts and Theatre
Institute and the Charles University in Prague. Her research and academic stays include Royal Central School
Enacting Crisis in Communities: A study of theatrical interventions of Speech and Drama in London, University of Hull or National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has
been an active conference organiser, recently, she has chaired an international conference Politics and Com-
in the discourses of Migration and Identity in Central Eastern munity Engagement in Doctoral Theatre Research (JAMU, 2017). She published on artistic research and edited
Europe an English volume Current Challenges in Doctoral Theatre Research (2017). She has participated in various
international conferences (IFTR, ELIA), workshops and research projects and gave invited talks at the Freie
After the flow of displaced people including children, elderly and vulnerable segments of populace- Universität Berlin, in Estonia or Lithuania. She was a committee member of the Czech Association of Theatrol-
from Middle East, Africa and Asia- to Europe through the Balkans in the summer of 2015 Hungary ogists and the Association of Czech Theatre Critics/A.I.C.T. She is an external co-editor of the theatre magazine
and the CEE region has been dominated by a wave of xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism. This Svět a divadlo (World and Theatre) and an editorial board member of the peer-reviewed journal Theatralia
has been dictated by the political discourses about migration and movement of refugees and asy- published by Masaryk University in Brno.
lum seekers thus, reviving deeper questions of citizenship, ethnicity and nationhood in this region.
On the theatrical stage, it has resulted in a very forceful and significant intervention by a leading Postmodernism Migrating into a Systemic Crisis
dissenting voice in Hungarian alternate theatre, Arpad Schilling. In my paper, I propose to read his
recent theatrical production on the themes of migration and national identities and place it within Loss of the subversive “anti-communist” agency, cuts in the state subsidy and disinterest of the audi-
his oeuvre of theatre addressing the crisis in communities and social cohesion in Hungary. I will focus ences represented some of the factors which generated “a crisis of theatre” in Czechoslovakia after
on the performative aspects of his theatrical productions that deal with questions of self-identity by 1989, as the situation was conceptualized by a number of contemporaries. According to a renowned
challenging the state-orchestrated campaigns of disinformation about the threat to national identi- Czech dramaturge Karel Kraus, “the theatre became mute (…), and was addressing a spectator who
ties. Finally, the questions of fear and otherness embodied in these performances will be analyzed was proved to be deaf.” Within this situation, postmodern aesthetics entered the field of Czech
within the performative devices and strategies employed in the performances and thereby delineate professional theatre significantly for the first time, since during the communist period, the concept
the performative nature of identities. of postmodernism was rather denied by the cultural policy, which considered it a suspicious trend
spreading from “the West”. How was the emergence of the new aesthetics negotiated in the situa-
Key Words tion of a systemic crisis when the role of theatre was being redefined? In what manner did theatre
performance, community, identity, crisis makers and theorists, including the former playwright and - at the time - president Václav Havel,
interrelate the on-going value reorientation of the society with postmodern philosophy and aesthet-
ics? In what ways did the new aesthetics relate to the previously established concepts of theatre
and it’s agency? And how did the contemporaries project the future role of theatre and its goals? To
answer these questions, which have not been addressed by historians yet, I will employ discourse
analysis drawing on theatre makers’ and theorists’ debates published in the press at the time.

Key Words
Theatre in crisis - postmodernism - Czech theatre - theatre history - discourse analysis
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

142 143
 GP GP

Yuko Kurahashi Tomoko Kusuhara

Kent State University Keio University

Dr. Yuko Kurahashi is an associate professor of theatre in the School of Theatre and Dance at Kent State Univer- Retired from Keio University now Emeritus Professor, and now a critic in the Modern Japanese Theatre
sity. Her areas of specialty include multicultural theatre, community-based theatre, and intercultural theatre.
She is the author of Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players Garland, 1999 and The Theatre of Ghosts and the Other under the Threat of Mass
Multicultural Theatre Kendall/Hunt, 2004 & 2006. Kurahashi is a writer for PlayShakespeare.com, San Diego
Press, and HowlRound. She is completing her book on Ping Chong McFarland.
Deaths
The details of the historical event like Nazi’s Holocaust, which is too horrible for ordinary people to
Voices of the Insiders and Outsiders: Ping Chong + Company’s Two face up to, had been for long years un-told. But now ‘time’ has begun to encourage people to remind
Projects what they experienced in the past, namely, people have begun talking about what they saw, felt and
kept deep in their minds.
My paper discusses identity, history and stories about insiders/outsiders in Alaska by examining two
works by Ping Chong and his collaborators. One is ALAXSXA/ALASKA Fall 2017 and the other is Un- Key Words
desirable Elements—Juneau Histories upcoming in March 2018. I attended three performances of decades-After Nazi’s Holocaust, memories, struggles among the Others
ALAXSXA/ALASKA in Anchorage and New York City in September and October 2017. I plan to attend a
performance of Undesirable Elements—Juneau Histories in March 2018. The title ALAXSXA/ALASKA
consists of different words for Alaska: Alaxsxa is an ancient word of the Unangax tribe. The name,
which means “the land against the sea breaks” was changed, by Russian traders in the eighteenth
century, to Alaska in the nineteenth century. The juxtaposition of the two names suggests social,
political, and cultural encounters and clashes between the natives and new settlers. Undesirable
Elements—Juneau Histories is a new Undesirable Elements installment which Ping Chong + Com-
pany is currently creating with his collaborators Ryan Conaro and Juneau artist Frank Kaash Katasse
Tlingit Chong has worked Undesirable Elements, the oral history series with different communities
since the early 1990s. All of the installments, which have been collaboratively created by Chong and
his co-artists and community participants, intend to discover and share stories of underrepresent-
ed people. My paper will rediscover and reexamine the perception of “Alaska,” which has been
perceived as an isolated place of and for the “Others.” I will examine in what way Chong and his
collaborators address history of purchases, trades, migration, and exploitation through voices of the
“insiders” and “outsiders” in the two pieces. In my investigation, I will particularly focus on one of
the 2018 Conference thematic questions: “the construction of the Other” in the realities and prac-
tices of everyday life.

Key Words
Alaska, Ping Chong, Community-based
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

144 145
 GP GP

Hye-Gyong Kwon Joonas Lahtinen

Dongseo University Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Hye-Gyong Kwon is Professor at the Dept. of English, Dongseo University, Busan, Republic of Korea South Ko- Joonas Lahtinen is a performance and installation artist and researcher based in Vienna and Helsinki. He works
rea. She got her Ph.D. from Korea University, Seoul, Korea. She is also President of the New Korean Association as a Lecturer-Researcher in the Art and Education program at the Institute for Education in the Arts of the
of English Language & Literature and Editor of the Journal of Modern British and American Drama published by Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Joonas holds an MA in Performance from Queen Mary, University of London and
Modern British & American Drama Society of Korea. Her academic concerns are British and American drama, an MA in Theatre Research from the University of Helsinki, where he is currently writing his PhD dissertation
feminism, film, comparative criticism between Korean and foreign culture and literature. She has published on participatory performance entitled ”Why participate? Horizons of change and politics of the sensible in Lois
books and articles on Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, Eve Ensler and James Barrie, as well as on gender politics Weaver’s ‘What Tammy Needs to Know’, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen’s ‘Complaints Choir’
and modern consumer culture, and on the political appropriations in the transformation of western folk tales and Claudia Bosse’s ‘dominant powers. was also tun?’“. Joonas has written several articles for Finnish and
into fairy tales and animations. In addition to these, she has also directed 19 drama performances in English international research publications. His recent performances have been shown in Austria, Finland, Germany,
with college stdents, such as Our Town, Romeo and Juliet, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, A Doll’s House, Death Switzerland and Romania. http://joonaslahtinen.wordpress.com, [email protected]
of a Salesman, etc.
On the dynamic of perception, power and exclusion – “sensory
Division and Migration: North Korean Defectors in the
fields”, “experience fields” and “body techniques” as performance
Contemporary South Korean Theater
analytical and epistemological tools
Since the division of Korea after World War II and the end of the Korean War, some North Koreans
have managed to defect for political, ideological, economic or personal reasons. Such North Koreans In the wake of poststructuralist thought, it has become commonplace for us theatre scholars to
are referred to as North Korean defectors. Starting from the North Korean famine of the 1990s, more acknowledge the interconnectedness of perception, knowledge, culture, and power in performance
North Koreans have defected. In 2017, there were 31,093 defectors registered with the Unification making and analysis. However, in our field, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining the
Ministry in South Korea, 71% of whom were women.[ North Korean migrants experience serious functioning of the human perceptual apparatus through which we sense and make sense of reality
difficulties connected to psychological and cultural adjustment once they have been resettled. This and of artistic performances. Such explanatory efforts could open up new possibilities for addressing
occurs mainly because of the conditions and environment that North Koreans lived in while in their processes of exclusion, inclusion and “othering” both in performance situations and beyond them.
own country, as well as inability to fully comprehend new culture, rules, and ways of living in South In this paper, I present a novel analytical framework for locating and interrogating ways in which
Korea. performance events engage and affect the participants, and for understanding the culture-bound
dynamic of perception, power, knowledge and the body in contemporary performance practice. My
Key Words framework is based on a detailed view of our bodily and cognitive ways of sensing and making sense
migration, North Korean defectors, division of Korea, South Korean theater, refugees of reality i.e. of how our experiences and knowledges take form through the interaction between our
bodies, the environment, and culture. Drawing especially from Jacques Rancière’s, Marcel Mauss’s,
and Michel Foucault’s views of human perception and experience, the main concepts – or “tools“ –
of this framework are ”sensory fields“, “experience fields” and ”body techniques“. I suggest that the
crucial ideological assumptions as well as the processes of exclusion, inclusion and “othering” in any
performance are not to be seen solely in their “goals” or “themes” but, even more distinctly, in the
modes of bodily participation that the performance employs. Thus, my framework takes the bodily
dimension – what is actually done to and expected from the bodies of the participants during the
performance event – as the starting point for critical analysis. I conclude my paper by outlining how
the concepts ”sensory fields“, “experience fields”, and ”body techniques“ have informed my PhD
research project at the University of Helsinki.

Key Words
Performance analysis, performance philosophy, human perception, Jacques Rancière, Marcel Mauss,
Michel Foucault
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

146 147
 GP GP

Outi Lahtinen Kevin Landis

University of Helsinki University of Colorado Colorado Springs

Outi Lahtinen is a lecturer at the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Ar- Kevin Landis is an associate professor and director of the Theatre and Dance Program in the Department of
chitecture. Her research interests include performance analysis, theatre criticism and Finnish contemporary Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. His research interests and publica-
theatre. She is a theatre critic and a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, completing her thesis on the tions are varied. He has studied contemporary avant-garde theatre groups, Eastern European actor training
Austinian theory of performativity. She has co-written the article “A Turn in Teaching and Learning: The Trans- methods, Native American melodrama, Nordic art, American drag, and performance analyses of evangelical
national Classroom in an International Setting” in International Performance Research Pedagogies - Towards church services as well as restaurant food preparation. He has published on several of those topics and co-au-
an Unconditional Discipline? together with Hanna Korsberg. thored the book Cultural Performance: New Perspectives on Performance Studies. He is currently writing a
manuscript about the contemporary history of the Public Theater in New York. Landis is an MFA trained actor
Refugees watching refugees and member of the Actors Equity Association. He specializes in physical theatre training derived from his work
with Grotowskis lead actress, Rena Mirecka. Landis uses an eclectic training method that includes Michael
Chekhov Technique, Suzuki and LeCoq clown and mask work. The training focuses on the actors understanding
The production Other Home at the Finnish National Theatre was created as a co-operation between
of his/her body as the integral component for vocal expression and performative creativity.
Finnish and refugee artists. Consequently, it became naturally multilingual. The languages used side
by side in the performance were Arabic, Finnish and English. Also, the text spoken during the per-
formance in either of the languages, was almost consistently translated to another, either as spoken
Public Body: The Movement Performance of Eiko Otake
translation or as writing projected on the wall.  This multilingual character of the production opened Eiko Otake is one of the most well-respected dance/movement artists in the world, having made
it also to audiences that do not usually belong to the probable audience members of Finnish theatre. an international reputation as one-half of the performance duo Eiko and Koma. In recent years,
However, in the repertoire of the producer of the Other Home, the Touring Stage of National the- Ms Otake has embarked on a daring solo exploration of the intersection of the private body in the
atre this is not such an exception. The Touring stage aims to broaden the audiences by performing public space. The work has as its genesis as a photographic site/corporeal documentation of Otake’s
at schools, homes for the elderly, reception centres, prisons and other locations which have limited body in-situ inside the nuclear zone of the Fukushima power plant fallout. Otake quite literally con-
access to theatre. Productions of the stage are often created through community research and inter- fronts migration and border crossing by placing her body in locations of disjunction in places where
action.  The production Other home was not performed on tour. Nevertheless, it drew audience with her body seemingly “shouldn’t” be. Then, in mesmerizing, slow movement, draws the unsuspecting
an immigrant and refugee background, when native Finnish spectators made good use of the op- viewer into communion with that body in that space. Fukushima was followed by a Private Body,
portunity and brought their friends to see the performance. Also, a couple of small groups of young Public Space performance over three days at the main hall of Pennsylvania Train Station in Philadel-
immigrants were brought to see the performance.  My paper is based on interviews of and discus- phia. Otake, in full kimono, white face makeup, and carrying her signature red cloth from Fukushi-
sions with young male Iraqi refugees who accompanied me to see the performance. The viewpoint ma, embarked on durational/endurance performance in a place of migration. The train station was
of the paper consists of their experience and thoughts about the performance which they agreed to followed by similar performances on Wall Street, in the Colorado Rockies and other locations around
share in the discussions. Among these young men appeared the same problematics and tensions as the world. Public Body interrogates Eiko Otake’s current work through the lens of migration. In inter-
among the artistic group of the production. Also, among them, the questions of politics, identities, views with the artist and using beautiful images of the various instillations, the presentation/paper
liminalities and distinctions were activated. proposes that her groundbreaking new work that focuses stasis and, sometimes, still photographic
recording, is actually a deeply rooted in her own confrontation with human kind’s and, thus, her own
Key Words sense of movement, migration and change.
Political theatre, spectatorship, language and translation
Key Words
Otake, movement, dance, theatre, Japan, Fukushima, durational performance, photography
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

148 149
 GP GP

Javiera Larrain George Andy Lavender

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile University of Warrwick

Javiera Larraín holds a degree on Spanish Literature at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Pontifical Cath- Andy Lavender is Professor of Theatre & Performance and Head of the School of Theatre & Performance
olic University of Chile, and is Master of Arts with a Major in Theatre Directing at Universidad de Chile Uni- Studies and Cultural & Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. Recent writing includes the mono-
versity of Chile. She is currently a PhD candidate in Literature at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She graph Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Theatres of Engagement Routledge 2016, and the article
has participated in numerous research projects related to theater, narrative writers, arts and culture in Chile ‘The Internet, Theatre, and Time: transmediating the theatron’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 27:3 2017.
and in different international congress: Argentina, México, Uruguay, Barcelona, London, and other. She has He is co-editor of the special issue of CTR, ‘Encountering the Digital in Performance’, in which the latter ap-
also published articles in international and international academic journals, book chapters an editing work pears and series editor of 4x45, published by Digital Theatre online videos and Routledge print volumes.
on several theater books, highlighting her books “History of theater direction in Chile: 1940-1979” and The Recent theatre practice as director includes Agamemnon Redux, part of the Mask & Avatar workshop proj-
melodrama in the Chilean scene of the XX-XXI centuries. Since 2011, Larraín works as a theater director of ect exploring motion capture in theatre settings with colleagues from Paris 8 and Warwick universities.
Cronópolis Theatre Company. She debuted with the plays, Prueba Viviente Living Proof, 2011, Rojo claro sobre
rojo oscuro Light red on dark red, 2012 and Tríptico Tryptic, 2013 She is now preparing her fourth play, about The plebiscitary problem or, re-othering others: plural public
chilean dictatorship.
spheres and the performance of power
Melodramatic imagination in current chilean theatre. The case of This paper explores reasons and implications for culture, political process and performance of the
“Los Contadores Auditores” (“The Auditors”) Accountants plebiscitary ructions of 2016 and 2017: the outcomes of the UK’s Brexit referendum and the disput-
ed Catalan independence referendum the following year the US presidential election of 2016 and
In contemporary Chilean scene, melodrama has been installed not only as a purely aesthetic refer- the differently resolved French version a year later. Each of these processes was characterized by a
ence, but also from its configuration and dramaturgical structure. Since 2000, the melodrama has theme concerning the prevalence of national or regional identities over and against incomers, im-
been reworked in his imagination, to collapse within a same context political discourse into a new migrants or others. Each saw the consolidation of stark divisions within civic society, in part through
national scene. This paper aims to establish the behavior of this contractual presented melodra- the reiteration of impassioned and incompatible affiliations. Such separations were compounded
matic imaginary part of the Chilean drama from 2000, through the analysis of various scenic parts by the effects of individuals operating within social media ‘bubbles’, so that the notion of a single
corresponding to the Company Los Contadores Auditores. Through a review of their main works it public sphere appeared to be supplanted by one of plural public spheres expressing radically differ-
will be possible to establish nuclei of common interest around the treatment and the rediscovery of ent notions of common sense. That said, the effects of each on the macro-political domain in each
melodrama as a renewed ideological prism construction work of the mise en scene. In this, an urge country can hardly be overstated. Each process featured considerable production management and
to demystify the materials be submitted trailing spaces, and melodrama would be, in part, a way to ‘performative’ manifestation in both senses of the term, in keeping with the extension of perfor-
perform this task. In fact, the current chilean melodrama performed by Los Contadores Auditores mance as a determining trope of culture McKenzie and pervasive mediation as a defining mode of
claims the primigenius political rol that the melodrama -as a genre- already had is its beginnings. socio-political narration. My paper explores some consistencies and conundrums here: changing
Thus, that for this Company -as a synecdoche of the current generation-, melodrama is far from a conceptions of the public sphere the defining contribution of neoliberalism to a reshaped expression
mere stylistic observation, to take a historical and cultural place within the Chilean dramaturgical of and by ‘the people’ the notably diverse political positions entailed the harnessing of populism
event as a main form and capital within the term of the generations that would inaugurate the new through performance and, in line with the conference’s theme, ideas of immigration and identity as
millennium. Consequently, the melodrama of recent Chilean scene, can be understood as a practice, a strikingly dominant topic within this turbulent plebiscitary discourse. Indeed, the immigrant stands
a dialogic operation and an actant model on different bodies onstage in the events of the local scene. as the emblem of that which is most often contested in this resurgence of the populist, where the
performance of power is typically most effective where it defines its presence in relation to that of
Key Words nominated others.
melodrama, chilean scene, dramaturgy, melodramatic imagination
Key Words
Plebiscite, popular, performance, public sphere, neoliberalism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

150 151
 GP GP

Insoo Lee Jussi Lehtonen

Korea National University of Arts The Finnish National Theatre

Employment: 2010-presesnt: Lecturer, School of Drama, Korea National University of Arts 2014-2017: Re- Jussi Lehtonen is artistic designer of the Finnish National Theatre’s Touring Stage, where he also works as a
search Professor, Korea National Research Institute of Arts, Korea National University of Arts 2012-2014: director and an actor. The troupe takes theatre performances out on the road to places like health care in-
Lecturer, English Department, Seoul National University Education: 2012 Ph.D in Theatre Arts, Pittsburgh stitutions and prisons, and contributes community-oriented documentary theatre to the National Theatre’s
University. 2004 MA in Theatre Arts, Miami University 2002 BFA in Playwriting, Korea Nationl University of repertoire. Lehtonen defended his Theatre Arts PhD on actor’s contact with audiences living in care facilities in
Arts 1995 BA in English Literature, Seoul National University Publication: A Perspective on the 21st Centuries 2015 at Finland’s Theatre Academy. He is currently pursuing post-doc research as part of the ArtsEqual project
Korean Theatre Classics, In Search of the 21st Centuries Korea Arts Classics, Korean National Research Cen- funded by the Finnish Academy’s strategic research council, in which he examines art as a public service and
ter for Arts, Korea National University of Arts. 2017. Text Adapting Strategies of Sacheonga as Intercultural explores the potential of art to create a more equitable society. Lehtonen’s writing credits include “Samas-
Performance from the Third World, Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association. Vol.58. 2016 Where Does sa valossa – näyttelijäntyö hoitolaitoskiertueella” “In the same light: Touring care facilities as an actor” and
Women’s Pleasure Lie?: Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play and the Third Wave Feminism, “Vapauden kauhu – kirjoituksia vankilasta vapautuvien teatterista” Terror of Freedom: Essays on theatre for
Journal of The Modern English Drama Association of Korea. Vol.26 No.1. 2013 Strategies to Construct a New released prisoners.
Asian American Identity on the U.S. Stage: The Plays of Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang, Journal of Ameri-
can Studies. Vol.45, No.1. 2013 Adrienne Kennedy’s A Lesson in Dead Language : A Narrative Battle over the Other Home: A hybrid community of artistic expression
Meaning of Women’s Bleeding, Journal of the modern English Drama Association of Korea. Vol. 25. No.2, 2012.
Directing: Either We Met for the First Time or We Have Known One Another For Too Long. 2017 Two Rooms.
Over the past few years I as theatre practitioner and scholar have been developing the concept of
By Lee Blessing. 2016. Pillowman. By Martin McDonagh. 2015
a hybrid community of artistic expression HCAE. This community includes people from different
backgrounds who collectively create a joint piece of art. These are individuals who would not spend
<The Song of Strangers>: pansori and immigration and exile time together otherwise. The community aims to call attention to the stories of marginalised or
experiences stigmatised people, fostering change by making these experiences understandable to a larger audi-
ence. It also seeks to provide it’s members with the opportunity to participate in the public discourse
Jaram Lee is known for her modern pansori series adapting and rewriting Brecht’s plays, Mother through the medium of art. The Other Home project of The Finnish National Theatre is an example
Courage and The Good Person of Setzuan. The intercultural encounter of the Korean traditional of this kind of a community. It included participants from three groups: 1 artists who sought asylum
performance genre and the Western cannon has drawn great attention and she is acknowledged in Finland in 2015 2 artists with background in Finland 3 non-artist asylum seekers who had partici-
for her success in telling contemporary stories in the traditional yet innovative theatrical form. Lee pated in an open workshop led by the project. The final product is a kind of documentary theatre:
recently presented The Song of Strangers, for which she adapted the Nobel prized novelist, Gabriel the production tells not just the stories of the community, but also the imagined stories of the
Garcia Marquez’s short story, Bon Voyage, Mr. President. Using the traditional performance style of community it considers itself to be. A key role comes when the community presents its production
pansori—one singer/storyteller narrating and acting all the characters accompanied by a drummer, to the audience, as the ticketholders become a part of both the community and its final product by
in this case, and a guitar player as well—Lee performs the story of the three strangers from a small contributing their own unique input. The activities of a HCAE are politically charged in many ways.
country in Caribbean, now living in Geneva, Switzerland and how they become friends in spite of The Other Home community contained members that fought on opposing sides of civil wars in Syria
their differences in terms of gender and class. In dealing with the experiences of immigrants and and Iraq. It was a big challenge to make these people do art together. Politics was also present with
exiles, which are rather unfamiliar to Korean audience, Jaram Lee uses her body as the performing regards to the unresolved asylum applications of many members of the community. Over the course
subject in ways to cross the border of self vs other, and here vs. there. My paper will explore how of the project, both positive and negative asylum decisions were handed down. Further tensions in
Jaram Lee uses pansori as a means to convey to Korean audience the strange experience of being the community included conflicts between males and female, the young and old and the group’s
foreigners in an European city, and how the form of pansori enhances what she suggests as the eth- professionals and amateurs. HCAE is an imagined community that perpetuates a vision of its inner
ics of human relationship of our time. sameness while also being aware of the phenomena that cause its members to be different. This is
part of the community’s performance and self-narrated story.
Key Words
Jaram Lee, pansori Key Words
Refugee, performance process, community theatre, politics of performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

152 153
 GP GP

Nic Leonhardt Olga Levitan

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv University
Nic Leonhardt is a theatre and media scholar as well as a writer based in Munich. She studied Theatre Studies Olga Levitan - holds her MA degree in theatre theory and history from the Academy of Theatre Arts in St.
and Audiovisual Media, German Philology, Musicology, and Art History at the Universities of Erlangen-Nürn- Petersburg (Russia) and a PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She started her professional career
berg and Mainz and received a Dr. phil. in Performance and Media Studies from the University of Mainz 2006. as the theatre critic in Petersburg and Moscow and continued her activities at the Department of Theatre
Her scholarly activities are characterized by a strong interdisciplinary approach and focus on global theatre, Studies at the Hebrew University and Department of Arts in Education at the David Yellin Academic College for
media and popular cultures at the turn of the 20th century as well on contemporary visual and urban cultures Education. She is also the Chair of The Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts in Tel-Aviv
and Digital Humanities. She is currently the associate director of and senior researcher with the ERC project University. The fields of her research are related to the issues of intercultural theatre, Jewish and Israeli theatre
“Developing Theatre”, LMU Munich. She is also the co-director of the Centre for Global Theatre History, and and to Russian modernistic theatre, and she has published numerous articles on these subjects in academic
co-editor of the Journal of Global Theatre History. Her recent publications include Theater über Ozeane. journals and books. She initiated and had a major part in the planning and organization of many international
Vermittler transatlantischen Austauschs 1890–1925. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2018 in press. „Cir- conferences and research projects, including a symposium Theatre in the Multicultural Society (Jerusalem,
culation. Theatre Mobility and its Professionalizaton in the Nineteenth Century“, in: Peter W. Marx Hg.: A Cul- 2008) and the Israeli-German research group Performing Arts in Postcolonial Culture: Jerusalem and Berlin
tural History of Theatre in the Age of Empire 1800-1920. London: Bloomsbury 2017, S. 113-133 with Stanca (2014-2017). In addition, she was a member of the Artistic committee of the International Exposure of the
Scholz-Cionca. Website: Nicleonhardt.wordpress.com Israeli theatre, and she publishes reviews on modern Israeli theatre productions in leading Israeli theatre
magazines.
“The show business has gone all to pieces” – Theatrescapes, Mobility
What did Mikhail Chekhov write to the Hebrew theatre Habima?
and Stasis during World War I
Mikhail Chekhov, a prominent Russian actor and director and one of the most famous theatre artists
In The Birth of the Modern World. A global history 1780-1914 2008 the British historian Christopher
in the 20 th century, left Moscow in 1928, feeling persecuted by Soviet ideological standards. Since
A. Bayly used the formulation of a paradox of globalization to describe what initially seemed as two
that moment, he experienced the life of a wandering artist, performing and directing in different
contradictory processes of globalization in the 19th and early 20th century: On the one hand, the
European countries. Habima, founded in 1917 as a Hebrew studio-theatre of the Moscow Arts The-
period from the mid-19th century up to the First World War saw the formation of political, economic
atre, fled from Moscow in 1926 due to the complete cessation of funding by the Soviet regime, and
and ideological views of the sovereign nation state. On the other hand, there was an increasing and
for a number of following years became a wandering, cross-cultural theatre. At the end of the 1920s
dynamic global interconnectedness and cultural mobility. Theatre plays an important role in this
and beginning of the 1930s both of them, the theatre and the artist, were exposed to the obstacles
‘two-faced’ dynamics in that it both serves as a ‘carrier‘ of nationalist and representational ideas,
of immigrant art practice. In 1930, they met in Berlin, where Chekhov directed The 12 th Night by
and is subject to an increasing transregional/ transnational mobility at the same time. Between the
Shakespeare on Habima’s stage. The success of this work resulted in a continuing correspondence
late 19th and the early 20th century theatrical productions, performers, and plays circulate often
between Chekhov and Habima’s actors and to the latter’s attempts to reunite with him. This paper
globally on a larger scale than ever before, enabled by improved infrastructures of communication
proposes an analysis of Chekhov’s unknown letter to Habima (1934), which was discovered at the
and transport. By following the professional paths of selected theatrical agents, impresarios and
Israeli Centre for the Documentation of the Performing Arts. The letter is reminiscent of a highly
performers, in my paper, I will focus on the impact the outbreak of the First World War had on the
dramatic scenario, where every paragraph contains a specific dramatic situation, referring not only
mobility of theatre. Based on primary material, and by applying perspectives of global theatre histo-
to Chekhov’s personal life circumstances, but to the whole complex of political, socio-economic,
ry, I shall demonstrate to what extent the War cut the infrastructural routes and trails of migration,
and cultural problems accompanying the reality of Russian and Jewish immigrant artistic communi-
and forced a massive ‘setback‘ and re-direction of theatrical practices and individual careers.
ties between the First and Second World Wars. The analysis of this document allows revealing and
discussing the macro-history of theatre artists’ migration, through the micro-history presented in
Key Words
Michail Chekhov’s letter.
Global Theatre History, Theatrical Brokers, Transnational Exchange, Migration and Stasis, National-
ism, Theatrical Mobility, Transatlantic Cultural Exchange, World War I
Key Words
Mikhail Chekhov, Habima, Immigrant artistic communities, Wandering artist, Cross-cultural
theatre.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

154 155
 GP GP

Julia Listengarten Milton Loayza

University of Central Florida State University of New York at Oswego
Julia Listengarten is Professor of Theatre, Artistic Director, and Director of Graduate Studies at University of Milton Loayza is a Theatre scholar, actor, and director, working mainly with Latin American Theatre with a focus
Central Florida. She has written on avant-garde and contemporary theatre, theory and practice of performer on Performance and Philosophy.  He recently wrote two articles linking the plays of Ricardo Monti to Deleu-
training, scenographic practices, and performances of national identity. Her translation of Vvedensky’s Christ- zian Assemblages and to an “anthroposcenic” dramaturgy, published in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and
mas at the Ivanovs premiered Off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company. She is the author of Russian Tragifarce: Criticism and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, respectively.  He has also been performing in the
Its Cultural and Political Roots 2000, co-author of Modern American Playwriting: 2000-2009 with Cindy Rosen- United States in numerous productions of the tango Opera Maria de Buenos Aires, by Piazzola/Ferrer in the
thal, 2017, and co-editor of Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1950-2000 2011 and Playing with Theory in Theatre role of EL Duende Atlanta, New Orleans, Minneapolis, etc, and has recently presented his own staged tango
Practice 2012. She has contributed to many theatre publications and recently completed the 8 volume series concert titled Tango and Borges. Milton is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at the State University of
Decades of Modern American Playwriting: 1930-2009, which she co-edited with Brenda Murphy. She is editor New York at Oswego.
of Stanislavski Studies: Practice, Legacy and Contemporary Theater, a UK-based peer-reviewed journal.
Migrating Into the Scientific Bunker and the Future Beyond: Three
Found in Translation: Performing Displacement and Migratory Latin American Plays
Geographies in a Visual and Performing Arts Collaboration
Three plays from Chile and Argentina, written and performed in the last fifteen years conjure the
Drawing on the conference topics around performing displacement and migratory geographies, this image of the bunker as a sort of control center and laboratory for a near escape or migration to the
paper explores sites of possibility for addressing the current refugee crisis through artistic collabo- future. El Vuelo del Dragon [The Flight of the Dragon], by Javier Daulte Argentina, 2002, El Lobby del
rations. How do we as artists negotiate artistic mediums to foster a collective dialogue about ethics Odio [The Lobby of Hate] by Benjamin Galemiri Chile, 2006 and El Barro Se Subleva [The Mud Rises]
of representation concerning migrant bodies and mediatized images of violence and destruction? by Norman Briski Argentina, 2012 are very different plays in terms of language, tone, and politics.
Since his election and inauguration, United States President Donald Trump has continued to rally his The common image of the bunker, on the other hand, reveals mixed and contradictory emotions
base around his campaign promises, which include building a U.S.-Mexico wall, enforcing a travel about the theatre of possibilities on a global stage at the dead end of capitalism, or the “antecham-
ban, and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. To many, his populist rhetoric is a trou- ber of Godot,” in Brisky’s words. In this paper I will present the plays as peripheral visions of global
bling reminder of the racism and anti-intellectualism that permeate contemporary American society, impasse, where Latin American characters seek to short circuit the electronic, chemical, or genetic
to others, it is a direct threat to their lives and communities. In winter 2018, University of Central connections, emanating from the First World, that threaten the future of the World. I will show how
Florida’s Schools of Visual and Performing Arts leveraged the support of the National Endowment these plays stage the tension between the promising efficacies of technology and science on one
for the Arts to respond to issues of exile, displacement and Otherness, and demonstrate how no- side and of affect on the other.  In Daulte’s play, the coordinated computer room work of saving the
tions of migration might be employed to grapple with issues of cultural cross-fertilization, transfer, world is unmatched by any feeling of solidarity or accomplishment. Similarly in Galemiri’s play the
appropriation, and mutation, de/construct normalized racist representations and spaces, challenge attempted chemical fusion or dilution of modern ideologies in the lab, is sabotaged by the inept
neoliberal hegemony, and offer techniques for resilience and resistance. The gallery exhibition Find- romance of the two lover scientists.  I contrast these comedies of defeat to the oneiric play by Brisky
ing Home: The Global Refugee Crisis brought together fourteen artists from around the world whose where defeat itself becomes a kind of affect and a source of solidarity and hope. The affective work
work addresses themes including borders as geographical and symbolic dividing lines, displacement done in the bunker with self, a dog, co-workers and co-prisoners, I argue, becomes its own experi-
and asylum seeking, refugee camps and detention centers, and immigration and resettlement. The ment and a positive political force.
production of David Edgar’s Pentecost interweaves the past with the present to challenge how so-
ciety responds to a refugee crisis and treats “precarious bodies” of the displaced and wounded. Key Words
This paper considers the ways in which this collaboration united the visual and performing arts, * migration, science fiction, affect, politics, revolution, Latin America, technology, science, defeat
decolonized the institution, adapted, transformed, and negotiated media, performed difference and
diversity, and demonstrated the ability of the arts to act for social justice.

Key Words
performing displacement cross-cultural fertilization mediatized images of violence
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

156 157
 GP GP

Diana Looser Darko Lukić

Stanford University University of Zagreb

Diana Looser is based in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. Her re- Darko Lukić, Ph.D., theater scholar, playwright, and novelist, Born: Sept. 8. 1962. Tenured professor at Acade-
search interests include historiographic, ethnographic, and cross-cultural approaches to performance, particu- my of Drama Arts University of Zagreb, department of production, and guest professor at Faculty of Phyloso-
larly from the Pacific Islands region Oceania. She is the author of Remaking Pacific Pasts: History, Memory, and phy University of Zagreb - doctoral studies of theater, film, litarature and culture. As a guest professor worked
Identity in Contemporary Theater from Oceania University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014 as well as numerous essays. at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz Austria - Institut für Slawistik. As a teacher also worked in Europe, Asia, Nort
Her current book project, “Moving Islands: Contemporary Performance and the Global Pacific,” examines the and South America. His education and training includes BA in comparative literatutre and philosophy, MA in
international connections forged by artistic performances from Oceania in the first two decades of the twen- dramaturgy, and PhD in theatrology. Lukic is also certificated TQ trainer and e-learning course designer. Fur-
ty-first century. ther training includes Fulbright scholarship at Tisch School of the Arts - New York University, USA, education at
Institute for Theater Anrthropology - University of Copenghegen, European Academy for Culture and Manage-
Destination Urbanesia: Cityscapes, Militarization, and the Global ment in Salzburg. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Introduction to Applied Theatre, Leykam International, Zagreb, 2016, “Intro-
duction to Anthropology of Performance”, Leykam International, Zagreb, 2013. „Theater in its Enviroinment,
Pacific vol 2. Intermediality and Interculturalism in theater“, Leykam International, Zagreb, 2011. „Theater, Culture,
Transition“, Hrvatski Centar ITI, Zagreb, 2011. „Theater in its Enviroinment, vol 1. Theater Identities“, Leykam
The rapid changes to Pacific Island cultures caused by mass migration to urban centers after the International, Zagreb, 2010. “Theater Production and Marketing”, Hrvatski Centar ITI , Zagreb, 2010. „The War
Second World War form the backdrop for this paper, which takes up “Urbanesia” as a spatial config- Trauma Drama“, Meandar, Zagreb, 2009.
uration, creative arena, and mode of lived experience. Coined by New Zealand-based Cook Islands/
Samoan performance artist Courtney Sina Meredith, the term Urbanesia describes the new physical
mappings and social formations that emerge from the energetic, polyglot Pasifika cultures of con- Static Migrations/Inner Exiles: Challenging Collective Memories
temporary metropolises, where island and city are brought into profound collision and act as the and Deconstructing National Mythologies in Drama and Theater
crucible of fresh global identities. As an elastic cartography that takes the modern city as its com-
mon ground, Urbanesia emphasizes Pasifika identities shaped by expansive, mobile cultural fields The problem of migrations and exile in societies with illiberal tendencies and lack of democracy can
and offers a counter to the artificially imposed and colonially restrictive geocultural categories of be an artistic choice. In conflict with dominant narratives and collective mythologies, performing
Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Urbanesian cultural production can, I argue, also be fruitfully artists can choose the postition of inner exile and static migration. Staying within their societies,
extended to examine how Pacific artists frame broader coalitions with different communities across they can ignore their borders and its limitations. The paper shows the inner exile attitude and posi-
global, urban spaces to interrogate histories of mobility, colonialism, and violence. tion of the Other from generalized approach to performative confronting the stereotypes of collec-
tive memory and deconstruction of national mythologies to specific example of the Croatian theater
I explore this approach through the work of Fijian New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson, who author Oliver Frljic. In his case of exile as the choosen postition, the examples of the receptions
has become known for a body of work in visual art, film, and live performance that attends to trau- experiences shows the same reaction patterns in condemning his work in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia,
matic genealogies of racial discrimination, institutional violence, warfare, and coerced migration. I Poland and Austria . Looking at the subversive strategies in the identitiy politics through the theatre
focus on three of Thompson’s filmic artworks: How Long? (2018), Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries of recollection, memory theatre and the political theatre, the paper reflects on spatial and temporal
(2016), and autoportrait (2017). Suturing the cities of Suva, London, and St. Paul, these pieces link aspects of inner exile in post-authoritarian and post-conflict societies, attitude of the chosen Oth-
discourses of militarization in the Pacific and the militaristic structures of urban police brutality, erness, and social and cultural displacement from the Mythscapes Duncan S.A.Bell of the dominant
registering performances of violence on black bodies across Pacific Island (Fijian), Black British, and cultural narratives. Cultural representation and construction of the Otherness through this perfor-
African American contexts. Thompson’s trans-diasporic engagement offers new ways of understand- mative strategies stays on the borderline between cultural integration and cultural displacement.
ing the global reach and political urgency of Pasifika performance/art. From the point of phenomenology of the memories Paul Ricoeur and rethinking the transitional
structures of constructing the collective mythologies, through the highly polemical concept of Cul-
Key Words tural Trauma Caruth, Weinberg, Kansteiner, Weilnböck the performing artist in inner exile and in the
Pacific Island, performance, diaspora, urban static transition rethinks and reconceptualises the topics of Memory, Remembering and Forgetting,
and challenging collective memory by the individual reminiscences. Negotiating between memory,
history and social forgetting, such artist is targeting collective mythologies and challenging domi-
nant cultural narratives at the high price of permanent marginal postiton, which constitutes inner
exile space.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key Words
static migration, inner exile, collective memory, personal witnessing, performance, Otherness

158 159
 GP GP

Signy Lynch Caoimhe Mader McGuinness

York University Kingston University London

Signy is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. Her research investigates how Caoimhe Mader McGuinness is a lecturer in Drama at Kingston University of London. Her research and pub-
direct audience address in contemporary performance can help audience members and performers to negoti- lications look at the politics of reception spectatorship, criticism and institutional identities of contemporary
ate the complexities of inhabiting a twenty-first century globalized Canada. theatre and live art through a Marxist, feminist, queer and post-colonial lens. She also more broadly focuses
on the specific histories of Western liberalism as these apply to theatrical production and reception. Further
Direct audience address in Cliff Cardinals Huff: Complicity, interests are social reproduction in feminist performance, the 1951 Festival of Britain and Marxist approaches
to theatre and performance, especially in the work of the Frankfurt School and Jacques Rancière.
powerlessness and sovereignty
Direct audience address or ‘breaking the fourth wall’ is a mode of theatrical communication in which Ambivalent theatre: the difficulty of community in ATC and David
the performer, often through the construct of a character, addresses the spectator directly. This pa- Greig’s “The Events”
per examines how Cree/Lakota performer Cliff Cardinal employs direct address in his monodrama
Huff to both undermine and directly respond to power of the colonial gaze. Huff is a brutal and pow- In this paper I will analyze David Greig and Actors Touring Company’s 2013 staging of The Events at
erful piece of theatre which presents the effects of colonialism and the Canadian residential school the Young Vic to consider how the deployment of ambivalent representational strategies in the per-
system on a family. It deals with what Cardinal calls Canada’s “most taboo subculture”: “First Na- formance served as a complex critique of British conceptions of liberal multiculturalism. I order to so
tions’ kids abusing solvents, at high risk of suicide” iv. Through his address Cardinal foregrounds the I will focus on the choice made by the company of casting actors of colour to play a white suprem-
immediacy of the theatrical situation and instigates a relationship of affective intersubjectivity with acist who kills most members of a community choir as well as the lesbianism of Claire, the play’s
the audience, blurring boundaries between the fictional and the actual world. This strategy allows other main character, reflecting on the racial and sexual tensions which underpin liberal conceptions
Cardinal to ‘speak back’ both literally and figuratively to a gaze that is both institutional—embedded of multiculturalism. While the show was understood by critics as essentially an attempt to champi-
in the power structures and historical context of the proscenium theatre—and individual, contained on community in the face of irrational racial hatred, many aspects of the staging and the play text
in the overwhelmingly white, middle class audiences of Canadian theatres. Grounding my investiga- itself destabilise such a singular reading. Indeed, when reading and watching the play performed,
tion in the work of Indigenous writers and scholars including Michelle Olson, Dylan Robinson and Jill I sensed a more ambivalent relationship to the content than a singular quest to understand ‘evil’,
Carter, I examine how through these strategies Cardinal uses direct address to assert sovereignty, to embodied here by the fascist and mentally ill attacker. Rather, the play and its production seemed
challenge settler complicity in colonial violence, and to confront the erasure of Indigenous bodies to suggest a troubling proximity between liberal tolerance discourses and white supremacist views,
through colonial occupation. I’ll also examine how, by repurposing the individual performer’s body and to suggest, in contradiction of widely held liberal assumptions, that community cannot be relied
as mediator of the play’s content, direct address allows Cardinal to examine disturbing content while on as a redemptive force Considering ongoing critiques of liberal multiculturalism in Europe in the
denying spectators any kind of voyeuristic pleasure. Finally, by framing my discussion in terms of work of Paul Gilroy, Jin Haritaworn, Gavan Titley and Alana Lentin will help me uncover the contra-
an address’ invitation to audience members to ‘participate,’ I will consider how direct address as a dictions between the way The Events was staged and its critical reception. Although according to
mode performance might productively engage with contemporary discussions about the political most reviewers the casting choice was a seemingly neutral decision, analysing the opening mono-
potential of participatory performance. logue specifically through Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry will help exemplify how this choice
might point towards a much more critical relationship to conceptions of multicultural togetherness
Key Words in a liberal context.
performer-audience relations, direct audience address, Indigenous performance, participatory
performance, colonial gaze, spectatorship Key Words
Ambivalence, Multiculturalism, Liberalism, Spectatorship
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

160 161
 GP GP

Sarita Malik Gordana Marić

BPS Women University Khanpur Kalan, Sonipat Faculty of Dramatic Arts

Sarita is a teaching faculty in the Department of English, BPS Women University, Khanpur Kalan, India. Having Gordana Marić is a retired acting professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Besides a number of
been worked as an Assistant Professor at University of Delhi, India, before the present position, she is best roles in theater, film and television she is also the writer and director of her monodrama: The Elusive System
known for oratory and teaching skills. She is a poet, stage anchor, theatre actor and national level debater. Her of Acting and The Elusive System of Acting 2. She used to be a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Boston,
inclination towards Indian aesthetics exhibits in her M.Phil. dissertation which distinctly traces the elements USA, Escuela Nacional Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru, and she followed her students at various international work-
of Indian Bhakti Movement in an Anglo-Indian poet Kamala Das. She is a recipient of so many awards for aca- shops: ITI UNESCO meetings in Tampico-Mexico, Sinaia-Romania, Test-Zagreb, Skomrahi-Skopje. She Holds an
demic excellence and cultural performances during her studies including a gold medal in M.Phil. Her research MA on Development and application of methods in Lee Strasberg Method Acting and a member of the Michael
papers have been published in many national and international journals. She has presented several papers Chekhov Association. She is finishing her PhD thesis at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.
with substantial research in a number of national and international conferences. Remarkably, her research
paper was declared the best among 750 research papers in an International conference. Person without ID Card - Person with False Identity: The Future of
Theater as a Method of Social Intervention
Re articulation of Identity/Identity Negotiation: Dialectic
Interplay Between Transnational Theatre and Intercultural We live in turbulent times of migrant crisis worldwide, in which we share a common transitional
misfortune, trying in vain to emancipate ourselves from the past, and find our way in the present.
Dialogue
Every day is exhausting, placing ourselves hundreds of questions without answers, and every day
Identity, an important keyword in contemporary human existence, is the result of the negotiation we enter the silent dialogue with ourselves and others. Our faces have been shown in TV series, on
of personal conditions, social context, relationships and institutional frameworks. However, it is also newspapers covers, and we share an uncertain destiny of the migrant crisis and become transitional
very crucial to explore how meanings and conflicts are associated with different locationalities of heroes. There is a character from Radovan III a famous Serbian play by Dusan Kovacevic - a tragicom-
individuals and groups and how multiple identities are compounded and negotiated to generate ical story of newcomers as the victims of the big city. This is a story of yesterdays peasants crammed
new forms of cultural hybridism. One of the complexities of contemporary theatre is that the perfor- in the small cage of housing projects, on the twelfth floor of a skyscraper in New Belgrade. Our hero
mance in it is contained as much in the enforcement of a peculiar identity as in its breaking of the at- is a typical homo duplex - whose body and soul never reconciled. His social status and mental state
tempted traditional or national uniqueness. The representation of congruity in terms of the bonds of are impossible to express in the rounded form of a classical character. Dusan Kovacevic brilliantly
culture, place and identity invites the spectator to consider the liquidizing force of the wider culture creates a picturesque identity from details of reality. This project aims to investigate these phenom-
and global framework in which it is located as an apparatus. This research paper critically analyzes ena through a known dramatic piece, and explore these rituals of unsuccessful imitation, European
the tension between identity and mobility and exhibits how transnational theatre articulates notions and international identity, human rights, nationality, class and the unfinished personal development.
of home, belonging and identity in an ever-shifting negotiation and reconfiguration of spatiality. The
paper deals specifically with Asian theatre and attempts to explore how contemporary cross-border Key Words
flows intensify adaptations in traditional Asian theatre forms. This paper is structured around several transitional misfortune, uncertain destiny, migrant crisis, Dusan Kovacevic, Radovan III, newcomers
interconnected issues related to multiplicity of transnational spaces and Asian theatrical engage- as the victims of the big city, rituals of unsuccessful imitation
ments with these spaces in an intensely interconnected world. The paper also focuses on the politics
of representation and highlights how transnational movement of theatre and its practitioners can
create new political openings and new dialogues to forge and reinforce a collective identity.

Key Words
Negotiation, Identity, Transnational, Intercultural, Dialogue, Spatiality etc.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

162 163
 GP GP

Ksenija Marković Božović Anika Marschall

Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade University of Glasgow
Ksenija Marković Božović hold Bachelor in contemporary and costume design 2005, Faculty of applied arts, Anika is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow and member of GRAMNet. Her research focuses on
Belgrade and Master of applied arts 2010. Faculty of applied arts, Belgrade. Currently, she is PhD candidate contemporary performance art: how it reflects, challenges and shapes our understanding and enactment of
in management culture, the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade expected 2018. Ksenija is employed at the human rights. Her work has been presented at international conferences and she has published about the poli-
Faculty of Dramatic Arts as the Art Research and Development Coordinator and the Research Associate. Her tics of listening, artistic responses to migration movements, dramaturgies of statelessness, and the conceptual
scientific researches, in domain of management culture and cultural policy are specially focused on theatre aesthetics of Antonin Artaud and Jacques Rancière. Currently she is working on a contribution for RiDE 23.3
management and theatre policy, creative entrepreneurship, the transformation of the public sector and pub- 2018 about the role of commitment and institutions in performative interventions.
lic-private partnerships in culture. She participated in various scientific and professional meetings and her
papers were published in diverse scientific journals. During last five years she has been engaged on developing
and organizing diverse educational conferences and for aplied artists and has been engaged on the TEMPUS
Building New Worlds: How artists navigate institutional life and
project Scen-Tec as a researcher and the trainer in the field of the theatre organizational structure. She partic- envision political organization
ipated in various exhibitions and did numerous costume and set designs.
As a response to migrant flows and manifold crises in todays societies, ecologies and economies,
Social Role of Theaters: Case study of Belgrade’s public city new para-institutional artistic collaborations have emerged. Different from working in the form of
theaters system temporary projects, many artists today have started building long-term organisational structures
which challenge the singular commodified artwork and which potentially restructure social relations
Based on Holden’s theory on constructing cultural values Holden, 2004 and conclusions of various as such Malzacher 2015. Theatre makers, performance artists and art institutions across the globe
researches dealing with the impressions and experiences of theater audiences Sauter, Martin, 1995, have formed alliances with underrepresented political parties and social movements. Together they
Sauter, 2002, Schoenmakers, Tulloch, 2004, Brown, Novak, 2007, etc, we have singled out the func- have enacted ad-hoc political parliaments such as the General Assembly 2017 founded by the the-
tions of public theaters which contribute to the development of the local community, as well as to atre director Milo Rau and the New World Summit 2012– founded by the visual artist Jonas Staal.
reaching wider social goals, the benefit for the public and the creation of public value Moore, 1995: Both cases propose a mode of radical agonism and a new political togetherness. But both cases also
contributing to social cohesion and cultural emancipation aiding social inclusion initiating critical raise a host of ethical and legal issues concerning equalities and human rights: While the General As-
opinion initiating dialogues and public debates revising formal history and re questioning myths and sembly sought to give a voice to the “victims” of todays “global third estate”, the New World Summit
traditional opinion patterns. All these functions are essentially tightly connected to processes which is an alternative migrating parliament for representatives of stateless peoples and black-listed or-
include ‘others’ into the social life of the dominant cultural group, whether the difference is based ganisations. How can such artist-run organisational structures open up new models for engagement
on national, political, religious or some other denomination. However, the question is: do public between performance and political action? What is implied when artists seek to both imagine and
theaters actually perform all of those functions? To what extent are the following functions obstruct- build new worlds? In this paper I argue that, if we attest such a shift of political performances from
ed by the material problems in theaters? Are theaters perceived as centers of community’s social temporary events to artist-run organisational structures, that we need to contest our performance
life which attract a widely diversified audience? In search of answers to those questions, we have registers rather than to perpetuate a traditional “mistrust of structure” Jackson 2011, bureaucracy
analyzed the results of researches carried out within Belgrade’s public city theaters system, which and policy.
included both the analyses of the content of the program as well as results of surveys completed by
theater directors and employees. In addition, we have analyzed the results of surveys studying Bel- Key Words
grade city’s theater audience. Main results show that the above mentioned social roles of theaters New World Summit, civic engagement, institutional collaboration, political performance, stateless-
are scarcely recognized in practice and thus the understanding of the importance of the defined ness
social functions is poorly and unclearly regarded by the theater management. Results of the surveys
carried out among theater audiences confirm previous conclusions regarding dominant groups in
view of social and demographic labels women are predominant as well as experts with higher levels
of education, but they also reveal a certain diversification regarding the interests of the common and
random theater audience gravitating towards new theatrical forms and festival programs. In general,
the results indicate the necessity of creating repertoires which would mainly fulfill the audience’s
current needs whilst support the development of a stronger social role of theaters turning them into
congregational centers for diverse social groups and critical judgement of social problems. Empirical
research should be of particular importance in discovering possible plans of action and the following
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

monitoring and evaluating the effects of applied solutions.

Key Words
public theater, the social role of public theaters, public value, empirical research, audience

164 165
 GP GP

Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez Peter W. Marx

Birmingham City University University of Cologne
Maria Jose Martinez holds a PhD in Architecture Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Her PhD Prof. Dr. Peter W. Marx holds the Chair for Media and Theatre Studies at the University of Cologne. He is also
thesis entitled Dynamic Cartographies: Body and movement in the architectural space is an investigation into director of the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung Cologne, one of the largest archives for theatre and per-
how architectural and urban space influence the way we relate to space. Her MA in Advanced Theatre Practice formance culture in Germany. Following his dissertation, Marx has worked on theatre history, with a special
at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama enabled her to specialize in space design within devising theatre focus on German-Jewish artists in the late 19th, early 20th century. Two books stem from this interest: Max
processes. In 2012 she was awarded the INJUVE prize for young creators in performance for the piece enti- Reinhardt 2006 and Ein theatralisches Zeitalter 2008. His latest publications are a handbook on the theory and
tled VACIO which was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Reina Sofia Madrid. She has facilitated history of Drama 2012 and a handbook on Hamlet. His book Hamlets Reise nach Deutschland is supposed to
several workshops focused on space and body movement at the School of Architecture of Madrid Spain, Uni- appear in 2018 he is currently working on a project on theatre historiography with Tracy C. Davis.
versidade de Fortaleza Brazil and the University of Winchester UK. She has been developing her professional
career as a scenographer in London and Madrid where she has worked as a designer for several companies
and festivals. She has also worked as an exhibition designer. She has presented her work at the Quadrennial of Peeping through the key-hole: Hagemann directs “Vasantasena”
Scenography in Prague 2015 and the Biennal of Dance in Venice. (1915)

“4:48 Macbeth” In 1915, when the designer Ludwig Sievert accepted the assignment of creating a setting for the Indi-
an play Vasantasena in Mannheim Germany, he created a setting that was framed by a golden-brazed
The practice led research project will engage with adaptations allowing connection between differ- dome-like silhouette that also evoked the  image of a key-hole through which the spectator of the
ent dramatic forms and experiences through deconstruction of stasis, performing migratory geog- production was following the events on stage.  The production – based on Lion Feuchtwanger’s
raphy and transformation, migration, mutation and appropriation of theatrical forms. The perfor- translation – was directed by Carl Hagemann 1871-1945. Hagemann had not only attempted to
mance practice and subsequent research presentation are based on an interdisciplinary installation reform the German theatrical language by experimenting with new forms of set design as well as
combining visual and performing arts migrating form a dramatic texts. It antecedent two dramatic new dramaturgies, he had also extensively travaled baroad, in particular to India. His book-length
texts: 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and Macbeth Projecto based on Shakespeares Macbeth. The description Spiele der Völker Plays/Games of the People of the World, 1919 is an essayistic attempt
research could be presented as a solo-performance, and a research paper. The phases of the proj- to reflect on theatre and performance in a global comparison. The paper is aiming at reading Vas-
ect, premiering in Belgrade, were previously seen in Madrid Reina Sofia , Spain and Birmingham antasena 1915 – at the peak of World War I – as an a testament to the migration of scenes and
Centrala, UK. The new performance 4:48 Macbeth Projeto explores migration of dramatic texts images.
into installation / live art events, in which the narrative is fragmented and presented as a multi sen-
sorial aesthetic journey, provides a new performative experience. Performance and visual art can Key Words
be presented as two different geopraphies defined by the language that each artistic media uses. In transcultural relations Germany - India migrating scenes
the case of conceptual art it is the space, texture, atmosphere combined with the atemporality of
the artistic piece. In theatre, the moving body of the actor, the dramatic text and the temporal line
of the dramatic action which define its geography. The different artistic forms and media are related
to each other within rizhomatic structures 1998, G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, they can be transformed
and migrate from one to another following different processes, not just through a linear hierarchi-
cal process. The research aims to: • investigate strategies of offering audiences new experiences
combining elements of performance and visual arts • defining the geographies of interdisciplinary
aesthetic journeys • investigate methodologies in transforming dramatic text into a multisensorial
aesthetic performing arts experience and • engage with cross-cultural collaboration and migration
of classics though interdisciplinary visual and performing art.

Key Words
Interdisciplinarity, Installation, transformation, mutation, Sarah Kane, Shakespeare
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

166 167
 GP GP

George Mascarenhas Erik Mattsson

Federal University of Bahia Stockholm University

PhD in Performing Arts and M.A in visual arts – Arts theory and history from the Federal University of Bahia, Erik Mattsson, PhD in Theatre Studies, Stockholm University.
Licence d’Études Théâtrales Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Corporeal mime training and diploma from
Steven Wasson and Corinne Soum’s Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique Paris/London. Professor of drama Scene Changes: The Second Wave of Independent Theatre in Sweden
and physical theatre, Graduate Research Supervisor Master’s degree, and Undergraduate Academic Coor-
dinator B.A in acting, direction, and teaching at the Federal University of Bahia. Theatre director, actor and After a decade of relative aesthetic stability and ideological unity, the field of independent theatre in
certified mime artist with over 30 years experience in performing arts. Director of Mimus theatre company
Brazil, dedicated to the artistic research of Etienne Decroux’s corporeal mime. Editor in chief of the Brazilian
Sweden started to disintegrate towards the end of the 1970s. In the years around 1980, there were
academic journal Repertorio UFBa and coordinator of the online journal Mimus specialized in mime and phys- a number of competing directions among the independent groups, aesthetically as well as politically.
ical theatre. The older and more established groups – who had their collaborative organization Teatercentrum
–  were in the middle of a heated debate about whether or not to include the word ‘socialism’ in
In a queue: poetic and socio-political dimensions of movement and their joint manifesto. At the same time, the younger groups – loosely held together by an interest
for Grotowski, physical acting, circus etc. – seemed unsure whether they wanted to form their own
stasis in a contemporary Brazilian corporeal mime production
movement, as an alternative to the alternative, or join the established groups. Based on a recently
The purpose of this study is to analyse the different poetic and socio-political dimensions of move- commenced research project, this presentation aims to give an outline of the status of political the-
ment and stasis in the 2017 production of Na Fila In a queue, a contemporary Brazilian corporeal atre in Swedish independent groups, a decade after the heydays of radicalism. The political issue will
mime play. The focus was to determine the impact of movement and stasis as creative and poeti- be addressed broadly, ranging from the content of plays, the place of performance and the audience
cal principles for physical acting both on the development and the results of the artistic process. relationship to the groups’ internal and external organization, international interests, etc.
The effects of movement and stasis have been outlined by taking into consideration technical and
poetical procedures of Etienne Decroux’s corporeal mime, physical and verbal actions, spatial rela- Key Words
tionships on stage, dynamo-rhythm as well as thematic and dramatic perspectives connected with Political theatre, independent theatre group, Sweden, 1970s, 1980s
contemporary theatricality and socio-political scenarios in Brazil and other countries. The dramatic
and thematic elements, as well as the context of the play are presented followed by a description
of the corporeal procedures used on stage. Subsequently, the principles of movement and stasis
are described and analysed in each dimension to show their impact on the development of the play
and the expansion of performance borders in Etienne Decroux’s corporeal mime itself. From the
poetic principles to the thematic approach, the paper highlights the connections between the play’s
images and socio-political-cultural issues such as the Brazilian National Health System waiting lines,
inner migration, racism patterns and narratives of war refugees in other countries. The principles of
movement and stasis are then related to ideas of passiveness and activism through the image of a
standing line where those issues are addressed. By breaking away from corporeal mime’s standard-
ized principles of balance between spoken text and movement, movement and immobility, acting
and non-acting, the poetical principles applied in the staging of Na fila help shift some conventions
in mime itself thus bringing about different perspectives for contemporary creative processes and
productions based on Etienne Decroux’s acting system.

Key Words
corporeal mime, creative processes, movement and stasis
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

168 169
 GP GP

Rūta Mažeikienė Yana Meerzon

Vytautas Magnus University University of Ottawa, Canada

Rūta Mažeikienė, Ph. D., is associate professor and researcher at Theatre Studies department at Vytautas Mag- Dr. Yana Meerzon is an Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa. Her research in-
nus University Kaunas, Lithuania. She has published numerous scientific and critical articles on contemporary terests are in drama and performance theory, theatre of exile and migration, cultural and interdisciplinary
Lithuanian theatre and drama and has given presentations in a number of national and international theatre studies. Her book publications include A Path of the Character: Michael Chekhovs Inspired Acting and Theatre
conferences. She contributes to various journals and magazines on contemporary culture and art, belongs to Semiotics, 2005 and Performing Exile – Performing Self: Drama, Theatre, Film Palgrave 2012. She has also
the editorial board of academic journal Nordic Theatre Studies and scholarly periodical Sketches of Theatrolo- co-edited several collections, such as Performance, Exile and ‘America’ with Dr. Silvija Jestrovic Palgrave, 2009
gy. Her academic experience include research of contemporary Lithuanian theatre, focusing on different forms Adapting Chekhov: The Text and Its Mutations with Dr. J. Douglas Clayton Routledge, 2012 History, Memory,
of acting and performing as well as strategies of participation and community involvement in contemporary Performance with Dr. David Dean and Dr. Kathryn Prince Palgrave 2015 Routledge Companion to Michael
theatre. She is also a member of the board of the Association of Nordic Theatre Scholars. Chekhov, with Dr. Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu, 2015 and a special issue of Theatre Research in Canada
journal on theatre and immigration Fall 2015. Currently, she is working on a new book project, provisionally
Placelessness: Representations of Emigration in Contemporary entitled On Self and Encounter: Constructing Subjectivity in the Age of Cosmopolitanism.
Lithuanian Drama
On Mythopoetics of Migration: Staging Self in Canadian Immigrant
Since the early 1990’s when the Iron Curtain was lifted after over fifty years of Soviet occupation, Solo-Performances
approximately 800 thousand citizens of Lithuania have emigrated, leaving a population of less than
three million. Considering that we live in the times that sociologists have called ”The Age of Migra- The focus point of this presentation is the “how” of making the mythopoetics of migration Cox
tion“ and that are so visibly shaped by the march of globalization, Lithuanian emigration seems to be 10: the discursive practices of constructing a figure of a immigrant on stage, the way immigrant
but a natural part of that global migration course. However, when it comes to the trend in emigration artists employ their mother tongue and adopted languages. Working predominantly in the official
in recent years, Lithuanians do not show any optimism. Even acknowledging the inevitability of mi- languages of their new country, these artists often engage with the embodied experiences of speak-
gration as part of globalization the researchers from different areas point out the massive extent of ing simultaneously in their mother tongues and a second language. This phenomenon generates
Lithuanian emigration. The very fact that in a period of approximately twenty years, about twenty performative heteroglossia and polyphony in theatre dialogue. The work of Canadian theatre art-
percent of the Lithuanian population have left the country, led the Lithuanian public and political ists constitutes a comprehensive map of dramatic devices that portray immigrants negotiating their
figures to declare emigration to be the “ultimate non-military threat to Lithuania” and the public at sense of self as the uncanny tension between one’s I as Self, expressed in his/her mother tongue,
large to see emigration as ”evacuation”. The high level of mass emigration from Lithuania has not and the same I as Other, expressed in a new language Kristeva 184-85. This theatre often features
only turned into a dominant issue in the public sphere and political discourse but has also gradually authorial voices partaking in language games, employing accented speech and dialects, and dabbling
entered into the artistic field. A growing number of contemporary Lithuanian artists have addressed in multiple forms of Englishes or Frenches so, this reminds us of the power of logos as the meaning
the issue of emigration, using artistic forms to raise questions about the causes and outcomes of this making and experience forming element of performance. This article examines the narrative strat-
social problem, exploring the effects of emigration on the ordinary life in Lithuania and represent- egies of multilingualism in Canadian immigrant performance, as an example of “incorporation” or
ing the complex experiences of contemporary emigrants. This paper analyses the plays Goodbye, being possessed by “the voice of another” Carlson 148. As its primary example, it uses the work of
My Love Antoškos Kartoškos by Marius Macevičius and Expulsion Išvarymas by Marius Ivaškevičius second generation Canadians—specifically their solo-performances.
and points out how the reflection on the contemporary experience of emigration helps to explore
deeper problems of post-Soviet society and the individual, such as fragmented identity and sense of Key Words
placelessness. mythopoetics of migration, multilingualism, solo performance,

Key Words
Lithuanian drama, migration, emigration, post-Soviet identity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

170 171
 GP GP
at the beginning of 20 th century, or the influence of various traditional Asian forms on the inter-
Ivan Medenica cultural theatre of A. Mnouchkine, P. Brooke, and E. Barba). Although this approach, at first glance,
Faculty of Dramatic Arts Belgrade might seem colonial, since it supports an approach where non-western theatre is studied from the
point of view of the western one, it is, actually, quite opposite. It abandons the crypto-imperialist
Ivan Medenica (PhD) defended his PhD dissertation at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. He works at the FDA as a ambition to study the traditions with whose cultural, religious, political and philosophical context
professor of The History of World Drama and Theatre. He regularly publishes articles in both the national and it is not fully acquainted as if those challenges did not exist, while still offering a basic, informative
the international journals. He was the Chairman or Co-Chairman of five international symposiums of theatre and thus methodologically more honest insight into the traditional forms of non-western theatre.
critics and scholars organized by Sterijino Pozorje Festival in Novi Sad and the International Association of Moreover, some notable examples of intercultural theatre and its polemic reception (“The case of
Theatre Critics (IATC). Medenica has participated in a number of international conferences and given guest
lectures at Humboldt University, Yale School of Drama, University of Cluj Medenica is an active theater critic
Mahabharata by Peter Brook”) let us step into the theoretically much deeper, multilayered analyses
and a six time national award for the best theatre criticism winner. His book The tragedy of initiation or the of the problem of cultural appropriation, hybridization, etc.
inconstant prince was also awarded the best book on theater in Serbia (2017). He was the Artistic Director of
Sterijino Pozorje, the leading national theater festival in Serbia (2003-2007), to which he brought some import- Key words
ant structural changes. From 2001 to 2012, Medenica was one of the main editors of the journal Teatron which history of world theatre, globalization, cultural appropriation, intercultural theatre, western and
than became the prestigious theater publication in Serbia and was awarded by an international prize. He was non-western theatre
a fellow in the International Research Center „Interweaving Performance Cultures“ at the Freie Universität in
Berlin (2011-2013). He is a member of the International Association of Theater Critics’ Executive Committee
and the Director of its international conferences. He is also member of the editorial board of Critical Stages,
the web journal of the Association. Medenica is the artistic director of Bitef festival.

How to conceive the History of World Theater in an Era of Migration

and Globalization
How to conceive history of world theatre in the modern world of migration, globalization, multicul-
turalism, and of cultural appropriations as well? If, as our starting point, we take the theses of Erika
Fischer-Lichte which she states in Routledge Introduction to Theater and Performance Studies about
the double challenge that the history of theatre is facing nowadays – how to avoid universalizing
approach but also cultural appropriation marked with imperialistic dimension – this presentation
outlines a possible approach in “incorporating” non-European theatre traditions into the study of
what, actually, comes down to history of European or Western theatre, although it is still represent-
ed as history of world theatre in numerous academic contexts. Dialectic, multi-perspective study of
theatre phenomena in various epochs and cultures that is offered, for example, by the book Theatre
Histories: an introduction does seem like an “optimal” theoretical and methodological approach.
However, what is immanent to thus concieved approach is a practical challenge also highlighted by
Fischer-Lichte: it requires gathering of enough authors competent in various fields/cultures. Another
problem which could emerge are the dilemmas of how representative the “samples” are, since this
approach also does not aim at encompassing theatre history of the entire world. Is it, for example,
enough if the thematically focused (as all of them are) chapter “Theatre and State: 1600-1900” an-
alyzes only the situation in France, England and Japan of that period? Why not also China, Russia or
the states which were not nationally homogenous or centralized at the time: the multinational ones
(Turkey, the Austro-Hungarian Empire), or the ones struggling for unification (Germany, Italy)? With
an intent to avoid a totalizing approach to history of world theatre, but bearing in mind these prag-
matic and methodological reserves to this kind of multicultural approaches grounded on &quot; case
studies&quot;, we base our proposal on the contrary premise which does not disguise the necessary
fragmentariness in the study of history of world theatre, but lays an emphasis on it. The phenomena
of non-western performing arts, principally the traditional and highly codified ones, are studied from
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

the perspective of their historical “inscription” into the western theatre, its influence on it (the visit
of Japanese kabuki theatre and the influence it has exerted on the directors of historical avant-garde

172 173
 GP GP

Majeed Mohammed Midhin Maja Milatović-Ovadia

University of Anbar Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

My name is Majeed Mohammed Midhin Al-Aubaidy. I am from Iraq. I have MA in English literature from the I am a freelance theatre director, drama lecturer and PhD researcher at Royal School of Speech and Drama. My
University of Baghdad- College of Languages in 2002. In 1996, I have been awarded a B.A in English Language research interest includes the use of humour and comedy within applied theatre practice in post war societies.
and Literature. I have taught English Literature in several Iraqi universities since 2002.In 2008, I promoted to Originaly from Former Yugoslavia I studied Directing at the University of Belgrade BA and further trained at
Assist. Prof. after I published more than ten papers in different subjects that have relation to Shakespearean Royal School of Speech and Drama MA, Nationl Theatre Studio in London and Directors Lab West in Los Ange-
and Modern Drama. In 2011, I have been nominated for a scholarship to the UK to pursue my study, that is, to les. I’ve directed and devised over thirty productions for the principal national theatres of Serbia, Montenegro
get a PhD in English Literature. In 2017, I got a PhD in Literature from the University of Essex. My PhD proposal and Slovenia as well as for various fringe venues in the UK. My practice as a director is wide-ranging and has
is “The Artist as a Dramatic Character in Contemporary British Drama: A Critical Study of Stoppard, Barker, included devised work, opera, new writing and adaptations of classical texts. From 2009 I work as advisor,
Wertenbaker.” It is under the supervisions of Dr. Clare Finburgh and Dr. Elizabeth J. Kuti. I am interested in mod- facilitator and director for Most Mira charity organization and run drama workshops for migrants and refugees
ern drama which touches the immediate needs of people in society. I have participated in many colloquiums, at Migrants Organise in London.
conferences and seminars inside and outside UK. Now I am a teacher at the University of Anbar, Iraq.
Smiling while waiting for decision on asylum
Cultural Hybridity: The Question of Britishness in Contemporary
British Theatre What do you do?  I’m waiting for my status to be resolved.   For constructive dialogue on integration
to begin, recognition of the humanity and identity of the ‘other’ and the mutual acceptance need to
In the first decade of the new millennium, British theatre seems preoccupied with the issue of na- be achieved.   This paper is focusing on the social use of performance as a possible support to the
tional identity. The spread of this phenomenon is ascribed to the social fragmentation, cultural seg- integration process. It examines how theatre projects with culturally and linguistically diverse group
regation and a huge number of immigrants. However, the ever-increasing migration in the United of refugees and asylum seekers in London created a space and opportunities for people to meet in
Kingdom, especially after the Arab Spring made British playwrights think seriously in the issue of a safe, fun and creative environment allowing them to recall other element that constitutes their
national identity which is in flux. Moreover, among unique forms of art, British theatre responds identity beyond dominant ‘refugee’ one.  Furthermore, it examines why going away from testimonial
abruptly to this phenomenon which finds its expression in the old tradition of one nation to new theatre projects might be beneficial. Through close analyses of the theatre project The Hypochon-
ideas of multiple cultural hybridity. So the tensions between the old traditions and new adopted driac this paper aims to understand how humour and comedy function as a vehicle to address issues
ones made those playwrights raise questions about the Britishness of these new ideas. No doubt, related with displacement such as isolation, dehumanization and identity reshuffle and how it can
the new comers have their own values which, on the long term, affects the host ones. The clash support the complex process of integration in the circumstances where one is trapped in the time
between these cultural values are enjoyably enacted on stage. The present paper is an attempt to vacuum while waiting for asylum application to be resolved not being allowed to work, go to univer-
shed light on the acceptance and rejection, on the local and alien values as described by David Ed- sity nor to volunteer. I will outline the key principles that guide this work, as well as examining the
gar’s Testing the Echo (Out of Joint, 2008). Edgar tries to tackle issues surrounding Citizenship and difficulties this approach poses, and what potential benefits it holds regarding the use of humor in
its test in contrast with those about immigration, asylum, and refugees. It’s about becoming official theatre work with refugees. The study takes a cross-disciplinary approach to research, drawing from
and accepted in UK as a British citizen. Depending on testing existent vales, Edgar writes his play in theory of applied theatre practice, comedy studies and refugee studies.
such a way to encourage those who want to reconcile British culture with echoes of a previous life,
or the audience’s testing their own beliefs as echoed back at them from the stage. What is the most Key Words
important thing is that the newcomers tried hard to assimilate in a new hybrid space where all val- refugees, comedy, humour, theatre
ues meet together.

Key Words
Cultural Hybridity, British theatre, Arab Spring, cultural values
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

174 175
 GP GP

Aldo Milohnić Dijana Mitrović

University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television University of Wisconsin-Madison

Aldo Milohnić, PhD, is Associate Professor of the History of Theatre at the University of Ljubljana Slovenia, Dijana Mitrović holds a PhD in Literary and Theatre Studies. As a lecturer, she teaches courses on literature,
Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. He is author of two books Theories of Contemporary Theatre theatre, and art at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a founding member of the Madison Performance
and Performance Art in Times of the Rule of Law and Capital and numerous articles in academic journals. He Philosophy Collective, as well as founder and co-editor-in-chief of Journal for Literature and Theory of Liter-
is co-author of several books Culture Ltd. – Material Conditions of Cultural Production It’s Time for Brecht, ature txt Belgrade. In her book project, she analyzes representation of volatile bodies in post-WWI European
among others and editor of numerous anthologies and special issues of performing arts journals Theatre avant-garde and modernist theatre, performance art, and drama. Additionally, Dijana focuses on ethics and
of Resistance The Politicality of Performance Pupilcheks Arrived – 40 Years of the Pupilija Ferkeverk Theatre political power of arts in general and theatre and performance art in particular both in theory and practice. In
Artivism Brecht/Gestus How to Do Things with Words in Theatre Women in Theatre Along the Margins of the the past couple of years, she has directed several theatrical productions, while her short plays were performed
Humanities, etc.. During the last twenty years he has been involved in many research projects on the history at festivals. She has presented and performed at numerous academic conferences across the world.
and theory of performing arts and the sociology of culture. He is a member of the editorial boards of several
performing arts journals, a board member of the Slovenian Theatre Institute, and a member of several inter- Performing Passivity: Marina Abramović’s “The Artist Is Present”
national theatre research associations.
Seemingly simple in its conception, Marina Abramović’s 2010 performance piece The Artist Is Pres-
Migrations of Slovenian Avant-garde Directors across the ent confronts one with radical uncertainty in deciding how to interpret a piece that ostensibly re-
Yugoslav Theatres fuses to “mean” anything in particular. The author herself, a painter by education, describes it as “a
blank canvas” that the audience queued to spersonally experience during more than 720 hours of
Among Slovenian theatre artists active in the former Yugoslav space in the first half of the 20th the performance. While some of them found it worthwhile, describing the experience as moving and
century and partly in the first decades after World War II three of them were particularly produc- life altering, others saw it as a marketing ploy, impotent and void of any significance. Either way, the
tive: Rade Pregarc, Ferdo Delak and Bojan Stupica. Known also as ‘the famous trefoil of Slovenian reactions were forceful and extreme. In my essay, I am exploring the mechanisms provoking such
avant-garde directors’, they were restless theatre nomads, continuously migrating all around Europe reactions, as well as the implications of intended non-productivity in the system of economic ex-
and especially bigger Yugoslav cities. Along with theatre nomadism, they share a leftist orientation change. What does it mean to choose not to perform in a performance? What does “doing nothing”
and versatility – they were also actors, stage designers particularly Stupica and, to some extent, Pre- ultimately do? Using concepts such are radical passivity, habitus, and the afformative, I contextualize
garc, theatre managers, theatre educators in addition, Delak and Pregarc were writers, translators the piece, analyze the source of diverse audience responses, and read its non-action as a site of rad-
and editors. Because of a restless spirit and the conviction that the only true art is that ‘for which ical potentiality. Investigating theoretical implications of the performance that refuses to be one, as
you burn’ Stupica, they often came into disputes with theatre management, thus moving from city well as audience’s responses to it, I am interpreting Abramović’s complex piece itself, while revealing
to city and, consequently, left a significant trace in many Yugoslav theatres. In the presentation, I will its philosophical and political connotations.
briefly outline the migrations of each of the three theatre directors across the Yugoslav stages, and
in the end I will summarize some key findings on the common characteristics of their work, which Key Words
significantly influenced the theatrical life in many Yugoslav cities in the 20th century. stasis, passivity, performance art, Abramovic

Key Words
Slovenian theatre, Yugoslav theatre, 20th century theatre, avant-garde theatre artist, migrations
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

176 177
 GP GP

Mariko Miyagawa Jan Mohr

Chiba University Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich
Mariko MIYAGAWA is a Ph.D candidate in Graduate School of Arts and Science at the University of Tokyo. She Jan Mohr is Assistant Professor of Medieval and Early Modern German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Uni-
was a research fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2014-2016 and is a temporel lecturer versity, Munich, since 2014 and PI of the DFG-funded research project The village of Christ. Institutional-the-
at Kaichi International University. Her study focuses on butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, especially the relationship oretical and historical perspectives on Oberammergau and its passion play in 19th-21st centuries. He studied
between his words and movements. Her publications include“The Philosophy of Movement and Body: The German and Spanish literature and Art History and graduated from LMU Munich, where he gained his PhD in
Novelty of Techniques in Kazuo Ohno’s Butoh” 2015 and “Transmission of Gestures in Dance: the Spectrum of 2007 published 2007. 2004-2007, he was research associate of the international graduate college ‘Textuality
Corporeality of Kazuo Ohno in « Ô sensei » by Catherine Diverrès” 2016. She also participated in some perfor- in the pre-modern period’. 2007-2014, Jan was research assistant at LMU Munich in winter term 2012, he was
mances as a dramaturg and an actor. appointed a ‘Junior Researcher in Residence’ of the Center of Advanced Studies, LMU. In 2014, he finished his
habilitation on the constitution of courtly culture and notions of the court in middle high German love lyric.
Ohno Kazuo and his experience of gymnastics and German Main research: historical narratology, middle high and early modern German love lyric, early modern drama,
European picaresque novel. Recent books: Minne als Sozialmodell. Konstitutionsformen des Höfischen in Sang
culture in the early 20th century und rede 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts habilitation forthcoming [2018] with Carolin Struwe / Michael Waltenberger
ed.: Pikarische Erzählverfahren. Zum Roman des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts 2016 with Michael Waltenberger
Dunring the 20th century, Butoh has spread all over the world and it becomes the most successful
ed.: Das Syntagma des Pikaresken 2014.
cultural product of Japan. But when we see the history of Butoh, there are a lot of influence of vari-
ous cultures including Europe especially Germany, USA and so on. For example, Ohno Kazuo, known
as a one of founder of Butoh, studied Modern Dance from Eguchi Takaya and Miya Misako, who had
The sacred within. Travelling, shifting mind sets and testifying
studied under Mary Wigman. He also watched the performance of Harald Kreutzberg in 1930s. As bodies in Oberammergau tourism
for the case of Hijikata Tatsumi, who was another founder of Butoh, many researchers already point
out the influence of German Modern Dance or French litterature too. But looking at the personal In the figure of the religious tourist two movement types converge. At a first glance, one might think
history of Ohno, we would notice that he also studied gymnastics and became a teacher. In the of tourist travelling as a movement there and back again while the pilgrim’s way is broadly conceived
beggining of the 20th century, many kinds of gimnasytics from Germany, Denmark or Sweden were as a one way trip to a long-desired destination. The tourist returns to his starting point but the
imported in Japan. After WW2, Ohno also taught again the gymnastics and the dance to the girls’ pilgrim will to some extent stay, literally or virtually. Thus, the religious tourist allows for focusing
school and choreographed a ‘mass game’ in the sports event in 1955. How did these body culture the tension between migration and stasis and at the same time the state of sacred places between
work in Japanese dance scene and what kind of its echo remained in Ohno’s body ? It is also im- historical change and religious persistence. In the light of the religious tourist, issues of religion,
portant not only to interrogate the genesis of Butoh by Ohno but also to know how these corporeal conversion, identity and community are to be discussed.  This will be illustrated by the worldwide
culture behave for the emergence of nationality in pre- or post-war in Japan. Via one dancer, Ohno known Oberammergau passion play. From mid-19th century on, it attracts an audience throughout
Kazuo, I would like to argue about the transcultural correspondance of dance and gymnastics and its Europe and, only a little later, worldwide. The attitude towards the play is ambivalent partly it is taken
relation to nationality. as mere play, partly as devotional exercise. Within a wide range of travel guides and travelogues
published in German as well as in English, a considerable part takes the very way to the outback
Key Words village as a pilgrimage.  But how can one justify to be a pilgrim how can it be plausible that she or he
Butoh, gymnastics, German Modern Dance has experienced a change of mind? This question leads to the immediate physical reactions of the
audience. To be sure, these performative testifying can only be traced via textual representation. But
this still allows for the analysis of discursive strategies by which the passion play is proved to be still
sacred, notwithstanding the historical change that turned it into a tourist attraction.

Key Words
Oberammergau Passion Play, Religious Tourism, Pilgrimage
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

178 179
 GP GP

Céline Molter Olga Muratova

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München City University of New York

Céline Molter is writing her PhD as a research fellow of the DFG-funded project: “The village of Christ. Institu- Olga Muratova is a native of Moscow, Russia. She teaches Russian Studies at the City University of New York.
tional-theoretical and historical perspectives on Oberammergau and its passion play in 19th-21st centuries” She received her MA degree in Linguistics at the Moscow University of Linguistics and her Ph.D. in Comparative
at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. From 2014-2017 she was research and teaching assistant at the Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has been a contributing member of IFTR for 12 years.
Department of Anthropology and African Studies in Mainz. From 2007-2013 she studied Anthropology and
Islamic studies in Mainz. Since 2017 she is a member of the Research Center of Social and Cultural Studies European Tango, Korean-Style: A Staging of “The Seagull” in Seoul
Mainz SoCuM.
The paper will look at a successful marriage of a European text original Russian that traveled to
Oberammergau’s Da Vinci table - Performing stasis in a Korea via a German translation and an Asian performance. A Korean appropriation of Chekhov’s
post-modern Bavarian village The Seagull, as represented by its staging in Seoul in 2008, became a perfect tribute to the Russian
playwright, with no dissonance, far-fetchedness, or straining. The action-packed Asian interpreta-
Every ten years, Jesus and his disciples perform the Last Supper as part of the Oberammergau pas- tion of the action-free Russian drama focused on finding and exploring common ground, bridging
sion play – around one hundred times per season, but always on the same table since the year 1890. two different worlds, epochs, styles, practices, and ideologies. The paper will examine two of those
It is the oldest stage prop still in use and distinctively carved after the model in Da Vinci’s famous Last building, or rather bridging, blocks: insight into what it means to be misunderstood, unappreciated,
Supper painting. But over the decades, its symbolic reference has shifted away from the painting and and lonely and a study of the destructive force of uncontrolled passions and desires. The verbal
it has become a genuine piece of Oberammergau theatre tradition, an anchor, carrying the aura of directness of Western theatre effectively migrated to Korea through its merger with the non-verbal
every famous Jesus actor who sat on its side. Based on the history of the table, this talk will exam- symbolism of the East. For example, Sang-Sik Nam, the show’s director, introduced a dumb-show
ine how stasis is performed in Oberammergau and how different time and space registers – biblical prologue in the beginning of the play. Western spoken words were first translated into the Eastern
Jerusalem, Italian Renaissance and Bavarian peasantry – mingle into an illusion of timeless nostalgic language of gests, masks, and dance more familiar to, and better understood by, the local audience.
stability that becomes tangible and real, not only for visitors, but especially for the actors and par- Chekhov’s velvety symbolism, his metaphors and allegories are well perceived by the East. His dra-
ticipants in the passion play. Stasis, in this example, is only possible through mobility, which puts the mas are said to appeal to Korean public, as they combine tragedy and comedy, creating a mixture
opposition of both concepts to question. that works well with the Asian perceptions of life.

Key Words Key Words

Oberammergau, passion play, performance of stasis Russian, Korean, Chekhov
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

180 181
 GP GP

Maiya Murphy Szabolcs Musca

National University of Singapore University of Lisbon

Maiya Murphy is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Studies Programme at the National University of Sin- Dr Szabolcs Musca is Research Fellow at the Centre for Theatre Research CET at the University of Lisbon Por-
gapore. Her research investigates the intersection of body-based performance practices, cognitive science, tugal and Founding Director of New Tides Platform UK, currently leading an international research project
and philosophy. She has a particular interest in Lecoq-based pedagogy, physical theatre, and dance. Maiya on theatre and migration in Europe. Szabolcs holds a PhD from the University of Bristol and he worked as a
has presented papers at meetings of professional associations such as the Association for Theatre in Higher researcher, teacher and theatre critic for over ten years, both in the UK and continental Europe. Szabolcs’ arti-
Education ATHE and the American Society for Theatre Research ASTR. At ASTR she has participated in working cles and reviews appeared in the New Theatre Quarterly, the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance,
groups such as Cognitive Science in Theater and Performance 2010, 2013, Between Theatre Studies and Dance The Theatre Times, and Játéktér, Korunk, Erdélyi Riport, Szabadság, Hamlet.ro, A Hét Romania and Fidelio.hu
Studies, and Performance as Research 2009. She has been published in Theatre Survey and has contributed Hungary. His co-edited collection entitled Redefining Theatre Communities. International Perspectives in Com-
chapters to COLLECTIVE CREATION IN CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva and Scott munity-Conscious Theatre Making will be published in 2018. Szabolcs is Regional Managing Editor at The The-
Proudfit, eds., THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF DANCE AND THEATER Nadine George-Graves, ed., and THE ROUT- atre Times and an active member of the Translation, Adaptation and Dramaturgy Working Group within the
LEDGE COMPANION TO JACQUES LECOQ Mark Evans and Rick Kemp, eds. In addition to performing, devising, International Federation for Theatre Research IFTR-FIRT. He is also member of the Theatre and Performance
and directing, she was the founding Administrative Director for Naropa University’s MFA Theater program. Research Association TaPRA and the International Network of Italian Theatre.
Maiya was a 2012-2013 UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellow. She received her BA from Yale, trained in Le-
coq-based actor-created theatre at LISPA, and was awarded her PhD from UC San Diego. “White people all over”: Refugee Performance, Fictional Aesthetics
and Dramaturgies of Representation
Edward Gordon Craig, Movement, and Orientalism: Attempts at
Migrating Embodied Cognitive Possibilities Over a two months period during the summer of 2017, I have been following the production process
of Passajar Passage, an immersive participatory theatre project collaboratively created by four the-
This paper considers how Edward Gordon Craig’s orientalist gaze might have been undergirded by atre-makers and recent refugees from Congo, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Zimbabwe. Developed under the
what he saw as the potential of movement in the practices and principles in Asian performance tra- curatorship of Madalena Victorino and as part of the Todos Festival in Lisbon Portugal – a multi-arts
ditions. Furthermore, it investigates how this gaze toward Asian movement may have aimed at not festival that became synonymous with representing migrant cultures in the Portuguese capital – this
only a new aesthetics, but also new kinds of cognitive-affective encounters between performers and multilingual experimental work focused on representing migrant experiences through a postdramat-
spectators. It navigates through some of the touchstones of Craig’s Asian interests including Balinese ic artistic gaze. The production refused the forms of testimonial theatre and with it the contradictory
dance, Indian aesthetics, and Nō to trace how contact with, misunderstandings of, and perversions role of facilitators, opting instead for a multidimensional practice, rendering personal accounts and
of Asian movement practices could have held the promise of new ways of thinking and feeling with deeply rooted traumas, universal. In this paper, I am looking at the functions and interplays of multi-
and through theatre. By using the lens of the enactive cognitive scientific paradigm, this paper pro- ple performative devices e.g. communal choreographies, solo and interactive elements, installations
poses a new dimension to understandings of orientalism and theatre to explore how the historical and dramaturgical processes by which fictional aesthetics of refugedom are being created. Similar
cultural and political forces of orientalism could have mingled alongside Western artists’ dissatisfac- to a growing number of non-verbatim migrant theatre initiatives, Passajar switched from the real
tions with their own models of theatre and performance as cognitive-affective engagements. This to the fictitious via non-realistic representations and processes of abstraction see Balfour 2010 and
presentation follows parallels of actual theatrical movement practices, imagined geographical move- Tinius 2016. Arguably, this practice went against victimhood narratives, but does suspending tradi-
ments, and movement within the paradigm of enactive cognition to investigate how Craig’s attempts tional means of identification and empathy help develop new understandings on migration, or, on
at migrating the practices and principles of Eastern movement traditions were aimed at forging not the contrary create detachment in audiences? What are the ethical consequences to audiences and
only new identities but even new ways of thinking about what performance should be for. By follow- refugee participants alike? By reflecting on both the rehearsal process and the final production, I am
ing both movement as a core principle in enactive cognition and the proposal that movement was also questioning the ethical qualities and positions involved in Passajar and beyond. Ultimately, this
central to Craig’s essentialist gaze, this project looks to how Craig’s fiery urge to change the stasis of production not only presents a dramaturgical deconstruction of the stranger, but crucially, provides
theatre as he saw it was a cognitive project proposed through movement. transformative albeit uncertain alternatives for migrant representations on and beyond the stage.
This presentation will be a part of the curated panel ‘Dramaturgy of Migration: Staging Multilingual
Key Words Encounters in Contemporary Performance’
cognitive science, Edward Gordon Craig, movement, embodiment, Asian theatre, orientalism
Key Words
migrant theatre, refugee performance, fictional aesthetics, dramaturgy, representation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

182 183
 GP GP

Maria Mytilinaki Kennedy Nanako Nakajima

Shobi-gakuen University
Maria Mytilinaki Kennedy recently received her PhD from the Graduate Center, City University of New York
CUNY. Her dissertation is entitled Theatre Translation as Historiography: Projections of Greek Self-Identity Dr. Nanako Nakajima is a scholar and dramaturg of dance and teacher of traditional Japanese dance. After she
through English Translations during the European Crisis. She has taught Theatre and Communication at Hunter worked as a postdoc research fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and fellow of inter-
College, Baruch College, and the College of Staten Island. She is a translation reviewer for The Mercurian and national research center »Interweaving Performance Cultures« Free University Berlin, she currently teaches
has worked as a dramaturg for the New York Shakespeare Exchange and the National Theatre of Northern at several universities in Germany and Japan. Her dramaturgy includes luciana achugar’s Exhausting Love
Greece. She received her BA and MA in Theatre from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and her MA in at Danspace Project 2006-07 New York Dance and Performance Awards, ‘The Bessies’, Osamu Jareos The-
Translation Studies from the University of Warwick. In the 2017-2018 academic year, she serves as theatre ater Thikwa plus Junkan Project, Ong Ken Sen’s Dance Archive Box. Nanako realized Yvonne Rainer Perfor-
advisor at the American Farm School of Thessaloniki, Greece. mative Exhibition at Shunju-za Kabuki Theater 2017. Nanako received 2017 Special Commendation of Elliott
Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Manager and Dramaturgs of the
Translation as Historiographical Method: The Ottoman Americas. Her recent publications include Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement
Palgrave, 2015, The Aging Body in Dance: A cross-cultural perspective, co-edited with Gabriele Brandstetter
“Alexandrovodas the Unscrupulous” (1785) in English Routledge, 2017 Moving Across Borders: Performing Translation, Intervention, Participation transcript, 2017
“Kazuo Ohno and Anohni: From Without and Within” in Anohni—My Truth, James Elaine, Peter Hujar, Kazuo
In this work in progress I interrogate translation as historiographical method through the case study Ohno Walther König, 2017 Nanako serves as an issue editor for Performance Research, Vol. 23, No. 7: ‘On
of Alexandrovodas the Unscrupulous, a closet drama written in 1785 by Georgios Soutsos. Of the Ageing & Beyond 2018.
wide range of issues raised on this first occasion of a translated Greek play from the period, I look
into the libel’s shifting narratives from a 1785 manuscript, privately circulating among the members Disassembling the dancing subject for the good of cleaning
of the Phanariot Greek-speaking minority of the Ottoman Empire of which the writer was a member,
to the Greek publication of a considerable treatise in 1995, when the play found its place in the Mod- The act of cleansing inherently holds the power to disassemble the subject itself, while the exhil-
ern Greek Theatre canon, and finally, to an international English-speaking audience of Ottoman and aration that accompanies the act of cleaning connects to the internal sense of purification. Japa-
Empire Studies, World Theatre, and Translation that the 2012 translation allows. I assess the English nese artist, Masaru Iwai produces films, performances and installations on the themes of cleansing,
Alexandrovodas in my hypothesis of translation as historiography, particularly as it builds on the cleaning and purification, thereby he visualizes the various circumstances by which the act of cleans-
principles of metakénosis, the historiographical-translational approach that dominated the play’s ing comes to emerge. This paper deals with one of his attempts with cleaning staffs of immigrant or-
period. Metakénosis, a term coined by Greek intellectual Adamantios Korais 1748-1833, referred igin. The collaborative dance production “x / groove space,” choreographed by Sebastian Matthias,
to the transfer of the ideas of European liberal humanism through translation into Modern Greek. served to explore the city “grooves” common to Düsseldorf Germany and Tokyo, leading to the fun-
European thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was assumed by Korais to be based damental question regarding “groove” in terms of how homogeneity is received within space. Iwai
on classic Greek ideals, and its re-translation into Greek was undertaken in earnest in order to inspire had devised several innovations for this work, in which both dancers and the audience were present
sentiments of national unity and continuity with the classical past. This highly consequential concept within the same space. In order to realize the idea of collective cleansing onstage, Iwai had asked
dictated a selective historiographical outlook on Greek culture’s Ottoman past. The centuries be- for the support of individuals in the respective cities who were responsible for cleaning the theaters
tween classical Greece and late eighteenth century were condemned to historical obscurity. I argue as a delegated performance. Because cleaning tasks take place in the early hours of the morning,
that the recent translation of Alexandrovodas constitutes a break with the until recently accepted even the people working in the theater rarely encounter the cleaning staff. Interestingly, all persons
mode of historicizing eighteenth century Ottoman theatre. The availability of this useful historical involved in these tasks in these four theaters in two countries were of immigrant origin. In partic-
document in English, over two hundred years after its composition, sheds light onto an unknown ular, the involvement of African cleaning workers at one theater in Berlin led to critical comments
multicultural and multilingual dramaturgy. from the predominantly contemporary dance world, where audiences are predominantly Caucasian.
While in Tokyo, the Japanese audience rarely mentioned the background of cleaning staff, who was
Key Words: Asian woman originally from China. Through the act of cleaning proposed by Iwai, the audience are
historiography, translation, metakenosis, Greece confronted with the construction of other in one’s societies, which also came to visualize the invisi-
ble structure of homogenized dancing subject as opposed to the participating, migratory identities.

Key Words
dance, cleaning, delegated performance, migratory identities
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

184 185
 GP GP

Radmila Nastić Tero Nauha

University of Kragujevac Theatre Academy of The University of The Arts Helsinki

Belgrade based Professor of English Literature and Culture employed until recently full time at the Faculty of Tero Nauha is an artist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Academy of Finland funded postdoctoral research
Philology and Arts in Kragujevac, now only on doctoral studies. Specialised in drama and Shakespeare, but project How To Do Things With Performance. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Ad-
taught various courses in English and American literature. Published papers in peer reviewed journals, as well vanced Studies in 2017. He defended his doctoral research at the Theatre Academy of the University of the
as a number of books. Conducted research in several leading universities and libraries, including the Harvard Arts in Helsinki in January 2016. In 2015, he published his first fiction novel Heresy & Provocation for a Swedish
University and the British Library. Supervised a number of dissertations and theses. publishing house Förlaget. His performance art projects have been presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein,
Theatrediscounter in Berlin, CSW Kronika in Bytom, Poland, Performance Matters in London, and at the New
Where is Home? Performance Festival in Turku, among other venues.

The question of migration, as any other contemporary issue, is most fewquently tackled in the the- Migrating concepts in performance: Performance as thinking or
atre of today within its selfimposed limited scope. Namely, theatre has in recent decades narrowed performance philosophy?
its field of vision, often downplaying its social significance. The focus of this paper is one such project
meant for limited groups, underlying individual transformations instead of social change. It is a cycle This paper is part of a panel - which includes proposals by Annette Arlander, Hanna Järvinen, Tero
of creative performances - operas by the international group of artists called VestAndPage. Though it Nauha and Pilvi Porkola - brings together approaches to performance from separate disciplinary
is still a work in progress, they have so far realized five chapters in five European countries, under the discussions like performance philosophy, dance history, and artistic research. The purpose is to show
umbrella title HOME: HOME I in Regello Italy, I Left My Story Home HOME II in Thessaloniki Greece, how material-discursive practices, migrating concepts and translations have a direct bearing on how
AEGIS IV HOME III in Belgrade Serbia, After the Fear HOME IV in Venice Italy Come Home and HOME we make, experience and understand performances.  The difference between the conceptual appa-
V in Sopot Poland Mother. In the Artaudean, anti-Brechtian tradition, these artists highlight the ratuses of performance as thinking and performance thinking are elaborated in this presentation,
idea of migrating towards each other and ourselves, investigating what home represents for each of which is linked with the discourse of performance philosophy. The performance philosophy insists
them. In this case the limited vision mentioned before means that each performance or chapter is that the definition of thinking and research need to be kept open, when it is regarded as process
shown only once, before a limited, specially chosen audience, without permission to record or make of relating with the world. But how performance thinks in what it is performing or how it performs
photos. The paper is primarily based on the chapter seen in Belgrade which questions the notion of what it is thinking? My research project relates with migration through non-standard thought, pre-
fear and post-fear. sented by François Laruelle. It is a radical interpretation of heresy- a freedom to choose or a devia-
tion from the proper thinking. If performance thinks, is it proper thinking? Can we make a choice, or
Key Words do we need to make thinking meet with universal principles and standards of thought, i.e. philoso-
home, migration, fear, limited vision phy? This paper relates with a research project on non-philosophy and performance. It ties thinking
with the generic and the Other, or recognition and the common sense in performance. The proper
thinking is the sufficient organization and generation of the world, which simultaneously predeter-
mine positions for a subject and the Other.  However, the argument goes like that, that the human is
not central for performance thinking, but it is the performance that thinks. It is an experimentation
with thought itself.  Will be commented by Hanna Järvinen in the panel.

Key Words
performance philosophy, non-philosophy, heresy, orthodoxy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

186 187
 GP GP

Tania Neofytou Simone Niehoff

Adjunct Lecturer, Open University of Cyprus Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Tania Neofytou is a Drama and Theatre Studies Adjunct Lecturer in the Open University of Cyprus. She studied Simone Niehoff, Dr. des., is a lecturer at the Theatre Studies department at Ludwig Maximilian University of
Theatre Studies in the Theatre Studies Department in the University of Athens Greece. She received a Mphil Munich and the academic coordinator of the International Doctoral Programme MIMESIS. She completed her
in Theatre Studies and was awarded honors Ph.D. in Theatre Studies of the same Department. She has partici- doctoral thesis Theatrical Interventions: Subversive Mimetic Practices and Agonistic Public Spheres in 2017 to
pated in many international conferences as a speaker and published papers about Greek and European theatre be published in 2019. Her research interests include activist performances, political theatre, audience research
of the twentieth and twenty first century. She has collaborated with the Theatre Company Anemi as a director and the Historical Avant-Gardes.
assistant and also attended many seminars on directing and acting. During the last twelve years, she has been
directing amateur theatre groups. Transcending the Boundaries between “own” and “other”
Migration Experiences
Queens of Syria: An Adaptation of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women”
or Documentary Theatre? This paper focuses on two contemporary performances, which ostentatiously transcend the bound-
aries between ‘own’ and ‘other’ migration experiences. Both draw parallels between the migration
Queens of Syria premieres at the Young Vic Theatre in July 2016, following a four week workshop of Germans in the past and contemporary migration into Germany:  Kalte Heimat Cold Homeland,
process in Jordan, before embarking on a UK tour. Thirteen Syrian women on stage play extracts Munich 2017 relies on testimonies by Germans who had to migrate after World War II. Actors share
from Euripides’ The Trojan Women. They are not actresses but refugees exiled in Jordan. They nar- their experiences of losing their homes, being unwelcome and feeling unjustly treated. Then, young
rate their personal stories of their lives in Syria before and during the war. The performance turns to refugees who recently arrived in Germany enter the stage and voice their hopes, wishes and polit-
documentary theatre until each of them explains why their lives identify with Hecuba, Andromache ical demands. The performance does not exploit their stories, but offers them a public forum. The
or Kassandra of the ancient Greek tragedy. The story of The Trojan Women is parallelized with their traps of theatrically representing traumatic experiences and arousing mere pity in the audience are
exile because of the war and the catastrophe of their country. This presentation is going to explore avoided. Nevertheless, the performance left me with uneasiness since German post World War II
how Queens of Syria bears similarities with The Trojan Women and at the same time puts a mirror migration experiences have been appropriated and misused by the far right.   The First Fall of the
up to our society today. European Wall 2014 by Center for Political Beauty CPB antagonized these reactionary spheres within
the German public. CPB addressed the migration from East to West Germany during the Cold War,
Key Words another large-scale migration of Germans still vivid in collective memory. But they did so in a far
Trojan Women, Queens of Syria, exile, war, catastrophe, adaptation, documentary theatre less subtle way: They dismantled a Berlin memorial for the Victims of the Wall and transferred it to
the European Border in Morocco. The message was clear: Refugees are like ‘us’ and ‘we’ have been
refugees – are refugees. The artivists obviously tried to confuse these categories and thereby out-
raged conservative politicians and ring-wing publics.   Can looking at contemporary refugees through
the mirror of a country’s own history help reshaping a collective memory and national identity? Is
it maybe an especially adequate way of dealing with the so-called “refugee-crises” considered that
both performances were mainly addressed at a ‘German’ public?

Key Words
collective memory, national identity, migration, political performance, recent and historic migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

188 189
 GP GP

Christina Novakov- Ritchey Sarah O’Brien

University of California, Los Angeles Teesside University

Christina Novakov-Ritchey CNR is an interdisciplinary performance artist, dramaturg, and scholar based in Los Sarah is Course Leader for the BA Hons Performance Arts at Teesside University, where she currently teaches
Angeles, San Francisco, and Belgrade, Serbia. CNR holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from UC Davis and live performance, acting and performance and media theory. Sarah has exhibited creative work at confer-
an M.A. in Culture and Performance from UCLA, where her thesis, Practical Aesthetics, examined bajanje, a ences, art galleries, theatres and site-specific locations in the UK and Europe. Sarah has also published on arts
Balkan healing practice, as an aesthetic negotiation with sickness. CNR is currently a doctoral student in UCLA’s practice-as-research methodology and Performance/Live Art and continues to research through her own per-
Culture and Performance program, where she examines the historical transformation of Serbian rural spaces formance practice. Her research concerns reflections on immersion, the uncanny and questions surrounding
and cultures as a result of “folk” discourse. Invested in practice-based research, CNR brings together perfor- place, space and identity.
mance artists, musicians, bajanje healers, photographers, shepherds, and blacksmiths to explore the meaning
of collaboration within her field sites in rural Serbia. CNR has most recently presented her performance work The Alienated Self? Addressing the Border Between the Digital Self
at One Night Stand—Los Angeles Palazzo Luccarini in Trevi, Italy and Highways Performance Space in Santa
Monica. She has served as a dramaturg for projects at the Kennedy Center, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The
and Participation in Immersive Experiences
Playwrights Foundation, and many others. Continually weaving together her artistic and scholarly practices,
CNR’s primary areas of interest include social aesthetics, rural temporalities, post-socialist ritual, and anarchist This paper identifies a particular discourse of technical immersive conventions that belong to both
anthropology. digital gaming and theatre. In bringing together these disparate genres I wish to locate some recent
immersive experiences within a critical participatory arts discourse Bishop 2012. Some forms of
Crossing the River: Transgressing the Folk/Contemporary Border immersion, particularly ‘perceptual immersion’ Klitch, 2016, physically encourage a viewing position
that relieves the viewer from taking the consequences for her/his actions, and in this sense, follow-
While the practice of labeling rural or working-class artists as “folk,” “self-taught,” “outsider,” or ing Alston, it can be seen to encourage hedonism and risk taking. Cathartic release from personal
“naïve” has been problematized over the last few decades, curators and performance critics contin- responsibility is encouraged as risks taken are within a suspended reality. Similar to traditional the-
ue to represent non-institutional artists as an anonymous mass. In Serbia, the artistic practices of atre, these immersive conventions encourage us ask us, with our consent to mask/subdue/suspend
rural communities have been heavily represented in discussions of the “folk” since Johann Gottfried our ‘selves,’ leaving our usual world perfectly intact, ready to return to once the experience is over.
von Herder’s theorization of Volksgeist in the late eighteenth-century. Recent confrontations of this We allow the artist or company e.g. theme park to take responsibility for our actions – it is not real
term emphasize the nationalist connotations of “folk” discourse, however, little attention is paid to risk. We become avatars in a ‘closed’ game world Burrill 2005 where we die and get another life.
the role of “folk” discourse in the perpetuation of social Darwinist ideology. In the Serbian and Yugo- ‘Perceptual immersion’ therefore encourages performances of Otherness in both utopian and dysto-
slav contexts, I theorize that “narod”—an analogue to “folk”—invents a common national archetype pian imagined worlds. The immersive installation piece Séance 2017 appears to carry on a tradition
by marking rural space as an ancestral past. By equating living rural communities with ancestors, of ghost trains and phantasmagoria that plays on the thrills to be found in this fake invincibility.
politicians and scholars alike prescribe the death of contemporary rural people in Serbia. To resist In Séance, the audience sit and passively allow their souls to be taken by the devil. Whist by AOE
this semiotic maneuver, I turn to the performance practices of Breda Beban, Vladimir Nikolić, and Aoiesteban, 2017 claims to give us an insight into our personalities based on our individual action
Svetlana Spajić. Each of these artists facilitates collaboration across the folk/contemporary art bor- throughout the piece through its psychological underpinning. In both pieces, on different levels,
der by either inviting rural cultural practitioners into their artistic works or vice versa. Using the case the ‘self’ is displaced and packaged as ‘other’. And, I argue, this conveniently serves the ‘experience
studies of Breda Beban’s video “Walk of Three Chairs” 2003 Vladimir Nikolić’s video “Death Anniver- economy’ agenda Gilmore and Pine 1999. However, I examine them here through the lens of ‘dele-
sary” 2004, made with lament singer Milica Milošević and traditional singer Svetlana Spajić’s album gated performance’ where: ‘The perverse pleasures underlying these artistic gestures offer an alter-
“Serbian War Songs” 2017, made with German art music group zeitkratzer, I propose that these native form of knowledge about capitalism’s commodification of the individual’ Bishop 2012: 238.
artists practice collaboration as a mechanism through which to re-endow the anonymous “narod”
with contemporary subjectivity. By pushing back against what Johannes Fabian dubs the “denial of Key Words
coevalness,” this paper begins to untangle our definitions of art-making from the evolutionary un- Immersive, Otherness, digital, participatory, self
derpinnings of European epistemologies.

Key Words
rural temporality, folklore, Serbian performance, volksgeist
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

190 191
 GP GP

Emer O’Toole Akihiro Odanaka

Concordia University, Montreal Osaka City University

Emer O’Toole is Associate Professor of Irish Performance Studies at Concordia University, Montréal. She is Dr. A. Odanaka is a professor at the School of Literature and Human Sciences, Osaka City University. He has
author of the book Girls Will Be Girls (Orion: 2015) and co-editor of the collection Ethical Exchanges in Transla- been interested in modern playwrights in France and Belgium like Adamov, Ionesco, Ghelderode and Crom-
tion, Adaptation and Dramaturgy (Brill: 2017). Her work appears in journals including Sexualities; Éire-Ireland; melynck, which lead to the award winning publication “The Layers of the Modern Theatre: A Search for the
Literature, Interpretation, Theory; and Target. She is also a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Irish basis of French absurd drama” 2010 Kawatake Award, Japanese Society for Thesatre Research. Another field
Times. of his research is comparative theatres. He has been undertaking a joint project with Prof. M. Iwai regarding a
comparative study of revenge drama between Western and Japanese theatres. The latest achievement on this
The Ambiguous Aesthetics of THEATREclub’s “The Game” subject is “Revenge and the Marketplace: A Study of Chikamatsu Hanji’s Travel Game while Crossing Iga” Com-
patative Theatre Review, 2014. Recently he launched with Prof. K. Hibino a research project about Japanese
THEATREclub’s The Game (2015) is an activist theatre piece that aims to explore “the rules, the regional amateur theatres of which activities are neglected in the mainstream of Japanese theatre studies.
language, and the power structures” of buying and selling sex. Each night, five men volunteer to
play. Inverting the gendered dynamics of the sex industry, they consent to participation, but do not Mobility and Periphery in pre-modern Japan: Theatre as Social
know exactly what their parts will entail. Two actors, Gemma Collins and Lauren Larkin, direct the Media
volunteers through roles as Johns in live re-enactments of scenes from the lives of both current
sex workers and exited women. Set against a political backdrop of Ireland’s introduction of Nordic This panel will discuss how Japanese theatres bunraku and kabuki from the 18th to the 19th centu-
model legislation – i.e. decriminalizing the selling of sex and criminalizing the buying of sex – as well ries worked as places to mediate political, social, or cultural peripheries through theatrical represen-
as Amnesty International’s release of its draft policy on sex work, The Game came up against criti- tation, with a view to gain some insight into the dynamism of Japanese society in the pre-modern
cism from Irish sex workers rights groups, who considered its focus on the harms of the sex industry era. Bjoerk focuses on the communication between rural and urban areas through kabuki stage in
to represent an illiberal abolitionist politics. However, international reviews are wildly divergent in the 17 the century she analyses how the famous Ichikawa Danjûrô family one of the most prominent
terms of their readings of the politics of the piece. This paper will argue that THEATREclub’s activist lineage of kabuki actor built a close relationship with influential Buddhist temples on the outskirts
commitments create an ambiguous aesthetic, a refusal to concretize which functions politically and of Edo, thus showing a cross-regional advertising strategy of the kabuki theatres and religious insti-
semiotically. This leads viewers in different national contexts to connect very differently with the tutions. Iwai and Odanaka will treat the bunraku play “Yoshitune Senbonzakura” Yoshitune and the
piece, and to come to very different conclusions as to who wins the game. Thousand Cherry Trees, written in the mid 18th century, in which a 12th-century revenge story is
transplanted into the world of merchant class people of the day. By juxtaposing the world of ancient
Key Words samurai and that of ordinary people, the play reveals, as a contemporary drama, a process by which
Activism, Sex Work, Aesthetics self-assertion of the defeated is blurred, modified, and finally erased from history. Finally, Hioki
considers the figures of war losers on stage. After the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan rapidly mod-
ernized the country through a series of domestic and overseas warfare. He interested in how kabuki
theatre, still overshadowed by a pre-modern mind-set, depicted the defeated people who found
themselves on the threshold of two different “world”.

Key Words
Japanese theatre, kabuki, bunraku
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

192 193
 GP GP

Mariko Okada Junko Okamoto

Oberlin University, Tokyo Osaka University

Education: PhD. in Literature, Graduate School of Literature, Waseda University, 2011 Dissertation: Study on Junko Okamoto is Assistant Professor of Graduate School of Language and Culture Department at Osaka Uni-
the formation of dance of Inoue-School of Kyo-mai M.A. in Literature, Graduate School of Literature, Waseda versity in Japan. She received her Ph.D. in Language and Culture Spanish Literature from the Osaka University
University, 1995 Academic Experience: Associate Professor, 2014-present Faculty of the Humanities, College for Foreign Studies in 2007. The title of her doctoral thesis is “The Dramaturgy and Resistance of Antonio Buero
of Arts and Sciences, J. F. Oberlin University Toyota Professor in Residence, 2012-13 The Center for Japanese Vallejo”. Based on the doctoral thesis, in 2014 she published a book titled Modern Spanish Playwright Antonio
Studies, the University of Michigan Visiting Scholar, 2009-10 Center for research on the Far East, University Buero Vallejo – His Dramaturgy and Resistance, which received an incentive award of KAWATAKE PRIZE from
Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV JSPS Research Fellow, 2009-12 Graduate school of Humanities and Sociology, Universi- the Japanese Society for Theatre Research. Her teaching and research fields include Theater Studies, Spanish
ty of Tokyo The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Honors and Awards: Suntory Prize for Social Scienc- Literature and Spanish Drama. Her main research interests at present are theatre censorship during the dic-
es and Humanities, 2013 Hayashiya Incentive Award in Study of Performance History, 2014 Kawatake Award tatorship of Franco, and contemporary Spanish dramas such as works of Paloma Pedrero, Laila Ripoll, Alfredo
from Japanese Society for Theater Research, 2014 Publications-- Books: Okada, Mariko, Kawasaki Kyuen, Ka- Sanzol and Juan Carlos Rubio.
wasaki Katsuko. eds. Kawasaki Kyuen Chosakushu. [Collected Works of Kawasaki Kyuen]. Tokyo: Hanamoyo
henshushitsu, 2014. Okada, Mariko. Kyomai Inoue-ryu no Tanjo. [Birth of Inoue School of Japanese Traditional Migrating Audience as Strategies to Clear Censorship in Franco’s
Dance]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2013. Okada, Mariko. Nihonbuyokyoku Shusei Kyomai Kamigatamai Hen.
[Anthology of Japanese Traditional Dance Songs in Kansai Area]. Tokyo: Engeki Shuppansha, 2005.
Spain – In the Case of Buero Vallejo and Sastre
Spanish playwrights had to cope with the censorship to be able to present their plays during Franco’s
The Power of Outsiders: A Dance Movement in Japan Driven by era and worked out various strategies in order to deceive the censors. This paper will analyze some
Marginal Women dramaturgy of two major playwrights of this time, Antonio Buero Vallejo and Alfonso Sastre. Their
works make the spectators experience spatial migration, time-shifting and also crossing the border
Outsiders can open new doors and discard convention. This paper explores a case in the history between reality and fantasy. In The basement window 1967 of Buero Vallejo, 2 researchers appear
of Japanese “traditional” dance in which dancers from outside the mainstream created a great and thank the audience for attending their experiment. They live approximately in the 30th century
sensation. In the early twentieth-century period of social modernization, a new dance movement and their experiment is to save the past, 1967.That is, the audience is moved to the future to observe
emerged, led by three female dancers: Fujikage Seiju 1880–1966, Hanayagi Sumi 1898–1947, and the past which is actually their reality. The Foundation 1973 shows 5 investigators working on a na-
Gojō Tamami 1899–1987. All-male kabuki theater had long dominated stage performance culture tional project. However, it all turns out to be protagonist’s imagination and they are in fact political
in Japan, and female dancers were a rare, new phenomenon. These three dancers, moreover, were prisoners. In this play the spectators experience a process of awakening from misperception. Sastre’s
all from peripheral areas of Japan, outside of the cultural capitals. Since dance had not yet devel- Ana Kleiber 1955 starts from the death of Ana Kleiber in a hotel, where a playwright Sastre happens
oped as an occupation, they worked as geisha, a stigmatized profession. These three dancers can to be in the lobby. Then the audience sees flashback episodes about Ana and her lover. The final
therefore rightly be regarded as outsiders. This paper argues that it was precisely because they were scene comes back to the beginning and Sastre in the lobby says that he will write a play titled Ana
outsiders that they were able to establish new dance movements. Because of their marginality, Kleiber. It means that the audience sees what has not be written yet. In William Tell Has Sad Eyes
moreover, their innovations in dance have not yet been properly assessed, even today. They have 1955, Sastre invites us to a famous story by Schiller however, with a different version where William
been dismissed as amusements for peasants. For audiences and critics in the center of performance Tell kills his son and leads a life of agony. In this way 2 playwrights make the audience migrate in
culture, dances created and performed by outsiders were unacceptable. This paper will explore the various levels and it was surely their strategies to clear censorship.
experimental work of these three dancers and discuss why these outsiders could make a completely
new start, disregarding orthodox expectations. I argue that their outsider status enabled them to Key Words
be innovative, in three ways: first, they were not yet accustomed to the conventions of traditional Audience Migration Time Space Reality Fantasy Censorship Spain
dance. Second, they needed to stand out in order to advance their dance careers. And third, the
fact that they were not yet established gave them the freedom to take risks since they were not yet
established. This paper places Seiju, Sumi, and Tamami in the broader context of Japanese dance
during a period of drastic social transformation that took place a century ago.

Key Words
others, dance, movement, tradition, modernization
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

194 195
 GP GP

Anita Orfini Marta Ostajewska

Roma Tre University University of Warsaw

Anita Orfini Roma Tre University. Bachelor degree at Roma Tre University on March 2015 with a thesis about Marta Ostajewska º1980, Poland performer and visual artist, PhD researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in
“Heart of a dog” by Michail Bulgakov. Master degree at Roma Tre University on March 2017 with a thesis about Krakow and at the University of Warsaw Artes Liberales. Her M.A. in Multimedia Design was received from
Shakespeare in Russia. Now studying for my PhD in Russian literature with a project on Shakespeare on the School of Arts in Ghent. She graduated also at the University of Lodz Theory of literature. Her artistic activi-
Post-Soviet stage. ties were presented in several galleries and at the international theater’s stages: Croxhapox Gallery, Campo
Victoria, Nieuwpoorttheater, NTGENT in Ghent, Rozentheater in Amsterdam, The Manhattan Gallery, Prexer,
Between stasis and movement: Dismorphomania by Vladimir Factory of Art, Gallery Kobro, Posiadło Ksiezy Mlyn, Free Space Gallery in Lodz, Articule Gallery in Montreal,
Industra Gallery in Brno. She has participated in many international projects, among others, in the artistic res-
Sorokin and the migration of Shakespearian texts idency Human Hotel: Copenhagen in Denmark and in the international festivals BIO50 in Ljubljana, RIAP2014
in Quebec City, Canada, PAB2015 in Bergen, Norway. She is co-chief editor of the artistic magazine Woof Woof
Postmodern literature is characterized by a constant game with the reader and the text which be- Arf Arf. She publishes her artistic works and theoretical texts related to the modern art scene, site-specific art
comes a sort of palimpsest. In the play Dismorphomania 1990 by the Russian writer Vladimir So- and performance art on the international stage.
rokin, the Shakespearean text migrates from England to the USSR. After being manipulated by the
author, it undergoes a mutation merging with itself and with the Soviet reality it paints: the world Migration video performance – an artistic exploration of
of seven patients locked in an asylum. The Other is seen as something extraneous to oneself and
impermanent, transient and porous spaces of abandoned factory
also as a figure alien to the everyday life. This leads to the construction of social barriers which seem
impassable between “us” and “them”. Margined, isolated and removed, the Other is locked up in Migration according to the dictionary is: 1. the mass movement of people, usually in search of better living
places that do not communicate with the outside and with others. The Soviet asylum represented conditions, moving animals from one area to another, related to reproduction, searching for food, etc., mov-
the place and the instrument for the elimination of the enemies of the people. “Madmen” were ing the limits of the reach of some plants ». But what happens if migration become a place? The space inside
nothing but people who deviated from the norm and therefore could not be part of the community. the abandoned factory with the roots so weak as the dying tree. An artistic exploration of impermanent, tran-
In this heterotopia see Foucault in which space and time are arranged and articulated with parame- sient and porous spaces of abandoned factory, the spaces between, marked by decay and temporality investi-
ters and rules differing from those of external reality, Sorokin’s characters are stripped of their own gate how the relationship between site-specific performance art and architecture / space may be understood.
identity. The postmodern stasis, seen as something empty, is well represented by the immobility of The result of this experimental operation, rotation of body in an abandoned factory, followed by two camera
the characters in the first part of the play. This emptiness is then filled by the movement and the operators, is the video performance Migration. The performance was created in 2015/2016 at the Ksiezy Mlyn,
the postindustrial district in Lodz, Poland. The title of the action was significant, referring both to the history of
words uttered by the characters in the second part, but they seem to be something equally empty
the place itself the inflow and outflow of workers from the factory and to the biography of the performer. The
and meaningless. The birth of this stasis is perhaps traceable in the climate of terror that reigned at performance grew from uprooting and migration. The workers  came to the Scheibler factory, the largest
the time but it is perhaps also a consequence of the loss of reference points due to the imminent textile factory in Poland, in the 19th century from all over. There were Silesians, farmers from nearby villages,
dissolution of the Soviet Union. Germans, Jews, local residents. Together, they created an enclave, community, and family, which after years
was destroyed by history, politics and economy. At Księży Młyn, dialogue strongly marked lack, rupture, being
Key Words in between. Roots, migration and uprooting strongly marked all activities at Księży Młyn, were defining their
stasis movement other border migration otherness madmen asylum Sorokin Shakespeare common axis. Material memory was superimposed on symbolic memory. The present was strongly immersed
in many time plans.  Migration is the performance in which the horizontal relationship of all elements of action
is crucial: the performing body, Zina the dog, the abandoned factory, human and inhuman objects, traces of
the past. It seek the answer to the question how have performance responded to issues of exile, displacement
and Otherness. It also asks how the notion of migration might be used to think about the mobility of bodies
and the mixing and cross-fertilization of forms, practices and ideas.  Migration refers to the achievements of
the new humanities, issues related to performance studies, archives, leftovers or found things. It also refers
to the achievements of contemporary philosophical trends: object-oriented ontology, space phenomenology,
hermeneutic tradition, psychogeography and promenology. It results from a horizontal, partner relationship
with a place. The place that is an interdisciplinary concept, one of ‘travelling concepts’ Mieke Bal.   Space is
the crossing of bodies in motion and includes both the physical dimensions of the place, as well as all possible
relations that occur in it. Thus, one can not claim that the space has been fixed once and for all, because it
undergoes dynamic changes at any moment.” Michel de Certeau  Space empty and abandoned as a migration
is a concept which assumes the introduction of a two-way performative turn. When the body stops moving,
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

space begins to vibrate.

Key Words
performance as reaserch, abandoned factory, migration, site-specific performance art, uprooting

196 197
 GP GP

Rina Otani Ulf Otto

Paris-Sorbonne University Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich

Rina Otani is a doctoral student at Paris-Sorbonne University, Doctoral school III : French and comparative Ulf Otto, Dr. phil., is Professor Theatre Studies and Intermediality at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.
literature under the supervision of Professor Didier ALEXANDRE. With wide interest in theatre audience and Areas of research include: interconnections of theater history and histoy of technology, theatricality of digital
reception, her current thesis project focuses on the French playwright Jean Anouilh and his audience. Among cultures, gestures and genealogies of reenactments, media performances in contemporary theatre. Recent
her recent publications are “La Réception initiale du théâtre de Jean Anouilh à Londres et à New York” Cahiers publications: Theater als Zeitmaschine. Zur performativen Praxis des Reenactments, ed. w. J. Roselt 2012 Inter-
détudes françaises Université Keio. Vol.20, p.32-47. 2015. and “Butoh and Its Image: A Statistical Approach” netauftritte. Eine Theatergeschichte der neuen Medien 2013. Auftritte. Strategien des In-Erscheinung-Tretens
Keio University Art Center Annual Report. Vol.24. 2017. She also has diverse experiences on and around the in Künsten und Medien, ed. w. M. Matzke u. J. Roselt 2015. Current research projects deal with the electrifica-
actual stage, including her work as Assistant Stage Director in the 2011/2012 production of Die Zauberflöte tion of theatre and the theatricality of electricity at the end of the 19th century, the politics of representation
Arakawa Bayreute and as Subtitle Operator in 2015 production of Ionescos RhinocérosLe Théâtre de la ville de in german theater and the art of rehearsal.
Paris/ Saitama Arts Theater.
The theatre of responsibility. Refugee constructions and the
Jean Anouilhs British and American Audiences: Limits and Conflicts institutional desires of the german stage
that Intercultural Adaptation Faces
›Refugees‹, Europes new ›foreign others‹, have become the central obsession of german politics
The works of French playwright Jean Anouilh1910-1987 had earned long-lasting popularity on the and theatres alike. While the former is currently producing figures of exclusion to schmooze right-
Parisian stage throughout his career1932-1987. The success was enough to attract the interest of for- wing voters, the latter have been proudly producing gestures of inclusion to reassure their left-wing
eign actors and directors, who in turn imported his works to their countries.    Of these adaptations, stance. Those labeled refugees appeared as choirs, amateurs, actors or audience members, repre-
we will on those on the London and New York stage, two cities that showed contrasting reactions senting themselves, the global south, injustices of world economy, the moral discontents of bene-
upon the initial introduction of Anouilhs between the 1930s and the 1950s. While the London audi- fitting from these injustices, or the pitfalls of representation themselves. Within these perimeters
ence appreciated his works and its interpretations by masters such as Laurence Olivier, Christopher the chances, that the voices of those who lately arrived in the country could actually be heard, were
Fry and Peter Brook, resulting a “Jean Anouilh vogue”, the spectators of New York proved to be more small, while the chances to learn more about the contested construction of a German identity were
hostile towards this French dramatist and his creations.    What caused such different receptions? high: for west-germans, who built their national pride on a moral exceptionalism that rests in the
We will observe and contrast the difference of reception by studying the journalistic reviews in the admittance of an unspeakable guilt, the symbolic welcoming of refugees seemed to reassure their
two cities, and will contemplate for both cities the shared ethical values, the existence of dramatic distance from the Nazi-crimes as well as their moral superiority. But the cost was often the reduction
mediators, and the political and historical backgrounds concerning the importation of French culture of those represented to the role of victim, and the concealment of the hosts interests in a gesture
and arts. Finally, the failure in United States will be further considered through the observation of of seemingly selfless generosity. Taking the cue from postcolonial thinkers like bell hooks, the pa-
Lucienne Hills English translation of Le Waltz des Toréadors, which was staged in 1957, marking one per asks what the german theatre demands from the refugees it participates in constructing: what
of the first great American success for Anouilhs work. Close examination and comparison with the wants, needs and desires lie behind the representational hospitality? What institutional lacks are
original French text will illuminate the merits of Hills translation, which successfully adapted Anouil- compensated for, what symbolic gains are arrived at? And in what way does the appearance of the
hs text to suit the Anglo-Saxon audience. The presentation will explore the limits of the importation, refugee on the german stage promise a way out of an aesthetic and institutional crisis that touches
or the “migration”, of a theatrical work and its poetic and aesthetical value.   This presentation is a the very fundaments of that insitution? Refusing to denounce good intentions because of their lack
part of the presenters on-going thesis project, focusing on Anouilh and his audience. This study will of selflessness, the paper proposes an affirmative stance towards the needs and desires of hegemo-
therefore have as corpus previous works focusing on reception theory and audience studies, such as niality to avoid the patronizing stance of privileged ignorance.
the works of H.R. Jauss, A. Ubersfeld, and M-M. Mervant-Roux.
Key Words
Key Words Refugees, bell hooks, desire, institutional crisis, german theatre, nationalism
Jean Anouilh, Audience, French Theatre, Adaptation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

198 199
 GP GP

Louise Owen Teemu Paavolainen

Birkbeck, University of London University of Tampere

Louise Owen is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research examines Teemu Paavolainen is a research fellow at the Centre for Practice as Research in Theatre, University of Tam-
contemporary theatre and performance in terms of economic change and modes of governance, in particular pere. He is the author of two books with Palgrave McMillan, Theatricality and Performativity: Writings on Tex-
the social and cultural effects of neoliberalization. Her writing has been published in Performance Research, ture From Plato’s Cave to Urban Activism 2018, and Theatre/Ecology/Cognition: Theorizing Performer-Object
frakcija, Contemporary Theatre Review, and TDR. Her book Agents of the Future: Theatre, Performance and Interaction in Grotowski, Kantor, and Meyerhold 2012. Generously funded by the Academy of Finland 2012–
Neoliberalization is under contract with Northwestern University Press. She is co-director of Birkbeck Centre 15, the Finnish Cultural Foundation 2015–17, and the Kone Foundation 2017–20, his current research project
for Contemporary Theatre, and co-convenor of London Theatre Seminar. with Kone is humbly titled Plural Performativity: Theatrical Models Against the Inversion of Western Thought.

In circulation: discourses of austerity and nation in Kaleider’s Performing the Anthropo(s)cene: Migratory Histories and
“The Money” Cartographic Inversions
This paper examines Kaleider’s The Money 2013-date in terms of its implication, in performance, in According to the anthropologist Tim Ingold, Western modernity is characterized by a ‘logic of inver-
national politics and policies of austerity. The Money, a piece of ‘game-theatre’, challenges an audi- sion,’ by means of which the plurality of life is systematically reduced to structures of interiority. In a
ence of ‘benefactors’ renamed ‘players’ in 2016 to negotiate with one another to decide upon a use time when both the climate crisis and the refugee “crisis” are met with ever more introversive poli-
for a sum of money – the total ticket revenue contributed by the benefactors themselves as paying tics, the logic of inversion is itself in crisis and the quest for alternatives ever more urgent. In this pa-
customers of the show. The paper offers a close reading of a performance of The Money at London’s per, I relate histories of inversion to the horizontally extended human performance – “All the world’s
Battersea Arts Centre in 2015, part of the year-long festival The Nation’s Theatre. In this particular a stage” – that is now dubbed the Anthropocene, its ‘performativity’ argued in the Butlerian sense
performance, the benefactors’ discussion and decisionmaking regarding how to spend the money of reiterated practices regularly confused with essential nature: That the relevant range of practices
focused implicitly and explicitly on alleviating the effects of austerity, and positioned charitable acts from agriculture to automobility seem to virtually define human conduct and being, is because they
repeatedly in relation to the figure of the refugee. The paper contrasts the benefactors’ debate are not only restored or twice-behaved Schechner but infinitely behaved, massively reiterated, and
with the cultural and economic politics of The Money’s global touring practice – which, its website also non-humanly distributed. More specifically, I trace as much of world history as twenty minutes
announces, has by now visited ‘5 continents and played as charged and prestigious venues as Edin- allows – based on a chapter by then well underway – along two very different trajectories: that of
burgh City Chambers, UK Houses of Parliament, Lagos City Hall, Lisbon City Hall, Victoria Parliament, local migrations of human associates, and that of human attempts at global overview. The former
City of London’s Guildhall, Tianjin’s Grand Theatre and many others’ Kaleider 2018. The paper anal- ranges from migrant crops and animals, at the dawn of agriculture, through European germs as
yses the politics of the production’s dramaturgical treatment of money as a scarce, finite and locally agents of colonial conquest, to the diffusion of plastics as one stratigraphic marker of the Anthropo-
consequential resource. It proposes a tension between this treatment, which elicits heated debate cene epoch the latter traces the cartographic inversion and abstraction of all such local trajectories
from benefactors over the ethics, cultural politics and efficacy of expenditure, and the global circula- into an externally observable ‘globe,’ performatively naturalizing not only national boundaries and
tion of the production itself, as it ventures into new territories as a touring commodity. geographical distortions, but the very separation between ‘nature/geology/climate’ and ‘humanity.’
A cosmic spectator above all local struggles, ‘the human’ becomes what Ingold calls an ex-habitant’
Key Words of the globe rather than an inhabitant of the world, logically blinded to the vast human migrations
money circulation nation austerity global touring that the effects of global warming are likely to cause over the coming decades.

Key Words
Anthropocene, Cartography, Global imagery, Modernity, Performativity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

200 201
 GP GP

Ana Pais Julia Pajunen

CET - Universidade de Lisboa INET-MD - Faculdade Motricidade Humana University of Helsinki

Ana Pais is a FCT postdoctoral fellow at CET – Centro de Estudos de Teatro at the School of Arts and Humanities Julia Pajunen PhD, University of Helsinki, 2017 is postdoc researcher at the University of Helsinki. In her
of the University of Lisbon FLUL / McGill University, dramatuge and curator currently undertaking the research PhD thesis, she has researched the adaptation of The Unknown Soldier by Kristian Smeds, performed at the
project “Practices of Feeling”. She also colaborates with INET – MD research center at Faculdade Motricidade Finnish National Theatre 2007–2009. Internationally, she has published an article, together with professor
Humana. She holds a PhD in theatre studies entitled Commotion: affective rhythms in the theatrical event Hanna Korsberg “Performing Memory, Challenging History: Two Adaptations of The Unknown Soldier” 2017
from the University of Lisbon. Since 2000, she has been participating in national and international conferences. in Contemporary Theatre Review. Currently, she is working in a research project on theatre relations between
Between 2003 and 2004, she has worked as theatre critic in the most distinguished Portuguese newspapers as Finland and Estonia.
well as she has engaged as a dramaturge in both theatre and dance projects in Portugal. She is the author of
Discourse of Complicité. Contemporary Dramaturgies Colibri, 2004 and of several articles. From 2005 to 2010, Translations of ethnofuturism? - Andrus Kivirähk in Finland
she was assistant professor at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema Lisbon. As a dramaturge, she has worked
with theatre and dance professionals in Portugal João Brites, Tiago Rodrigues, Rui Horta and Miguel Pereira. In this paper, I examine two performance adaptations of Estonian writer Andrus Kivirähk, played at
She curated, coordinated and produced various discursive practice events, namely Projecto P! Performance na Kokoteatteri, Helsinki, Finland, in 2006 and 2007. I analyze his plays in the context of ethnofuturism,
Esfera Pública Lisbon, 10-14th April 2017. a literary, artistic and sociocultural reform movement that was born in the late 1980s in Estonia.
Later the term has spread among young Finno-Ugric writers and artists.
“Beautiful ladies, beautiful gentlemen the borders are open”: The core of ethnofuturism is in mixing and remixing elements of old and new, ancient mythology,
game, power and affect in Rimini Protokoll’s “Home visit Europe” folklore and national romanticism with postmodernism. Old myths used in modern contexts can
construct counter to monolithic, transnational culture. My aim is to examine how the traces of eth-
“Beautiful ladies, beautiful gentlemen the borders are open”: game, power and affect in Rimini Protokoll’s nofuturism translate when they are moved in a different political and historical environment.
Home visit Europe     My generation grew up listening to the European’s anthem and to sentences like: “Beau- The performances I examine are based on Kivirähk´s novel Old Barny, or November (Rehepapp ehk
tiful ladies, beautiful gentlemen the borders are open”, at the Eurovision Song Contest. Back in 2006, actor and November, 2000) and play Romeo and Juliet (Romeo ja Julia, 2004). Old Barny, or November pro-
director Pedro Penim Teatro Praga devised and performed Eurovision. While addressing theatrical ontological vides an account of the chronicles of a nameless village throughout the month of November. In
issues, such as the presence/absence of the body constituted in performance, Eurovision discloses some of Romeo and Juliet, Kivirähk has adapted the well-known tale Estonian countryside, to a village that
the ways by which a common European subjectivity has been hardwired in new generations and how political
borders supplanted geocultural ones. Europe is presented as a “game of the Almighty whose power organizes
people has left behind. Romeo is a foolish country boy who falls in love with roe deer.
and commands over people’s lives”. Last year, Portuguese singer Salvador Sobral “moved the world” so the Both stories share the grotesque use of folktale plots and motifs as well as other genres of folklore
media said with the unpretentious song “Loving for the both of us” and, for the first time, Portugal won the and connect with peasant culture that gathers from avant-garde. They open up a view to villages
competition. Love crosses borders. In 2015, the German/Austrian company Rimini Protokoll premièred Home that are closed communities that hang through surviving. In Old Barny, besides humans, the village
visit Europe, a performance commissioned by the European theatre network “House on Fire”, in private apart- swarms with ghosts, treasure-bearers, or kratts, and werewolves, figures known from Estonian folk
ments, confronting the idea of Europe with individual experiences of belonging. Each performance enacts a religion and beliefs.
game played by 15 spectators sat around a table with the purpose of investigating “How much Europe is in us By examining these adaptations, I debate how the traces of ethnofuturism were interpreted in the
all?”. Home visit Europe proposes a competitive game dispositive with a clear structure and rules that creates Finnish adaptations and their reception. Through that, I explore the question of locality in ethnofu-
an “intimate public” Berlant. Divided in teams, spectators will be given tasks to perform and questions to an- turism when it is migrated in the context of theatre.
swer, oblivious of the fact that they are fighting for the largest piece of cake served at the end of the show.  In
this text, I will look into game as a recreational practice that fosters affective attachments with “fantasies of the
common” Berlant, in particular, of European identities and feelings of belonging, thus, creating specific kind
Key Words
of “intimate public” Berlant that simultaneously dissipates and reinforces borders. In contrast with Eurovision, ethnofuturism, Estonia, adaptations, locality
which urges us to find an “artistic and geographic position” within the game of Europe, I will be suggesting
that Home visit Europe activates a power structure embedded in cultural narratives and ideological repre-
sentations of Europe, in some ways similar to Eurovision or Jeux Sans Frontières, that discloses public affect
attachtments to fantasies of belonging in private homes. Anchored in my personal experience, I will further
argue that, perhaps against the odds of the artists, the actual encounter can game the system or, at least, dis-
rupt it. What happens when the audience wants to change the rules as a result of the game itself? What could
happen to Europe? Drawing upon public affect theory by Lauren Berlant 2008, 2011 and Sara Ahmed 2004,
I will address how borders are performed and affective attachments produced in theatre contexts, informed
by political and ideological narratives, and how audiences can challenge planned games. References  AHMED,
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Nova Iorque: Routlege. BERLANT, Lauren. 2011. “Cruel Optimism.”
In . Durham e Londres: Duke University Press. BERLANT, Lauren. 2008. The Female Complaint. The Unfinished
Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham e Londres: Duke University Press.

Key Words: borders, public affect, performance

202 203
 GP GP

Ameet Parameswaran David Pattie

Jawaharlal Nehru University University of Birmingham
Ameet Parameswaran is currently Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies, the School of Arts Dr Pattie is an internationally recognised expert on the work of Samuel Beckett, and has published ground-
and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He completed his Ph.D in Theatre and Performance Studies at breaking work on live music as a performance. He has also written extensively about contemporary British
the University of California - Los Angeles. His recent publication is the monograph titled Performance and the theatre, Scottish theatre, and popular culture.
Political: Power and Pleasure in Contemporary Kerala published by Orient Blackswan in 2017. His research ar-
eas of interests include political performance, performance theory, technology and performance, region and Everyone’s Welcome Here: Migration and Utopia in David Greig
performance, gender theory etc.
In his 90s work, both with the company Suspect Culture and as a solo playwright, David Greig dra-
Between Movement and Stasis: Theatricality and the Problem of matized a world in which flows of population were converting the world into an extension of Marc
Scale in Left Aesthetics Auge’s non-spaces undifferentiated locations within which, at best, potentially utopian encounters
might take place. In these works, borders were porous. It is not that all symbols of national identity
Critical geographers, following the philosophical intervention of Henry Lefebvre, have forcefully ar- dissolved into a globalised whole rather, the world was imagined, at least potentially, as a space in
gued for the centrality of space, and especially the significance of the category of ‘scale’ as defining which indications of cultural specificity did not necessarily place characters in a hierarchical relation
life in the contemporary times [Neil Smith 1992 2010 Hewitt 1997 Brenner 1999 2004 Moore 2008 to each other and to the spaces they inhabited.  In his more recent work, however, the idea of po-
Marston 2000 Bunnel and Coe 2001]. Rather than considering scales as given and natural, they fore- rous borders might persist, but the utopian potential of encounters in non-space no longer seems to
ground how the scales of nation, region, local and global etc are reproduced constantly in relation to be possible. In more recent works The Events, and The Suppliant Women, for example, moments of
each other. Unlike neoliberal framework, wherein world is conceived of emerging through unimped- utopian cultural interaction are fleeting, in which hierarchies based on the presumed superiority of
ed flows, these works highlight simultaneous territorialisation and deterritorialisation in the flow of some cultures and nations over others persist, and where the staging of cultural interaction involves
capital. Building on these works, I interrogate the status of theatricality within politics of scale. I take a different type of performer- a performer who can serve as an audience surrogate within the action
performances, broadly aligned to Left, across two historical and geographical sites. First, I analyse of the play. This paper will examine the change in Greig’s approach to cultural encounters, and will
closely two plays Gudalloor, a play dealing with mass eviction and displacement of primarily adiva- attempt to analyse what, if anything, is left of the utopian idea of cultural exchange in Greig’s work.
sis, repatriates from Sri Lanka and Dalits from Gudalloor and the play Spartacus performed by the
Peoples Cultural Forum in Kerala south-India in late 1970s and early 80s. The second site is the con- Key Words
temporary performance, Atlas of Communism directed by Lola Arias that looks back at the life under Migration, Greig, politic
GDR through memories of primarily women aged between 8 and 84 who narrate the truth about
their own experience. Interrogating their theatrical strategies whereby they fold what is regarded as
the global scale with the most local personal and bodily, I show how they offers a reconfiguration the
world by marking and producing a space-time of performance wherein one can feel movement and
stasis as relational. In the process, I explore the larger question of globality of left aesthetics and the
ways in which political strategies and imaginations are shared across wide geographies.

Key Words
theatricality, Left aesthetics, politics of scale, movement, stasis
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

204 205
 GP GP

Bishnupriya Paul Sarah Penny

Jawaharlal Nehru University University of Warwick

Bishnupriya Dutt is Professor of Theatre and Performance studies, in the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawa- Sarah Penny is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick, UK, and was Assistant Administrator for the In-
harlal Nehru University, Delhi India. Her area of research includes colonial and post colonial histories of ternational Federation for Theatre Research IFTR 2014. She is currently serving a 2-year term as the Student
theatre, feminist readings of Indian Theatre and contemporary performative practices and popular culture. Member on the IFTR Executive Committee. She received an Erasmus Mundus scholarship for her Masters in
Her recent publications include Gendered Citizenship: Performance and Manifestation co-edited with Reinelt International Performance Research at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and is currently researching
and Sahai Palgrave Macmillan and Orient Blackswan, Dec 2017, Protesting Violence: Feminist Performance amateur performances in the Royal Navy within the Arts and Humanities Research Council AHRC funded proj-
Activism in Contemporary India in Diamond, Varnay and Amich eds: Performance, Feminism and Affect in ect ‘Amateur Dramatics: Crafting Communities in Time and Space’. She has published in Performance Research
Neo-Liberal Times, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, Protesting Through Gestures: Maya Rao in Dialogue with Dance and Contemporary Theatre Review and delivered papers on her research at the National Museum of the Royal
and Theatre, in Munsi and Chakraborty eds: The Moving Space: Women in Dance, Primus Books, 2017, Per- Navy, Portsmouth and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
forming Resistance with Maya Rao: Trauma and Protest in India CTR vol 25 issue 3, August 2015 Engendering
Performance, Indian Woman Performers in Search of an Identity, Sage Delhi 2010,. Bishnupriya has been Making a Song and Dance at Sea: The Rise of SODS Opera in the
involved in active theatre in Calcutta since 1960s with the Little Theatre Group and later People’s Little Theatre
under the directorship of the noted playwright, actor and director, Utpal Dutt. She has been performing and
Royal Navy
directing in the group since 1980s.
Upon the wide-open expanse of the sea, ships’ companies of the 20th century Royal Navy have
transformed into performers and captive audiences to stage SODS Operas. A hybrid theatrical form
Re-inscribing histories into lost geographies: Migrant Labour that takes influence from 19th and 20th century theatrical forms such as Music Hall and Concert
and socialist imaginations Party entertainment, SODS Opera evokes a carnivalesque atmosphere that encourages patterns of
interaction outside the norms of everyday shipboard behaviour, dress, and activity. Drawing from
Re-inscribing histories into lost geographies: Migrant Labour and socialist imaginations The last interviews with serving and retired naval personnel and materials from formal archive holdings, this
decade has seen the largest outbound migration from India since independence, ranking the second paper investigates the origin and historical development of this unique naval tradition to examine
highest in the world, not only in terms of an affluent class leaving the country, but a large exodus why Commanding Officers COs have repeatedly permitted the production of a theatrical form that
of menial labour, moving to east and west Asia. Inbound migrations has been severely controlled facilitates the temporary suspension of a rigid naval hierarchy. Situated within mobility studies, this
and restricted particularly from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and West Asia where communalism has paper will identify the ways in which participants confront and contest structures that restrict move-
become a serious issue. In addition aggressive neo-liberalism in nexus with religious fundamental- ment on board ship to pinpoint the limits of their transgression within this floating performance are-
ism are redefining critical notions of nation, citizenship through drafting new national register of na. By investigating the literal as well as social and imaginary mobilities of people and space within
citizenship as a result of which I would argue both the notions of migration and labour has shifted performance, I argue that like many of the amateur theatre-making practices that have emerged
fostering narrow identity politics based on religion, caste, indigeneity and in effect re-defining the within the Royal Navy, SODS Opera functions as a subtle means of control. Theatrical turns not only
visions of working class solidarities a foundational base of left or communist ideology and activism. provide COs a valuable insight into the health and wellbeing of personnel, but the mass participation
Against these shifts and changes the paper will map through a recent agit-prop performance Janam’s of the company enables participants to collectively re-imagine themselves as rooted to an exclusive
The Struggle through pictorial-words and Shaina Anand’s project with Tate From Gulf to Gulf to community with a distinct naval culture and identity.
Gulf, contemporary engagement-activism and concerns pertaining to the migrant-labour. The agit
prop intended for spreading awareness amongst its working class constituencies also inaugurated Key Words
the centenary celebration of the October Revolution and the paper would try to understand how Amateur Theatre, Royal Navy, SODS Opera
such historical imaginations, at one time closely related to gesturing towards a socialist future and
internationalism Non Alignment Movement where India and Yugoslavia formed an alternate to cold
war world, is re-inscribed through performance and artistic works in these times and contexts. The
paper intends to question through Benjnamin’s ideas of historical labour, artistic responsibilities
particularly at a time when global cultural productions are reinterpreting the history of the socialist
revolution and its potential deployment of historical strategies.

Key Words
Migration, Belonging, Dissent radical performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

206 207
 GP GP

Rosa Peralta Orestes Pérez Estanquero

GEXEL Autonomous University of Barcelona Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

Rosa J Peralta Gilabert 14-VII-1962 is a secondary school teacher in Art, and researcher in the performing Orestes Pérez Estanquero b. 1962, Habana, Cuba is an artist and a PhD candidate Universitat Autònoma de
arts. She holds a doctorate in Fine Arts 2000 from the Politechnical University of Valencia, a master’s degree Barcelona, UAB. He earned a degree in Dramatic Art 1985 and a Master degree in Arts 2002 at the Universidad
in Stage Design 2006 from the European Institute of Design, in Barcelona, and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts de las Artes de Cuba ISA. As an actor he has played, among others characters, Prospero in Otra Tempestad by
1991 from the Politechnical University of Valencia. Ms. Peralta’s doctoral thesis, Exile Stage Design: Works by Teatro Buendía at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Fidel in the Argentinean movie Hasta la Victoria Siempre.
Gori Munoz Una escenografía del exilio: la obra de Gori Muñoz looks at the use of scenic design in plays by He worked as theatre director, among other companies, with Semaver Kumpanya: in Chamaco 2006 at Istan-
exiled playwright, Gori Munoz Valencia 1906-Buenos Aires 1978. Research: Ms. Peralta is a member of the bul. In Cuba he taught from pre-grade as teacher of drama at International School of Havana to graduate and
research group on exile literature, GEXEL, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and has researched postgraduate university courses as Senior Adjunct Professor of Acting at ISA. He has participated in several
extensively on scenic design in contemporary filmmaking and theatre. http://www.gexel.es/rosaperaltagi- festivals: Perth, Cadiz, Caracas, Edinburgh, etc. His research focuses on the areas of theory and practice of
labert.html. She has published books and articles on Spanish Republican exile theatre and film including: La acting. He has published in theatre journals such as Assaig de Teatre, Conjunto, Gestos, etc. He has presented
escenografía del exilio de Gori Muñoz Stage Design in the Works of Gori Munoz in Exile. Valencia, Ediciones his research in the Annual Conferences of the IFRT Barcelona, 2013 and Warwick, 2014 and in different scien-
de la Filmoteca, Institut de Cinematografia Ricardo Muñoz Suay – Radio Televisió Valenciana, 2002. Manuel tific conferences Malta, 2016 Brno, 2017. He is a member of the National Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba
Fontanals escenógrafo: teatro, cine y exilio Manuel Fontanals: Stage Design in Theater, Film, and Exile. Madrid, UNEAC
Ed. Fundamentos, 2007. Awards: Ms. Peralta received an award in theatre production for the play Prohibida
la reproducción Reproduction Prohibited, by Jose Ricardo Morales-. The work was premiered in the Assembly Routes and migration processes within an investigation about
Hall at the University of Valencia, in 1992. She was finalist for the Leandro Fernández de Moratín Award in
Theater Arts 2008, for the book Manuel Fontanals escenógrafo: teatro, cine y exilio Madrid, Ed. Fundamentos, performing of real people in a theatrical frame
2007 an award granted by the Spanish Stage Managers Association ADE.
In this work we expose and analyze some of the migratory routes and processes produced in my
Spanish Republican Theater in Exile: A Social Question research about performances of real people Garde and Mumford: 2015 within determined struc-
tures and theatrical dispositives - We present and analyze, among others, The route, migration and
In the late 1920’s, and throughout the duration of the Second Republic 1931/1936, Spain under- transformations of the formal essence” –that is: the nature of the biographic materials, the artistic
went a period of intense and prolific theatrical production. During the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, forms, the technological tools, etc.-from the each scenic creations/performances that I have studied
theater was used as a political tool, and as a critical means of communicating with a population originals to the scenic creations/performances that I, the researcher, have created and performed
suffering high levels of illiteracy. At the end of the war, with General Franco’s victory, theater com- derivates as part of the research. The route, migration and transformations of the mode “not act-
panies that had sympathized the Republican cause were forced to go into exile, while others, with ing” following the continuum proposed by Michael Kirby, when both creations/performances: the
no political affiliation or orientation, were also were obliged to emigrate, due to the desperately originals and the derivates, are ordered following the criteria: from the ones that stand as performa-
impoverished state of Spanish society in the postwar period. For Spaniards forced to live far away tive lectures to the performative assemblies from those where the performer becomes spectator,
from their homeland, what did theater signify at the political and human level? Was it a means for to those where the spectators become performers. The routes and migratory processes will allow
them to relate to one another, and to maintain a collective awareness and memory? Was it a way for to confirm or not, the following hypothesis: 1 if the theater of the real people, ordered taking into
them to reaffirm and differentiate themselves from their host country? Or was it their way of making account their radicality, have frontiers by one side with post-fictional theaters centered in the artistic
themselves heard, of crying out to the world for the injustices they had suffered? What relationship realities, and by the other side with theaters socially centered, and 2 if we are facing a new paradigm
did this Spanish exile theatre have with vanguard theater in the host countries at that time? What of theatrical acting.
parallels can be drawn between the experiences of these exiled Spanish republicans then, and the
experiences of exiled persons today? To answer these and other related questions, one needs to ex- Key Words
amine the conditions prevailing in the receiving countries-- most notably Mexico, Argentina, France, migration processes, real people, research as performances, mode “not acting”, liminality
and Russia—while bearing in mind the social, political, and cultural differences among them.

Key Words
Spanish Republican Theater in Exile
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

208 209
 GP GP

Madli Pesti Goran Petrović – Lotina

Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tartu University Ghent University
Madli Pesti has a PhD in theatre research at Tartu University, Estonia. Her dissertation was “Political Theatre Goran Petrović - Lotina is a researcher, curator and theorist in visual and performing arts since 2000. He re-
and its Strategies in the Estonian and Western Cultures” 2016. The theme of her M.A. thesis was “Political the- ceived the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Performance Studies from Ghent University Belgium, and Masters
atre in Estonia and Germany in the 20th and 21st century”. She has a B.A. in Scandinavian Studies specializing Degrees in Art and Politics SPEAP from Sciences Po Paris: Institute of Political Studies France and Art History
in Danish contemporary drama. She has studied at the university of Aarhus, Denmark, at the Humboldt Univer- from the University of Belgrade Serbia. His research combines art theory with political philosophy to examine
sity and Free Univesity Berlin as an exchange student. Madli Pesti is working as a lecturer at the department of the political dimension of art. His main point of interest is to explore how art, and performance in particular,
theatre research at the University of Tartu and as a researcher in the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. may contribute to contesting dominant politics and invigorating democracy. Petrovic-Lotina finds inspiration in
Her teaching areas are performance analysis and theory, political and applied theatre and contemporary the- post-Marxist theories accountable of discourse analysis, hegemony and antagonism. On this, he publishes in
atre. Since 2002 Madli Pesti has been writing theatre critics for cultural magazines and newspapers. In 2015 different journals, books and catalogues.
she was the head of the Estonian Theatre Researchers’ and Critics’ Association. 2015–2017 she was curating
the programme of the new performing arts center Open Space Vaba Lava in Tallinn, Estonia. Immigration, Populism and Identifications
Performing borders: questions of national identity on the example Abstract 48 words: This paper examines alternative ways of constructing subjectivities within the
of two productions that discuss the relationship of Estonians and context of ‘European migrant and refugee crisis’ and rising right-wing populism. The goal is to open
Russians up a debate about the relationship between different subject positions in terms of identifications
that nevertheless anticipate a multiplicity of identities.  Abstract 131 words: In the course of the EU
Estonia is a small country with 1.3 Million inhabitants. One third of the population is Russian speak- economic and refugee crisis, the right-wing populist discourse constructs the people by successfully
ing. That third of the population is hardly taking part in the Estonian cultural life. My presentation connecting anti-immigratory, racist and nationalistic interests with the anxiety of workers. It desig-
analyses two exceptional theatre productions that deal with the Russian minority, with the migration nates immigrants as the enemy and threat to the economic stability of the welfare state. In contrast,
problematics and with talking in the name of the Other. The productions are: “At second glance”, the left-wing populist discourse aims at constructing the people by connecting a multiplicity of so-
authors and directors Mari-Liis Lill and Paavo Piik, Tallinn City Theatre, 2016 and “I’d Rather Dance cial demands, including those of the workers, in a struggle against the powerful corporate elite. It
with You”, director Oleg Soulimenko, dramaturg Piret Jaaks, Vaba Lava / Open Space, Tallinn, 2016. designates the neoliberal politicians / businessmen bond as the establishment that threatens global
Those productions are extraordinary because almost for the first time in the Estonia theatre history stability. Taking contemporary performance as a trigger for thought, this paper seeks to explore how
Estonians and Russians meet on stage and talk about history and politics. Both productions are using contemporary performances contribute to the left-wing populist discourse on constructing the peo-
strategies of documentary theatre and are presenting egodocuments on stage people talking about ple in plural terms — in terms of identifications, rather than identities. To envisage identifications is
their real life experience. The productions use relational aesthetics and were created using strate- to challenge not only the right-wing populism, but also the hegemony of neoliberalism.
gies of devised theatre. Both productions are exceptional examples of political theatre and created
intensive discussions in the media: how is the relation between Estonians and Russians? How should Key Words
the minority of Russian-speaking people be presented on stage? The reception of the productions immigration, refugees, populism, identity, identification, pluralism, performance
was extremely polarised.

Key Words
national identity, political and documentary theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

210 211
 GP GP

Janina Piech Anita Piemonti

University of Vienna Pisa University

Studied Theater, Film and Media Studies BA, as well as Theater, Film and Media Theory MA, at the University Born in Gorizia Italy in 1948. Graduation Dr. in Lettere Moderne at the University of Pisa Italy in 1971. Lecturer,
of Vienna. Currently employed in the FWF Austrian Science Fund research project Historiography - Ideology then Professor at the University of Pisa and at the University of Calabria Italy for Film and Theatre History, Ger-
– Collections. Research-based Digitizing of Historical Theater Material from the ‚Zentralinstitut für Theaterwis- man Theatre, Austrian Literature, History of the Theories of Theatre from 1971/1972 to 2010/2011. Retired
senschaft‘ in Vienna 1943-1945 of the Archive and theater-historical collection at the Institute of Theater, Film in 2011 since then, teaching appointment for History of the Theories of the Theatre at the University of Pisa.
and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Collaborations for that same Archive since 2015. Research subjects: German theatre Lessing, Piscator Austrian theatre Grillparzer, Raimund.

Historiography – Ideology – Collections. Provenance issues Migration from Africa to Europe and the transformative power
of Historical Theater Material from the Zentralinstitut für of performance: two Italian cases
Theaterwissenschaft in Vienna 1943-1945
The powerful migration wave from Africa to Europe constitutes a challenge for some theatre people
An essential aspect of working on theater and migration is to document conflicts of flight and ex- in Italy. My paper focuses on two recent cases among the many that are nowadays going on in
pulsion and to elaborate the vacancies of that very documentation in archives and collections. This Italy in the attempt to cope with the unexpected event. One case took place in Gradisca, a small
research is fundamental, if archives hold sensitive materials surrounding the “National Socialist” era. town near Gorizia, at the border with Slovenia. The other one occurred in Tuscany, the garden of
The project “Historiography – Ideology – Collections”, which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund, Italy. The three-year Gradisca project, directed by Elisa Menon from the Theatre Group Fierascena,
aims not only to investigate such vacancies, but to illustrate them as provenance issues. The pri- which she founded in 2010, consisted of workshops with African immigrants hosted in one of the
mary focus of interest is the collection of the Archive of the Zentralinstitut für Theaterwissenschaft notorious recently abolished by the Government CARA Centro Accoglienza Richiedenti Asilo and
Central Institute for Theater Studies, founded 1943 as ideologically motivated scholarly studies. The of a performance acted in front of the audience of the small town at the end of each workshop.
in-depth investigation of a collection formed during the “National Socialist” era will contribute to Elisa Menon was born in the eighties she accomplished her training as an actress mainly through
the clarification of complex provenance concerns regarding questionable inventories, and will thus workshops run by some leading figures of the physical and devised theatre in Italy such as Emma
form the basis for restitution proceedings and the research of the historical origin of materials. An Dante, just to mention one of them. The Tuscany experience followed an apparently more traditional
important objective of the project is to develop a standardized mechanism for provenance issues. pattern: a group of African immigrants performed The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht in
This process is combined with the exploration of a collections history and the collection structure of the Italian translation by Cesare Molinari, the well-known theatre scholar, under the new title Story
uncatalogued archives. The goal is to conduct an historical analysis of the generated sources, based of a Villain who conquered the Power. Cesare Molinari is also one of the two leaders of the project.
on targeted digitizing, methods of the digital humanities and traditional archiving. The material to The other one, Massimo Luconi, began his career as a stage director in the seventies he is open to
be digitized implicates graphic and textual records. The contents include Jewish actresses as well as suggestions from the African tradition of griot. The play was first presented to the public in Florence
actors and theater documentation on exemplary NS-stage productions or “Grenzlandtheater”. The in January 20ween different cultures. How did the transformative power of performance affect both
questions regarding the material focus on investigating canonization processes in an historical con- experiences?
text. The history and logic of exemplified inventories are researched by means of linking them via
digital processes. Examining the ideology of the collection and the collecting process will form the Key Words
basis for the long overdue research of the historical provenance of materials that were most likely Migration from Africa to Europe. Transformative power of performance. Different cultures. Two
stolen, such as some of those integrated in the Archive in this case. cases.

Key Words
provenance issues, theater-historical collections, 1943-1945, digitizing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

212 213
 GP GP

Daniela Pillgrab Emilie Pine

University of Vienna University College Dublin

Daniela Pillgrab finished her doctorate in theatre studies at the University of Vienna in 2010. After that, she Emilie Pine is Associate Professor of Modern Drama at UCD. She has published widely on theatre and memory,
was visiting scholar at the School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University, China. She just fin- including the books The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture
ished the first part of her research project called Mimesis was a Greek Idea. Body Images in Performing Arts Palgrave, 2011 and forthcoming Performing Witnessing in World Theatre Indiana University Press, 2019. Emilie
in the Age of Globalization, which was carried out at the Department of Theater, Film und Media Studies in is Editor of the Irish University Review, founding Director of the Irish Memory Studies Network, and a mem-
Vienna, Austria, and at the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, US. ber of the Advisory Board of the Memory Studies Association. Her first collection of personal essays, Notes
Main areas of research:  Theatre, Dance and Performance Theories, Body Concepts, Performing Arts in East to Self, will be published by Tramp Press July, 2018. Emilie is PI of the major New Horizons project Industrial
Asia, Arts and Politics. Memories 2015-18, a digital and verbatim project on the Ryan Report on institutional child abuse. Emilie is a
current collaborator with the Conquesta de la Pol Sud theatre company, and is on the Advisory Board of the
From Being Alien To Alienation. Revisiting Brechts Revolutionary Irish Theatre Playography.
Conception of Theatre
Freedom of Movement? Site-specific performance and the role of
Bertolt Brechts theoretical and practical theatre work, his poems, his songs, his novels, his engage- the empathetic spectator in Irish theatre now
ment with film  – in short: his entire oeuvre cannot be considered without the social and political
ongoings of the time. Two world wars determine his life, force him to leave the Weimar Republic in This paper considers site-specific performances of intersecting marginalisation within Irish society,
1933 and to live in Exile until 1948, when he returns to Eastern Germany. In continuous collaboration focussing on migrant sex-workers, asylum seekers, socio-economically deprived communities, and
with others most prominently Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Walter Benjamin, Ruth Berlau, Margarete institutionalised children. The paper contends that through physical movement and the use of defa-
Steffin, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht seeks to revolutionize the art of theatre through new aesthetic miliarising performance tactics, site specific theatre can engage audiences to think differently about
and political techniques.  In my paper, I will ask how Brechts radical draft of an other view to the marginalisation and victimisation. Vardo 2014 by ANU Productions brought audiences into a range
world could be thought today:  In “Revisiting Brecht” through the lens of  contemporary perspec- of spaces in inner city Dublin – a bus depot, a brothel, a car, and a pub – where they met, talked
tives like those of Georges Didi-Huberman and René Pollesch, I would like to conceive of theatre as a with, and held hands with performers. A migrant sex worker flees her pimp, an asylum seeker learns
scenic process that reflects both history and historicity on several levels, calling for intervention and of his father’s death. At turns, the audience member is asked to answer questions, to give opinions,
critique. The conception of alienation obtains a central position: rather than being a purely formal to hold objects, or to help. In Dominic Thorpe’s Proximity Mouth 2015 audiences are led into the
artistic technique, it  marks a disourse of the political, where structures of powers are both analysed former Children’s Court in Dublin Castle. The room is darkened, a performer holds a mirror up, the
and attacked. audience are led by hand by a resident of the Direct Provision asylum system. A young girl reads a list
of names of those others born there. She asks if the audience member would like a boat or a plane.
Key Words Both of these productions require physical contact and verbal responses from audience members.
Bertolt Brecht, Exile, Alienation, Georges Didi-Huberman Both target audiences one by one or, at most, in groups of two or three. Both are site-specific and
ask the audience to reflect and engage with the history of the site, and the present ethical and social
crises being performed at these sites. How do these performances affect the spectator, and shape
the role of spectatorship? How do these performances exploit the idea of movement to pose ques-
tions about the ethics of movement? How do the performances engage with questions of freedom
and entrapment? How are these performances of memory and performances of presentness?

Key Words
Site-Specific Movement Empathy Spectatorship Performance Art
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

214 215
 GP GP

Mark Pizzato Clara-Franziska Plum

University of North Carolina at Charlotte Institut Theaterwissenschaft Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz
Mark Pizzato, MFA, PhD, is Professor of Theatre and Film at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His Clara-Franziska Plum is a research assistant for performing arts Theaterwissenschaft at the Johannes Guten-
publications include Beast-People Onscreen and in Your Brain 2016, Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The berg University Mainz. In her dissertation “Doing pop-, doing classical music, doing mixed genres” she exam-
Mind’s Staging of Gods, Angels and Devils 2011, Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain 2006, Theatres ines the cut surfaces of theatre, music and sociology. Lectures selection: 2. Collegium Musicum Populare at the
of Human Sacrifice: From Ancient Ritual to Screen Violence 2005, and Edges of Loss: From Modern Drama to University in Köln, 9th Midterm Conference of the RN-Sociology of the Arts in Porto Portugal, third Symposium
Postmodern Theory 1998. of the Social- and Cultural Science Institute in Mainz, 26. Conference of the society for popular music in Ham-
burg GfPM. She speaks English and Portuguese.
The “Other” of the Inner Theatre
Staging the Other. Santa Catarina the German part of Brazil.
How does “otherness” across political boundaries and group identities relate to the theatricality of
Self with various aspects of character performing for the Other as audience—through cooperation In the mid 19th century german farmers left their country to flee the hunger crisis in the Hun-
and competition with others? Especially with the migrant’s otherness, when viewed as a territori- srück-area to find a new future in the south of Brazil, where they were offered land for little money.
al invader or villainous terrorist, can the theatrical display of Self and group identities, onstage or In the state Santa Catarina for example, a lot of people have german ancestors. They grew up in
onscreen, evoke a catharsis of emotions and rasas with tragicomic insights altering such fearful pro- Brazil, spoke  german and brought their culture, like the typical german frame house architecture,
jections—or potentially backfire, increasing the melodramatic stereotypes and violent, competitive to brazil. The movie “Die andere Heimat. Chronik einer Sehnsucht.“ from  Edgar Reitz tells the story
drives? Drawing on research from my last three books, I consider psychologist Bernard Baars’s no- of poor farmers in Germany before the actual emigration to Brazil, always imagining the Other, the
tion of a “theatre of consciousness” in our heads, related to our evolutionary heritage and our daily foreign unknown country Brazil followed by the prospect of the stereotyped American Indian. The
performances, from childhood to maturity, with others as mirrors. I involve research on mirror neu- play “Brasilien 13 Kisten” from Karin Beier, named in an extended version with co-writer Elfriede
rons, emotion contagion, and oxytocin as a group-bonding neuropeptide, regarding primal drives Jelinek “Pfeffersäcke im Zuckerland”, was a transatlantic theatre project evaluated by the Goethe
and core affects—plus Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating. I also consider the Institut, performed by german and brazilian actors. Theatre in this case is not only for migrants but
research of Mario Beauregard on “cognitive reappraisal,” with changes in the brain while watching also from migrants who tell their own stories of emigration which is influenced by the hard work
sad, aversive, or erotic videos, and then reflecting on the experience. Using an inner theatre model cultivating the different nature of the land. Being a farmer in Germany was different than being a
of the brain developed from Baars’s Global Workspace Theory, with an inner “improviser/designer” farmer in Brazil which is why the national identity is strongly affiliated with the ground that has to be
and “scripter/critic,” as well as primal “stagehands” and memorial “audience” aspects of otherness fielded or mastered. The role of the “caboclos”, a hybrid of European and Indian ancestors in Brazil, is
within, I explore how current neuroscience connects with ancient and modern theatre theories, illu- staged as the Other that basically devaluates every ethnic that is not german. The play offers a critic
minating the spectator-character-actor relationship when a hero, group, and others appear onstage/ view on german migrants that instead of adapting to Brazilian culture, brought their own culture to
onscreen in certain genres. the foreign country and pass it on to the following generations. As a result migration evokes fluid
national identities. This study examines how they are performed in migrant theatre and how the
Key Words Other is staged in that context.
catharsis, rasa, neuroscience, psychology, mimetic theory, emotion contagion, cognitive reappraisal,
Global Workspace Theory Key Words
Brazilian and German Migration, Theatre of an for migrants, staging the Other
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

216 217
 GP GP

Bagryana Popov Pilvi Porkola

La Trobe University Uniarts, Helsinki

Dr Bagryana Popov is an award-winning theatre artist, lecturer and researcher who works in an interdisci- Professor in Artistic Research, Uniarts Helsinki. Performance artist and a writer. Researcher in a post doc
plinary way. She has collaborated with acclaimed professional artists, students and communities, working as research project How to Do Things with Performance?
director, actor, dramaturg and performance maker. She is interested in how artistic practice can speak about
social and political reality. Her research interests include embodiment, site-specific performance, politics and Questions of Translating in Library Essays
trauma and the ethics of representation. She completed her PhD in performance through University of Mel-
bourne. Much of her work has examined themes of displacement, refugee experience and trauma as a result The question of translating performance is multifaceted it concerns not only a language but also a
of war: Subclass 26A, Studies in Being Human, Cafe Scheherezade, Sarajevo Suite. Of Cows, Women and War,
context. In his text “Translator’s Task” Walter Benjamin 1997 problematizes translation of language
co-created with Ajak Kwai, told stories of Dinka culture, war and displacement. Internationally, Dr Popov has
directed for the National Theatre of Macedonia, Bitola, presented work in Finland and performed in Bulgaria by stating that fidelity in translating the words can never render the meanings they have in the
and Hungary. The dance work He is not here, created with Simon Ellis, was performed at Roehampton Univer- original. In the context of performance Diana Taylor 2003 has also problematized translation what
sity, UK, and the Red House, Sofia. Her current performance and environment project Uncle Vanya is a site-spe- is considered as a performance in one society might be a non-event elsewhere. Performances are
cific, durational version of Chekhov’s early environmentalist play, transposing it to the Australian landscape. Dr always located they have their contexts. Moreover, when thinking the question of translating from
Popov is a lecturer in theatre at La Trobe University, Melbourne. artist-researcher’s perspective there is one more layer how to talk or write about performance, so
how to translate action to words?   In this presentation, I focus on questions of translating in my
The Uncle Vanya project: Performing Chekhov in the Australian performance Library Essays #1 “Elephants are always drawn smaller than life”. The original version in
landscape Finnish was performed in an empty library building in a suburb of Helsinki. The translated versions in
English were realised in very different contexts: in a yard of University in Sao Paulo and at the busy
This paper will discuss the Uncle Vanya project; a site-specific, time-specific theatre project which city library in Turku. If we accept Benjamin’s proposition that you can’t translate the ‘essential’ thing
not only translates Anton Chekhov’s early environmentalist play from Russian into English, but trans- of an artwork, what was translatable then? And what for?
plants it into the Australian landscape, adapting it to local place and issues. Chekhov’s play Uncle
Vanya (A Portrait of Country Life in Four Acts) introduces themes such as deforestation, environ- Key Words
mental deterioration and climate change. Chekhov was passionate about forests and aware of their language, context, performance, translation.
ecological importance. In his plays the natural environment, social structures and human lives inter-
twine in a fragile ecology. Characters work on the land, ignore it, buy it, sell it: they are embroiled
in family struggles, while the environment is deteriorating. This contemporary version of the play
is adapted to and performed in regional Australia, in response to specific sites. The performance
takes place over two days, with each act of the play performed at the time of day indicated in Chek-
hov’s stage directions. Between acts, audiences interact with performers, are invited on walks in the
surrounding landscape and to talks about ecological and farming issues of the region. The project
opens up connections between location, environment and performance. The play, the place and the
performers enter into conversation, invoking place as a major player. The project dissolves bound-
aries between performance and reality, between audience and performers in the experience of the
landscape. The idea of site as an active player in the creation of meaning in the performance will
be developed referring to the ideas of Mike Pearson. I will also discuss embodiment and relation to
place, referring to the work of Gernot Bohme on atmosphere and embodiment.

Key words:
site-specific performance, translation, adaptation, embodiment, Chekhov, landscape
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

218 219
 GP GP

Ina Pukelyte Neda Radulović

Vytautas Magnus University, Kauna
Neda Radulović holds a BA in the dramaturgy from University of Arts in Belgrade, as well as the Erasmus
Ina Pukelytė  is Associate Professor of the Department of Theatre Studies, Faculty of Arts, KaunasVy- Mundus MA in International Performance Research (jointly hosted by the universities of Amsterdam, Bel-
tautas Magnus University. In the period of 2003-2007 Pukelytė was the Head of Kaunas State Drama the- grade and Warwick). For the past three years she has been working on her PhD thesis, researching the repre-
atre. She did her Master degree at the Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle University and defended in 2002 her doc- sentations of non-human animals and other non-human phenomena in the arts and culture (animal, vegetal
tor thesis at the Universityof Leipzig, with the publication of her thesis under the title Funktionen der and AI performances). She has been writing and presenting papers on such topics as feminist posthumanism,
Bildmedienin Theaterinszenierungen der neunziger Jahre des 20.Jahrhunderts Functions of visual medias critical animal studies and new materialism regionally (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia) and internationally (Germa-
in theatre performances of the nineties in the 20th century. Her other research interests are theatre his- ny, UK, Finland, Poland etc.). She has been working as dramaturg, on projects in Amsterdam (Rast theatre),
tory, theatre management, and cultural policies. She was participating in a project, directed by Polish re- London (Arcola theatre) and writing for film (Trolling, Passage), theatre (Painkillers, 60 seconds, Princess and
searchers, concerning organizational theatre system in Europe. The research was published in a book the pea), radio (Ana Del Rey, Iron Cross, Family picture); and translated several theatre plays (Naomi Wallace,
System organizacji teatrow w Europie in 2016. Recently she published a monography Jewish theatre in Lith- Steve Tešić, Tim Price).
uania During the Interwar Period. She also published a chapter in a book Stanislavski in the World, 2017.
Performing Trauma at the turn of the 21st century: Theatrical
Migrating Histories: Russian and Jewish actors in Lithuania during
responses to the (European) migrant crisis
the Interwar Period
Contemporary theatre practices face various challenges in the face of the migrant crisis, thus ex-
The presentation will deal with the questions of artist migration in Lithuania between the two world
amining the role and the effects of the theatre in regards to the community it is created in. Perfor-
wars 1919-1939. Lithuania was an independent country during the above mentioned period. It start-
mances that engage with the political are socially aware theatre forms, and they usually generate
ed to develop itself rapidly in the thirties and attracted Russian and Jewish artists that were escaping
a direct communication with the community, as they give voice to the vulnerable through different
Soviet Russia and moving towards further Western countries.  At one time, in the beginning of the
forms of (self) representations, by creating social bonds and advocating open discussion.
thirties, there was quite a significant group of foreign artists, who were coming to Lithuania direct-
We will look at the question of (i)migration and some theatrical responses to the most recent
ly from Moscow, in order to create performances in Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania at
(European) migrant crisis as both traumatic and political event that urge for (collective) re/action.
that time. Mikhail Tchekhov, Viktor Gromov, Andrius Oleka Zilinskas, Michael Gor, Miriam Cohen-
More specifically, this presentation will analyse three case studies dealing with the same topic
Bernstein, Vera Solovjova, just to mention a few,  all of them came from the Studios of Konstantin
and using trauma testimonies based in the real-life experiences and/or documentary material:
Stanislavsky and Yevgeni Vachtangov. They made an important impact to the newly born Lithuanian
Lampedusa Beach by Senka Bulić/ Lina Prosa (Kazalište Hotel Bulić, 2016), Compassion. History of a
national theatre. Their reception in the press was not always favorable.  Some of them were regard-
machinegun by Milo Rau (Schaubuhne, 2016), by Creation of human by Ivona Šijaković and Tijana
ed as a menace for  the national spirit of the country. Therefore all these artists did not stay in Kaunas
Grumić (Atelje 2012, 2018).
for more than some years and continued their careers abroad. The presentation will reveal ,what
We will analyse these three performances by employing the concepts like liminality (Turner, Fischer
factors were crucial for the short-living of their artistic careers in Lithuania and what impact they left
Lichte), which is an important notion in performance studies, stemming from anthropology and
nevertheless to Lithuanian national theatre.
tackling the interconnectedness as well as the fragile boundaries between the social and the ar-
tistic, between the ethics and aesthetics; empathy in relation to the testimony- one of the crucial
Key Words
concepts in trauma and memory theory (LaCapra, Hirsch, Oliver); homo sacer (Agamben) as one
Migrating actors, Lithuanian theatre, Soviet theatre, Jewish theatre, Interwar period
of the fundamental notions dealing with migration from both philosophical/ethical and political
perspective.   We will argue that these concepts are important starting points when thinking about
staging both the ongoing traumas, as well as representing the oppressed and subsided. Finally, we
will examine this suggestion in the interviews with the authors and present the discussion and the
findings.

Key words:
migrant crisis, homo sacer, liminality, empathy, socially engaged theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

220 221
 GP GP

Paul Rae A. Gabriela Ramis

University of Melbourne Olympic College

Paul Rae is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is author of Theatre & A. Gabriela Ramis is a Professor of Spanish at Olympic College. She earned a PhD in Theatre History, Theory
Human Rights, and Senior Editor of the journal Theatre Research International. His book Real Theatre: Essays and Criticism from the University of Washington, and an M.A. in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin. She
in Experience is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. was a member of a research team of Theater Studies at Universidad de la República, Uruguay. She has pub-
lished articles in Gestos and Latin American Theatre Review. Since 2009, she has been working on emigration
Performing Island Australia in a Time of Offshore Detention and Ibero-American theatre. Her research interest includes the use of Roman Jakobson’s poetic function when
verbal language is not the dominant code in drama and performance, and Spanish and Latin American theatre.
In 2001, the Australian government implemented the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’ to the arrival of
asylum seekers: they would be detained on islands both within and beyond Australia’s sovereign From Cuba to Colombia: Mérida Urquía’s Inward Journey Leading
borders. The situation continues, enjoying cross-party support. In 2015, there were 1792 detainees, to the Encounter with Her Audience
held mainly at centres on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea closed in October 2017, and on Nauru.
Australia’s artists have addressed this situation as part of a larger pushback by civil society. Many As a migrant, Cuban actress Mérida Urquía was subject to the regime of social motion that Thomas
performances have sought to represent or feature asylum seekers, and scholarship has focused on Nail understands as an expulsion through dispossession that is “neither entirely free nor forced.”
the ethics of the resulting representations. This paper considers recent performances that examine Nail’s approach to the migrant through the observation of movement as the migrant’s inherent at-
the implications of the policy for Australians’ own self-imagining. In so doing, I am concerned with tribute intends to acknowledge a social force that has traditionally been denied. In her uprooting,
the conditions of stasis that all parties – detainees, hosts, activists, governments – find themselves Urquía has experienced the process of throwing herself into the analysis of her identity, which is
in in this seemingly intractable situation. These performances include: the Malthouse Theatre’s undoubtedly tied to her profession. From the choice of her theater group name, Mi Compañía Te-
2017 production of Michael Gow’s classic Australian play Away 1986, which combined a nightmarish atro [My Company Theatre], to the production of La extranjera [The Foreigner], she has adopted
diagnosis of 1960s Australian society with a return to the beach as both restorative and sinister site introspection to analyze her condition of migrant and to find theatre as the element that defines her,
of Australia’s insularity This is Eden 2017, by Emily Goddard, which historicized the current situation as her identity, in a search that seems asocial. This asociality paradoxically connects Urquía to her
by focusing on Tasmania’s role as a nineteenth-century prison island and Samara Hersch and Lara audience as one of the “floating islands,” concept with which Eugenio Barba characterizes theatre
Thoms’ We All Know What’s Happening 2017, in which children presented a history of Nauru. These groups for which isolation and individual needs become worthy of their methodology.
and other performances demonstrate that although both the numbers of people, and the land mass-
es involved are relatively small, the rhetoric and actuality of the ‘Pacific Solution’ has produced a Key Words
constitutive reliance on the islands for Australia’s sense of its own sovereignty. This is a pressing autobiography – Colombia – Cuba – displacement – ethics – floating islands – identity – Ibero-Amer-
material problem for the detainees. But it is also an existential problem for Australians. The resulting ican theatre – memory – theatre of migrants – third theatre
performances capture the punishing ambivalence of being between migration and stasis.

Key Words
Theatre, Asylum, Islands, Detention
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

222 223
 GP GP

Janelle Reinelt Thomas Riccio

Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick University of Texas at Dallas

Janelle Reinelt, Emeritus Professor of Theatre and Performance at University of Warwick, was President of Thomas Riccio, Professor of Performance and Aesthetic Studies, University of Texas at Dallas. Artistic Director
the International Federation for Theatre Research 2004-2007. She has published widely on politics and per- of the Dead White Zombies, a post-disciplinary performance group, Dallas, Texas. Previous positions: Profes-
formance, receiving the ‘Distinguished Scholar Award’ for lifetime achievement from the American Society for sor, University of Alaska Fairbanks where he directed Tuma Theatre, an Alaska Native performance group Ar-
Theatre Research 2010, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki in 2014. Recent books are tistic Director, Organic Theater, Chicago Resident Director/Dramaturg, Cleveland Play House Associate Literary
The Grammar of Politics and Performance with Shirin Rai 20160 and Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and director, American Repertory Theatre. He has directed and devised work nationally and internationally, includ-
Performance with B.Dutt and S. Sahai 2017 ing works for LaMama, the New York Theatre Workshop, and Teatro di Roma. He works extensively in the area
of ritual, shamanism, and indigenous performance, working in Alaska, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Korea,
Problems Of and For the Left in Our Times India, Nepal, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia. He has taught, conducted research, and created performances
at the University of Dar es Salam Addis Ababa University University of Pondicherry and the Korean National
At a time when migration/immigration have become the great divisive issue of our times across University for the Arts, among others, His current performance ethnography project is with the Miao of south-
much of the globe, we need to understand what could constitute a relevant ‘Left’ politics of migra- west China where he is a Visiting Professor at Jishou University. The Republic of Sakha Siberia declared him a
Cultural Hero for his work for the National Theatre. He has published two books his academic writings have
tion. This paper will discuss three central problematics: how to understand populism viz a viz a no-
appeared in numerous international journals. www.deadwhitezombies.com www.thomasriccio.com
tion of ‘the people’ what is ‘democracy’ for migrant subjects, often stateless and what performance
contributes to these debates by virtue of its embodied and signifying affects. Staking out my position
with help from Chantal Mouffe, Etienne Balibar, and Jan-Werner Müller, I hope to challenge perfor-
Dead White Zombies: Open Ended Encounters
mance theory to articulate a more effective approach to advocating for progressive politics through Dead White Zombies is a post-disciplinary performance collective based in Dallas, Texas. In its sev-
performance. en years of existence it has experimented with a variety of site-specific events creating a distinct
identity, expression, and position within its community. The Dead White Zombies apply and re-mix
Key Words the vocabularies of theatre, performance art, installation, video and audio art, dance, ritual, and
Migration, Populism, Democracy, Performance drama therapy. Each performance event explores a deeper connection to the world and self in a
multicultural, post-industrial, and rapidly transforming economic, technological, and urban environ-
ment. Inspired by the performance models, methods, and expressions of a variety of indigenous
groups, DWZ seeks to re-establish and reanimate indigeneity for a globalizing world. DWZ views
performance a community event, an emotional, psychological, spiritual, mythic, and functional site
of agency and transformation. A site where the body travels through spaces to reiterate and recon-
sider its place in a mercurial, networked, modern reality. The paper will present a conceptual over-
view of DWZ performances using specific examples to illustrate how the work instigates open ended
encounters with audiences participating and completing the performance. Examples include, Flesh
World 2012 whole 2012, and Karaoke Motel 2014, a cycle of performances that respectively travel
through death, the afterlife and re-birth T.N.B. 2013 a death ritual of African-American male identity
in a former crack house DP92 2015 a spirit journey and devolution to the origins and essences of life
on earth and Holy Bone 2016-17, a durational performance of initiation, a performed preparation
for our global reality. Holy Bone began at a Taco restaurant and journeying through city streets to
fourteen sites in six buildings. DWZ was named the 2017 Theatre Company of the Year by the Dallas
Observer.

Key Words
Post-Disciplinary, Immersive, Site-Specific, Participatory, Interactive, Community, Experimental
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

224 225
 GP GP

Veronica Rodriguez Freddie Rokem

Royal Holloway, University of London and Canterbury Christ Church University Tel Aviv University & University of Chicago

I am writing a book, derived from my PhD thesis, entitled David Greig’s Holed Theatre: Globalization, Ethics Freddie Rokem is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre at Tel Aviv University, where he was the
and the Spectator, which is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan. I have published articles in Contemporary Dean of the Faculty of the Arts 2002-2006 and held the Emanuel Herzikowitz Chair for 19th and 20th Centu-
Theatre Review and Platform, among other journals. My most recent publication was a chapter in the book Of ry Art 2006-2016. He is currently the Wiegeland Visiting Professor of Theater & Performance Studies TAPS
Precariousness: Vulnerabilities, Responsibilities, Communities in 21st Century British Drama and Theatre 2017, at the University of Chicago. His more recent books are Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking Performance
edited by Mireia Aragay and Martin Middeke. I am member of the research group Contemporary British The- 2010 translated into Italian, Polish and German to appear in Hebrew Jews and the Making of Modern German
atre Barcelona www.ub.edu/cbtbarcelona. I teach at Canterbury Christ Church University and Royal Holloway, Theatre 2010, co-edited with Jeanette Malkin Strindbergs Secret Codes 2004 and the prize-winning book Per-
University of London. forming History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre 2000 translated into German
and Polish. He was the editor of Theatre Research International 2006-2009 and was a founding co-editor of
This is Our Song: Aeschylus’s “The Suppliant Women” in a Version by the Palgrave/Macmillan book series Performance Philosophy 2012-2017 also being among the founders of the
Performance Philosophy-network. He has been a visiting professor at many universities in the United States,
David Greig Germany, Finland and Sweden, and is also a practicing dramaturg.

The summer of 2015 came to be known as the beginning of an ongoing refugee crisis in Europe. On
Who’s there, when a stranger appears?
23 June 2016 the UK voted to leave the European Union. At different scales and in various contexts,
people globally seem to want to go, to leave, to look inside, to shut the door. This paper will dis- Suddenly a Stranger Enters My contribution to this panel will examine the dialectics between Migra-
cuss Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Women Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, 2016 in a version by David tion Movement and Stasis Standstill – as the conference theme proposes – on the basis of Walter
Greig, a play that is 2,500 years old and yet including refugees and a referendum. In both contempo- Benjamin’s discussion of “The Interruption” Die Unterbrechung in the second version of his essay,
rary politics and the play, refugees and referenda are connected. Although one cannot frame Brexit “What is Epic Theatre?” This essay, theorizing the work of his close friend Bertolt Brecht was one
uniquely around the question of immigration, those of us who followed the campaign, remember of the last texts Benjamin succeeded in publishing, about a year before he committed suicide in
about the horrifying murder of Labour MP Jo Cox at the hands of a right-wing extremist just days be- September 1940, while attempting to cross the border between France and Spain. In this essay
fore the referendum and have lived in the UK before, during and in the aftermath of the referendum Benjamin suggests that the sudden entrance of a stranger on the stage is paradigmatic for such an
know about some of the connections. In the play itself, refugees the suppliant women and a refer- interruption, a caesura through which movement comes to a standstill, creating an image which
endum are linked because the King of Argos, where the supplicants arrive all the way from Egypt Benjamin in The Arcades Project refers to as a “dialectics at a standstill”. In the Epic Theatre-essay
fleeing marriage, asks the people of Argos whether they want to offer sanctuary to these women, Benjamin describes a situation of violence – a State of Exception – where the “wife is just about to
who form the chorus in the play. Unlike the townsfolk in Lars von Trier’s film Dogville 2003, where pick up a bronze statuette and throw it at the daughter, the father is opening the window to call a
“a young woman, fleeing gangsters, seeks refuge in a small town” Secomb 2007: 142, the people of policeman. At this moment the stranger appears at the door. Tableau, as they used to say around
Argos decide to offer the women sanctuary without reluctance. Highlighting the myriad paradoxes 1900.” Who is this stranger? Where does he come from? And what induced his sudden appearance?
at work, including a clear instance of paradoxical hospitality the women can stay but are strongly ad- These are some of the questions I will raise, exploring the regulatory principles of entrances as an
vised to marry local men, this paper will explore notions of global indigeneity and will read the play aspect of the dispositive of the theatre – its own inherently unique system of signs – as well as in my
as an unforgettable, profound, plural act of mourning for the perished in the waters and the land. own dramaturgical practice with an Israeli production based on Kafka’s The Trial, called “Citizen K”.
Key Words Key Words
Ethics, Politics, Refugee, Women, global indigeneity the stranger the stage state of exception entrances
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

226 227
 GP GP

Kati Röttger Daniela Sacco

University of Amsterdam University of Milan

Since March 2007, Kati Röttger is professor and chair of the Institute of Theatre Studies at the University Daniela Sacco, with a degree in philosophy at the University of Venice and Siena, is currently research fellow
of Amsterdam. She had completed her doctoral studies at the Freie Universät Berlin, Germany, on Collec- in aesthetics of theatre at the University of Milan. She collaborates with the Centro studi classicA of IUAV in
tive Creation in the New Colombian Theatre. After having completed a postdoc at the ‘Graduiertenkolleg’ Venice. She is the author of a number of books, articles, reviews and play texts among her publications: Pen-
„Gender-Difference and Literature“ at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Germany in 1998, she siero in azione. Bertolt Brecht, Robert Wilson, Peter Sellars: tre protagonisti del teatro contemporaneo 2012 Al
had been appointed at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz Germany as Assistant Professor where she di là delle colonne d’Ercole. Hillman erede infedele di Jung 2013, Mito e teatro il principio drammaturgico del
wrote a ‘Habilitation’ about ‘Theatre as medium of vision’. Her actual research topics are International Drama- montaggio 2013 Goethe in Italia. Formazione estetica e teoria morfologica 2016.
turgy and Technologies of Spectacle.
The “theatre of emigration” Starting with Walter Benjamin and
Translating the tragic Bertolt Brecht
In The Island 1973 Athol Fugard’s collaborators Winston Ntshona and John Kani, both of whom cre- One of Benjamin’s definitions of Brecht’s epic theatre is ‘theatre of emigration’ W. Benjamin, The
ated the roles of political prisoners, play Antigone and Creon respectively. The drama concludes not country where it is forbidden to mention the proletariat, in “Understanding Brecht” [1966] 1998.
with death but with defiance, with Winston’s endurance despite his life sentence, John’s anticipated Not by chance, Benjamin and Brecht came to know each other mainly during their years of exile
release and, by implication, the amplification of his defiance in the world outside. In this scenario, in the Second World War 1933-40. In this state of re-calibration and unease, i.e., outside of their
the hero and her drama represent not so much the tragic sacrifice as commitment to struggle. The homeland, fleeing from a totalitarian ideology, in a condition of dislocation and alienation, that the
darkness of tragedy, the fatal outcome of the collision between hubris and necessity, appear to fade two deepen their mutual understanding of each other. This shared new reality is the starting point
in the light of prospective liberation. If the commitments of the antiapartheid movement encour- to reflect upon concepts such as estrangement, estrangement effect Verfremdungseffekt, quotation,
aged a theatre of resistance whence the suffering protagonist emerged transformed as an agent to translation/translatio, interruption, montage, iteration, re-staging, contextualization, and re-contex-
struggle, the achievement of democracy in the post-apartheid era might appear to have escaped the tualization. They are not only outcomes of the mutual influence between Brecht and Benjamin in
threat of catastrophe and thus the grasp of tragedy.”  In the light of these words of Loren Kruger, conceiving theatrical art, but also philosophical key terms to understanding more broadly, the pro-
written in her article “On the Tragedy of the Commoner: Elektra, Orestes and Others in South Africa, foundly intimate link between the condition of exile and the art of theatre.
2012 the lecture will explore the question of the translatability of the tragic.  This question will be
situated in the current context of the crisis of democracy, perceived as a deep crisis of the com- Key Words
munal body on a global scale. It focuses especially on “the tragedy of the commons” Hardin 1968. Brecht, Benjamin, Theatre of emigration, estrangement, quotation, iteration, translation, montage
While the notion of ‘the commons’ is grounded in a desire for the conditions necessary to promote
social justice, sustainability and happy lives for all, the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in turn reproduc-
es socio-economic injustices and hierarchical divisions of power, environmental catastrophes and
stressed-out, alienated lives De Angelis 2013. Especially against the background of migration due to
global asymmetries, thinking and practicing the commons becomes particularly urgent. What does
this mean for translations of the tragic?

Key Words
translation, tragedy, global asymmentries, commons
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

228 229
 GP GP

Yuko Saito-Nobe Hugo Salcedo Larios

Tokyo University of the Arts Universidad Iberoamericana - Ciudad de México

Professional Training and Employment: 2015 Part-time Lecture of College of Social Sciences, Ritsumeikan Doctor en Filología por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España, que con la tesis El teatro para niños en
University, Kyoto 2014 Researcher of Vietnamese Theatre, Japan Foundation 2013-2015 Research Fellow of México, obtuvo cum laude Ed. Porrúa / Universidad Autónoma de Baja California UABC, 2002 2ª. ed., UABC,
Institute of Current Business Studies, Showa Women’s University, Tokyo 2008-2013 Assistant Managing Direc- 2014. Concluyó también los estudios de posgrado en “Teoría y Crítica del Teatro” de la Universidad Autónoma
tor of UNIJAPANJapan Association for International Promotion of the Moving Image 1A study of Vietnamese de Barcelona, España. Autor de más de medio centenar de títulos para teatro y de un amplio número de
Cinema-Expression of the Exist and Conscience Master Thesis, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2002 2 artículos académicos y ensayos, algunas de sus piezas dramáticas han obtenido premios nacionales e interna-
Lavancement du Doi Moi réformes et les films viêtnamiens  Language, area and culture studies 12, 219-234, cionales, y se han traducido, transmitido para radio, publicado y/o representado en inglés, francés, alemán,
2006-03, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies  3 A study of Modern Vietnamese Theatre Japan Foundation, persa, coreano y checo. Ha sido profesor invitado en varia universidades mexicanas como también de otros
2014 4 The Identity of Modern Vietnamese Theater – The Example of Northern Vietnam, IV Baku International países como Francia, España, Marruecos, Estados Unidos, El Salvador, Ecuador y República de Corea. Fue
Theatre Conference, 2016 5 The State of Modern Vietnamese Theatre, The Example of Collaboration Between miembro del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes FONCA. Es
the Youth Theatre and Japan, 5th International Conference on Vietnamese Studies, 2017 actual miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores SNI del Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de
México CONACYT y académico de tiempo completo en el Departamento de Letras de la Universidad Iberoa-
Seeking the identity of Vietnamese modern theatre – a challenge mericana Ciudad de México.
of Le Khanh, actress that does not migrate
Insecurity and violence. Representations of immigration in the
Modern Vietnamese theatre has been formed and developed as the combination of the existing tra- theater of Mexico.
ditional theatres like Chèo or Tuồng and Western theatres.  In 13th century, the traditional theatre
in Vietnam had developed by the influence of Chinese opera. Then Vietnamese imported modern The geopolitical space in which is located the Mexican northern border, stands as a scenario where
theatre from France during the colonial era in 19th century. After the end of wars, some Vietnamese there is a violent encounter of equidistant, complex and contradictory forces. This previously only
artists had studied in Russia or Germany and brought the theatrical methods into their country. Viet- nodal point of transit which functioned as truncated aspirations Weir, now has become also port of
namese modern theatre flourished thanks to a gifted playwright Luu Quan Vu in late 1980s.  How- settlement physical site that summarizes longings, imaginary and frustrations place for the uproot-
ever, the change of economical policy made the Vietnamese theatre struggled to progress in 1990s. ing of identities, longing and nostalgia for the geographical distances also cultural and linguistic con-
It remains present although waning or gradually dying.  Le Khanh, is the most famed actress in frontation. In the «real» scenario, the nature of the theatre to realize his background and the arising
Vietnam, but not in the World. She lost chances to succeed overseas and had to remain at her birth- contradictions, because through his Aristotelian form either through some posdramatics expres-
place.  She is now the deputy director of the Youth theatre. But she has come back to the stage and sions, or with the use of strategies of performance than is they refer to autobiographical exposure,
is trying to find the theatrical identity of her country.  In the autumn of 2013, the Japan Foundation conventional logical rupture, narrative - experiential dramatic expression and action. The variety in
has invited performing artists from Vietnam, and in 2014 about 20 Vietnamese performing artists the way is a reflection of the multiplicity of interests dramaturgies of its authors and the urgency for
participated in a long-term training program in Japan that lasted for about four months. Currently, protesting the violence of everyday life. The intention of this paper is to point out some expressive
several projects that are being jointly produced with Japan are moving forward.  Vietnamese mod- shafts which Mexican drama said the complex issue of immigration into the United States, taking
ern theatre has been developed by Vietnamese migrated to overseas. Now it is now being turned into account work of reference of this dramatic literature. For the theoretical approach takes into
over a new leaf by the actress who never migrate. account spectacular and textual analysis of Ubersfeld and Pavis models, as well as some studies of
Alejandro Lugo, Roberto Herrera Carassou and Alfonso Alfaro around the border, studies of migra-
Key Words tion theories and meetings - misunderstandings in the historical relationship of Mexico with the
Identity, Aisa United States.

Key Words
Mexican Theatre, immigration, violence, representation, analysis of texts.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

230 231
 GP GP

J. Andrew Salyer Rosa Sanchez

University of Wisconsin-Madison Koniclab

Andrew Salyer is a writer, artist, performer, and curator. He has presented research papers at national and Rosa Sánchez Spain Multidisciplinar and multimèdia artist, perfomer and choreographer. Rosa has an extend-
international conferences including American Society for Theatre Research, Performance Studies International ed professional trajectory in relation with new technologies applied to artistic installations, performances,
at Stanford University, and Midwest Modern Language Association. He works in various media including dance and theatre. Founder and Artistic Director of the dance theatre company and contemporary creation
photography, text, performance, drawing, audio, video, sculpture, and installation. His work has been platform Kònic Thtr a Barcelona based artistic platform, specialized in contemporary creation at the border
published by Ugly Duckling Presse and Emmie Magazine, and staged at Hemsley Theatre. He has performed between art, new technologies and science, active in this field for over 25 years. Together with Alain Baumann,
at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Chazen Museum of Art, Stanford University, and University of she leads the conceptual, creative and technological lines of the company. The main focus of activity of Kònic
Paris-Sorbonne, and his work has been exhibited at the New York Photo Festival, Darling Foundry, University is the application of interactive technology to artistic projects, blend the visual and performing arts with evolv-
of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, and the New Media Caucus’ traveling video exhibition. He has curated ing new technologies, from digital interactive technology to using high speed telematics and video mapping.
exhibitions for the Gelsy Verna Project Space, Madison Jewish Artists’ Lab, and Big Car. He is also part of a Kònic has a strong international projection in Europe and Latin America. Their work has been shown in places
collaborative art-making team SALYER + SCHAAG; their work was recently selected for Madison Museum of such as: MACBA, Mercat de les flors -Barcelona Spain, ICA, London UK, V2 The Netherlands, ZKM Germany,
Contemporary Art’s Wisconsin Triennial. He received a B.F.A. from Herron School of Art/Indiana University Centre Pompidou/IRCAM France, CENART Mexico, File Festival, Sao Paolo Brazil, Thekh/Proekt Fabrika Mos-
and an M.F.A from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is currently a PhD student in Art Theory and cow Russia, EMPAC and 3 Legged Dog, New York US, RokBund Art Museum, Shanghai and DanStorm, Beijing
Practice at UW-Madison, researching the poetics and politics of falling in contemporary art. China, FILE Festival, Sao Paulo Brazil, Pier2, Kaohsiung TW. www.koniclab.info

Cultivated Failure: White Men and the Performative Politics of Networked performance. Performing across boundaries. Sample
Falling of woks by Konic Thtr
Can failure be a privilege? What does it mean for able-bodied white men to represent themselves Networked Performances are performances taking place simultaneously in two or more locations
falling? The whiteness and male-centeredness of contemporary art might be invisible to those that linked via internet connection. This relatively new form of performance is based on the possibility to
speak its codes without intentionality. Through the lenses of gender studies, whiteness studies, vi- share a common virtual space in real time between artists, researchers, engineers, living in separate
sual studies, and performance studies, this paper analyzes latent and manifest ideological meanings cities, countries or continents. The artistic content of the work is created between the different
within a photographic archive of white male gestures of falling. I identify a pattern of what I call partners in a collaborative fashion, and it is worth mentioning that although they are considered
cultivated failure as a practice and a trope in contemporary art, and I argue that white male con- as single works, by the very nature of the Networked Art, each node will present to the audience a
temporary artists Kerry Skarbakka and Patrick Manning perform a cultivated failure that, in varying different aspect, point of view, mise en scène, of the same performance. In this paper, we suggest
degrees, interrogates masculinity and throws whiteness into relief. Their work questions the need that the apparent complexity and disparity of this type of proposals is an opportunity for the col-
for a stable masculinity by rendering the artist tentatively falling, failing, or floating, and develops a laboration between artists and creators, researchers as well as engineers from different countries
visual counter-argument for how a gendered body should function. Actively resisting a hegemonic coming together to explore new possibilities in the field of the performing arts, and is a great con-
white masculinity, these disruptive gestures provide representational tactics to counter the strat- tainer to bring together different cultural approaches, as well as artistic sensibilities and technolog-
egies of straight white male dominance in cultural production. However, while these artists’ indi- ical solutions stemming from the variety of partners. We will present two projects in which Kònic
vidual gestures perform a collapse, suspension, or failure of straight white masculinity, patriarchal was involved, and show how this genre can provide opportunities for cross border, cross cultural,
and white supremacist institutions remain standing. Still, I argue that these photographs attempt a and cross disciplinary collaborations. In Near in the Distance 3 2017 we will see how musicians and
visual rupture of masculine ideals of stability by exposing repetitive gendered acts in a moment of dancers from Austria, Spain, Italy, Finland and India are brought together onto one stage in Linz.
collapse, and challenge dominant notions of how men allow (or disallow) themselves to perform. A project made possible through the transnational collaboration between the artists and network
Ultimately, I argue that Skarbakka and Manning use their privilege to perform a self-reflexive ex- engineers of the different NRENs involved. EVD58 2015 was shown simultaneously to audiences in
haustion, emptiness, and failure in late 20th century white masculinity – but provide the possibility Bahía, Mexico, and Barcelona. University department in Mexico, a dance company in Spain, and net-
of ethical performative interventions in the form of what I call cultivated failures, the pause, and the work engineers and software developers in Brazil were brought together to present one Networked
reorientation drive. Performance simultaneously in three continents.

Key Words: Key Words:

gender, race, politics and aesthetics, visual studies, performance studies, contemporary art, con- Networked Perormance, Cross border collaboration, Performance and New Media
temporary performance, photography, conceptual art, failure, falling, pause, reorientation.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

232 233
 GP GP

Imanuel Schipper Ruth Schor

Rimini Protokoll Arts & Social Change - MSH Hamburg Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo

Imanuel Schipper is a lecturer and researcher at different universities and art academies in Germany and Swit- Ruth Schor currently works as Associate Professor at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo where she
zerland. He also works as a dramaturg for the well-known German Performance group, Rimini Protokoll with primarily focuses on the reception of Ibsen in different cultural spheres of the German-speaking avant-garde.
whom, over many years, he has developed a contemporary way of documentary theatre as intervention, as Prior to that, she completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford with a thesis on the avant-garde theatre
political think tanks. Most recently he has been the dramaturg for „ State 1-4” a tetralogy on postdemocratic scene of late nineteenth-century Berlin. She further holds an MA in Text and Performance Studies from King’s
phenomenas, commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and four major theatres in Germany and College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Switzerland. Imanuel Schipper works on the interface between scientific research, teaching, and artistic prac-
tice. He works to analyse such terms as “theatricality”, “performativity”, “dramaturgy”, “staging”, “reception” A new intimacy? Ibsen and the evolving theatre-going culture of
and “mediality” – coming from the theatre studies – beyond the boundaries of the theatre, for example in
design, urban design, scenography and curation. He holds a deputy professorship on Performance Studies and
late nineteenth century Berlin
Dramaturgy at the Departement Arts & Social Change at the Medical School Hamburg (MSH). Is on the board
of directors of Performance Studies international (PSi) and finishing his PhD on „Relational Dramaturges” at The uncanny relevance of Ibsen’s work across cultures engages scholars and audiences until the
Leuphana University Lüneburg. Recent Publication: present day. How the works of this Norwegian author have captured the global imagination re-
- Rimini Protokoll: Staat 1-4 (2018). mains a continuous source of discussion. This paper takes one of the most well-known sites of this
- Performing the Digital - Performativity and Performance Studies in Digital Cultures (2016). “Ibsen-effect” – namely the city of Berlin in the late nineteenth century – and aims to broaden the
notion of cultural ex- change by providing an analysis of the theatre-going cultures surrounding it.
By looking at literary matinees, membership clubs and newly intimate theatrical spaces, it aims to
From global research to walking audiences. Migration in Rimini highlight the multifaceted layers through which culture can travel, and thereby reshape fundamental
Protokoll’s State 1-4 notions of human interaction.

In their most up to date production, the tetralogy State 1-4 (2016-18), Rimini Protokoll focuses on Key Words
post democratic phenomena such as the global network of intelligence, construction sites and lob- theatre, avant-garde, modernism, cultural history, late nineteenth century, Berlin
byism, digitalisation of democracy and the interweaving structures of global companies and politics.
For each of this rather political contents a special setting not only for an aesthetic space experience
was constructed but also an unique way of how to address, organise and guide the audience through
the theatre event. Different strategies of participation and interaction come into action in order to
generate an immersive experience. This paper will discuss the different dramaturgies of staging the
publics with the help of theories of Rancière and others. The movements of the spectators is strongly
linked to many migrating motions of the research, the production, the lives of the protagonists and
the travelling of the show itself.

Key Words
audience participation immersive political performance dramaturgy interaction digital migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

234 235
 GP GP

Mikko-Olavi Seppala Azadeh Sharifi

University of Helsinki Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich

Dr. Mikko-Olavi Seppälä defended his thesis on the formation of the Finnish workers’ theatres at the University Azadeh Sharifi is a researcher, writer and activist. Since October 2016 she is a PostDoc researcher at the the-
of Helsinki in 2007 and was assigned docent of theatre research in 2010. His research interests cover political atre department of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich where she is currently working on Postmigrant
theatre and popular theatre. Currently he is writing a book on the history of Finnish workers’ theatres and do- Theatre in German Theatre History – DisContinuity of aesthetics and narratives. From 2014 until 2015, she was
ing research on Finnish-Estonian theatre relations in a joint project with the universities of Helsinki and Tartu. a Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, Freie Universität Berlin
Previous she was part as a researcher at the Balzan Prize Project “The Role of Independent Theatre in Contem-
Actress in exile - Liina Reiman in Finland, 1944-61 porary European Theatre: Structural and Aesthetic Changes” by Prof. Dr. Manfred Brauneck and the Interna-
tional Theatre Institute ITI, Germany.
The paper discusses the Estonian actress Liina Reiman 1891-1961 who fled to Finland in 1944 and
lived in exile until her death in 1961. A celebrated tragedienne and heroine in the 1920s, Reiman’s “Frutomania” - Dramaturgies of queer-postmigrant performances
career had setbacks in the comedy-driven early 1930s. In her quest for a larger audience, Reiman in Germany
successfully performed and toured Finland several times during 1928-37 and eventually performed
some roles in Finnish. Fleeing the Soviet occupation along with tens of thousands Estonians in Au- Frutomania describes an obsession, a lust for life and its translation into the arts. It describes an
gust 1944, Reiman settled in Finland and was given the possibility to perform Franz Grillparzer’s approach to German and postmigrant theatre, life in the diaspora and safe spaces in queer commu-
“Sappho” at the National Theatre of Finland. Finland having lost the war, the situation of Estonian nities of color. The term was invented and is used by Frutas Afrodisíacas, a young queer performance
refugees in the country was politically delicate and most of the Estonians proceeded to Sweden. group from Berlin consisting of people of color. All members of the group received a kind of postmi-
Unable to set foot at the main professional theatres of Finland, Reiman was able to rely on private grant “theatrical education” during their involvement in the artistic work of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse
support and tour minor theatres of the country also directing her own plays, most notably Karel Ca- Berlin for several years. In their performance, also named Frutas Afrodisiacas, the “Früchtchen”
pek’s “Mother” at six different theatres during the years 1945-47. Displaced as a performing artist, as they sometimes call themselves link themselves to “West-Berlin’s Tunten “fag” movement of
Reiman contributed in instructing young actors. The theatre educational system in Finland being the 1980s” to investigate “commonalities, contradictions, and themselves” and explore the queer
largely unorganized, Reiman’s guest directions had a clear educational character. Appraised for her heritage within the queer community of color. Their “quadruple-lingualism”, a mix of Spanish, Por-
cultivated voice technique and affective emotional expression, she was invited to teach in the ad- tuguese, English and German spoken on stage, their cross-dressing – referencing Carmen Miranda
vanced theatre courses and in the Theatre academy. For the afterwar Finnish audiences, Reiman also and YouTube-videos of brick shoe dancers as their source of inspiration – as well as their theoretical
carried and manifested the fate of independent Estonia. background in Queer and Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies creates a unique aesthetic framing for
German theatre. In my presentation I will examine representation of queer black and people of col-
Key Words or within German theatre along the performance by Frutas Afrodisiacas. I will focus on dramaturgies
artist in exile, World War 2, Estonia, Finland, Liina Reiman which are linked to postmigrant theatre, but also to political/activists strategies of resistance and
empowerment as well as personal experiences of migrants, refugees and/or marginalized subject.

Key Words
Migration, Post-migrant Theater, Multilingualism, Queer post-migrant Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

236 237
 GP GP

Will Shüler Anna Sica

Royal Holloway, University of London University of Palermo

Dr Will Shüler is a senior teaching fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. Will recently published his Anna Sica is a PhD Associate, full professorship, Professor of Theatre at Palermo University, a distinguished
chapter,“The Greek Tragic Chorus and Its Training for War: Movement, Music and Harmony in Theatrical and scholar in History of Theatre, with special reference to nineteenth and twentieth century drama, as well as act-
Military Performance” in Palgrave’s War and Theatrical Innovation 2017 and will be curating an event on ma- ing and directing. She also specialises in Commedia dell’Arte, contemporary Italian drama and in North-Amer-
terials and digression in the Tate Modern Tate Exchange space in May 2018. ican and Russian theatre. Particularly, in her late books Uptown-Downtown: New York Theatre from Tradition
to Avant-garde Milan, 2005 and articles on Italian contemporary theatre La drammaturgia degli emarginati
A Promise to Artemis: Hippolytus, Male Virginity, and Queer nella recente scena italiana Rome, 2007 and on Anton Chekhov ‘s Poetic and Social Realism Cambridge UK,
2008, she proposes a new approach to acting and directing working directly on the effects of politics and
Spectatorship in the 5th Century BCE poetry in drama. She is who has discovered the Eleonora Duse’s personal Library, now housed as The Murray
Edwards Duse Collection, Cambridge. She is the author of “The Murray Edwards Duse Collection” 2012. She is
Not many laws governed the theatre of ancient Athens, but there was one which specifically affected who has discovered and deciphered the Italian acting code system of the drammatica. She has also published
the rehearsal process. Choral training was to conclude before sundown, so that young chorus men “La drammatica metodo Italiano: trattati normative e trattati teorici” 2013, “The Italian Method of la dramma-
could walk home in the daylight. This law was instituted to protect these ephebes the age-class of tica”2014, “L’Arte massima”, vol. I p. I 2017, and significant essays and chapters on Italian contemporary dra-
men whose beards had started to come in from sexual assault. The existence of this law evidences maturgy and Commedia dell’Arte. She has also published ‘Eleonora Duse’s Library: the disclosure of Aesthetic
a popular sexual desire for the performers and points towards a queer desire in the spectatorship Value in Real Acting’ in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 37/2, Winter 2010.
of their performances, which I refer to as a “male gayze”.  This paper reads the ancient performance
of the Hippolytus of Euripides through the lens of the queer Athenian male spectator. King Theseus’ Actor’s Art and Politics as/through/beyond Borders: Tommaso
son, Hippolytus, makes a vow of chastity to the virgin goddess of the hunt, Artemis. While some read Salvini’s “Hamlet” and the Stage of the Unification
this as a foil to Phaedra’s lust, the promise to not marry is also a demonstration of preference to his
huntsman. These men appear from lines 59-112, dance, and sing a paean to Artemis. The brief inclu- The drammatica is an Italian theatrical declamatory system that has been com¬pletely neglected
sion of this chorus is exceptional in two aspects. Not only is it uncommon to include two choral roles since the dawn of the twentieth century nevertheless it formed the foundation of the Italian national
in a tragedy the perform as Troezenian women for the remainder of the play, but it is also rare to theatre and played a remark¬able role in the history of eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century Euro-
have a chorus of young men. Hippolytus, these young men, and the Athenian citizens who perform pean the¬atre. It featured a scale of intonations and gestures which were represented by symbols
them are all ephebes, the age at which they might socially and physically align themselves with an of notation. Some of those symbols are still preserved and readable in actors’ prompt-books. Now
older male patron, erastes. This performance invites a male gayze of the Attic spectator and will be that the Italian method of the drammatica has been defined as a distinctive way of acting, we are
examined through this lens alongside promising chastity to a deity, virility in the Festival of Dionysus, able to investigate on the literary and historical actors’ interpretations of the most relevant plays
and the fetishizing of male virginity in ancient Greece. of their repertory. And in particular, we are able to analyse the literary and political role actors and
actresses had in their times. The drammatica let Italian actors and actresses act in Italian all over
Key Words the world, migrating their cultural and ideological environments and perspectives. The drammatica
Euripides, Hippolytus, Queer Spectatorship, Festival of Dionysus consisted of drawing acting from prosody, and combining metrical structure and gesture and expres-
siveness. It was embodied in symbols that represented phonological features such as pitches, into-
nations, stress, emphasis, vocal complexion. It subsisted as a rich interactive scheme of key-voices
and key-gestures. Most of the Italian actors’ and actresses’ prompt-books still include the declam-
atory symbols that are still readable, and still contain not only the reach and complex repertory of
intonations that reveal us the extraordinary skillful structure of an actor’s art, but, what is even more
reliable, that the accomplished crucible of vocal combinations and extended emphasis enlighten us
the leading actor’s cultural and literary interpretation of each production. We intend to investigate
the declamation symbols of some of the key-scenes of the 1860 Hamlet that Tommaso Salvini per-
formed in the evening of 14 July in Naples, and retrace the political events of those days in South
of Italy. The Garibaldinians were reaching Naples after landing in Marsala. We’ll see how Salvini
chained the variations of the key-voices to enforce the meaning of each scene in the attempt to join
acting to real time, to history. I will read fragments of 1860 Salvini’s prompt-book of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet in which the declamation symbols by Salvini are still readable. In particular, I will read from
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Salvini’s prompt-book act I, scene I and act I scene V.

Key Words
Salvini, acting, unification

238 239
 GP GP

Leah Sidi Sigridur Lara Sigurjonsdottir

Birkbeck, University of London University of Iceland
Leah is a PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London. Her thesis explores Sarah Kane’s dramaturgy in rela- Degrees from the University of Iceland: B.A in Comparative Literature in 1997 final thesis on a production of
tion to developments in psychiatry and psychoanalytic theory from the 1980s to the present. Before beginning John Fords “Tis Pity She’s a Whore” at the National Theatre of Iceland in 1996 M.A. in Comparative Literature,
the PhD, Leah worked supporting student activists, especially in the areas of mental health and disability 2004 final Thesis on formulas in playwriting M.A. in Practical Editorship and Theory of Publication. From 2009:
rights. Her first publication, ‘A Director in Search of a Narrative: Reality-Testing in Katie Mitchell’s Cleansed’ is A PhD student at the University of Iceland researching performance of dissidence in Iceland after the econom-
available in Performance Research journal. ical collapse in 2008. 2014: “Send in the clowns” A paper published in Nordic Theatre Studies.  Playwriting:
Have written five full length plays that have been produced and two in collaboration with others. Produced
A post-asylum dramaturgy? Displacement and Community Care as by Hugleikur, University of Iceland Student Theatre, The Theatre Company of Fljótsdalshérað and Frú Norma.
Have also written twelve short plays, all produced by Hugleikur. A member of the Icelandic Dramatists Union
a context for Sarah Kane’s “Crave” (1998) since 2001. A member of IFTR since 2010. A member of the working group Performance in public space since
2012. A student member of the executive committee of IFTR 2013–2015.
The 1990s saw a radical shift in the conceptualisation and delivery of psychiatric care in the UK.
Following the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, funding and services relating to long-term care
of mentally ill people were moved out of NHS Trusts, into the joint jurisdiction of local authorities, The immigrant women of #metoo in Iceland #höfumhátt and
charities, and private sector care providers. This deinstitutionalisation policy was widely perceived anonymity
as causing an exodus of vulnerable psychiatric patients out of hospitals, into uncertain urban sites.
Vagrancy and displacement replaced the asylum as the dominant images associated with psychiatric The immigrant women of #metoo in Iceland #höfumhátt and anonimity  In this paper the performing
subjectivity throughout the decade. The first production of Kane’s Crave staged experiences of men- of the #metoo revolution in Iceland will be looked at, in particular the shocking and horrifying stories
tal breakdown in a post-asylum society. Its dramaturgy explored the structure of pathological mental from immigrant women in Iceland. The autumn of 2017 Iceland found itself without government.
suffering at a moment in which assumptions surrounding psychiatric identity were being reconcep- Like the year before. The reason: corruption. Also, like before. Except this time the scandal did not
tualised along ideas of displacement and dislocation. Incorporating the speakers’ paradoxical sense involve money but the prime ministers father‘s involvement in restoring honour of a convicted child
of movement and restless stasis into the staging of the production itself, Kane and director Vicky abuser. One of the victim‘s father started a discussion on the matter in the media and public sphere
Featherstone created a performance that integrated these new spatial conditions of psychiatric care under the hashtag Höfum hátt or Let‘s be loud. This resulted eventually in a resignation of the gov-
into the psychic lives of the characters themselves. By examining newly available archival material ernment and a new congressional election in October. The autumn of 2017 also brought #metoo and
on Crave and its first production, alongside arguments surrounding the Community Care Act, this an avalance of stories told by women from various aspects of Icelandic society. Started by women
paper demonstrates Kane’s unique dramaturgical reimagining of the relationship between site and in politics, it spread to many other professions such as women in the publishing industry, women in
mental pain in the context of mass psychiatric displacement. Crave responded to the new-found theatre and film and in the beginning of this year some shocking stories came to light from women
dislocation of the mentally ill in the 1990s, one might say their newly migratory status, by suggesting in sports and immigrant women.  Certain performative aspects will be looked at in particular. For an
that mental pain takes its structure from the socio-politically contingent ‘setting’ in which it takes example a reading of selected stories that was held at the City theatre in Reykjavík and streamed on
place. In doing so she suggests a new kind of ‘dramaturgy’ of mental illness for the post-asylum age, the internet from three places at once in November.
characterised by directionless movement.
Key Words
Key Words #metoo, immigrant women, gender politics, politics of migration
dramaturgy, displacement, psychiatry, Kane
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

240 241
 GP GP

Ajeet Singh Brian Singleton

BPS Women University Khanpur Kalan Trinity College Dublin

Dr. Ajeet Singh earned his Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and wrote his doctoral thesis on Brian Singleton is Samuel Beckett Professor Drama & Theatre, and Academic Director of The Lir – National
European Experimental Theatre and Ancient Indian Theatre. He has been teaching as Assistant Professor since Academy of Dramatic Art. As well as publishing widely on orientalism and interculturalism in performance,
August 2008 in the Dept. of English, BPSMV, Khanpur Kalan, Sonipat, India. His teaching experience ranges most notably in the monograph Oscar Asche, Orientalism & British Musical Comedy Praeger, 2004, and inn
from undergraduate to postgraduate levels covering varied fields of literary studies like Contemporary Literary several publications on the work of Antonin Artaud, Ariane Mnouchkine & the Théâtre du Soleil, his most re-
Theory, Indian Poetics, Cultural Studies and Western Literary Theory and Criticism. He has been actively in- cent monograph contribution to theatre research is his monograph Masculinities and the Contemporary Irish
volved in guiding research and other academic activities. As an academic, along with intensive teaching work, Theatre Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. He is former Editor of Theatre Research International Cambridge University
he has been doing research work in terms of publishing research articles in different research journals and Press and former President of the International Federation for Theatre Research. He serves on the Editori-
presenting research papers in different national and international conferences. Recently, he has presented his al boards of New Theatre Quarterly and Contemporary Theatre Review and is Associate Editor for Theater
research paper based on a comparative study of Indian theatre and Brazilian theatre in IFTR-2017 Conference, Journal. In 2012 he won the ATHE Excellence in Editing Award along with Janelle Reinelt for their book series
Sao Paulo, Brazil. Moreover, one of his research papers has been selected for presentation and recommended ‘Studies in International Performance’ published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is currently editing a new book
for inclusion in the proceedings of World Congress of Philosophy to be held in University of Peking, Beijing, series with Elaine Aston entitled ‘Contemporary Performance InterActions’ for Palgrave Macmillan and most
China. recently published a monograph on contemporary Irish theatre entitled ANU Productions: The Monto Cycle
Palgrave Macmillan 2016.

Negotiating the choice between Migration and Stasis: (reviewing Migrating Histories & The Others in the Archive: CoisCéim & ANU
multi-locational positioning of Self in Biljana Srbljanović’s Productions’ “These Rooms”
“Belgrade Trilogy” and “Family Stories: Belgrade”
This paper will focus on the award-winning 2016 co-production of These Rooms as an act of remem-
Migration, with its possible socio-cultural implications, is not just a contemporary phenomenon ap- bering the testimonies of women in the final days of the 1916 revolution in Ireland, colloquially
pearing in European civilization only rather different civilizations of the world, since time imme- known as The Rising. As an act of rebellion against colonial British rule it fell short of a revolution,
morial, have been experiencing this phenomenon due to different political, economic and cultural was poorly timed, organized, sustained, and doomed to failure. Nevertheless its aspiration for a so-
reasons. Since migration is the total result of the internal dynamism of any civilization where dif- ciety of equality in its official Proclamation of an independent republic has long since captured the
ferent social, political, economic forces work simultaneously, therefore, it may not be seen as a imagination of Irish citizens. In the final act of the week-long insurrection, male civilians were shot
phenomenon just happening externally in any culture. Migratory movements in human cultures by the British army in the North King Street massacre in Dublin. The testimonies of their surviving
have triggered a cultural transformation whose traces are perceptible in all aspects of life including relatives, mostly women, at a subsequent military Tribunal were censored and stored in the Brit-
production, distribution and reception of art and creative expression. As an art form theatre has also ish National Archives in London. Their release to military historians in 2016 fuelled a performative
been experiencing the structural and aesthetic changes due to these migratory movements. Con- remembering through installation-like scenes in These Rooms that showed how the history of po-
temporary East European theatre in its aesthetic and structural form may serve as an appropriate litical and social action configured as the work of Others migrated through time and place through
example of the cultural transformation. After the end of Balkan wars in 1990s, theatre makers of dif- memory in light of their absence in recorded histories of either Irish or British national narratives. As
ferent Balkan states have dealt with this multi-dimensional cultural phenomenon in their theatrical spectators wandered through site-responsive scenes and through multiple narratives, they mean-
productions. Biljana Srbljanovic, Serbia’s leading playwright in her plays deals with the theme of the dered through the conflicting annals of history of a significant national event. With the focus on the
dilemma of choice between ‘stay and fight’ on the one hand and ‘leaving in search for a normal life’ affect of the event and its subsequent suppression on its survivors, spectators were invited to map
on the other. This paper focuses exclusively on three select plays of Biljana Srbljanovic showing the memories as feelings and stir up the stasis, secrecy and suppression of the document that had been
conflict which arises in the lives of her characters due to the choice they have made. forcibly migrated to another nation’s archive.

Key Words Key Words

Migration, Culture, Balkan, Creative, Stasis etc. Testimony Archives Remembering Suppression Migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

242 243
 GP GP

Varvara Sklez Zofia Smolarska

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw

Varvara Sklez is a research fellow and a lecturer in the School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the Zofia Smolarska 1987 graduated from the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, where she now works
Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. She also teaches in the Mos- as a lecturer at the Department of Theatre Studies. An author of a book “Rimini Protokoll. Blind Alleys in Par-
cow School of Social and Economic Science. She holds an MA degree in Cultural Studies from Russian State ticipatory Theatre” 2017. Member of Polish Theatre Journal’s editorial team. Deputy chair of the Polish Associ-
University for the Humanities and MA degree in Public History from the University of Manchester obtained ation for Theatre Studies PTBT. The participatory aspect of the creative process is among her main interests in
in the Moscow School of Social and Economic Science. Her current research interests are focused on the con- practice as well as in research. An urban performer and author of urban social projects, she has collaborated
temporary Russian documentary theatre and the issues of history and memory in theatre. She was published with the Rimini Protokoll collective and with Edit Kaldor on participatory theatre projects. She has worked as
in Russian on the issues of documentary theatre, performance documentation, Jerzy Grotowski’s theatre and an assistant for director Erling Jóhannesson. She is working on a doctoral dissertation about the situation of
public history. Being one of the Public History Lab founders, she is at the organizing committee of the annual theatre craftsmen and the organizational dysfunctions in Polish state theatres after the political transforma-
Public History in Russia conference. She participatеs in the activities of the Theatrum Mundi Independent tion.
Theatre Research Lab, and among other matters works as the contributing editor for the Labs website http://
theatrummundi.ru/english/. Blind Alleys of Participatory Theatre. Migrations and Migrants in
Rimini Protokoll’s “Situation Rooms”
Past is Another Country? Performing Documents in Contemporary
Russian Theatre The paper is the author’s relation from participation in the work on a multiplayer video game of the
Rimini Protokoll theatre collective, Situation Rooms premiered in 2013. In the production, ‘experts
Post-Soviet space is carved with all sorts of borders, from political and social ones to the one that of everyday life’, including refugees and migrants, were invited in the roles of narrators of their
constitutes its definition and refers to understanding its own past. Russian theatre of 2010s is active- own video tales connected with military conflicts. The audience, holding iPads, were taken on a
ly rethinking this past by involving all sorts of sources such as archival materials, cultural artifacts and video-tour around an immersive set which depicted the net of global weapon trade.  The author
verbatim interviews. There has been a shift in Russian documentary theatre from understanding a of the paper, convinced that the value of a work of art depends on the method it was created and
document as a reality equivalent to exploration of variety of ways a document may function in a pro- on the social relations of production, describes the casting phase, rehearsals and the organization
duction. As I am going to argue, these changes in ‘document’ interpretation by theatre practitioners of the big-budget production and shows their artistic implications. She concentrates on two groups
are accompanied by a more thorough understanding of the Other of the Post-Soviet society.  Looking of experts: a South Sudan journalist living in Germany and a refugee family from Libya. Through an
back to the Soviet past as a source of reflexion about the present necessarily brings about thinking embedded research the author first shows how the collective trained the experts as story tellers and
about historical events that radically reshaped territories, social groups and single lives, such as video makers, using neocolonial schemes. Then, she analyses how the rehearsal process and the
October revolution, collectivization, Stalinist repressions and Second World war. All of these events post-production of the video material programmed critics’ feedback, but also triggered a resistance
this way or another brought about massive displacement of millions of people as well as reshaping in audience which, in several cases, refused to ‘migrate’ and chose a more static form of perception.
their identities. Therefore understanding oneself’s identities today demands tracking of the role of
these spacial and inner ‘migrations’ in shaping these identities. Work of theatre director Anastasia Key Words
Patlay is one of the most vivid examples of this trend. Her production Kantgrad co-authored with participatory art, documentary theatre, neocolonialism, refugees, embedded research
Nana Greenshtein and Mikhail Kolchin, 2016 is based on the oral history archive of interviews with
Soviet settlers who moved to the prior German town of Koenigsberg later renamed into Kaliningrad
and explores the brief postwar period of their coexistence with German civilians. Her another pro-
duction, Peasant’s Diary 2016, is based on the diary of the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Belous, who
documented horrors of the collectivization and the famine of 1931-1933. In Kantgrad stories of the
Soviet settlers and the German civilian are used to show possibilities of a peaceful postwar coexis-
tence as well as traumatizing effects of people’s displacements. In Peasant’s Diary the very attempt
of reading a document written in a very different social and cultural context happens to be a source
of an actor’s identification with his family history. I am going to suggest that the ways documents
function within these productions uncover a demand for creating a distance to the past as well as
performative strategies of its overcoming.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Russian theatre, documentary theatre, Soviet history, displacement, 2010s

244 245
 GP GP

Sukanya Sompiboon Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei

Chulalongkorn University University of California Los Angeles

Assistant Professor Dr. Sukanya Sompiboon is currently Head of Department of Speech Communication and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei BA Pomona College, MA, PhD University of California, Santa Barbara is Professor Emer-
Performing Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. In 2012 she completed her PhD in Drama entitled The ita of Theatre, UCLA. A specialist in postwar Japanese and intercultural performance, she is also a playwright
Reinvention of Thai Traditional-Popular Theatre: Contemporary Likay Praxis at University of Exeter, UK. Her re- and director. Sorgenfrei was a Research Fellow at the International Research Institute in Interweaving Per-
search areas include tradition-based contemporary theatre and reinvented popular performances in Thailand. formance Cultures at the Free University, Berlin, Germany. In 2014, the Association for Asian Performance
Sukanya Sompiboon has actively presented articles at academic conferences both international and national honored named her a Founding Mother of Asian Theatre Studies. She is the author of Unspeakable Acts:
levels. She has also published her research articles in different academic journals and conference proceedings. The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan University of Hawaii, 2005, co-author of The-
“From ‘Naga Wong’ to ‘The Message’: the Intercultural Collaboration and Transformation of Makhampom’s atre Histories: An Introduction Routledge, third edition, 2016 and the author of sixteen plays including the
Experimental Likay Performance”, is published as a book chapter in a book entitled Embodying transformation: award-winning Medea: A Noh Cycle Based on the Greek Myth. Her most recent play, Ghost Light: The Haunt-
transcultural performance. 2015 edited by Maryrose Casey, Monash University Publishing. Her article entitled ing co-conceived with director Penny Bergman, fuses Macbeth with the kabuki Yotsuya Ghost Tales. She has
“Likay Goes To Japan” was published in SPAFA Journal: Contemporary Thai Theatre Volume 22 Number 1 Jan- published numerous articles, essays, and translations, has presented over 100 conference papers, keynotes,
uary - June 2012. Currently, she is working on her research “Performing Process of Intercultural Performance and talks, and has directed 40 plays. Sorgenfrei is Editor of the Association for Asian Performance Newsletter,
between Thai Tradition-Based Popular Performance and British Panto”. Apart from an academic, Sukanya Associate Editor Asian Theatre Journal and has contributed editorial services to many scholarly publications,
Sompiboon is a singer, actress, director, dramaturge, and playwright on traditional-popular and contemporary including Theatre Journal and Theatre Research International.
theatre. She has performed a number of contemporary Likay projects and contemporary theatre productions
since 2003. INTERCULTURAL CONUNDRUMS - Boundaries, Barriers and Borders
Likay “Red Demon”: Dramatic Representation of Domestic
Among the many conundrums facing scholars and artists working among and between cultures,
Otherness in Thailand
perhaps the most vexing today are the issues of identity and ownership. As more and more people
With the universal content of social concern about discrimination among different nationalities, rac- opt to determine their precise genetic makeup, it becomes increasingly clear that we are all complex
es, cultures, religious in the world, this paper will demonstrate Red Demon, a Thai tradition-based mixtures, that our ancestry is a jumble of cultures, nationalities, and so-called “races.” In addition,
contemporary likay, which represented and reflected the cultural prejudiced that causes discrimi- some people are discovering that they are not the gender their parents assigned them. All aspects
nation and humiliation in the country. Originally scripted and directed by Hideki Noda, a renowned of the self are beginning to be revealed as fluid.
Japanese playwright, in 1996, Red Demon deals with racism and the difficulties of heterogeneity, How do new understandings of “identity” affect intercultural performance? During the last thirty
particularly discrimination towards people from outside Japanese culture. It also relates the images years or so, debates about the practice and ethics of cultural ownership, theft, appropriation, bor-
and stories of homeless people, refugees, and those banished from their hometowns across the rowing and so on have raged. The entire project of liberal humanism -- the suggestion that humanity
world. When villagers meet an odd-looking creature who is washed ashore, speaking an unfamiliar is ultimately a unity -- has come under fire by progressive thinkers and artists, yet these new scientific
language that nobody can understand together with his strange appearance, they view him as an in- and genetic realities tend to undercut their concepts and support the “old fashioned” suppositions.
truder. Pradit Prasatthong, a legendary Thai director, brought in this theme and used it as the back- The ideologies of “racial” or “ethnic purists,” as well their opposites who espouse “identitarian” or
bone of dramatic reinvention. Red Demon or in Thai ‘Yak Tua Daeng’ was restaged and performed in “minoritarian” politics, are now equally suspect.
tradition-based contemporary Thai performance called ‘contemporary likay’ in 2009. In contempo- Do such trends devalue the very concept to theatre as art and as a valid academic discipline? De-
rary likay version the play adopted the geographical approach to relate the situation in the southern spite efforts to bring the “non-west” into the center of our discussions, why do many scholars con-
part of Thailand. It showed conflict between the local people who can be presumed as Muslim and tinue to view intercultural theatre from the Euro-American perspective? What might be productive
Buddhist on the continual political and religious turmoil in the three southern frontier provinces of modes of theoretical constructions to insure the robust future of the field?
Thailand. More to the point, traditional likay performance is considered as chaobaan commoner
performance, so it is excluded to be representative of ‘Thai identity/Thainess’ due to its character- Key Words
istics of being a coarse entertainment for low-class people, threatened as a substandard form that Terayama Shuji, Japan, Theatre and Film, Gender, Breaking boundaries
fails to meet the aesthetic standards of the Thai national arts. This paper will, thus, demonstrate
both the praxis of contemporary likay that can bridge the gap of aesthetic discrimination, all at once
presenting the story that help decreasing domestic otherness in Thailand.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

domestic otherness, Red Demon, contemporary likay, aesthetic discrimination, Muslim and Bud-
dhist, political and religious turmoil, Thailand

246 247
 GP GP

Jurgita Staniskyte Amy Stebbins

Vytautas Magnus University University of Chicago

Jurgita Staniškytė, Ph.D., heads the Faculty of Arts and is a Professor of Theatre Studies Department at Vy- Amy Stebbins is a director, librettist, and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago. Stebbins’ scholarship
tautas Magnus University Kaunas, Lithuania. She has published numerous scientific and critical articles on explores issues pertinent to theater, film, and opera, with a focus on the ethical parameters of acting, con-
contemporary Lithuanian theatre in the context of the processes of Baltic stage art, performative aspects of ceptual dissensus between American performance studies and German Theaterwissenschaft, and the public
post-soviet Lithuanian culture, creative communication and audience development. Jurgita Staniškytė active- role of theater in the age of post-politics. Her dissertation Theater of the Turns: The Dialectics of Acting and
ly participates in various scholarly and artistic organizations as well as international and national research Identity at Frank Castorfs Volksbühne attends to acting practices at the Berlin Volksbühne from 1992 to 2017,
projects. She serves as a member of the Committee of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Research Coun- and demonstrates how actors function as representations and symptoms of the reconfiguration of German
cil of Lithuania. Jurgita Staniškytė is also the Board member of HERA Humanities in the European Research and European identity structures after 1989. Stebbins graduated from Harvard University in 2007 with a B.A.
Area and the Governing Board member of EU Joint Programming Initiative JPI on Cultural Heritage and Global in History and Literature. Recent theater projects include: Mauerschau an evening-length opera commissioned
Change. She has published three monographs: “Changing Signs: Lithuanian Theatre between Modernism and by the Bavarian State Opera winner of the Operafestspielpreis 2016. “MAKING A REENTRANCE PARTS I & II, a
Postmodernism” Vilnius, 2008, “Post-Soviet Lithuanian Theatre: History, Memory, Identity” Vilnius, 2014 and performance piece featuring male ex-offenders from the Crossroads Adult Transition Center that investigated
“Communicating Culture: Strategies, Institutions, Audiences” Kaunas, 2015. Her most recent publication – a the performative demands of prisoner rehabilitation programs in the United States. In 2014 Stebbins co-au-
chapter in a collective monograph “I teatri post-sovietici” Roma,2016. thored the libretto for Musical Land for the Deutsche Oper Berlin Tischlerei with Felix Seiler. In recent years,
Stebbins has also directed music-theater projects with pop artists including Grammy Award-winning composer
Moving Targets: Tactics of Relocation in Contemporary Baltic Michael Einziger, and composer/computer scientist Richard Whaling. From 2011-2013 she was a dramaturgy
fellow at the Deutsche Bank Foundations Akademie Musiktheater Heute. Stebbins is also the founder and
Theatre curator of multiple international artist exchanges involving The Bavarian State Theater Munich, The Goodman
Theatre Chicago, and Òpera de Butxaca. From 2015-2016 she was a guest in the dramaturgy department of
Referring to the notions introduced by Michel de Certeau in his seminal book “The Practices of the Bavarian State Theater where she worked to promote Transatlantic collaborations under the auspices of
Everyday Life” 1984, it is possible to conceptualize different models of theatrical imagination and the German Chancellor Fellowship. Other initiatives include Echo Chamber Operas, an international working
artistic “ways of operating” as strategies and tactics. If we assume that creative practices are indeed group and network for contemporary music-theater.
research into reality, we can define the artist – strategist as the one who occupies the privileged
position above the territories of his / her research,  keeps the distance and seems dissociated from Other Voices: considerations on operatic form and staging
the realities he / she investigates. Meanwhile, the tactic is always in the position where he /she is alterity
directly dependant on the object of his / her analysis and must constantly review and revise the
ways of operating. To schematize de Certeau, tactics are the modes of action or knowledge that In this presentation, I will discuss the possibilities opera offers for staging alterity in distinction to dra-
are acquired in the process, they are not stable, objective or given. It is clear that one can relate matic theater or performance. Which are the formal characteristics particular to opera e.g. casting,
these notions to transformations of creative practices of stage-directing in contemporary Baltic The- voice, instrumental, scenic that can scenically capture--or even better—problematize the very con-
atre. Furthermore, one can observe the increasing tendency to apply tactical directing in order to cept of “otherness”. Questions of migration, identity, and privilege lie at the heart of my upcoming
deal with themes of “dislocation”, “instability” and “migration”. Tactical directing can be defined as production THE PEOPLE OUT THERE 2021. This new opera addresses the polarity of inside and out,
an open and multidimensional communication with the object of artistic analysis and fearless self about who can see whom, and who remains in the dark. The “inside” world of our story is the new
questioning as a reaction to the demands of the unique situation of the present day.  The paper will headquarters of a young start-up company: a transparent, glass building located in a picturesque
analyse artistic practices closely linked with the notions of tactics, such as performances - investiga- “somewhere.” Here the next technological revolution is about to be launched: a neural interface that
tions, relocations of performance place and interventions into public spaces in contemporary Baltic facilitates uninterrupted media connectivity in all the senses. The genius behind this technology is
Theatre. The examples of performances by NO99 Estonia, The New Riga Theatre, Dirty Deal Teatro the pregnant software engineer, MARY. Over the course of two hours, the idyllic scene explodes into
Latvia, Oskaras Koršunovas Theatre, The Open Circle Lithuania and others will be analysed in the a volcanic wasteland, displacing “the people out there,” driving them from outside to inside as those
paper. inside try desperately to get out. My talk focuses on the character of “the stranger”, a person who
is only visible to the lead character and “insider” MARY. Mary cannot classify this alien character. Is
Key Words he a fan? An employee? Or an intruder? Is he desirable? Or is he undesirable. The appearance of the
Contemporary Baltic Theatre, Tactical Directing, Relocation, Engaging Audience, theatre spaces stranger in THE PEOPLE OUT THERE bears a strong resemblance to Benjamin’s unanticipated strang-
er, throwing into relief significant differences in the ontological condition of the performer in opera,
dramatic theater, and performance.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

alterity, stranger, entrance, opera, practice

248 249
 GP GP

Julia Stenzel Lizzie Stewart

Theatre Studies, University of Mainz, Germany Kings College London

Julia Stenzel is Juniorprofessor of Theatre Studies at JGU Mainz since 2012 and PI of the DFG-funded research Lizzie Stewart is a Lecturer in Modern Languages, Cultures, and Societies to KCL. Her research and teaching
project The village of Christ. Institutional-theoretical and historical perspectives on Oberammergau and its focuses on cultures of post/migration, specifically theatre and migration in contemporary Germany. Lizzie
passion play in 19th-21st centuries. 2009-2012 she was research assistant at LMU Munich and research as- has previously held positions as Teaching Associate University Lecturer at University of Cambridge 2016-2017
sociate of the DFG-funded research unit Anfaenge in der Moderne. She studied Dramaturgy, German and Teaching Fellow at University of St Andrews 2015-2016 Research Fellow at University of Edinburgh 2014-2015
comparative literature and graduated from LMU Munich, where she gained her PhD in 2007 published 2010. and Tutor at University of Edinburgh 2011-2015. She holds a PhD in German Studies, an MSc in European The-
2011, Julia was appointed a Fellow of the young researchers’ center Junges Kolleg of the Bavarian Academy atre, and an Undergraduate Degree in German and Russian, all of which were taken at the University of Edin-
of Sciences and Humanities which she presided as a speaker 2016-2017. In 2017, she finished her habilitation burgh. her PhD and Masters were AHRC-funded. Recent publications include a special issue of Oxford German
on the political reception of Attic theatre in mid-19th century venia legendi: theatre studies. Main research: Studies on Turkish-German actress, playwright, and author Emine Sevgi Özdamar 2016. Her first monograph,
theories and practices of historiography, political transformations of Athenian and medieval theatre/drama, Staging New German Realities: Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmil-
theories of drama, intersections of cultural studies and cognitive science, Oberammergau and its passion play. lan in the series Performance InterActions.
Recent books: Reformulierung der Antike. Szenische Antikepolitiken im Vor- und Nachmärz habilitation 2017
with F. Krippner/A. Polaschegg ed.: Die andere Antike. Altertumsfigurationen auf der Bühne des 19. Jh. 2018 Interculturalism – Serving the Market or the PostMigrant
ed. Reenacting to Religion. Vom Wiedererzählen und Wiederaufführen religiöser Praxen special issue of the
journal FMT. Presence in Theatre?
One in five people in Germany today has “a background of migration”, however, the increasing-
On the doorstep. The Judas of/in Oberammergau between ly present reflection of this in state-subsidised German theatre emerged only slowly. In 2011, the
migration and stasis German Dramaturgical Society thus decided to explore “theatre in an intercultural society”. Nota-
bly this phrasing shifts the object which the descriptor “intercultural” attaches to: it is no longer
In its presentation of Judas, the Oberammergau Passion play is to be seen as part and product of theatre which is intercultural, but rather the society from which that theatre emerges. Rather than
a centuries-long tradition. The various theatrical reenactments of the Gospels since late medieval taking the postmigrant confusion of categories as aberration, this paper views them as paradigmatic
times tend to present Judas as a figure of in-between, who willingly remains in a pre-christian time: for new approaches to interculturalism, theatre, migration and its aftereffects. It asks how making
Although one of Jesus’ disciples, he becomes part of the evil other although part of a Christian “intercultural theatre” differs from making theatre in an “intercultural society”, moving away from
narrative, he remains Jewish. The presentation of Judas, in many ways prefigured in the biblical an analysis of theatre which self-positions as intercultural, to trace the ways in which intercultural
stories, even lead to pogroms in early modern Germany.  Not surprisingly, in the Nazi era, the op- policies and funding pots have both enabled and demanded McIvor new forms of engagement with
positions transported to modernity by the Oberammergau passion play have been functionalized in post/migrant theatre. My case study will be the multiple productions of Black Virgins Zaimoglu/Sen-
anti-judaic propaganda. The paper aims at understanding how the figure of Judas can also lead to kel which proliferated from 2006-14. Sieg has read this play in its premiere production as a means
a deconstruction of the logics the play seems to claim. By analyzing both the pictorial record and of working through entanglements of feminism and Eurocentricism. Here I will suggest that the
textual evidence from late 19th and early 21th century, it explores the Judas of/in Oberammergau play’s subsequent journey across the German theatrical landscape can also help identify and unpack
as a figure of migration in stasis. In this, it does not only focus on the narrative level. Beyond, it a further entanglement: one in which the very interculturalism that had previously marginalized
elaborates on Judas as a figure that never fully approaches the play and its politics: Oberammergau post-migrant writers as outside the German literary canon remerges, yet with the potential to situ-
as the village of the Passion is often described as being run by a logic of transparency: The play and ate migration and postmigrant experience as central, rather than marginal. Equally, the relationship
the players converge and hint to the eternal truth of the biblical stories which they transport into a between the long-overdue intercultural opening of the theatres as institutions, and the integration
contemporary ‘hic et nunc’. According to most of the travelogues dealing with the village community management which appears to be a source of that opening, creates an unexpected alliance: be-
and its structure, “being” Judas in the play leads to a specific extraposition in the village.  In being a tween the interests of artists with a background of migration, who have long sought artistic space in
paradoxically static migrant, Judas disturbes not only the logics of the play but also opens it up for the German context and the governance practices of a state which such artists often critique.
critical, deconstructive and transformative views on the passion play, its story and history.
Key Words
Key Words Germany Postmigration Turkish-German Documentary Theatre Interculturalism Cultural Policy
Oberammergau, Passion Play, Judas, anti-judaism, historical theatricalities
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

250 251
 GP GP

Ana Stojanoska Jovana Stokić

Faculty of Dramatic Arts - Skopje New York University

Ana Stojanoska, Ph.D. Writer and Theatre scholar, Associate professor of the Macedonian Drama and Theatre Jovana Stokić is a Belgrade-born, New York-based art historian, performance art scholar, and curator. She
and History of the World Drama and Theatre at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts – Skopje Macedonia. She has holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her dissertation, The Body Beautiful: Feminine
worked as researcher/coordinator at the Institute of Theatrology at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts since 2002. Self-Representations 1970–2007, analyzes works of several women artists—Marina Abramovic, Martha Rosler,
She writes short stories, novels, poetry and dramas, and has published about 60 articles and essays in academ- Joan Jonas—since the 1970s, particularly focusing on the notions of self-representation and beauty. Her essay,
ic journals and periodicals. She has participated in many symposiums and workshops and in 10 national and “The Art of Marina Abramovic: Leaving the Balkans, Entering the Other Side” appeared in the catalogue for
international projects. She is author of the books: Macedonian Postmodern Theatre monography, FDA, 2006 The Artist Is Present 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Stokic was a fellow at the New Museum
Dimitar Kostarov, Realistic poetics and aesthetics of a director monography, FDA, 2014 Lin and I, after novel, of Contemporary Art, New York a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York the curator
Blesok, 2016, received National Award “Racinovo priznanie”, 2017. She is also the editor of the books: Drami, of the Kimmel Center Galleries, New York University and the performance curator at Location One, New York.
Pro Arts, 2002 the collection of plays by Dejan Dukovski and Contemporary Macedonian Drama Mikena, 2008, She is currently on the faculty of the MFA Art Practice, SVA and NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art
and one of the authors and editor of the chapter Fakti in the monographs Ilija Milčin 2003 and Petre Prličko Professions.
2005. She is also one of the authors/contributors of Glossary of literary theory MANU, 2007. Her monodrama
The Glass Lampion was performed as a radio play Theatra, 2013. Disciplinary Migrations: Issues in Contemporary Performance Art
Research
Macedonian – Slovenian Theatre Relations
Disciplinary Migrations: Issues in Contemporary Performance Art Research. This paper offers a crit-
This paper will test the hypothesis that migration of theatre artists directors, authors, actors, mu- ical insight into current migrations between the disciplines that deal with the increased interest in
sicians, dancers, etc. is an important and in some cases even one of the main triggers of changes performance art in theory, history and practice. The presentation reflects on the epistemological and
in national theatres. It is based on a research of the relations between Macedonian and Slovenian methodological inquiry we conducted while working on the Critical Companion to Performance Art
theatres. During the 20th century, many Slovenian theatre artists were guests in Macedonian the- forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press in 2020, which gives a comprehensive overview of the contem-
atres and a lot of plays by Slovenian authors were staged in Macedonia. Macedonian and Slovenian porary interdisciplinary debates concerning performance in art contexts that have developed over
theatres have developed a close and permanent cooperation based on their similar theatre tradi- the last decade. Understanding “performance art” as an institutional, cultural, and economic phe-
tions. Focus of the study is based on researching the reasons for relatively intensive collaboration nomenon rather than as a label or object, we trace this dynamic interdisciplinary exchange that is
between these two theatre spaces, the socio-political context and concrete framework from 1913, conditioned by many institutional forces across academia and art institutions. Following the ever-in-
when Macedonian institutional theatre was established, till today. I will also present collected data creasing institutionalization and mainstreaming of performance and its methods of display, repre-
on Slovenian theatre artists and their performances in Macedonian professional theatres. Empirical sentation, and mediation in the wider cultural sphere, we identify a marked change in the economies
data will be used as a source for analysis of the influence of Slovenian theatre artists and perfor- and labor practices surrounding performance art and its curating and presenting practices, reflective
mances on Macedonian theatre and their presupposed long-lasting impact that is important for of an advanced stage of capitalism that approaches art production in tandem with event production.
further researches. Finally, my study will discuss migratory processes bringing Macedonian theatre Embracing what we perceive to be the “oxymoronic status” of performance art—where it is simul-
artists to Slovenia and their potential influence on Slovenian theatres. taneously precarious and highly profitable— we map the gestures and radical possibilities of this
extreme contradiction. Our approach activates an interdisciplinary perspective to better attend to
Key Words performance art’s legacies and its current practices where art history, visual and performance stud-
Macedonian Theatre, Slovenian Theatre, Migrations, Theater relations, 20th century Theatre ies, dance and theatre scholarship migrate and populate each others’ territories in order to provide a
non-hierarchical merging of the disciplines within and between the humanities. The methodological
directions we see as migrations are key to examining the possibilities of transformative change—the
core of performance art’s transgressive radical legacy. This is a co-presentation with Bertie Ferdman,
co-editor of Critical Companion to Performance Art.

Key Words
performance art, disciplinatory migrations, institutionalization and mainstreaming of performance,
non-hierarchical merging of the disciplines
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

252 253
 GP GP

Mitsuko Sumida Ioana Szeman

National Institute of Technology, Tsuyama College University of Roehampton

SUMIDA Mitsuko is an Associate Professor of English at the National Institute of Technology, Tsuyama Ioana Szeman is Reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Roehampton, London.
College. She was a Lecturer in English at Hiroshima University from 2011 to 2017, and has been a Lecturer Her book based on long term ethnographic fieldwork “Staging Citizenship: Roma, Performance and Belonging
in Western Theatre at Onomichi City University since 2012. She took her M.A. in Education from Tsukuba in EU Romania” has been recently published with Berghahn Books. Ioana’s articles have appeared in books and
University in 2003, and her Ph.D. in Literature from Hiroshima University in 2008. Her main concerns include journals, including Theatre Research International, New Theatre Quarterly, TDR, and Performance Research.
the adaptation of Shakespeare’s theatre and the works adapted by the contemporary directors including She is a member of the Feminist Review editorial collective.
the film, referring to the original works and the other materials. She focuses on innovation in the process
of adaptation. She joined New Scholars Forum, IFTR in August 2011 with the paper: “Pascal’s Wager: ‘Faith’ Roma Performances of Belonging and Citizenship: from Bollywood
Inserted in Another Adaptation of The Winter’s Tale”. One of her recent papers is “Between Two Values: The
Elements of Honor Killing in the Film, Titus by Julie Taymor” included in The Studies on Shakespeare’s Works: Dance to “Gypsy Music”
the Drama, the Poem and the Music Eihosha, 2016.
This paper discusses Roma performances of belonging and citizenship in music and dance. Using
ethnographic research, it focuses on Roma artists in and from Romania, including internationally
The Narrative in 887: Construction of Identity as Québécois and
touring Roma band Taraf de Haidouks, who play “Gypsy music”, successful Roma singer Florin Salam,
the Collective Memory and local young Roma dancers. Even though they were recognized as an ethnic minority in 1991,
Roma in Romania continue to be seen as foreigners, while most Roma see themselves as both Roma
887 1995, a stage performance directed by Robert Lepage, has a narrative structure that makes the
and Romanian. Many Roma live in poverty and face eviction and discrimination on a daily basis,
audience reflect on the personal and collective memory. The narrative is irregular especially as a
lacking basic citizenship rights, despite measures officially designed to improve their situation. The
narrator recalls fragments of his past memory, where one persona changes into another persona.
forced eviction of numerous Roma inside Romania, and the expulsions and police violence targeting
Consequently, the audience experiences the real lives of Francophones who had spent time at the
Roma in France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, are related to each other as state-sponsored attacks
apartment at 887, Murray Avenue, Québec City from 1960s to 1970s. The narrative is peculiar,
on Roma, who are not treated as equal citizens by their governments. Despite the diversity that
especially for the multiple perspectives. In the previous research on the narrative, Fricker argued
characterizes both Roma and their musical and dance production, and despite their significant
that Lepage used the stage as a mirror through which he can see his own reflection. However,
success in these fields, Roma have not gained a legitimate place as a culture in the national imaginary
the interpretation has a disorder because 887 reflects a variety of images, more than the autobi-
in Romania, and they continue to be denied cultural citizenship, even when their musical talent
ographical remembrance of Lepage. Dundjerović, on the other hand, insists that narrating for Lep-
is praised. While Roma musicians’ and dancers’ performances may continue lucrative stereotypes
age is finding out who he is by telling audiences about himself and involving, inviting the outside
about Roma as exotic Gypsies that have existed for centuries, I argue that these performances can
world.  Lepage’s way of constructing the narrative is to put fragments of memory together into the
be read as performances of citizenship.
collective memory of the audience. In the process, one local identity as Québécois is constructed in
the memory of the audience. The purpose of this paper is to discuss what kind of other elements
Key Words
and imagery are recognized in the process of uniting fragments of the memory of the persona. The
Gender, race, ethnicity, and performances of belonging Roma minorities
key to construction of the collective memory according to Halbwachs, is to place each episode into
its current of time flow in one memory. In this paper, first of all, by reflecting on insertion of “Speak
White” of Michele Lalonde into the theatre, we will discuss the role of the multiple narrative, and
further reflect on the theatrical approach on the memory of the audience experiencing the narra-
tive of 887.

Key Words
narrative 887,  collective memory
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

254 255
 GP GP

Berenika Szymanski-Düll Mariko Tanaka

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich Aoyama Gakuin University

Berenika Szymanski-Düll is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Ger- Is your abstract for a General Panel, New Scholars’ Forum Panel, or Working Group Panel? Please
many. Her current research interests include international touring theatre in the 19th century, theatre and Mariko Hori Tanaka is professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. She has published widely on Samuel
migration and Performance Art in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Beckett and other contemporary British and American drama. Her present interest is how catastrophes are
depicted in the works by contemporary playwrights - especially how they affect the ethics and aesthetics of
Migrants in Theatre - A look into the 19th century the plays dealing with such catastrophes as war, genocide, natural disasters, etc.

Following the development of steam and railway technologies, and freedom of movement with rel- The Theatre of Ghosts and the Other under the Threat of Mass
atively few political restrictions, the phenomenon of mobility, and especially the phenomenon of Deaths: Ethics and Aesthetics in Plays of Genocide
emigration, took on a new and previously unknown dimension in the nineteenth century. Millions of
Europeans left their homelands and moved - for political, economic or personal reasons - to foreign As Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem, contends that Eichmann, the persecutor lacked imagi-
countries and continents. The theatre - one of the mass media of the day - was greatly affected by nation to think of the persecuted and was only thinking of following orders and rules, for any soldier
this phenomenon. Focusing on selected actors from the theatre business - such as Modjeska, Börn- fighting in a war, to defy given orders risks his life and therefore he has to oppress conscience in
stein or Dawison - this paper seeks to analyze the opportunities and the challenges of these migrants killing his enemy. Likewise, Kitty Felde’s A Patch of Earth, a play set in Serbia, delves into the wound
border crossings in a time of strong national building processes, and to position these migrants with- of a soldier who, with his fellow soldiers, took part in a genocide of hundreds of Islamic people. The
in the migration processes of the nineteenth century. soldier is the only man who admits the crime at the International Criminal Court. Other soldiers
suppress the existence of the genocide itself. Such disavowal of persecutors’ side always makes it
Key Words difficult to disclose what happened. debbie tucker green’s Truth and Reconciliation, a play set in the
nineteenth century, border crossing, nation building, migration aftermath of genocidal incidents in five different countries – South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Bos-
nia and Northern Ireland –, shows how it is difficult for persecutors to break their silence before their
victims and the families of victims. In both plays by Felde and tucker green, ghosts appear to ap-
proach persecutors, trying to get the truth out of them. However, in either case, those who ordered
the mass murders are speechless or invisible so that a Kafkaesque nightmare emerges. Moreover,
treatment of refugees who escape genocidal violence and migrate to safer places also complicates
the issue in a global scale. Key Adshead’s The Bogus Woman denounces inhuman receptions of Brit-
ish authorities for asylum seekers who have escaped from brutality of their homelands. Such asylum
seekers have no place to be sheltered in safe. This paper will focus on how such plays dealing with
recent crimes of mass murders can bring ethics and aesthetics to the audience.

Key Words
genocide, persecutors, victims, wound, reconciliation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

256 257
 GP GP

Rina Tanaka Kurt Taroff

Meiji University Queens University Belfast

Rina TANAKA [email protected] is a PhD candidate in Graduate School of Global Japanese Studies Kurt Taroff is a Lecturer in Drama at Queen’s University Belfast. His primary area of research concerns Nikolai
at Meiji University and a visiting fellow in the Institute of Music Sociology at the Universität für Musik und Evreinov’s theory of Monodrama and its manifestations in music, theatre, and film, both before and after its
darstellende Kunst Wien 2017/18. Her primary research interest is an inter- and innercultural transition and composition. He is also currently serving as co-investigator for “Living Legacies 1914-18, From Past Conflict
recontextualization on musical theater, especially between German-speaking countries and Japan. She also to Shared Futures,” a First World War Commemoration Centre funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
works as translator/interpreter in Japan, especially for guest performances of musical theaters from Germany. Council in the UK. He has published in Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film, the Journal of Adaptation in Film
and Performance, Forum Modernes Theater, Marvels and Tales and The Arthur Miller Journal, among others.
The Emigrant Marie Antoinette: The Recontextualization by
Japanese Bodies in Musicals Blood and Soil and Sweat: Lynn Nottage’s Depiction of Migrancy
and Stagnation
In 2006, the musical “Marie Antoinette” was first staged in the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. This musi-
cal about the Queen of France who was executed in the French Revolution was written by the Austri- Lynn Nottage’s timely play Sweat 2015-17 vividly depicts the sagging fortunes of the demographic
an author Michael Kunze and the Hungarian composer Sylvester Levay, originally based on the Jap- frequently cited as handing Trump the Presidency: blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt of the Ameri-
anese novel by Endo Shusaku, directed by the Japanese director Kuriyama Tamiya, and performed can Midwest. Most reviews highlighted the play’s racial tensions: White, Black and Latino characters
by Japanese actors/actresses. The capital was held by Japanese Toho Company. “Marie Antoinette” fighting for the crumbs left as the industrial plants that were for generations the lifeblood of Reading,
has been migrated so far in three cities in Japan Tokyo, Osaka and Hakata and in four regions Bremen PA recede into collective memory. But while the markers of race and language provide visible cues
2009 Tecklenburg 2012 Seoul 2014 Budapest 2016. However, she has not reached her motherlands, for the tensions between characters, Nottage marks within her text a written cue—largely obscured
Austria and French, despite of the press attention possibly because of the criticism against a daugh- in performance and ignored by critics—that ultimately forms one of the plays most salient ideas.
ter of Maria Theresia as well as the French Revolution itself in the performance. The delocation of Nottage’s description of character is quite specific. Just as the ‘scab’, Oscar, is not merely Latino but
the performances lets, however, this work gain different images of Marie Antoinette. In Japan, for specifically Colombian, the play’s white characters are defined by their national heritage, as Ger-
example, her image as an innocent, tragic princess has been developed in the girl-oriented manga man-Americans as Italian-American. Despite their own migrant histories, these characters empha-
Berusaiyu no Bara [The Rose of Versailles] 1972-73 and its musical versions by Takarazuka Revue size their ties to the land and to the city’s industry and history, engendering a sense of nostalgia and
Company since 1974. These preceding images were reflected to “Marie Antoinette” through the entitlement. The assumption that these jobs will always be there for them, and will guarantee them
actress bodies who took part of the past musicals by Takarazuka, and carried by the Korean actors/ security and prosperity, renders them largely incapable of action. On the other hand, the characters
actresses, though the Korean version was basically adapted from the Bremen version. This Korean of color in the play seek to change their situation, but these ambitions are dismissed—Cynthia’s
version was recently taken over by the first producer Toho and is performed by Japanese bodies in promotion to management is viewed as a case of affirmative action, and Oscar’s desire to ascend
2018. What is embodied by Japanese actors/actresses in the performance of “Marie Antoinette”? from the menial labor of bar-backing to a more respected role in the steel plant becomes the play’s
How are their bodies not related to the Japanese context on- and off-site? Can this re-/decontextu- central conflict. The great irony of Sweat, and its commentary on the current situation in the US, is
alization be considered as more relativistic dimension of musicals or a new export strategy? These that the success of the European immigrants of the 19th and early 20th century has convinced their
questions are considered in the presentation. descendants that prosperity is deserved rather than earned, resulting in a stagnation that is both
mental and physical.
Key Words
body, Japanese, context, musical Key Words
Migration, White Nationalism, US Election, Donald Trump, Lynn Nottage, Sweat
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

258 259
 GP GP

T. Sofie Taubert Magnus Thorbergsson

University of Cologne University of Iceland

Dr. T. Sofie Taubert studied Theatre Studies, Musicology and Cultural Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg-Uni- Magnus Thor Thorbergsson is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iceland working on a research project
versity Mainz. Between 2010 and 2013 she was employed as assistant lecturer. Since 2013, she holds a junior on the history of Icelandic-Canadian theatre. He holds a BA-degree in Comparative Literature from the Univer-
at the Institute for Media Culture and Theatre in Cologne, department Theatre Collection. Research interests sity of Iceland 1994, a MA-degree in Theatre Studies from the Free University Berlin 1999 and finished his PhD
are music theatre, Shakespeare reception, visual perception, theatre historiography, scenery and stage effects in 2017 on the Icelandic theatre in the 1920s and its part in the construction and development of Icelandic
in the 19th century. cultural identity and tradition. He has been a lecturer at the Iceland Academy of the Arts IAA, Department of
Performing Arts since 2001, 2005-2012 as a program director of the newly founded program Theory & Prac-
Around the Empire in 80 minutes. Imaginations of the foreign in tice, and was appointed assistant professor 2007-2015. Magnus was co-convener of the IFTR Historiography
Working Group 2012-2016, and is currently serves as president of the Association of Nordic Theatre Scholars.
19th century set design
Whereas travelling is still expensive and socially exclusive in the 19th century, European popular
Connecting communities: Touring networks and competitions of
cultures indulge imaginations of the foreign, the ‘exotic’. Through travelogues, novels, images, and Icelandic-Canadian amateur theatres
colonial politics, far off regions became talk of the town and subject of art and entertainment and of
course hegemonic politics. The paper therefore focusses on “Oberon” by Carl Maria von Weber as an In the last quarter of the nineteenth century more than a fifth of the Icelandic population emigrat-
example to analyse how music theatre supplies serves a curiosity as well as it is part of a process, in ed to North America, particularly to the province of Manitoba in Canada. A few years after the first
which it became politically important to inform the population about foreign politics. In this opera, Icelandic settlement was established in Manitoba the Icelandic immigrants started performing plays
the main protagonist Huon sets out for a journey from Aachen to Bagdad to Tunis, and the spectator and until 1950 communities of Icelandic Canadians boasted a thriving network of amateur theatre
with him – symbolically visiting the outline of the British Empire.  This appropriation of the “exotic” groups performing mostly in Icelandic but occasionally also in English. The sheer number of per-
is fuelled and engendered by the common techniques of the spectacular: exotic gardens, volcanos, formances produced and original plays performed among these groups reveal the importance of
shipwreck, and picturesque panoramas are the theatrical means by which the western gaze con- theatre for the Icelandic-Canadian immigrants to come to terms with issues of migration, ambivalent
structs the foreign world. Therefore, I am looking to imaginations and discourses as well as on the identities and the complex status of the Other. By the mid-1920s the Icelandic-Canadian amateur
parameters of its technical production in theatre. My research is based on stage design sketches, theatres had established a touring network stretching across Manitoba to Saskatchewan and North
technical drawings, and costume designs coming from individual performances. In a second step, I Dakota as well as launching a competition of amateur drama societies from various settlements of
am also analysing how the imaginations of ‘the exotic’ became a nearly standardized scenario, espe- Icelandic Canadians. In attempting to connect dispersed communities, these networking strategies
cially through the distribution of theatre ateliers and paper theatre/toy theatre. clearly aimed to build a sense of an interconnected community of Icelandic immigrants, creating a
space where a presence of community may be felt. This emphasis of connecting communities seems
Key Words to have gained importance over the earlier stress of theatre activities on creating and maintaining a
Panel title Migrating scenes keywords: images of the other, scenography, cultural impact of migra- bond with the homeland, indicating a period of transition of the community of Icelandic-Canadians.
tion My paper looks at these networks and competitions and their function in imagining a community in
transition reaching across province and state borders.

Key Words
Amateur theatre Theatre and immigration Icelandic Canadians
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

260 261
 GP GP

Sara Tiefenbacher Joanne Tompkins

University of Vienna University of Queensland

Sara Tiefenbacher, Mag.: Postgraduate degree in Theater, Film and Media Studies, as well as Slavic Studies Joanne Tompkins is Executive Director for the Humanities and Creative Arts at the Australian Research Coun-
Polish in Berlin, Vienna and Wroclaw. Currently writing a dissertation on cultural mobility. Since November cil, a secondment from the University of Queensland. In addition to publishing numerous books and essays
2017 she is employed at the Institute of Theater, Film and Media Studies in the research project Historiography on different aspects of contemporary and historical theatre research, she has been a foundation member of
– Ideology – Collection. Research-based Digitizing of Historical Theater Material from the ‘Zentralinstitut für AusStage, the research database/resource of Australian performance materials. She currently researches the
Theaterwissenschaft’ in Vienna 1943-1945 FWF possibilities of recreating theatres that no longer exist by means of virtual theatre, through the start-up com-
pany Ortelia. She has just completed a term as Editor of Theatre Journal.
Historiography – Ideology – Collections. Provenance issues
of Historical Theater Material from the Zentralinstitut für Migration, Qualitative Research Methods, and the Reshaping of
Theaterwissenschaft in Vienna 1943-1945 National Identities in Australian Performance
This presentation addresses migration not of people although the movement of performance from
An essential aspect of working on theater and migration is to document conflicts of flight and ex-
one city or country to another comes in to it but of technologies: from close reading of performance
pulsion and to elaborate the vacancies of that very documentation in archives and collections. This
to an understanding of the ways in which the reading quantitative evidence can assist in our un-
research is fundamental, if archives hold sensitive materials surrounding the “National Socialist” era.
derstanding of changing patterns of performance. Approximately fifteen years after we published
The project “Historiography – Ideology – Collections”, which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund,
Women’s Intercultural Performance, Julie Holledge and I returned to interculturalism, taking into ac-
aims not only to investigate such vacancies, but to illustrate them as provenance issues. The pri-
count other research methodologies that we have worked with in the meantime. We assumed that
mary focus of interest is the collection of the Archive of the Zentralinstitut für Theaterwissenschaft
the strong desires among artists to collaborate across cultures, particularly in Australia, would still
Central Institute for Theater Studies, founded 1943 as ideologically motivated scholarly studies. The
be evident, albeit recognizing that there had been some shift away from this performance trend. We
in-depth investigation of a collection formed during the “National Socialist” era will contribute to
had no idea how much the trend had been reversed until we began using digital methods to anal-
the clarification of complex provenance concerns regarding questionable inventories, and will thus
yse the parameters for performance. Focusing on the material available in AusStage, the Australian
form the basis for restitution proceedings and the research of the historical origin of materials. An
performing arts database, I explain how the market for intercultural work has almost disappeared in
important objective of the project is to develop a standardized mechanism for provenance issues.
Australian performance, remaining mostly quarantined in certain festivals. This study has examined
This process is combined with the exploration of a collections history and the collection structure of
festivals in the most part, because festivals were, in the 1980s and 1990s, the predominant location
uncatalogued archives. The goal is to conduct an historical analysis of the generated sources, based
for large-scale intercultural performances. It argues the case for qualitative research methods to pro-
on targeted digitizing, methods of the digital humanities and traditional archiving. The material to
vide an augmented dimension to analyzing in this case intercultural performance. The investigation
be digitized implicates graphic and textual records. The contents include Jewish actresses as well as
has revealed that the major shift in politics and political interests has extended equally markedly to
actors and theater documentation on exemplary NS-stage productions or “Grenzlandtheater”. The
performance. The presentation offers a different way to think about how a nation presents itself on
questions regarding the material focus on investigating canonization processes in an historical con-
stage, particularly in the context of migration, belonging, and shifting national identities.
text. The history and logic of exemplified inventories are researched by means of linking them via
digital processes. Examining the ideology of the collection and the collecting process will form the
Key Words
basis for the long overdue research of the historical provenance of materials that were most likely
performance, qualitative methods, interculturalism, Australia
stolen, such as some of those integrated in the Archive in this case.

Key Words
provenance issues, theater-historical collections, 1943-1945, digitizing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

262 263
 GP GP

Nese Ceren Tosun Kristina Trajanovska

University of Warwick Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje

Nese Ceren Tosun studied Sociology, Political Science, Film Studies and Cultural Studies before embarking on a Kristina Trajanovska is a PhD candidate in the English Language and Literature Department at Ss. Cyril and
journey at the crossroads of Performance and Food Studies. Through her interdisciplinary research and teach- Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. She holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and de-
ing, she inquires about the possibilities of creating a better world, homes and hopes by means of food.  She fended her thesis in Translating Drama: “The Literariness of the English and Macedonian versions of Shake-
currently works as Impact Officer in AHRC funded Sensing the City Project -a collaboration between University speare’s The Tempest”.  Her PhD thesis is entitled: The Poetics of Contemporary British Drama ”. Her thesis
of Warwick and Coventry University PI: Prof. Nicolas Whybrow. She teaches in Critical Issues in Law and Man- question is: How have the socio-political and cultural events influenced the British literary dramaturgy in the
agement Module with Open Space Learning pedagogy at Warwick Business School and curates “A Table with a second half of the 20th century and how these aspects are reflected in the primary sources, i.e. in the dramas.
View”, an impact generation project for Early Career Fellows. Since the theatre/drama has always been her passion, she has dedicated herself to numerous activities as
drama researcher and critic, drama translator, playwright and actress, participating in many seminars, con-
Performing Home: à la Turca Foodscapes in London ferences and workshops worldwide. Since 2013 she has been a member of the executive committee of ITI –
Macedonian Centre of International Theatre Institute. She continues to pursue her zeal for academic develop-
This paper investigates how home is performed through foodscapes by focusing on the Turkish ment, writing and literary criticism, as well as for literary translations English, Dutch, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian,
Macedonian. She currently lives in Amsterdam and works as an English and Dutch teacher.
Speaking Communities in London. It is based on the premises that food has a strong connection to
not just where home is, but how it manifests itself at different scales and registers, in the ‘here and
now’ of so-called migrant communities. Home is therefore taken as an act of dwelling that is both “Lord Chamberlain’s Blue Pencil”: Post-War British Drama Before
constitutive of and constituted by the specificities of the site of habitation. Based on Ingold’s con- and After Censorship
ceptualisation of dwelling perspective and a performative ethnography among the Turkish Speaking
Communities in London, the paper argues that the migrant skills deployed around food are trained By the mid-1960s, many of the social uncertainties that had animated the work of the 1950s gener-
and practiced in response to the environment of habitation 1993, 2000 as opposed to being import- ation of playwrights no longer existed. After Harold Pinter’s heightened and menacing naturalism,
ed as innate skills from the country of origin. Explored through the acts of eating, cooking, serving, Joe Orton’s gleeful destruction of English social and sexual mores, and the multiple controversies
sharing, celebrating and talking about food puissantly problematises the frameworks of host & guest and accompanied successive premieres of Edward Bond’s work, there was undoubtedly a need for
migrants and home & host nations. Reflecting upon the constitution of home through food therefore a rapid change not only in society, but also in the theatre and dramaturgy. The theatre profession
has a double function: it liberates migrant homes from the geographical dominance of a past coun- redoubled its campaigning to rescue drama from censorship, and in early 1968, the Joint Parliamen-
try where they are from and at the same time recognises the site-specific manifestations of their tary Committee on Censorship advocated the abolition of the 1843 Theatre Act, finally bringing an
skills “within the current of their involved activity, in the specific relational contexts of their practical end to an archaic and unique system of theatre censorship and control which had lasted for over 230
engagement with their surroundings” Ingold 2000, p.186  also in Hage,1996 Hage, 1997, Hage, 2005 years. The censor was rather strict towards the drama, a fact which confirms the subversive potential
Hage, 2010 Hage, 2011.  The ways in which the ethnically and linguistically diverse members of this of the drama. A new era thereafter had truly begun. The long-awaited disappearance of Lord Cham-
vaguely framed group relate to themselves, to each other, to the city and to the larger discourses of berlain’s blue ink made some themes acceptable in the British drama. The extreme violence of word
community and nation, in their heterogeneity, show that home, looked especially through the lens and action for instance, in plays such as Edward Bond’s Early Morning and Saved is undoubtedly an
of food, appears to be re-creative, generative, tactical, site- specific, and multifold series of dwelling expression of the changing times and this has to a great extent to do with the abolishment of the
acts, rather than being the geographical elsewhere of a migrant. stage censor. Playwrights could push the limits of what before was not permissible. This applies to
the radical mythologizing reinterpretation of history in Early Morning and the more straightforward
Key Words approaches of a number of Second Wave playwrights to homosexuality, masturbation, violence, and
migrant, diaspora, home, Turkish, food, London sex, which were previously preserved by censorship.

Key Words
censorship, abolition, subversion, Edward Bond, Lord Chamerlain
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

264 265
 GP GP

Harue Tsutsumi Ewa Uniejewska

Meiji University, Japan University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw

After completing her BA and MA degrees in Theater Arts at Osaka University, Japan, Harue Tsutsumi received Ewa Danuta Uniejewska 1990 – PhD candidate at the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Studies at the SWPS University
her Ph. D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. Her interest has of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, graduated from the Theatre Studies Department of the A. Zel-
been in the westernization of Kabuki in the 19th century. Between 2012 and 2015 she was a lecturer at Seijo werowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art. In 2016 Visiting Research Scholar at Barnard College, Columbia
University teaching history of Japanese theatre. Currently she is a lecturer at Meiji University. She has given University and an auditor at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York. Laurette of the scholarship
papers at the conferences of International Federation of Theatre Research in Osaka, Barcelona, Warwick, Hy- program Młoda Polska 2015 Young Poland 2015. Translator and editor of a volume of Richard Boleslavsky’s
derabad, and Stockholm. She also has presented a paper at the conference of Japanese Society for Theatre texts, Lekcje aktorstwa. Teksty z lat 1923-1933 Lessons of Acting. Texts from 1923-1933. Author of articles,
Research in Osaka. Her recent publication related to the presentation is “ Wanderers’ Strange Story: Western reviews and interviews published in the “Aspiracje”, “Scena” and “Nietak!t” quarterlies and in the “Teatr”
Kabuki, or Kabuki’s Encounter with Melodrama” (2016). Harue Tsutsumi is also active as a playwright since monthly.
1988. Her play, Kanadehon Hamlet, published in 1993 received the Yomiuri Prize for Art and was produced in
Tokyo, Osaka, New York, London and Moscow. It was translated in English and was published in Asian Theatre Transmission of the Russian acting system into the ground of
Journal in 1998. Her latest play, Shylock in the Underworld which dramatizes the first production of The Mer-
chant of Venice by Kabuki actors, was produced in Tokyo October 2017. American movie industry
The most breeding ground for Konstantin Stanislavsky’s teaching legacy and his System was The
Three Kabuki plays which deal with migration: “The Battles of
United States of America. Stanislavsky became part of the US history in 1923 and 1924, when the
Kokusenya” (Kokusenyakassen, 1716), “Real Life Image of Kokusenya” Moscow Art Theatre toured the country. His former student Richard Boleslavsky decided to stay
(Kokusenya Sugatanoutsushie 1872) and “Wanderers’ Strange in New York and established The American Laboratory Theatre 1923, which represented the first
Story” Western Kabuki (Hyoryu Kitan Seiyo Kabuki 1879) programmatic attempt to introduce Stanislavsky’s ideals and ideas to the American practitioners
and put them into practice in a serious methodical way. Among his numerous students were future
My paper compares the three Kabuki plays in which the central characters are immigrants. I would founders of The Group Theatre 1931-1941 and afterwards The Actors Studio 1947-till today who
argue that these plays illustrate the transition of Kabuki’s reaction to the issue of Otherness in the were consistently passing on their knowledge about the system to the next generations of actors.
18th and 19th centuries Japan. Battle of Kokusenya by Chikamatsu Monzaemon is a play written Stanislavsky’s ideas took rapid, tenacious hold into the American soil, but – being a product of a for-
in 1715 for a puppettheater and was adapted for Kabuki in 1716. The play depicts an adventure eign culture – needed translation into the idioms of American culture. That in turn caused the Stan-
of Watonai,half‐Japanese whose father is an exile from Ming, Chana. When the Ming Emperor is islavsky’s System to turn into Lee Strasberg’s Method, the acting style that, paradoxically, has come
killed by a Qing General, Watonai travels to China and restores the Ming dynasty.　Under the iso- to be identified as “quintessentially and uniquely American” Hirsch, 1984 and – yet – the most influ-
lationist Tokugawa government, the play satisfied Japanese people’s interest in China and also ful- ential and powerful in shaping the mainstream of the popular culture. The primary aim of my paper
filled their sense of superiority. In 1872, Real Life Image of Kokusenya, a Kabuki play written by is to examine the course and character of transmission of the Russian acting system Stanislavsky’s
Kawatake Mokuami was staged. The heroine is a former geisha Kokin who was shipwrecked and System into the American ground and to comparatively analyze the consecutive stages of this trans-
brought abroad, got married to an Englishman and is living in London. Using the famous reunion mission from the perspective of cultural transmission theory. That examination shall facilitate the
scene between Watonai and his half sister, the play depicts the reunion and separation between final goal of the paper, i.e. the study of the process of crystallization of one of the most influential of
Kokin and her Japanese former husband. The play was produced 4 years after the establishment of all American acting styles Strasberg’s Method that to high extent has been responsible for shaping
Meiji government which opened the country to the world. By producing this piece, the playwright the American movie culture. As a result, the paper will analyze the nature of the American fascina-
bade farewell to old Kabuki of Tokugawa period to embrace the new idea of Westernization. In 1879, tion with Russian acting culture and its system of acting as well as the inevitable adaptation of the
Mokuami wrote Wanderers’ Strange Story: Western Kabuki .The central characters are two Japanese latter to the cultural conditions of the United States.
fishermen, father and son who are shipwrecked and travel around the United States and Europe. In
the last scene, father and son are finally reunited and express their gratitude to the foreigners for Key Words
their kindness. Following the policy of the government, this play tried to establish in the audience’s cultural transmission, Konstantin Stanislavsky, System, Method, acting, Russians in the United
mind an image of foreigners as friendly and helpful. States

Key Words: Kabuki

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

266 267
 GP GP

Carlos Vargas-Salgado Karen Vedel

Whitman College Copenhagen University
Carlos Vargas-Salgado is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Whitman College in Washington State. He has pub- Associate Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Copenhagen
lished on performance studies applied to Latin American culture, Andean literatures, and human rights/mem- University. KV has published in areas of dance and theatre historiography, archival studies as well as on site
ory studies in the Spanish-speaking world. His work has been published in Latin American Theatre Review, specific performance with a focus on cultural memory.
Hispanic Issues On Line, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, and various other scholarly journals in
Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Spain. Migratory Choreography and Possibility of Dissent
Theatricality as a Memory Place in Peruvian Civil War Stories of migration, exile and travel are part of the tradition of Western theatre since Ancient Greece.
At a time when Europe is struggling to come to terms with the migratory condition, a new body of
During the Peruvian Civil War 1980-2000, Indigenous and Peasant populations were openly target- works for the stage is emerging distinguished by being either with or by refugees and asylum seek-
ed. Currently, Most of these populations maintain a live memory of the facts mass murdering, armed ers. In these works, members of these oftentimes anonymous and invisible demographic segments
invasions, Paramilitar executions using several traditional artifacts, such as music, dance, handcraft, are granted both visibility and a voice on stage. My interest is on the potential of such works to not
and others. This presentation will be mainly focused on how a Peasant community in Ayacucho, only provide glimpses into the underlying diversity of personal experiences but also to confront
Peru, Accomarca have created a Theatre-Dance performance in which they depict how Military forc- and problematize otherwise naturalized social, cultural and political hierarchies in a manner that in
es attacked the community in 1988, killing 2/3 of the habitants. The performance has been created more profound terms may redefine what is sayable and visible in a given community. In honing in on
as a part of a Musical Festival in 2008 and was presented in several traditional Folklore festivals in choreographic works, I will, in more specific terms, be focusing on the potential for the articulation
the Andes. In my reading, Accomarca displays a unique use of the theatricality as a memory artifact of dissensus Rancière 2010 as it may be corporeally established on stage as well as in the relation
able to preserve another Memory of the violence different than the one the State officially presents. between performers and members of the audience. My analysis is in empirical terms based on the
Thus, these performance can be seen also as a tool for cultural resistance, political divergence and juxtaposition of the choreographic approaches in two works, premiered in Copenhagen within a few
cultural difference in nowadays Peru. weeks of the revision of Danish immigration laws in January 2016. One is a group piece produced by
Corpus, The Royal Danish Ballets experimental dance company, the other a solo by the independent
Key Words choreographer Edhem Jesenkovic. Drawing on Christiana Giordanos 2014 reading of Rancière, the
Peru - violence - memory - performance argument I wish to explore, has to do with the contribution of these works to actualizing a space for
politics based on acknowledgement rather merely policing based on established categories.

Key Words
migratory choreography, dissensus, corporeal acknowledgement
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

268 269
 GP GP

Pieter Verstraete
Jon Venn Bilkent University Ankara, Honorary University Fellow to University of Exeter
University of Exeter
Pieter Verstraete is an independent theatre scholar, cultural activist and critic, based in Berlin. Since 2012, he
Dr Jon Venn previously completed a BA in Politics and Philosophy at Cardiff University and an MA in Writing is an Honorary University Fellow of the University of Exeter. He has worked in several universities in Turkey,
for Stage and Broadcast Media at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. During his MA, he became including recently the American Culture and Literature Department of Hacettepe University, and the Commu-
interested in the representation of mental health, and how this informs modes of resistance and conceptions nication Department of Bilkent University, both in Ankara. He authored numerous works on sound, voice and
of agency. He subsequently worked upon an AHRC-Funded PhD in Drama in Representation and Resistance of aurality in Performance Research Routledge 2010, Theatre Noise CSP 2011, The Legacy of Opera Rodopi 2013
Madness in Contemporary British and Irish Theatre at the University of Exeter, which he passed with minor and Disembodied Voice Alexander Verlag Berlin 2015. His latest texts on the Gezi protests and Standing Man
corrections in January 2017. He is currently researching post-war studies of suicide and how they relate to were published online by IPC-Mercator 2013, the Jahrbuch Türkisch-Deutsche Studien V&R Unipress 2014 and
performance. Specifically, he is concerned with the genealogies of concepts such as the attempted suicide, the Turkish journal for historical materialism, Praksis 2016. He is also a co-editor of books: Inside Knowledge:
suicidal hotspots, and copycat suicide. Undoing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities CSP 2009 and Cathy Berberian: Pioneer of Contemporary Vocality
Ashgate/Routledge 2014.
A New Flame: Suicide-as-Protest and the Migration of
Self-Immolation in David Grieg’s “Fragile” Standing after Gezi: Theatre as Civic Engagement and Passageway
for “Artists in Exile” from Turkey in Germany
Self-immolation is invested with a historical, cultural and metonymic implication of the elimination
of the self in favour of instigating political change. Yet, western suicidology has demonstrated a Today, the dynamism of international migration has become a political terrain of struggle involving
wariness to the emphasis of political protest behind any suicidal act to frame the suicide as a protest many ‘actors’ and institutionalisms. It is shaping our theatres and, by implication, it begs for new
is seen to romanticize and legitimize the act, potentially leading to its spread and proliferation. As concepts and theories in Theatre Studies too. The instruments developed by states and institutions
a result, post-war suicidology has often framed and contained self-immolation through Oriental- often aim to ‘naturalize’ a set of phenomena regarding the migrant experience that cannot easily
ist tropes to distinguish it from western examples, highlighting the weakness of the suicide, the be assumed. Many theatres in the ‘free sector’ in Germany have already developed over the years
over-dependence on social cohesion, or fatalistic victimhood. Fragile, a short-play by David Grieg for a set of practices of civic engagement that question these naturalized – and often instrumentalized
the anti-austerity event Theatre Uncut, invokes the legacy of self-immolation as a mode of protest, – classifications of the state. Leading groups in the debate are the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and the
re-framing it within a western context. John, a mental health user, covers himself in gasoline, threat- Maxim Gorki Theater with their debates on the ‘post-migrant’ experience, the Theater an der Ruhr
ening to immolate himself unless appropriate shifts to austerity and mental health care in Britain. with their refugee restagings of the classics, the work of Mark Terkessides at Hebbel am Ufer, and the
John compares his actions to Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian whose immolation initiated the Arab Münchner Kammerspiele with their Open Border Congress, to name a few. With the latest political
Spring. Self-immolation as a form of protest in Fragile becomes a mode to explore continuances and crises in Turkey, we see an increase of intellectual migration of artists, journalists, and academics
disruptions between protests of the Arab Spring and British Anti-Austerity movements. This paper flocking into Berlin, while solidary networks of academics in exile and artists at risk are forming
will note how Greig’s play draws upon the more febrile understanding of self-immolation, and the hurriedly. In my paper, I would like to revisit the ‘standing man’ performative protest during the Gezi
implications of understanding suicide-as-protest. However, it will also observe how this simultane- uprising and its consequences today for those who feel forced to move and escape the ‘stasis’ of a
ously echoes a variety of Orientalist logics displayed in post-war suicidology involving romanticism, country that has been plagued by the post-coup emergency situation and legislation. The themes of
agency and victimhood. It will question how self-immolation has migrated as a concept and a prac- movement and stasis, as they were part of the Gezi activism, form the backbone of my evaluations
tice including its recently migration from a Buddhist and Hindu practice to a mode of protest within of the present theories and aesthetic approaches towards the migrant artist in the German theatre
Muslim communities in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt. In this regard, the paper will chart how the cul- system today. I would also like to share the larger proposal of this research project and would be
tural migration of self-immolation has complicated our relationship to suicide as a form of political delighted if I can discuss the outline with members from the Working Group.
protest.
Key Words
Key Words: artistic self-exile migrant activism post-migration Turkey stasis cultural policy
suicide, self-immolation, protest, David Greig
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

270 271
 GP GP

Iacob Viviana Sanja Vodovnik

University of Bucharest University of Toronto

Viviana Iacob is currently affiliated with the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia. Her scholarly focus is on the- Sanja Vodovnik is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her interest lies in examining various outlets
atre history after 1945 in Eastern Europe, theatre internationalists during the Cold War and the role of recent of staging and performing science fiction, focusing on it’s cultural history, dramaturgy, ethics, and the perfor-
archives in performance research. She defended her PhD thesis entitled Shakespeare Performances: A Study mance of sci-fi in fan communities. She completed her BA degree in International Relations, and got her MA in
of Socialist Realism in Romanian Theatre (1946-1964) at the University of Bucharest /Doctoral School of Liter- Cultural Studies and in Performance Studies.
ary and Cultural Studies. She has a BA in Art History and Theory from the Art History and Theory Department,
National University of Arts Bucharest and an MA in Theatre History from Illinois State University (2005 – 2007). Artificial intelligence performed: the dramaturgy of the reset
She is the recipient of a Junior Fulbright Scholarship and of several research grants awarded by the Romanian
state. button
At Paragon Sci-Fi + Fantasy Festival in 2017 two plays explicitly explored the possibilities and con-
Theatre in Romanian-Indian Relations during the Cold War: sequences of reseting an AI android. In one of them Sweet XP Townshend 2017 is reset after being
Post-Colonial Circulations as Second Network asked to perform as a lover to its their? human partner. Finding it difficult to accept that the android
has been a lover to other humans before, the most recent partner decides to erase all XP’s memories
History of Cold War culture has moved in the last couple of years from an East versus West bipolar in order to give herself a possibility to start a relationship as if it were a blank slate. In another play,
narrative to investigating the phenomenon from a global perspective. There is a resurgent focus on The People v. Mod Davies 2017, Mod is charged with murder after attacking it’s owner for threaten-
encounters between the Second and the ‘Third’ Worlds, between socialist states and those from ing to reset the AI. Staged as a trial process, the defense argues that Mod acted in self-defense and
the Global South. My paper is a contribution to the discussion about the role played by theatre that its actions could be considered a morally justifiable response since reseting the AI effectively
exchanges in the cultural dialogue between East and South. Its focus is on Romanian and Indian means killing it. The People v. Mod and Sweet XP thus present and perform a series of perspectives
attempts, starting with the mid-1950s, to bridge the distance between the two cultures. on how humans see their ‘life’ of with AI and what that might imply for the future ethical and legal
I underline the connection between broader programs of developmental assistance and the en- treatment of artificial intelligence. In my paper, I will look into the reset button and examine the
trenchment of cultural relations between Romania and India, particularly in the realm of theatre. dynamics between the human, the AI and the potential to delete memories, attempting to address
I argue that economic rapprochement constituted the igniting premise for mutual discovery. This the questions of what it means to embody a machine on stage and how the possibility of a reset
context is literally embodied by Amita Ray’s biography. She arrived in Bucharest 1957 accompany- is conceptualized, and how does the reset button divide the mind from the body? What does that
ing her husband who was an oil engineer. In the following years, she learned Romanian, translating imply for the AI learning about how to build relationships with humans and human response-ability
in Bengali Romanian playwrights and being involved in the production of their plays in India. By cf. Haraway towards AI?
1972 she was teaching a course of Bengali language and literature at Bucharest University. Ray was
not only a connector, but also an adapter between the two cultures. Key Words
This example ties in with a broader phenomenon: theatre diplomacy between state socialist sci-fi theatre, AI, being human
regimes and extra-European countries was founded upon what I call a “second network.” Drawing
from the representation of the socialist camp as the “Second World,” my paper will underline the
role of Indian progressive intellectuals in the consolidation of theatre exchanges with Romania – a
development that can easily be extended to relations across Eastern Europe.
Based on the Romanian-Indian encounter, the paper will flesh out two interrelated evolutions in
theatre diplomacy between Eastern Europe and the Global South: the importance of individual
elective affinities built by way of bilateral relations in facilitating reciprocal adaptation; and, the
conversion of personal experience into more systematic programs of theatre assistance, which
mirrored the developmental assistance of state socialist regimes to post-colonial societies.

Key Words
Global South, Cold War, theater diplomacy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

272 273
 GP GP

Hanna Voss Meike Wagner

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Stockholm University

Hanna Voss, M.A. studied theatre, literature and economics at the university of Mainz Germany and in 2012 Meike Wagner is Professor of Theatre Studies at Stockholm University. Her book “Theater und Öffentlichkeit
she became research assistant at the local institute for theatre studies. She works and does her PhD in the im Vormärz Theatre and the Public Sphere in the Early 19th Century” Berlin 2013 is based on her historical re-
context of the interdisciplinary DFG research group „Un/doing Differences“. From both a theoretical and an search on the early development of bourgeois theatre in German speaking countries. Her current research in-
empirical perspective, her PhD thesis deals with the institutionalized German theatre and focuses on the cur- terest lies in the ideas, models and practices of theatre, which materialized in the early 19th century as a result
rent de-institutionalization of ethnicity or rather ‚race’. of social, political and aesthetic transformations around 1800 prefiguring modern theatre as we know it today.

Prefabricated Biographies? Young Actors of Color in Performing Citizenship. Liebhabertheater around 1800
Institutionalized German Theater
In the decades around 1800, German theatre was increasingly involved in the establishment of bour-
The subject of the lecture is the institutionalized German theatre in the sense of relatively stable and geois cultural practices and a bourgeois public sphere Habermas 1962. From being representational
standardized behaviourial patterns which has begun to form up in the last third of the 18th century. forms, which were shaped after the needs of the absolutist ruler and the court’s desire for entertain-
Today this institution is daily reproduced by a multitude of organizations and individuals – primarily ment, theatres were transformed into public bourgeois institutions that offered cultural practices
by the public playhouses, but also to a considerable extent by drama schools, artists’ agencies and by mirroring an emerging bourgeois society and practicing the basic elements of citizenship: open
audiences. The analytical focus is put on the paradoxical tension of theatre between reproduction access to all societal strata, participation, and the sharing and communicating of bourgeois identities
and the transgression of physical individual differentiation. At present this can be noticed especially based on the ideal of the ‘citizen’. In my contribution, I will argue that the popular amateur theatre
in the case of ethnicity or rather ‚race’: The practice of ‚Blackfacing‘ has become increasingly associations played an important role in mainstreaming ideas of community and citizenship giving
illegitimate and this circumstance has promoted a smouldering discourse about discriminating their members an opportunity to practice public speech and performance, to try out forms of dem-
practices of employment, ensembles and performance. However, in institutionalized German ocratic decision-making and to shape and perform an identity as a full citizen of their theatre com-
theatre physical individual features and especially ethnic features of actors are in principle not munity without regard to rank and title. The social change in a late and post-Enlightenment political
professionally disregarded, but instead they are the main characteristics of functional requirements. landscape opened possibilities for these theatre associations to re-model their own citizen identities
For regardless of their acting ability actors are perceived according to such categorizations which on and off stage. Starting from the case of the Berlin based amateur theatre Urania established in
– following the sociologist Bettina Heintz – can be described as institutionalization of ethnicity in 1792 I will trace the establishment of a theatrical and citizen community within and around the the-
institutionalized German theatre. Owing to the dynamics in the case of ethnicity there is however atre association that allowed these amateurs to migrate vertically the otherwise still rigid strata of
a slowly starting de-institutionalization. But what does this mean for young professional actors? late absolutist society.
How do they see themselves? How do they present themselves on the ‚market’? And how do the
public playhouses and their staff policy reflect these developments? The lecture is supposed both Key Words
to provide a theoretical approach to theatre as an institution and to explain how organizational Amateur Theater and Community Building, Performing Citizenship, Theater around 1800
structures, perception of oneself and of the ‚other’ and aesthetic traditions interact with each other
in the biographies of young colored actors.

Key Words
German theater, institution, ethnicity, race, biographies
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

274 275
 GP GP

Gabriel Wankar Matthias Warstat

Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, California Freie Universität Berlin
Gabriel Wankar, is a consultant in social development and communication. He has pioneered several projects Matthias Warstat is Full Professor of Theatre Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. After graduating in theatre
in contributing to securing recognition and voice for poor men, women and children with special needs. He studies and modern history at Freie Universität Berlin 1999, he worked in a collaborative research network
has published extensively in the areas of development, empowerment and social justice. His research interests on „Theatricality as a Paradigm for Cultural Studies“ and finished his PhD.-thesis on theatrical aspects of early
include Church and society, community organising and development. 20th-century working class celebrations in 2002. In his habilitation thesis 2008 he analysed the dialectics of
crisis and healing in avant-garde theatre and aesthetics. Between 2008 and 2012, he was Chair of Theatre and
The Notion of Home between Migration and Identity in Iyorwuese Media Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg. In 2012, he was awarded an ERC-Ad-
vanced Grant for the project „The Aesthetics of Applied Theatre“. Main research areas: contemporary theatre
Hagher’s Global Home and society, modern European theatre history 19th and 20th century, theatricality of politics.
In an age of endless migrations of people seeking refuge in different nations, at different border
places, or adrift on various oceans as ‘boat people’ detained on island-prison camps, homeless on Affective Dimensions of Contemporary Forms of Post-Migrant
streets and stuck in tunnels or parks, home has begun to develop several significations for identity. Theatre
It is related as a place of departure. The very many exploitative disruptions of people’s lives as end
results of wars, famines, ecological disasters leading to homelessness, thus resulting to both young The talk will discuss the affective dimension of current forms of Post-Migrant Theatre, focussing on
and old seeking refuge in shelters, displaced from their homes because of poverty, abuse, dispos- examples from Berlin and other German cities, but also touching upon the situation in other Europe-
session and personal disaster. The figure of the displaced, homeless person is the most tragic rep- an countries.  Theatre productions dealing with shifting identities in the context of diverse migration
resentation of the transnational postmodern condition, as both physical and psychic homelessness processes and against the backdrop of different colonial histories tend to assemble rather complex
exists on a continuum with disruptions and out sidedness and a variety displacement through exile, audiences. The audience members may bring in different experiences of and attitudes towards mi-
migration movement. The question of identity takes into account the multifaceted nature of human gration, mobility, identity politics and discrimination. The resulting affective relations of belonging
existence therefore, the meaning of home becomes paramount. This paper critiques Iyorwuese Ha- and distance have to be described and analysed. In a rather short period of time, the figure of 
gher’s Global Home, it discusses the challenges of migration and identity in today’s modern world. „the migrant“ has undergone a number of significant changes. While biographies of a second- and
The paper relates social issues on, ‘where is home? What is home? ‘the immigrant’ ‘identity’ ‘strang- third-generation migration background have been highlighted in earlier productions of a specialized
er’ ‘going back home’. All of these are steeped in the culture of migration and identity of people „Post-Migrant Theatre“, contemporary projects done by a much broader range of theatres tend to
trying to take root in a new environment. Global Home relates the gory of migration, frustration of focus on the situation of refugees – a shifting constellation, that has lead to an all-in-all rather hy-
various peoples migrating to other parts of the globe. The conclusion is how could theatre through brid and vague image of migration.  Referring to interim results from the FU Berlin Collaborative
communication be explored to combat this challenge? Research Centre „Affective Societies“, the talk will argue that a deeper understanding of the affective
dimension of relevant productions has to start from analysing how the theatrical space is organised,
Key Words how the audience is addressed, and how thereby a specific theatrical public is shaped. Practices of
Migration, Identity, Border Places, Citizenship distancing seem to be as important as forms of identification, in order to challenge obtrusive and
simplistic conceptions of „belonging“ or „integration“.

Key Words
affect theory, belonging, integration, distancing, identification,
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

276 277
 GP GP

Keri Watson Raz Weiner

University of Central Florida Royal Holloway University of London

Education 2010 Ph.D. Art History, Florida State University 2006 MA Art History, Florida State University 2004 Raz Weiner is a practitioner and researcher of theatre and performance. Currently, he is working toward his
BA Interdisciplinary Humanities, University of West Florida Select Grants Fulbright-Terra Foundation Award PhD at the Royal Holloway University of London under the supervision of Dr Bryce Lease. His research focuses
in the History of American Art in China Institute of Museum and Library Services National Endowment for on the performativity of race and the performance of racialising ideologies in Israel/Palestine. His project is
the Arts Big Read Society for the Preservation of American Modernists Publication Grant Select Publications particularly interested in performances of ethnic-drag in cultures of settler-colonialism. Through analysing dif-
Watson, Keri. Art of the Non-Western World. Dubuque: Great River Learning, 2017. Watson, Keri. “Curating ferent sites of representation, such as educational performances, popular television and music icons, as well as
Controversy in the Trump Era.” Museum and Social Issues: A Journal of Reflective Discourse 12:2 2017. Wat- by reflecting upon his own drag-art, his project aims to theorise drag-practice as constitutive of settler-culture,
son, Keri. “Picturing Difference and Disability in the Classroom.” In Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twen- both as its consolidator and its disruptor and resistor. At present Raz is the co-editor of Platform, a Journal of
ty-first Century Approaches, edited by Julia Eichelberger and Mae Miller Claxton. Jackson: University Press of Theatre and Performing Arts based in the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at the RHUL where he
Mississippi, 2017. Watson, Keri. “Difference and Disability: The Photography of Margaret Bourke-White.” In also teaches. He presented papers in TAPRA 2016 Bristol and 2017 Salford and in IFTR 2016 Stockholm. He is
Disability and Art History, edited by Ann Millet-Gallant and Elizabeth Howie, 82-98. London: Routledge, 2017. a graduate of Goldsmiths College, the Summer Institute Cologne with North-Western University and of Brown
Watson, Keri. “‘Before We Were Us, We Were Them’: Curating Controversy.” Journal of Museum Education International Research Institute June 2017.
39:1 2014: 96-107. Watson, Keri. “Eudora Welty’s Making a Date, Grenada, Mississippi: One Photograph, Five
Performances.” In Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race. Edited by Harriet Pollack, 73-94. Athens: University of Dress-Crossing the Lines: Tilda Death and the Question of Confusion
Georgia Press, 2013.
as Strategy in Political Performance
Found in Translation: Performing Displacement and Migratory “For who would dare to stop my flow of words? / To quantify a horror? To hold me back from stroll-
Geographies in a Visual and Performing Arts Collaboration ing down / the bloody lanes of sorrow, perplexed, from taking down the walls / Of disinformation
with an axe? To prevent me from filling up / your glasses with the finest spirt, as / Judgment now
Drawing on the conference topics around performing displacement and migratory geographies, this relaxes? Right, who can prohibit me / From simply, blowing off, your faces?”
paper explores sites of possibility for addressing the current refugee crisis through artistic collabo- Created in 2013, Life and Times of Tilda Death is my drag mockumentary. Appropriating aesthetics
rations. How do we as artists negotiate artistic mediums to foster a collective dialogue about ethics typical of testimonial events of Holocaust survivors in Israel as its generic framework this monodra-
of representation concerning migrant bodies and mediatized images of violence and destruction? ma relates a fable of a Jewish girl from a small Hasidic community in Poland who became a partisan
Since his election and inauguration, United States President Donald Trump has continued to rally his fighter and an underground rap artist. Tilda’s biography not only exceeds her activities in WW2, but
base around his campaign promises, which include building a U.S.-Mexico wall, enforcing a travel also migrates to the Civil Rights Movement of 1960s New York, the Mizrachi Black-Panthers struggle
ban, and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. To many, his populist rhetoric is a trou- for equality and recognition in 1970s Jerusalem and contemporary artistic collaborations with Pales-
bling reminder of the racism and anti-intellectualism that permeate contemporary American society, tinian musicians in the West Bank. The paper analyses Tilda auto-ethnographically, both as a fictional
to others, it is a direct threat to their lives and communities. In winter 2018, University of Central persona and as a performative event, demonstrating how she utilises the aesthetics and politics of
Florida’s Schools of Visual and Performing Arts leveraged the support of the National Endowment drag to destabilise conventions of national, political and ethnic identities. Following the work of
for the Arts to respond to issues of exile, displacement and Otherness, and demonstrate how no- Katrin Sieg (2009), I will consider Tilda as an act of ‘ethnic drag’, questioning the reconfiguration of
tions of migration might be employed to grapple with issues of cultural cross-fertilization, transfer, racial constructs offered by Tilda’s articulation of jewness and blackness. Along theoretical models
appropriation, and mutation, de/construct normalized racist representations and spaces, challenge set by Sara Ahmed (2006), José Esteban Muñoz (2009) and other queer theorists I will argue for the
neoliberal hegemony, and offer techniques for resilience and resistance. The gallery exhibition Find- significance of Tilda’s body and corporeal presence in establishing a productive state of confusion.
ing Home: The Global Refugee Crisis brought together fourteen artists from around the world whose
work addresses themes including borders as geographical and symbolic dividing lines, displacement Key Words
and asylum seeking, refugee camps and detention centers, and immigration and resettlement. The Drag, queering, Israel/Palestine, memory, mockumentary, rap
production of David Edgar’s Pentecost interweaves the past with the present to challenge how so-
ciety responds to a refugee crisis and treats “precarious bodies” of the displaced and wounded.
This paper considers the ways in which this collaboration united the visual and performing arts,
decolonized the institution, adapted, transformed, and negotiated media, performed difference and
diversity, and demonstrated the ability of the arts to act for social justice.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

performing displacement cultural cross-fertilization mediatized image of violence

278 279
 GP GP

Tim White Birgit Wiens

University of Warwick Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Theatre Studies

Tim White is Principal Teaching Fellow in the School of Theatre & Performance Studies and Cultural & Media Dr. phil. habil. Birgit Wiensis a researcher, lecturer PD and DFG-Heisenberg-Fellow at LMU | Ludwig-Maximil-
Policy Studies, University of Warwick. His teaching and research interests include food and performance, im- ians-University Munich. PhD in Theatre Studies LMU Munich, 1998, Habilitation at LMU Munich, 2013. As a
mersive practices, online performance, video, and performance in public spaces. His most recent publication curator, dramaturge and project leader she has worked for ZKM | Centre for Arts and Media, Karlsruhe, and
is the concluding essay in Occasions of State, the forthcoming volume in Routledge’s European Festival Studies other institutions 2004-09 Professor for Theatre Studies/Dept. for Stage and Costume Design, Academy of
Series. Fine Arts Dresden 2010-13 Research Project »Intermediale Szenographie« LMU Munich. Member of the IFTR
working group »Intermediality«. Birgit Wiens has published widely on acting and performance theory, sce-
The Argos Catalogue: Motion Capture and Performance nography and art in public space, including the book projects: »Theater ohne Fluchtpunkt | Theatre without
Vanishing Points. The Legacy of Adolphe Appia: Scenography and Choreography in Contemporary Theatre«,
This paper considers the development of a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, devised as part of ed. with G. Brandstetter, Berlin: Alexander Verlag 2010 »Intermediale Szenographie. Raum-Ästhetiken des
Theaters am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts«, Paderborn: Fink Verlag 2014. In Nov. 2016 she organized the in-
the Mask and Avatar project, realised first in Paris December 2017 and, in revised form, in Warwick
ternational conference »The Art of Scenography: Epistemes and Aesthetics«, in conjunction with the Academy
March 2018. Myself and Andy Lavender Warwick along with Georges Gagneré and Cédric Plessiet of Fine Arts Munich and the Residenztheater, funded by the German Research Foundation DFG. Current book
both Paris 8 grappled with a number of issues, both artistic and technological, in bringing the work project: »Contemporary Scenography. Practices and Aesthetics in German Theatre, Arts and Design«, Blooms-
to the stage and the intention here is to reflect on the tools, workflow, and production methods both bury-Methuen 2019.
assumed and adopted. With reference to current exemplars of the integration of live performer and
pre-assembled digital assets such as Ninja Theorys Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice and the emergence Theatrical Reflections on Europe’s colonialist, imperialist Past: On
of real-time interaction with film The Mills The Human Race, both facilitated by the freely available
Frank Castorf’s Adaptation of Goethe’s “Faust” Volksbühne Berlin
Unreal Engine 4, the paper will evaluate the competencies and costs required to exploit the game
engine on the experimental stage. Alongside this, the status, disposition and persistence of the live 2017, Stage Design: Aleksandar Denić
performer as a most distinctive controller driving the co-present avatar in the theatre space is con-
Frank Castorf had been artistic director of the Berlin Volksbühne for 25 years his final production
sidered, in part as a reflection on the ensuing stage picture but also as a prelude to contemplating
was an adaptation or to be more precise: a deconstruction of Goethe’s »Faust«, one of the most
the performer as means for show control, beyond the one-to-one correspondence of actor/avatar,
iconic work of German literature and drama. Staged in 2017, Castorf’s version offered a critical and
articulating notions of manipulactor and mocaptor that might differently populate, indeed define,
non-traditional reading of the drama part one and two and used it as a pretext to explore Europe’s
the performance space.
colonialist, imperialist past and its consequences, i.e. misogynie, racism, exploitation, and terror. Ac-
cording to this reading, Faust can be interpreted as a ›global player‹ avant la lettre, and by doing so,
Key Words
the production took up not only a German, but a European perspective: relocated to Paris during the
Motion capture, Agamemnon, Unreal Engine, Film, show control
Algerien war, the play was loaded with quotes from Rimbaud, Zola’s Nana, Frantz Fanon’s liberation
theory The Damned of the Earth, 1961 and also Paul Celan’s »Dead Fugue« presented by Abdoul
Kader Traoré, an actor from Burkina Faso. -- »Like Heiner Müller, we think that one can be operative
with art – intervene, change, disturb and unsettle the landscape of the German soul through the
pleasure of contradiction«, Frank Castorf once explained his approach of theatre-making. His »Faust,
based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe« was performed in a complex, collage-like installation by
Serbian set designer Aleksandar Denić, built on a revolving stage that was almost constantly moving
25 times during the performance!. This rotating stage which also included film projection figured as
a metaphor for Faust’s dynamics and expansion at the same time, it adressed the viewer in specific
ways, by offering kaleidoscopic views onto an ever-changing landscape. – This contribution offeres
an analysis of the dramaturgic, scenic and scenographic conception of Castorf/Denic’s »Faust« pro-
duction, with special focus on moments of stasis vs. performative dynamics and velocity suggesting
fragmentation, dislocaton and identity loss.

Key Words: cultural identity/migration/stasis/velocity/constant movement

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

280 281
 GP GP

Fiona Wilkie Stephen Wilmer

University of Roehampton Trinity College Dublin

Fiona Wilkie is a reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Roehampton, UK. She has S.E. Wilmer is Professor Emeritus of Drama at Trinity College, Dublin, and was recently a Research Fellow at
published on various aspects of mobility, site and performance. Her monograph, Performance, Transport and the Research Centre for “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin. Formerly Head
Mobility: Making Passage, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. Other recent publications include an of the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity College Dublin, he has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford
investigation of how travel is staged: ‘“It’s a big world in here”: Contemporary Voyage Drama and the Politics University and the University of California at Berkeley. He is a playwright with productions at the Manhattan
of Mobility’, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 2017. Fiona is currently the book reviews editor for Theatre Club and Lincoln Centre and has written and edited twenty books and recently co-edited a special
Contemporary Theatre Review, and was part of the organising committee for the Melbourne stage of Psi Fluid topic on “Theatre and Statelessness in Europe” for Critical Stages, an online journal in 2016. His latest book,
States. Performing Statelessness in Europe, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018, and he has recently
been appointed editor-in-chief of the Nordic Theatre Studies journal. Other books he has written are: Theatre,
Pioneers, vagabonds, and ‘genuine visitors’: intersecting Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities Cambridge U Press, 2002 The Dynamic World of Finnish
Theatre Like Press, 2006 edited and co-edited books include Beckett and DublinLilliput, 1992 Theatre Worlds
narratives of theatre touring and migration in Motion: Structures, Politics and Developments in the Countries of Western Europe Rodopi, 1998 Portraits
of Courage Helsinki UP, 1997 Theatre, Histories and National IdentityHelsinki UP, 2001 Writing and Rewriting
This paper explores practices of theatre touring. In particular, I focus on the narratives of touring National Theatre HistoriesIowa UP, 2004 Stages of Chaos: The Drama of Post-war Finland SKS 2005 Reb-
theatre artists that are produced through a range of materials – newspaper reports, theatre pro- el Women: Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today Methuen 2005Humour and Humanity: Contemporary Plays
grammes, appointment books, customs procedures, schedules, blogs, and diaries – to consider the from Finland Like Press, 2006 National Theatres in a Changing Europe Palgrave Macmillan, 2008Reflections on
politics of theatre’s circulation. Here, touring performers are characterised as, variously, pioneers Beckett Michigan UP, 2009 Native American Performance and Representation Arizona UP, 2009 Interrogating
and vagabonds, exiles and nomads, as world-weary manual labourers and as global business trav- Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism Oxford UP, 2010 Deleuze and Beckett Palgrave Macmillan,
ellers. These narratives of theatre touring intersect in various ways with languages and experiences 2015 Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies Routledge 2016.
of migration. Our attention is drawn to this intersection explicitly at moments when movement is
denied and the rigidity of borders is performed. When the UK Visas and Immigration office respond- Empowerment of Refugees Through Theatre
ed in 2015 to a visa application by the Georgian theatre company The New Collective – invited to
perform at a UK-based festival – with the indictment that ‘I am not satisfied that you are a genuine I propose to compare two dramaturgical approaches one professional and one amateur that relate
visitor to the UK and will leave the UK at the end of your visit’, it reminded us that theatre does to the lives of refugees and the stateless. The first is the collaborative approach of Yael Ronen with
not always tour unproblematically. This marked merely one among numerous instances of theatre’s professional actors in such pieces as Third Generation with German actors from the Schaubühne,
mobilities being inseparable from other ways in which movement is contained and regulated. In this Israeli actors from the Habima theatre, and Palestinian actors, Common Ground with Balkan and
example, The New Collective responded by presenting an installation in absentia: titled The Artists German actors in the Gorki Theater, and The Situation with German, Palestinian, Syrian and Israeli
Are Not Present: A Performance by UK Visas and Immigration, the improvised response highlighted actors in the Gorki Theater. In these productions, Ronen devised plays based on the experiences,
the frictions that attend mobility, and the privileges of artistic movement that are often assumed. memories and prejudices of her actors, some of whom were German and many of whom were ref-
The example of the New Collective at – or rather, not at – the Flare Festival also raises questions of ugees or immigrants. I might also touch on the work of the “Exile Ensemble” with Syrian and Pales-
how the ‘international’ at international theatre festivals is constructed. This paper investigates the- tinian actors, whose work I haven’t yet seen. The second approach is that by Refugee Club Impulse,
atre touring as a practice that both moves alongside migration and, in some instances, is migration, an amateur group of refugee actors formed in Berlin in 2014 that used their own stories as the core
asking what this might tell us about theatre’s place within broader patterns of mobility. of Letters Home. Within the framing device of a classroom in Berlin where they are learning about
German culture, the refugees are asked to write letters home about their experiences in Germany.
Key Words This production was developed with the aid of German advisors but it mainly relied on the individual
theatre touring mobility migration narrative labour international monologues by the non-German amateur actors who came from a variety of countries and cultures
Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Gambia and used movement, music and filmic devices to
embellish their stories. I will discuss the rehearsal processes and devising methods, the interweav-
ing of cultures in performance, and the effect of these on the actors involved. I will examine some
of the similarities and differences between these two dramaturgical approaches and draw some
conclusions.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Yael Ronen Refugee Club Impulse Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater

282 283
 GP GP

Shira Wolfe Tzu-Ching Yeh

NGO Talas Creative Therapies Chang Jung Christian University

Shira Wolfe is a Dutch theatre practitioner and multidisciplinary artist, whose work is focused on opening up Tzu-Ching Yeh is Assistant Professor at Language Education Center at Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan.
intercultural dialogues through creative means. She holds a double degree MA in International Performance She received her PhD at Lancaster University UK, MA at Durham University UK, and BA at National Kaohsiung
Research from the University of Warwick and the University of the Arts Belgrade, and has completed several Normal University Taiwan. Her specialized areas are Samuel Beckett studies, radio drama, literary theories and
intensive trainings in socially engaged theatre practice at Trinity College Dublin, as well as with various theatre culture studies her publications include journal articles: “‘Late! . . . we are doubly late, trebly, quadrupedly
companies in Europe. She has been working in the field of dramatherapy since beginning 2017, with a partic- late’: Late Modernism in Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall” 2015, and “‘Close your eyes and listen to it, what do
ular focus on work with refugees. you think it was:’ The Uncanny and the Mechanical in All That Fall and Embers” 2008 and book chapters: “Re-
configuring Stone in Samuel Beckett’s Embers” 2016,〈論貝克特的《快活天》與永續生態〉“A Discussion of
In/Visible Faces – Dramatherapy as a Tool for Creating a Space of Beckett’s Happy Days and Sustainability” 2015, and “Samuel Beckett’s Radio Drama: Making Sense of a ‘Radio
Panopticon’” 2013.
Possibilities with Refugees
The traumas refugees have suffered often leave them isolated and alienated. In Serbia, many of The Politics of Space: A Study of Samuel Beckett “Rough for Radio
these people find themselves in limbo, either unable to travel further or uncertain how to establish II” and “Catastrophe”
a life here. Many refugees arriving in Europe face distrust from the local communities. In such a
context, the establishment of communication with refugees becomes an important, even radical act. In view of recent turmoil, we witness an exacerbation of natural calamity caused mainly by human
Dramatherapy facilitates the processes of healing, integration, and growth, 1 and can help restore activities on the one hand, and the rise of political tensions and the War on Terror on the other. As
communication through creative and often non-verbal means. Between June 2017 and October the construction of national borders progressively replaces cross-border cooperation, the tendency
2017, Serbian NGO Talas Creative Therapies conducted dramatherapy workshops with 8 male refu- of global democracy is seemingly in decline. In this paper, I seek to make these aforementioned
gees in Belgrade, between the ages of 14 and 30. We used fictional characters, dramatic enactment, challenges an equilibrium of Samuel Beckett’s work. In a sense, we may refer to Catastrophe 1982,
poetry, art, and music. Working with a fictional realm helps traumatized people rewrite their stories theater play as an implication of the manifold humanitarian crises we now face globally, and we
as people who can overcome and cope with real life struggles, while focusing on the healthy compo- can draw on Fox’s walls in Rough for Radio II 1960s, radio play as an analogy to address the idea of
nents of the personality. Using our experience in the field as a guiding thread, this paper reveals the borders. Taking Catastrophe as a sequel to Rough for Radio II, I shall first examine the confining state
strong potential of the dramatherapy method when working with refugees. We examine three key of the characters in both plays to demonstrate how the protagonists can be identified as bare life,
aspects of our process: the development of a model of dramatherapy for refugees in Serbia; lessons and to propose that their liminal position can be read as a potential site that informs the state of
learned; the positive outcomes of the work. Our project resulted in the substantial improvement of exception. Second, I investigate the space as the site of aporia where the ambiguous boundary be-
the wellbeing of our group, over the course of 20 workshops and 1 performance at Bitef Festival in tween biological and political bodies is created. In the attempt to politicize the space, I argue that the
September 2017. With this paper, we aim to contribute to the sharing of knowledge about drama- performance from the walls as imprisonment to the “bag” that contains the catastrophe in Beckett’s
therapeutic work with refugees. plays is, in effect, deterritorializing. Invoking theoretical works of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and
Giorgio Agamben, I argue the way that natural body merges with political body without distinction
Key Words: further unsettles the space in question. It is hoped that through my small scale study of the politics
Dramatherapy; refugees; communication through art of space, it may yield a valuable insight into the flaws of modern democracy in a globalized world.

Key Words
Samuel Beckett, Catastrophe, Rough for Radio II, politics, space
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

1 Pendzik, Susana. “Drama Therapy as a Form of Modern Shamanism.” The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 1988, Vol. 20, No I, p. 81.

284 285
 GP GP

Dorit Yerushalmi Sarah Youssef

University of Haifa University of Cologne
Dorit Yerushalmi is a senior lecturer in The Theatre Department, University of Haifa, and the Head of the de- Sarah Youssef completed her BA degree in Theater at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and received her
partment. She is the coeditor of Please Don’t Chase Me Away: New Studies on the Dybbuk Tel Aviv: Assaph MA in Text & Performance Studies from RADA, London, UK and a MA Cross Sectoral and Community Arts at
Theatre Studies and Safra Publishing House, 2009, and coeditor of Habima: New Studies on National The- Goldsmiths College, London, UK. Internationally she has worked as a director, writer and dramaturg. She is a
atre. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2017. She is the author of The Directors’ Stage: On Directors in the Israeli Theatre Or part of the CAST Artists Network - Creative Arts Schools Trust, an organization that supports the international
Yehuda: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir and Heksherim Institute, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2013. Her theater training with politically and socially disadvantaged children, founded by David Morrissey. Since fall
publications are related to Hebrew theatre historiography, aesthetics and ideological aspects in the works of 2012, Sarah is editorial assistant of genderforum – An Internet Journal for Gender Studies and research assis-
contemporary Israeli directors, theatre and gender, pedagogies of theatre, theatre and the city tant at the University of Cologne, Germany.

Khashabi Theatre: Performing the Right to a Palestinian City in Shakespeare and Digital Art: RSC meets Intel in “The Tempest” (2017)
Downtown Haifa
At the Court of James I the staging of elaborate court entertainment, known as the Stuart Masques,
Curated Panel: Performing Migration, Dis-Mobility and Displacement in Israel-Palestine Khashabi became custom. The illusionistic and new settings were characterized by their spectacular stage
Theatre: Performing the Right to a Palestinian City in Downtown Haifa In recent years, collectives effects, elaborate costumes and at the center of the event dancing by the royal family and aristoc-
of Palestinian artists have established and operated independent i.e., not funded by Jewish-Israeli racy, accompanied by music. These then innovative performances would soon dominate the English
sources platforms for promoting their projects in downtown Haifa. These relatively autonomous en- theatre. This new stage language dominated for more than 300 years. Today, Shakespeare remains
claves, which are located within Jewish-Israeli geography, enact transformative participation by pro- relevant to the theatrical landscape, and is continuously reimagined, retold, and reinvented. In a
ducing a space from below, motivated by an active attitude toward the city’s political life. In this pa- further attempt to engage audiences, the 2017 RSC production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is in
per, I will present one such platform, the Khashabi Theatre, which was founded in 2011 and has been collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios, putting an emphasis on the
located since 2015 in an old building in Wadi Salib that has been converted into a theatre house. My use of digital media in order to create the world of the play. In a new attempt to captivate audiences
main concern is to examine this theatre as an urban cultural institution from the perspective of “the the production uses real-time, interactive effects to immerse its audiences. This paper will explore
right to the city” Lefebvre, 1996, emphasizing the attendant questions: Whose right, what right and how the spectator takes part in these innovative performances and how the relationship between
to what city? Marcuse, 2009. To portray the theatre’s local environment, I will present the processes audiences and spaces are reimagined through those innovations. The critical examination of the
occurring in Haifas downtown: urban renewal, gentrification, and Judaization. I will argue that the changing role of the spectator and the use of new media in the artistic exploration of Shakespeare’s
Khashabi’s location is a clear statement of historical and spatial rights and cultural resistance to magical play will be focus of this paper.
the processes that are erasing the Palestinian city from memory and physical space. The Khashabi
building, as a site-specific performance, exposes the geopathology of Wadi Salib, a neighborhood
that suffered the deportation and abandonment of its Palestinian residents in 1948, and as a cultural Key Words
institution, performs a new system of self-location. With Arabic being the dominant language in the The Tempest, Shakespeare, Immersive Theater, Digital Performances, Audience, Space
theatre, and the post-dramatic aesthetic that characterizes its shows, the Khashabi produces a space
that does not fall into a “tragic impasse” rather, it is a multi-layered, palimpsestic space of place and
history that embodies the right to urban life and the seeds of a city-to-be.

Key Words
Palestinian theatre, Haifa, “the right to the city”, urban renewal, gentrification
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

286 287
 GP GP

Yosef Yzraely Houman Zandi-Zadeh

Tel Aviv University Flinders University Graduate

Date of Birth: 1938, Jerusalem Israel. Education: Graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts 1962, Lon- Houman Zandi-zadeh is an Iranian-born dramatist and researcher. He did his BA and MA in Dramatic Literature
don, UK B.A. in Drama 1965 – Bristol University, UK. PhD 1971 in Theater Arts – Carnegie - Mellon University, in Iran, and finished his practice-led PhD in Intercultural Drama at Flinders University. Houman was awarded
Pittsburgh, USA. Academic Experience: Full Professor – Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Theater Arts Professor the Akbar Radi Prize for the Best Young Dramatist of Iran in 2008 and 2009 and was shortlisted in 2010, 2011
and Head of Directing – The Chosky Chair of Directing at Carnegie-Mellon University, USA Artistic Directorships and 2012. Before moving to Australia, he was the Head of Dramatic Literature Association of Iran’s House of
Artistic Director – The Habimah, Israeli National Theater, 1975 – 1977 Artistic Director – The Khan Theater University Theatre. Houman is currently working on fictional and academic works on injustice, inequality, rac-
in Jerusalem 1984 – 1987 Direction: Director of a large number of theater productions in Israel and abroad, ism, and Orientalism.
with plays presented at festivals in Berlin, Baltimore, Zurich, Toronto and more… Productions include: Rum-
plestiltskin A. Shlonsky, Tyre and Jerusalem Mattiyahu Shoham, Only Fools are Sad Dan Almagor, Night in May “Orghast”: Othering the Other in Their Homeland
A.B. Yehoshua, Medea Seneca, Miss Julie Strindberg [Gesher Theater] Six Characters in Search of an Author
Pirandello. Adaptations of Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon for the stage: A Simple Tale, Tehila, Bridal Canopy. Adap- Peter Brook is arguably the most significant representative of intercultural theatre in the West. His
tations of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav for the stage: Seven Beggars at the Khan Theater, Nothing is More Whole works have not only helped theorists to shape their idea of intercultural theatre, but have also influ-
than a Broken Heart Heidelberg Municipal Theater and the Berlin Festival. Shakespeare in the Park Festival
enced other practitioners. Here I focus on Orghast 1971 which is rooted in Iranian culture. This play
– King Lear On Broadway – The Crucible Arthur Miller – at the playwright’s request with Martin Sheen and
Michael York. Direction of plays by Ibsen: Little Eyolf, Enemy of the People, Wild Duck, Peer Gynt. At the Khan was performed at the Shiraz Arts Festival, funded by the Queen of Iran. It concentrated on the theme
Theater: Lady from the Sea Ibsen, Don Perlimplin and His Love for Belissa in the Garden Federico Garcia Lorca of the origin of fire, and was based on a few texts from different cultures. Ted Hughes wrote the play
Other plays by Shakespeare, Beckett, Bolt, Kafka, Moliere and more…. Awards: Winner of the Ibsen Medal and invented a language for it, Orghast. The newly invented language consisted of unreal words with
presented by the town of Skien, where the author was born David’s Harp Award for Direction on three sepa- no cultural backgrounds. Additionally, Orghast used two dead languages, Ancient Greek, Latin, and
rate occasions. David’s Harp Award for Best Production of the Year on three separate occasions. National Arts Avesta the language of Zoroastrianism’s holy book, Avesta. Brook mixed his group of actors with
and Culture Council Award for Best Original Production of the Year two separate occasions Silver Rose Award some Iranian actors, however, there were no Persian words used in the play performed for an Iranian
as Best Director of the Year and Best Production of the Year audience. In this paper I attempt to answer this question: why did Brook perform Orghast in Iran for
an Iranian audience who had no knowledge of any ancient language, let alone an invented one? I
Habima National Theatre - the unique case of exile-migration- start with definition of othering, and continue with a section on intercultural theatre and its relation-
homecoming ship with Orientalism in Brook’s works. It gives a broader image of Brook’s methods and ideas about
intercultural theatre. Then I clarify how othering Iranian culture and language resulted in Orghast.
Habima Theatre was founded in Moscow 1918 and becomes the National Theatre of Israel 1958
Unlike most migrations that eventually assimilate in the countries of their destination, culture and Key Words
language included, the Jews saw these countries as temporary stations and with the constant hope The Other, Othering, Orientalism, Peter Brook, Orghast
of returning home they preserved both culture and language. For almost two thousand years a vast
literature of religious subjects, philosophy and poetry was written in Hebrew, and for the first time
Hebrew was spoken as a regular stage language in Habima Theatre in Moscow 1918. To understand
that unique case where the would-be national theater preceded nationhood and migration as
homecoming I will examine the second production of Habima in Moscow, the Dybbuk 1922 An-
skys play was written in Russian, translated by him into Yiddish and then by the poet H.N.Bialik into
Hebrew - translation as migration of language or homecoming? redemption through language?
The two protagonists of the Dybbuk are the Tzadik, an elderly rabbi, and Hannan, an ardent young
messianic Kabbalist. The latter views exile and homecoming not in territorial but spiritual terms
of redemption that should be actualised here and now by mystical means. The Tzadik claims that
exile has its mysterious course and nothing to be done but perpetual longing for its end. Hurrying
the course of exile and messianic aspiration, claims the Tzadik, would result in a disaster. And while
Hannan performs his mystical-Kabbalist means to enhance redemption he drops dead. A messian-
ic tragedy. And back to the Habima Theater. In 1925 it immigrates from Russia and for ten years
wanders from country to country, performing the Dybbuk in front of migrate Jewish communities.
In 1931 it settles in Tel Aviv, a territorial homecoming, where the Dybbuk is performed for another
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

twenty years. In 1958 Habima is declared as the National Theater of Israel. 2018 is Habimas cen-
tennial anniversary. From 1975 to 1977 I served as the artistic director of Habima.

Key Words
Habima
288 289
 GP GP

Marilena Zaroulia Sonja Zdravkova-Djeparoska

Department of Performing Arts, University of Winchester University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”, Faculty of Music

Marilena Zaroulia is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the Department of Performing Arts, University PhD Sonja Zdravkova Djeparoska, currently works as a assoc. prof. at Faculty of Music at University “Ss. Cyril
of Winchester. Her research focuses on theatre and performance and the cultural politics of post-1989 Europe. and Methodius”, Skopje. She graduated and achieved masters degree in ballet pedagogy and choreography at
She is the co-editor of Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Her mono- Academy of Theatre Arts GITIS, Moscow, Russia 1992. Masters and doctoral studies in theater theory achieved
graph Encountering Europe on British Stages: Performances, Policies and Affects since 1990 will be published at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Skopje 2003 and 2010. Permanently participates in many international scientific
in the Methuen Drama Engage Series. She is the Secretary of Theatre and Performance Research Association conferences and projects that promote the Macedonian culture. She wrote the following books Character
TaPRA. Dances Magnat, 1998, Discourses of dance art Jugoreklam, 2001, Ballet dramaturgy FDA, 2003, History and
theory of the art of dance MI-AN, 2006 and Aspects of performative kinesthetic Jugoreklam 2011.She is edi-
“Why does theatre about migration make me feel so bad?”: Ugly tor of journal As Academica published by Facultu of Music and Faculty of Dramatic Arts. As contibutor of the
project CD-ROM Theatre in Macedonia FDA, 2003 is recipient of a award Goce Delchev.
Feelings and Paranoid Nationalisms in Contemporary British
Theatre Short historical review - Intercultural relations and migration.
‘Why is so much art produced about refugees so bad?’: this question-provocation posed in an arti- Examples of the dance scene in Macedonia
cle[1] in openDemocracy provides the starting point for this paper, which will discuss certain works
Migration is a term that, in todays context is associated with the large waves of refugees that are
engaging with migration that were staged in Britain before and after the June 2016 EU referendum.
landed in Italy, Greece and pass through Macedonia as a transit line to their desired destination. But
Drawing on select moments from Anders Lustgarten’s Lampedusa (spring 2015), the Royal Court
do current events limit migration only to what is happening now and here, usually giving a negative
theatre/LIFT season ‘On the Move’ (June 2016), the Actors Touring Company’s The Suppliant Women
connotation? Approaching historically, whether migration had any influence on todays culture? Rich-
and the Creative Europe-funded project Phone Home (both, October 2016), I will consider the com-
ard Schechner emphasizes that there is no single pure culture, a culture free of influences. The influ-
plexities and ambiguities of theatre that engages with ‘the pain of others’ particularly, when placed
ences in this example will be analyzed through the migration. In this text I would refer to a two-way
against a milieu shaped by the escalation of British ‘paranoid nationalism’ (Hage 2000) in the lead-up
osmotic process, that has been going on for more than a decade. Since my subspeciality is dance, the
to the Brexit vote.
performing forms will be analyzed. The establishment and development of ballet art in the Macedo-
My aim is not to classify these examples as (aesthetically, politically, ethically) ‘good’ or ‘bad’ theat-
ni, but also in the ex-Yugoslav countries is associated with a major migration process. It was the Rus-
rical responses to migration; rather, I wish to think through the limitations and potentialities opened
sian white emigration that took place after the October Revolution. Many artists who could not stay
up by the performance of empathy vis-à-vis the migrant Other on London theatre stages. If the
in their homeland, sought for a new one in Europe. Macedonian dance art has binded its foundation
theatre stage is a space where the border disorder of paranoid nationalism appears, what kind of
and decades of development with the names of several Russian choreographers - Jelena Polakova,
political and ethical work do these performances do?What is the role that theatre plays in a wider
Nina Kirsanova, Alexander Dobrohotov. Today there is an opposite process, we are witnessing exam-
affective economy shaped by the circulation of images of pity, suspicion or hate towards the (racial-
ples of migration of Macedonian artists. The need for affirmation, a better professional ambience,
ly-marked) migrant Other? I will argue that an excess of emotions often underpins theatre about
prompted many Macedonian dancers and choreographers to build their professional life in Europe
migration; in turn, this theatre often generates difficult responses or ‘ugly feelings’ (Ngai 2005).
and America. Through their activities in the new environment, they carry features and influences
Building on a recent article published in RIDE[2], this paper will attempt to make sense of some of
from the Macedonian cultural context. Intercultural ties that are happening are perhaps most visible
these feelings and how they might inform our judgments of what might be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ theatre
at choreography level, the most important examples which will be elaborated and analyzed. These
about migration.
are examples where migration shows a positive tendency to establish intercultural ties which are an
incentive in the cultural and artistic development.
Key Words
empathy affect nationalism representation ethics politics
Key Words
Migration, dance, intercultural relations, Macedonia
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

290 291
 GP GP

Dominic Zerhoch Nina Živančević

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Université Paris 8, la Sorbonne 1

Dominic Zerhoch is research fellow at the DFG research project on Oberammergau and institutionality and is Poet, essayist, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, translator and contributing editor to NY ARTS magazine
currently working on his PhD at JGU Mainz. He is also part of the SoCuM research group on “immersive spac- from Paris, Serbian-born Nina Živančević published 12 books of poetry. She has also written three books of
es”. Main research: corporality and space, Oberammergau and its Passionplay. short stories, two novels and a book of essay on Milosh Crnjanski her doctoral thesis published in Paris, New
York and Belgrade. The recipient of three literary awards, a former assistant and secretary to Allen Ginsberg,
How Jesus migrated to Oberammergau. Processes of spatial she has also edited and participated in numerous anthologies of contemporary world poetry. ​ As editor and
correspondent she has contributed to New York Arts Magazine, Modern Painters, American Book Review, East
construction in its political context Village Eye, Republique de lettres. She has lectured at Naropa University, New York University, the Harriman In-
stitute and St.John’s University in the U.S., she has taught English language and literature at La Sorbonne Paris
Based on processes of spatial construction, the paper discusses the aesthetics of the Oberammergau I and V and the History of Avant-garde Theatre at Paris 8 University in France and at numerous universities and
Passionplay in contrast to the imagination of the ancient Jerusalem. It argues that there is no colleges in Europe. ​She has actively worked for theatre and radio: 4 of her plays were performed and emitted
intention in relocating the spectator into another time and space. Instead, we can observe certain in the U.S. and Great Britain. ​In New York she had worked with the “Living Theatre” and the members of the
strategies to translocate the story into the little Village at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. This way the “Wooster Group”. ​She lives and works in Paris.
Play is always connected to its spatial presence and mirrors contemporary societies.
Being deeply rooted in the topology of the Alps Oberammergau regenerates a new space that gives Memory of the Recent “Avangarda”, does it spell Migrations or
new meaning to the story of the last days in the life of Jesus Christ. But how is this meaning con- “Resistence”?
structed and how does it appear during the different seasons of the play? In taking a look back to
recent German History the paper illustrates how it was possible that the ‘integrated Jesus’ has been As I’m walking among the sleepy bodies of the Syrian refugees at Belgrade’s bus station park, trying
instrumentalized by the Nazis. During the tercentenary of the Oberammergau Passionplay, interna- to address all my human and performative efforts towards the Other, my whole life appears sud-
tional Press headlined the event as “Oberammergau is Hitler’s Germany”. In their perception Jesus denly in front of me as “ on a stretcher”: have I ever left this place where my grandmother founded
becomes a personification of Germany by using the stage of the play for anti-Semitic propaganda. the Serbian branch of the Red Cross, and where my grandfather was hiding the Bakuninists under
The paper then draws the journey of Jesus’ migration to its integration and questions its position his roof, on their way from Russia to the United States ? Here, the questions such as “Is art still pos-
today facing the recent refugee crisis that also concerns the village of Oberammergau. Director sible?” and “what is its current, dying form?” have never occurred to me, nor the questions about
Christian Stückl, who is also the director of the Münchner Volkstheater, has recently broke with the the true meaning of resistance, the migrating power of people and its dying absence or presence in
tradition of the play by renovating and renegotiating creative and systematical structures. What everyone’s life. Here I remember a specific procedure of combining the “already-made” elements
may we expect the Passionplay to look like in a period where symbols of Christianity are about to be which a sculptor, Zoran Joksimović, gathered in his work which uses abjectness as a self-reflective
politically instrumentalized again. act of a traumatic memory exploring its effects in a material and metaphorical image of a frag-
mented body. Hal Foster with his notion of “abject art” was also discussing the “vulnerability of our
Key Words borders, the fragility of the spatial distinction between our exterior and the interior,” bringing the
Oberammergau Passionplay, Spatial turn, Historiography, Nazi Regime, Refugee Crisis concept of self into a crisis through the cut of the dismantled body whose chopped off members
now independently follow their own ‘game of chess’, towards the path of disappearance instead of
the subject. However, may we assume that a traumatic cut is also productive, because it evacuates
and raises the subject, showing us that the totality be it a body, a country , a nation is often a tem-
porary illusion which cannot hold in practice and that it confirms its existence only in multiplicity, in
a dynamic interaction of the whole and its segments be it migrating people, habits, performing acts.

Key Words
Migrants, migration, Other, Resistance, whole, body, members
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

292 293
 Working African and
Caribbean Theatre
Groups and Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

294 295
 WG WG

Awo Mana Asiedu David Donkor

Univeristy of Ghana Texas A&M University

Awo Mana Asiedu is a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana. David Donkor is Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Africana Studies at Texas A&M University.
He researches performance as a public political practice, in Africa, in different historical, social and economic
contexts.
Representation, Identity and Alienation: The Dancer’s Body as
Multi-cultural Site
Who Said Tweaah!: Social Media Memes and Co-Performative
The Ghana Dance Ensemble is a multi-ethnic dance company, which boasts a rich repertoire of in- Critique in Ghanaian Digital Culture
digenous dance and music traditions drawn from the diverse ethnic cultures of Ghana. Since its
establishment in 1962, it has served the purpose of national unification, through performance, by In Ghanaian colloquial speech the word Tweaah is an interjection to rubbish someone’s assumption,
bringing together dancers and musicians from ethnic groups across the nation. The dancer’s body, claim, or authority with disdain, derision, disregard, incredulity, indignation, insubordination, or swag-
in traditional Ghanaian society, embodies the very soul of his or her ethnic group as it projects ger. In 2013, a government appointed District Chief Executive DCE in the Ashanti Region of Ghana ex-
through symbolic gestures, movement and rhythm, the historical, philosophical, and cosmological ploded with rage at an unidentified member of the audience who had reacted to the DCEs speech at an
worldview of the people. The dancer’s ethnic origin is therefore, woven into the fabric of the dance end-of-year event with a chuckle and the retort Tweaah. The DCEs angry rants, caught on tape, soon
to communicate the dancer’s identity in corporeal terms. The Ghana Dance Ensemble dancer’s body, became a trending, humorous, social/digital media meme with national and some international con-
on the other hand, is a multi-cultural site, trained to wield multi-ethnic movement vocabularies to sequences. The DCEs job appeared to be on the line, Ghanas Parliament debated on whether to ban
project diverse identities according to the dictates of professionalism. In the process of representing the word a development that was broadcast on BBC and other international newsites until the Presi-
multiple ethnic identities through professional dance, there are bound to be points of alienation, dent of Ghana himself joined the public mirth and diffused the poltical partisan tensions around the
where the dancer communicates ethnic identities other than his or her own. This paper examines incident by using the word in his State of the Nation speech at Parliament. In this paper I engage social
the professional demands on the Ghana Dance Ensemble dancer’s body as a multi-cultural site, by media memes as public political practice by exploring the ways in which it provided an intertextual
highlighting issues of representation and how the dancer’s body is constantly alienated from his or process by which Ghanaians hid under the cover of parody and pastiche to critque the hubris of power.
her ethnic identity.The paper relies on constructivist and primordialist views of ethnicity to draw
conclusions on the position of the Ghana Dance Ensemble dancers in relation to identity, alienation, Key Words
and professionalism. social media, memes, performance, political practice, co-performative, critique, power, digitial cul-
ture
Key Words
Ghana Dance Ensemble, The Dancers body, Identity, Cross Cultural, Ethnicity, Professionalism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

296 297
 WG WG

Sabine Kim Izuu Nwankwọ

University of Mainz Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam

Sabine Kim is a researcher at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the University of Izuu Nwankwọ teaches theatre courses at Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam Campus,
Mainz. She is the author of the monograph Acoustic Entanglements: Sound and Aesthetic Practice and she is Anambra State, Nigeria. He holds a PhD from the University of Ibadan. He has attended conferences widely,
also managing editor of the Journal for Transnational American Studies. and published scholarly essays, stage plays and prose, with one of the most important being the Igbo trans-
lation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart titled Ihe Aghasaa. His current research interest is on popular
Vodou, Social Media, and the Global Performance of Community performances especially comedic renditions. He is currently the Ag. Head, Department of Theatre Arts, Chuk-
wuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam.
Vodou as an important religion practised in Haiti both circulates via relationships between persons
in the community and also, more importantly, creates those social ties itself. As a performative Migratory Drums of Africa, Ambivalent Rhythms of the West:
act that draws together the material and the immaterial, the seen and the unseen, vodou can be Bolanle Austen-Peters’ Saro and Wakaa, the Musical and Nigeria’s
thought of as an exemplary diasporic religion, through its potential to overcome physical distances Theatre Renaissance
and the barriers of the passage of time imposed by migration. For example, the exchange of cas-
sette recordings with ceremonial prayers and sacred texts traverse the vast geographical distances Globally, theatre practice and studies have innumerable challenges which have also defined their
between Haiti and its diasporic practitioners—creating a community that is both intimate and glob- manifestations in several societies. In Africa, owing largely to economic problems, film and literature
al. In this paper, I will examine vodou as a kind of social media without the cybernetic apparatus have become mainstream thereby making theatre seemingly inexistent in everyday living. In recent
vodou is a network for sharing an expressive culture that is a crossroads intersecting the spiritual times however, with successes in other more popular genres like stand-up comedy and video films,
practices, social beliefs, and shared geopolitical histories of Haiti, Florida, West Africa, and France. theatre appears to be making a comeback, especially in Nigeria. Lagos-based Terra Kulture Theatre
has gained international reckoning for its Saro, the Musical and Wakaa, the Musical, which have also
Key Words played at London’s West-End. These experiments by this theatre company is here considered one
syncretic religion, vodou, transnational ties, media, social media of the few foundational efforts towards the reassertion of African forms in global theatre practice.
Within these stage performances, there is a juxtaposition of cultures and the manner in which these
contacts are smoothened over within the texts hold great potentials for the rise of a new global the-
atre in Africa. Hence, applying Homi Bhabha’s postulations on Ambivalence and Mimicry, this paper
interrogates the Lagos and London enactments, with a view to interrogating how both texts address
the dated issues of colonialism and slavery as well as more contemporary dilemmas of identity,
sexuality and nationality. The paper is concerned chiefly with the following questions: How are the
frictions of cultural contacts addressed? And what deductible aspects of these plays hold the poten-
tial to awaken theatre in Africa and encourage the migration of African theatre practice to the West?

Key Words
African Drama, Musical Theatre, Ambivalence, Mimicry, Bhabha
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

298 299
 WG WG

Rashida Resario
University of Ghana

Rashida Resario is a lecturer of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Ghana. She received her MPhil
degree in Theatre Criticism from University of Ghana. She is currently a PhD student at University of Stellen-
bosch- South Africa, with a research focus on Intercultural Performance. Her PhD research is a case study of
the intercultural activities of the Ghana Dance Ensemble at the micro and macro levels. Her current research
interests include intercultural performance at the micro level within Ghana, the dramaturgy of Ghanaian play-
wrights, and charcoal graffiti ‘performance’ on walls. Some of her publications include: Theatre and the Use of
Technology: the Case of Ghana A Western Tale on an African Stage: Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s Cinderama. In addi-
tion to her PhD research, she is currently working on a collaborative paper with two researchers from Durham
University and the University of Arizona, on the topic: ‘Languaging’ and Embodying Professional Selves in
Intercultural Settings: Performance in Research and Dance.

Representation, Identity and Alienation: The Dancer’s Body as

Multi-cultural Site
The Ghana Dance Ensemble is a multi-ethnic dance company, which boasts a rich repertoire of in-
digenous dance and music traditions drawn from the diverse ethnic cultures of Ghana. Since its
establishment in 1962, it has served the purpose of national unification, through performance, by
bringing together dancers and musicians from ethnic groups across the nation. The dancer’s body,
in traditional Ghanaian society, embodies the very soul of his or her ethnic group as it projects
through symbolic gestures, movement and rhythm, the historical, philosophical, and cosmological
worldview of the people. The dancer’s ethnic origin is therefore, woven into the fabric of the dance
to communicate the dancer’s identity in corporeal terms. The Ghana Dance Ensemble dancer’s body,
on the other hand, is a multi-cultural site, trained to wield multi-ethnic movement vocabularies to
project diverse identities according to the dictates of professionalism. In the process of representing
multiple ethnic identities through professional dance, there are bound to be points of alienation,
where the dancer communicates ethnic identities other than his or her own. This paper examines
the professional demands on the Ghana Dance Ensemble dancer’s body as a multi-cultural site, by
highlighting issues of representation and how the dancer’s body is constantly alienated from his or
her ethnic identity. The paper relies on constructivist and primordialist views of ethnicity to draw
conclusions on the position of the Ghana Dance Ensemble dancers in relation to identity, alienation,
and professionalism.

Key Words
Identity, Representation, Alienation, Dance, Alienation, Multicultural, Corporeality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

300 301
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

302
Groups
Working
ARABIC THEATRE

303

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Samer Al-Saber Roaa Ali

Florida State University
Roaa Ali’s research explores the representation of ethnic minorities and the politics of cultural production post
9/11. She is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester (Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity). Roaa
Samer Al-Saber joined the faculty at FSUs School of Theatre in 2015. His teaching, practice, and scholarship completed her PhD at the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham (December
focus on the intersection of cultural production and political conflict in the Middle East. At FSUs School of 2015) with Prof James Harding as an external examiner. Her thesis investigates the representation of Arab
Theatre, he taught the World Theatre History series, and specialized courses on Antiquity, Renaissance, Arab
Americans in post 9/11 American cultural scene and theatre, and is being prepared for a monograph. Some of
Culture, and the Israel Palestine conflict. Samers manuscript is tentatively entitled after his dissertation, Per-
her publications appear in the Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
mission To Perform: Palestinian Theatre in Jerusalem.
(RiDE), Journal of Arts and Community, The Methuen Drama Companion to Theatre and Interculturalism, and
Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity in Critical Events.
Against The Example Of Middle Eastern Heritage
Negotiating the Politics of Representation in Arab American
In the Us vs Them debate, the geographical region of the Middle East has been used as an ex- Theatre
ample to suggest relevance and to further lofty theoretical frameworks in fancy scholarship.  Ref-
ugees, Muslims, Arabs, and various categories provoke urgency and the necessity to act.  Those The rich and unique Arab American experience of immigration, settlement and be-longing is drama-
in power, senior scholars, intellectuals, liberal-leaning thinkers, and advocates rely on overused tised vividly and provocatively in a number of thought-provoking Arab American plays. The reception
formulas that render the Middle East into just another example. The region becomes a mode of of Arabs in America has been routinely shaped by interact cultural, racial and political history which
proving the argument of the enlightened scholar, working within the citational maze of western renders Arab American identity a fascinating site of negotiation. While Arab Americans negotiate
knowledge to produce theory.  In the field of theatre, significant efforts have not been undertak- the politics of race, religion and gender on a daily basis their fluid mediations with each of these
en to promote honest study in the form of engagement with Arabic speakers, primary sources, identity markers is most pronounced when they engage with the politics of representation. The
study abroad, hiring practices, translations, and capacity building.  Rather, the region is a well-or- engagement of Arab American playwrights with this is often a negotiation of: how Arab Americans
namented bucket of source material to discuss diluted postcolonial ideas, clever theoretical puz- are represented as the Other, how they would like to represent themselves as the Self, and how they
zles, performances of activism, and second-stage productions to bribe the guilt of a sensitive lib- sometimes unwillingly/unwittingly reproduce a representation of the Other as their own. Investigat-
eral conscience.  After all, the Middle East is hot right now and the scholar knows it: Aleppo, Gaza, ing the representations of Arabs in America unavoidably evokes the systemic Orientalist and Oth-
and Fallujah!       After a century of direct conflict or occupation in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Syr- ering discourse, which has marred Arabs with many negative serotypes. Many theorists Said 1978
ia, Yemen, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and various banned countries, one hopes that the Middle Eastern Shaheen 2001, 2008 Jamal and Naber, 2008 have probed the Western creation of the Arab by virtue
might move from target to target of study in the left-leaning fields such as theatre, from a subject of his/her stereotypes, and attempted to subvert these narrative yet such correlations persist and
of pontification to subject of exploration, and certainly, from a perception of conviction to an object have increased since 9/11. This article draws on two Arab American plays that engage with complex
of learning.     I discuss in this paper examples of how the Middle East remains Just An Example. negotiations of identity, representation and economic survival. Sam Younis’ Browntown is a dark
comedy that satirically presents an Arab American actor who is only cast for terrorist roles Similarly,
Key Words Yussef El Guindi’s Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes dramatises the plight of a talented actor
Arab. Arabic. Middle East. Muslim. Islam whose economical and professional viability depends on creating narratives that enforce the same
stereotypes he vehemently contests and fights against. The two plays unpack, challenge, ridicule
and subvert the framing of the immigrant, particularly the Arab in America, as the enduring Other.

Key Words
Arab American, Politics of representation, the Other
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

304 305
 WG WG

Hazem Azmy Katherine Hennessey

Ain Shams University American University of Kuwait

Hazem Azmy is Assistant Professor and postgraduate convener at the Department of Drama and Theatre Crit- Dr. Katherine Hennessey is Assistant Dean for Curriculum and Assistant Professor of English at the American
icism at the Faculty of Arts of Ain Shams University, Egypt and co-convener of the Arabic Theatre Working University of Kuwait. From mid-2014 to mid-2016 she held a research fellowship in the Global Shakespeare
Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research IFTR. He gained his Ph.D. at the University of program at the University of Warwick and Queen Mary University of London, and in late 2016 she was a Moore
Warwick, UK, with a thesis on post-9/11 performance realities. While based in Cairo, he continues to maintain Institute Visiting Fellow at the National University of Ireland in Galway.  Hennessey lived for five years in Sana’a,
an internationally-oriented career as theatre and interdisciplinary humanities researcher university teacher Yemen, where she conducted research on Yemeni theatre and served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian
professional translator of literary, media and audio-visual texts theatre and literary critic and cross-cultural at Sana’a University. Prior to this, she held the post of Assistant Professor of English at Bethlehem University
animateur. He is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of al-Masrah, Egypt’s oldest existing specialist quarterly. He is also a on the Palestinian West Bank.  Her current scholarship focuses on theatre across the Arabian Peninsula, as well
founding board member of the Egyptian Centre of the International Theatre Institute ITI and Expert at the as on adaptations of Shakespeare in the Middle East and Ireland. She organized and co-convened the Ireland
Arabic Language Academy, currently collaborating with a team of language specialists on a forthcoming Ara- and Shakespeare symposium at Princeton University in March 2016, and has published widely on theatre and
bic Enclycopedic dictionary of theatre and performance terms. His international publications include articles, performance in Yemen and the GCC. She co-edited the ‘Arab Shakespeares’ issue of Critical Survey Dec 2016,
chapters, and edited journal issues at Theatre Research International, PAJ, Critical Survey, Ecumenica, The and her monograph Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula is forthcoming from Palgrave.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, and The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History. His book
Staging Egypt on the Global Stage: Egyptian Performance Realities from 9/11 to the Arab Spring is forthcoming Theatre, Migration, and Identity on the Arabian Peninsula
with Palgrave Macmillan.
This paper explores the history and development of theatre practice on the Arabian Peninsula
Migrating Theatricalised Histories between Bible-Belt America throughout the 20th century, and its connections to images and constructions of national identity.
and Post-Islamist Egypt: Tarek El-Dwiris The Trial Theatre has repeatedly offered residents of the Peninsula a forum for reflection and comment upon
the nature, causes, and repercussions of sweeping social changes brought about by among other
This paper is an investigation of director and dramaturg Tarek al-Dwiris 2013 adaptation of the things exploitation of oil resources in the Gulf and by other complex factors in Yemen. Central to the
1955 American play Inherit the Wind, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee as a history, form, and content of this theatre is the issue of migration.   In Yemeni literature, migration
fictional depiction of the so-called Monkey Trial in 1925. Having won the best actor award at the is a centuries’-old preoccupation: the 16th-century performative dialogue Mother Hadramaut and
2013 National Theatre Festival, for playing the title role in Nora Amin’s interpretation of the En- Her Son debates the merits of immigration to wealthier climes. During the British colonial admin-
emy of the People, al-Dwiri started rehearsing the play against the backdrop of a cultural land- istration, impetus for the first theatrical productions by Yemenis came both from models found in
scape still reeling from the pains of the deadly overthrow of the religiously populist regime of local British educational institutions and from examples of Parsi theatre performed by Indian touring
the Muslim Brotherhood. Like its original American play, al-Dwiris production was a curious case troupes. 20th century Yemeni plays also provide numerous examples of Yemeni characters migrating
of migrating histories, of revisiting the Bible-Belt American South to cheer the downfall of McCa- to or returning from distant lands, and of Yemeni characters who interact often to satiric effect with
rthyite America. By the same token, al-Dwiri, a progressive secular artist but Christian by birth, migrants to their own shores from Africa, India, and beyond.   Though theatre in the Gulf appears
appeared to be revisiting the religious intolerance depicted in the text as a means to comment somewhat later in the century, it too draws inspiration from migrant individuals and communities,
critically on the deserved overthrow of the Islamist faction. However, in both cases of the orig- be they Egyptian producer-directors like Mustafa Hashish and Mustafa al-Bandari, or expatriate
inal text and its critically and popularly acclaimed Egyptian reiteration, the progressive activist community theatre groups like the Doha Players and the Kuwait Little Theatre. Moreover, migration
voice that the text appears to be encouraging at a surface reading has continued time and again is a similarly significant theme within Gulf theatre—whether migrants are Gulf citizens living abroad,
to prove uneasily problematic, appearing at times as self-defeating and self-righteous in its con- as in the classic Kuwaiti play Bye Bye London, or the “guest workers” whose numbers dwarf citizen
victions as the very fundamentalist group it sets out to pillory. **NOTE: This abstract proposal populations in countries like the UAE and Qatar.   Through a combination of textual and archival re-
offers a largely rethought version of the paper that I was scheduled to present at the IFTR 2017. search, this paper aims to shed light on the history of migration as both theme and shaping force for
theatre on the Arabian Peninsula.
Key Words
Egypt, Post-Islamism, Migrating Histories, Bible-Belt Red America Key Words
. Yemen, Kuwait, Arabian Peninsula, 20th century drama, 20th century theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

306 307
 WG WG

Tiran Manucharyan Eiman Tunsi

University of St Andrews King Abdulaziz University

I am a fourth year PhD student at the University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. I received my Master’s degree Eiman Mohammed Said Tunsi is an associate professor in faculty of Arts and ‎Humanities in King Ab-
from Yerevan State University Armenia in 2007. My current research focuses on Egyptian Theatre and Drama dul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She is ‎specialized  in Comparative drama and theatre. Being
in the late 20th and early 21st centuries the plays by Abū-l-ʿIlā al-Salāmūnī b. 1941 and Lenin al-Ramlī b. 1945. the only female board ‎member in Saudi Theatre Association grants her with opportunities to meet lo-
cal  ‎theatre groups, directors and playwrights. She is assigned in the jury of theatrical ‎performances in
schools and King Abdul Aziz University. She held theatrical ‎projects in the private and public sectors. She
The Conflict between West and East Represented through Works has published  a number of ‎researches on Saudi, Arabic and Western theatre and drama. Her first volume
of Art and the Media in Two Egyptian Plays in ‎translation “War . . . and . . . Life” has been recently published in Khaliji Plays. ‎She has been the mod-
erator of  a Session “ ‘New’ Theatres? Exploring the ‎Performance Cultures of the Arab Gulf” IFTR 2016.‎
The representations of works of art and other media in theatre serve a broad range of functions.
Landscape paintings, songs and dances make performances spectacular for the audience as well as “Immigration of Land Seagulls”: A Performance in Iraq
providing them with additional information about the action, place, time and characters of plays.
Choruses, TV reports, documentary shots, radio broadcasts, story-telling and other forms of media This paper tends to investigate the role of  theatre in  raising the question of ‎immigration. Through
and narrative transfer information that is otherwise not represented on stage, thereby filling gaps in the theatrical exchange  amongneighbouring countries in ‎the Middle East,  Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
the plots. In this paper I will observe the technique of dramatising conflict in certain plays through Qaraqosh theatre group in Bakhdida ‎chooses Immigration of Land Seagulls 2009 for the first day
works of art and other media. These media transmit the points of view of the characters and, like the performance in the ‎third Syriac cultural week  inAnkawa 2010.  Immigration of Land Seagulls is
characters themselves, they participate in the development of the plots of the plays. This technique ‎written in Arabic by Abbas Al-Hayik 1973, a Saudi playwright. It was ‎translated by Qaraqosh, the
is conspicuous in the plays of the contemporary Egyptian playwright Abū al-ʿIlā al-Salāmūnī b. 1940, Iraqi  theatre group which was established in 1990 to ‎commence Festival of Syriac Creativity 1992.‎
and is also present in the plays of other contemporary Egyptian playwrights, such as Lenin al-Ramlī The play in this study exposes the experience of young immigrants who ‎spring from diverse reli-
b. 1945 and Fatḥiya al-ʿAssāl 1933-2014. Here, I will analyse the plays Bi-al-ʿarabī al-faṣīḥ 1991, ‘In gious, social and cultural backgrounds launching their ‎voyage onboard a small boat. I aim, here,
Plain Arabic’ by al-Ramlī and Zūba al-Miṣriyya 2002, ‘Zuba the Egyptian Woman’ by al-Salāmūnī. to seek  answers to such  questions as ‎Why would the play text immigrate from Saudi Arabia to
In Bi-al-ʿarabī al-faṣīḥ and Zūba al-Miṣriyya the playwrights dramatise the clash between West and Ankawa, Iraq? How ‎different is the migration of seagulls on land? Why would youth  be forced
East, representing the conflict not only through human characters but also through various forms of into ‎immigration from their homeland leaving behind their land, family and personal ‎belongings?‎
media — television, the play-within-a-play technique and dance. Given the above, I suggest that in ‎ Does their motif for immigration hold any relevance to the British ‎or French theory of population?
certain cases representations of works of arts and other media in plays gain functions pertaining to
characters and can be interpreted as alternative characters. This attempt to exploit a new approach Key Words
in analysing the role of works of art and other media in theatre can help us gain a more nuanced Saudi theatre - Iraqi performance - Syriac Language - Immigration
understanding of the interrelation between form and content in theatre.

Key Words
Egyptian theatre, Lenin al-Ramlī, Abū al-ʿIlā al-Salāmūnī, alternative characters
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

308 309
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

310
Groups
Working
ASIAN THEATRE

311

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Balakrishna Pillai Anandhakrishnan Youngjoo Choi

University of Hyderabad
I am a dramaturg and reviewer for theatrical production, and have been teaching at the theatre department.
Balakrishna Pillai Ananthakrishnan is a professor of Theatre Arts at University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. I have interest in dramaturgy as a method to construct a theatrical piece or as a generative methodology for
the theatrical production.
Classics in Post colonial Indian theatre
The Encounter of Japanese experimental theatre with Korean
Post colonial Indian theatre has seen a series of productions of classical plays from the east and the west
Contemporary Theatre as in Kim Sujin, Oh Taesok, and Goh
as a trend and as a site for theatrical experimentations. It includes the old Indian classical plays espe- Sunwung
cially of Bhasa and many other playwrights like Sudraka and Bodhayana, but not Kalidas as frequent
like others. Interestingly most of the Sanskrit plays were translated into Indian languages only from Kim Sujin is a Zainichi-Korean theatre director who has led Shinjuku Ryozanpaku since 1987. Kim
the second half of 20th century though many of them got translated into other foreign languages from started his theatrical career in 1978 as a Kara Jūrō’sdesciple, who represented the Japanese un-
18th century onwards.  Emergences of such productions are to be seen along with the post colonial derground theatre angura movement with TerayamaShūji in the 1960s and 1970s. As Kara Jūrō
nationalist tendencies in the field of culture as an effort to establish an Indian identity. In this process followed counter-cultural dynamics, Kim and Shinjuku Ryozanpaku has continued to pursue the
the directors mainly focused on the form of the plays on stage as they could find appropriate tangible surreal, the carnivalesque, and sometimes baffling theatricality based on their corporeal expres-
devises and visual elements from the traditional performances. It has created an assemblage of diverse sion, while attracting spectators’ gaze upon their liminal subjectivity. Kim’s first encounter with Ko-
elements of traditional forms in a classical play in modern context. Through this exercise the modern rean contemporary theatre goes back to 1989 when Ryozanpaku visited the theatre fans of Seoul
theatrical versions of Sanskrit plays turned to be a site of Indian nationalism representing and imagin- with One Thousand Years of Solitude and Legend of Mermaids. It was 17 years later that Kara
ing a classical past devoid of the contemporary sensibility and postcolonial motif. The proposed paper Jūrō introduced his theatrical style with A Tale of the Two Cities into Korean theatre and awak-
will be discussing how such displays of classical productions turned as forms with revivalist agendas. ened the possibility of a playwright and director’s free-wheeling theatricality in 1972. My paper
pays attention to the theatricality between Kim Sujin, Oh Taesok, and Goh Sunwung as a sym-
Key Words bolic realm where the encounter brings about crossing boundaries, and acculturative mobility.
Classics, Post Colonial, Nationalism, India
Key Words
Kim Sujin, Kara Juro, Oh Taesok, theatricality, acculturative mobility
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

312 313
 WG WG

Wei Feng Tomoko Goto

Shandong University Tottori University

Wei Feng received his PhD in drama and theatre studies from Trinity College Dublin. He is an assistant research Tomoko Goto is a professor at Tottori University. Her research interests include arts management and commu-
fellow in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature of Shandong University, China as well as English ed- nity developments through arts and culture. Before joining the academia, she worked at a theater company
itor of Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art. His research areas are intercultural theatre, classical Chinese for several years as a manager. Her current research is about regional theater management and related human
theatre and Western theatre. His articles have appeared in academic journals such as Theatre Research Inter- resources.
national, Foreign Literature Review, Foreign Literature Studies and so on. His monograph on contemporary
classical Chinese theatre is going to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. Potentials of Amateur Theater Production in Super Aging Society:
A Case Study on Theater Activities by the Elderly
“Nothing” Reshaped: Eugène Ionesco’s “The Chairs” in Classical
Chinese Theatre This paper examines diversity and development of theater productions among Japanese senior cit-
izens and proposes three hypnoses to consider in understanding amateur theater productions in
This paper studies the presentation of ‘nothing’ in three xiqu adaptations of Eugène Ionesco’s The super aging society. Japan is one of the most rapidly advancing aging societies. The Japanese aging
Chairs respectively by Dapeng Theatre Troupe 1982, Shanghai Kunju Opera Company 2006, Mars population ratio the proportion of people over 65 or above to the total population in 2016 is 27.3 %
Theatre 2010. Situated against the background of xiqu development facilitated by intercultural en- and it is the highest in the world. The ratio is projected to be over 30% by the year 2030. With such a
counters, this paper intends to focus on the circumstances and adaptation strategies of each pro- growing senior population, enhancing their quality of life is one of the most challenging tasks in the
duction, to investigate how the culturally-loaded xiqu and insightful Ionesco could enrich each other society of Japan. In this context, the senior citizen’s participation in theatrical activities has been
in terms of acting, scenography, and metaphysics. Central to this paper is the diverse strategies and increasing rapidly. For example, over 40 theater groups by seniors are listed by a website special-
effects of reshaping Ionesco’s idea of ‘nothing’ with xiqu’s classical devices and ideas. During inevi- izing in senior theaters. In 2011, the National Senior Theater Network was established and twelve
table frictions and productive reception, there emerged promising theatricalities and thoughts, for senior theater groups participated in its 2017 annual festival. One remarkable characteristic of these
Ionesco who was seeking for a classical form, and xiqu that has been striving for modernization. senior-citizen theater productions is their diversity. Some, such as Saitama Gold Theater Group by
Yukio Ninagawa, an internationally well-known director, are more professionally oriented, aiming at
Key Words creating finest theatrical works. Others, however, have different goals and agendas. For example, in
xiqu, Ionesco, The Chairs “Aging and Theater Project,” Naoki Sugawara, a licensed care worker and actor, works with amateur
actors, including one who is 91 years old, and presents productions featuring aging, senile dementia,
and death. By taking several examples of theater productions by seniors, this paper illustrates their
wide range of agendas and objectives as well as artistic expressions. The paper, then, posits three
key points to consider in examining senior theoretical productions. Those points are 1 degrees of
openness of the productions to senior participants and audience, 2 relationships between theater
groups and their local communities, and 3 theoretical dimensions that productions aim to attain.

Key Words
Amateur Theater , Super Aging Society, the Elderly, Community
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

314 315
 WG WG

Kei Hibino Michael Ingham

Seikei University Lingnan University

Professor of English, the Faculty of Humanities, Seikei Unviersity, Tokyo. His main research interest is in musical Michael Ingham is Professor of English Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His contribution on Shake-
theatre. speare and jazz in the Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, his article in Shakespeare Studies ‘The
Stretchèd Metre of an Antique Song: Jazzin the Food of Love and his monograph for Routledge, Stage-play and
Screen-play: The Intermediality of Theatre and Film, all appeared in 2016-17. He is currently working on Shake-
Theatre That Holds the Self-Reflective Mirror up to Nature: speare in theatre broadcast in cinema, comparing UK and Hong Kong contexts of reception. He is also working
Japanese Local Amateur Theatre Reconsidered on a monograph on the relevance of drama in a postsocialist age and cultural context.

The significance of local amateur theatre has mainly defined in terms of its capacity to strengthen “Off, Off, You Lendings! Come. Unbutton Here”: The Divestment
community bonds. The aesthetic values it can create has earned perfunctory mention at best, al-
though recent discussions tend to shift their focus on what different kinds of aesthetic experiences
of Authority and the Cultivation of Hope in Makoto Sato’s
local amateur theatre provides for audiences from what urban commercial theatre offer. By com- Reincarnation of Lear with Mügen Nōh Elements
paring it with traditional folk arts like kagura, theatrical dance local residents are even nowadays
devoted to performing in Shinto shrines and other specially sanctified sites in putative dedication to Helen Mirren once lamented the fact that there is no equivalent Lear or Hamlet role for Western
gods, I propose yet another approach to evaluating local amateur theatre: as a kind of conservatory actresses. When the 82 year-old Misako Watanabe played Lear in a production for experimental Jap-
of “primitive” human desires of mimicry and transformation, it takes the middle ground between anese director Makoto Sato in his fundamental 2013 makeover of an earlier production - migrating
urban commercial theatre and traditional folk arts in applying the idea of representation to per- Lear from its tragic European context to a more redemptive East Asian theatrical ethos - she divested
formance. On the one hand, professional theatre eschews crude reproductions of reality action, the King not only of his regal trappings and divine authority but also of the role’s intrinsic maleness.
language, and display of emotions are rendered more stylized and less “real,” even in many types of In Sato’s staging everything is stripped back, affording insights into the common humanity of his
realist theatre. Especially in theatrical performances interspersed with dance and songs, which has depictions of us “poor bare forked animals” in his signature blending of experimental and traditional
historically been the most prevalent form of theatre, representation means presenting an idealized theatre forms. Our paper will argue that through the deft deployment of certain Mügen Nōh conven-
replica of how people act, talk and express themselves in reality. On the other hand, as in kagura, few tions, skilfully integrated into the translated Shakespeare text, that a radically different perspective
folk arts performers admit they are acting. Their movement and speech may represent something on the assumed bleakness and bitterness of his 1606 tragedy emerges. As Stephen Greenblatt com-
that is absent on stage, but they do not imitate. Folk arts performers tend to believe they reiterate ments in his essay ‘Shakespeare and the Ethics of Authority’, those in power may be “cloaked in the
ritual formula, rather than expressing themselves. In both forms of performances, single-minded mantle of moral authority”, but their stage actions, shown as unethical and/or depraved, speak for
representation is forbidden. I suggest that local amateur theatre has thrived because it does allow themselves. He points out that at the close of the play none of the surviving characters wish for “the
participants to imitate and pretend in a least self-conscious manner: it gives them the pretext of weight” of authority to fall on them the only response being to “speak what we feel, not what we
indulging in “childish” pleasure of mimicry and transformation in the name of theatre. ought to say.”. From this a faint sense of hope can be glimpsed, which Sato’s production highlights in
its ritualistic enactment of disrobing, of disencumbering the self from this mantle of a moral author-
Key Words ity that is tarnished by unethical application. The theory of cultural mobility advanced by Greenblatt
Japanese Local Amateur Theatre, Representation, Traditional Folk Arts, Kagura et al will also be invoked as a response to arguments against transcultural, mixed-mode theatre, and
to propose Sato as one of its foremost practitioners.

Key Words
Divestment and disrobing Mügen Nōh conventions Experimental theatre Moral authority Cultural
mobility
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

316 317
 WG WG

Hyunshik Ju Meewon Lee

The Institute of Media Arts Culture, Kyonggi University Korean National University of Arts

In 2010, I graduated with Doctor of Korean Literature from Sogang University in South Korea. I majored in Meewon Lee is a professor of Korea National University of Arts in Seoul, Korea. She received her Ph.D. at the
Korean drama and performance. My doctoral dissertation thesis was “A Study on Reflexivity of the Traditional University of Pittsburgh in the U.S.A. in 1983. Since then, she has been a professor and critic in Korea. She
Korean Masked Dance Drama”. I am currently a full-time researcher at the Institute of Media Arts Culture, served as the president of Korean Theatre Research Association, and as the president of Korean Theatre Crit-
Kyonggi University, South Korea. Areas of interest include Performativity in Korean theatre Traditional Korean ics Association these two groups are the biggest organizations for theatre in South Korea. She was also the
theatre and Orientalism North Korean Theatre’s Politics Technology and Performativity. My paper, “Becoming director of the Folklore Institute at KyungHee University, where she had been a professor between 1986 and
Hamlet for Only Nine Days: Korean Workers and Documentary Theatre” was recently published in TheatreRe- 2002, and the director of Korean National Research Center for Arts. She published ten books such as Korean
search International in July, 2016. Modern Drama, Globalization and Deconstruction in contemporary Korea theatre, Korea Mask-Dance Theatre,
and Contemporary Korean Playwrights. Her English works are “Kamyonguk: The Mask-Dance Theatre of Ko-
North Korean Defectors and a Theatre of hospitality reaPh.D. Dissertation,” “Shamanistic Elements of Korean Folk Theatre, Kamyonguk,” “Tradition and Esthetics of
Korean Drama,” “The Roots and Transmission of Korean Performing Arts” and many others. She is interested in
esthetics of Korean theatre in relation to its traditions and the world-wide theatrical conventions and theories.
North Korean Defectors and a Theatre of hospitality This paper examines the tension and complex-
ities of contemporary Korean theatres on North Korean defectors. As a result, this paper’s aim is to
analyze the ethics and politics of hospitality in the theatres. Recently, in South Korea, the theatres The representative Korean - American Diaspora playwrights
on North Korean defectors have been charting foregrounding differences for example, Sister Mokran
stages the story surrounding a female North Korean defector, Mokran, a female manager of South Korean Diaspora in America have their theatrical culture. The first director is Peter Hyun who ap-
Korean Hostess bar, and the manager’s families. Moran means a magnolia in Korean, the national peared as early as in the 1930s. The rise of Korean American playwrights is closely related with
flower of North Korea. This theatre provides a substantial platform from which audiences can de- the rise of Asian American theatres. Soon-Taek Oh, the first Korean American actor and playwright,
construct and reconstruct the national and cultural identity of the traditional Korean. Exodus-the joined the East West Players as one of founders in the 1960s. He won the East West Players contest
Time of Exhaling by famous Korean director Sun-woong Ko similarly invokes North Korean defectors’ with Tondemonai-Never Happen in 1970 and organized the first Korean American theatre group
voices. This theatre was based on the nearly-monthlong interview with real North Korean defectors. called Korean American Theater Ensemble. The representative 2nd generation playwrights are Sung
Toilet People translates the story of adolescent North Korean defectors into a stage, thereby em- Rno, Diana Son, Philip Chung, and Julia Cho. Sung Rno is probably the first playwright to be widely
ploying a viewing lens as their anguishes in South Korea, then reflecting on the problems of South known to Asian and American main stream theatre. Debuted with Cleveland Raining in 1994, he con-
Korea itself. Hence, these contemporary Korean theatre on North Korean defectors remind us of the tinues to write many plays such as wAve, and Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen. Diana Son’s plays speak for
philosophy of ‘hospitality’, said by Jacques Derrida. In Sum, I attempt to question and rediscover the the women of color. Her representative plays are R.A.W.Cause Im a Woman, Boy, Stop Kiss, and Satel-
ethics and politics of hospitality in the theatre. lites. All her plays convey minority women’s social protest and reveal their perspectives. Philip Chung
tends to be more Korean ethnic playwright than any other playwrights. He also represents the west
Key Words coast and produces most of his play though Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, the only Korean American
North Korean defectors, Border, Hospitality theatre group today. The plays such as Yellow Face, Home is where the Han is, Asiatik Nation heavily
reflect the ethnic history and its problems. Julia Cho writes plays about Korean Americans mingled
into the American society. Her representative plays are 99 Histories, B.F.E., and Durango. Iloyd Suh,
Edward Bok Lee and Jean Yoon, are also fairly well known. Young Jean Lee gained fame for her the-
atrical experiments with exaggerations and satires. All these Korean American playwrights are the
diaspora of Korean, and their plays show the marginal culture between Korea and America.

Key Words
Korean American Diaspora Playwrights, Peter Hyun, Soon-Taek Oh, Sung Rno, Diana Son, Philip
Chung, Iloyd Suh, Young Jean Lee
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

318 319
 WG WG

Yasushi Nagata Kaoru Nakao

Osaka University Osaka University

Yasushi Nagata is professor of Theatre Studies, Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University. He specialized Dr Kaoru Nakao is an Associate Professor specializing in Noh Theatre in the Theatre Studies section of the
Russian Avant-gard theatre and finished doctoral course in Theatre Studies of Meiji University in 1988. He pub- School of Letters in Osaka University. Her previous work was as an assistant researcher in the Waseda Uni-
lished many articles on theatre historiography, intercultural theatre, acting method and production analysis versity Theatre Museum. Her doctoral studies and subsequent research work have all been in this field. She
on modern and contemporary Russian and Japanese theatres in many anthologies such as Adapting Chekhov, has begun working on various projects recently with an intercultural angle, including a study of recent Noh
The Local meets the Global, Theatre and Democracy in English, and also The Age of Avant-Garde, The Theory versions of several Shakespeare plays and also a study of comparative theatre forms in China and Japan, par-
of Japanese Arts, Performance in Post-modern Culture in Japanese. He edited a recent book Kabuki and Russia ticularly Noh Theatre and Kun Opera.
in Revolution, Shinwa Sha in Tokyo. His recent interest is contemporary inter Asian theatre movement, esthet-
ic, performances and its historiography. He is a convenor of IFTR Asian Theatre Working Group. He served as “Off, Off, You Lendings! Come. Unbutton Here”: The Divestment
president of Japanese Society for Theatre Research. of Authority and the Cultivation of Hope in Makoto Sato’s
Reincarnation of Lear with Mügen Nōh Elements
Representation of Manchuria in Japanese Post War Three Plays
Helen Mirren once lamented the fact that there is no equivalent Lear or Hamlet role for Western
After the World War II lots of plays were produced reflecting Japan’s postwar issues in Japanese actresses. When the 82 year-old Misako Watanabe played Lear in a production for experimental Jap-
modern theatre Shingeki. Many of them depicted Labor issues, political independency or people’s anese director Makoto Sato in his fundamental 2013 makeover of an earlier production - migrating
identity just after the wartime. Among them it seems characteristic that some plays depicted de- Lear from its tragic European context to a more redemptive East Asian theatrical ethos - she divested
mobilized solders. These plays explains tragic and comical conditions of ex-soldiers who had much the King not only of his regal trappings and divine authority but also of the role’s intrinsic maleness.
difficulty in adjusting themselves to huge social turbulences and rapidly changing values amid the In Sato’s staging everything is stripped back, affording insights into the common humanity of his
devastation after they had come back from Siberia and other Asian countries. Especially, plays de- depictions of us “poor bare forked animals” in his signature blending of experimental and traditional
scribing Manchuria, in which Japan installed a puppet regime and proclaimed the independence of theatre forms. Our paper will argue that through the deft deployment of certain Mügen Nōh conven-
it in 1933 and which came to an end in 1945, suggested some typical points on interaction between tions, skilfully integrated into the translated Shakespeare text, that a radically different perspective
Japanese modern drama and its colonialism. Here the paper will pick up three Japanese plays, A on the assumed bleakness and bitterness of his 1606 tragedy emerges. As Stephen Greenblatt com-
Red Lamp 1954 by Yutaka Mafune, Iku Shun Betsu 1960 by Shoichi Oshikawa and Shojo Kamen 1969 ments in his essay ‘Shakespeare and the Ethics of Authority’, those in power may be “cloaked in the
by Juro Kara, and analyze their different approaches to the Japanese colonialism and its historical mantle of moral authority”, but their stage actions, shown as unethical and/or depraved, speak for
past. There are completely deferent from a recent piece Li Xianglan 1991 by Keita Asari, which ap- themselves. He points out that at the close of the play none of the surviving characters wish for “the
proached the Japanese past through a goodwill and friendship gesture between Japan and China. weight” of authority to fall on them the only response being to “speak what we feel, not what we
Regretting the past, the three plays explored the meaning of the Manchuria and tried to respond to ought to say.”. From this a faint sense of hope can be glimpsed, which Sato’s production highlights in
the question what the Japanese are like. its ritualistic enactment of disrobing, of disencumbering the self from this mantle of a moral author-
ity that is tarnished by unethical application. The theory of cultural mobility advanced by Greenblatt
Key Words et al will also be invoked as a response to arguments against transcultural, mixed-mode theatre, and
Post War Japanese Drama, Identity, Manchuria to propose Sato as one of its foremost practitioners.

Key Words
Divestment and disrobing Mügen Nōh conventions Experimental theatre Moral authority Cultural
mobility
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

320 321
 WG WG

Sebnem Sozer Ozdemir Tsu-Chung Su

Duzce University National Taiwan Normal University

I am an actress and performing arts theorist from Turkey. As a result of my Noh and Nihonbuyo training in Tsu-Chung Su, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, USA, is Professor of English
Japan between 2005 and 2007, I am especially interested in traditional performing arts in Asia. I have an MFA at National Taiwan Normal University. He is currently President of Taiwan Shakespeare Association TSA and
degree in Acting 2010, an MA degree in dance anthropology 2014 with a dissertation on Horon practice in President of the R.O.C. English and American Literature Association EALA. He was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard
Turkey, and a PhD degree in Theatre Studies 2016 with a dissertation that explores the relationship of tradi- University in 2002-2003, a Fulbright Scholar at Princeton University in 2007-2008, and a Visiting Scholar at
tional performing arts of Turkey with the actor’s art. Between 2014 and 2016, I have given courses on Eastern Aberystwyth University in 2012-2013. His areas of interest include Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, modern dra-
theatre, contemporary approaches in directing, and design in theatre. My published works are ‘Dance as Play: ma, theatre history, dramatic theory and criticism, performance studies, Nietzsche and his French legacy, and
Horon Performance in the Harvest Feast’ Porte Akademik Journal of Music and Dance Studies, vol. 13, 2016, theories of hysteria and melancholia. His recent publications include essays on Antonin Artaud, Eugenio Barba,
‘Devil of the Actor: Dogma of Being Real’ in the book Human Being Facing himself in Performing Arts: Time, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Richard Schechner and Robert Wilson.
Space, Story Ideogram Théâtre, 2016 in Turkish, ‘Subject/Object Body in Butoh’ Journal of Theatre Research,
vol. 37, 2014 in Turkish and ‘On the Place of Dionysian Impulse in the Art of Acting’ Journal of Theatre Re-
search, vol. 31, 2011 in Turkish.
Qibla—A Neverending Story of Migration
Written by Wan-Ting Shen, a promising young playwright, Qibla is the title of the 2015 Taiwan Lit-
The Aesthetics of Meşk: An Analysis of the Mode of Transmission erature Award Golden Drama Prize-winning play. This play was mounted on the stage by Dong-Ning
in Traditional Performing Arts of Turkey Hsieh, director and artistic director of Voleur du Feu Theatre, at The Experimental Theater located
inside The National Theater in Taipei from December 14 to 17, 2017. In her play, Shen portrays the
This research looks at traditional performing arts of Turkey, which include practices of singing, mu- interaction between a live-in foreign caregiver called Nadi and a Grandma who suffers from Alzhei-
sic, storytelling, dance, drama, puppetry and ritual, mostly co-existing in various combinations in mer’s disease and lives in the countryside. Planning to run away from the current job and home,
different genres. Although these arts are many in number and diversity, they display common char- Nadi, nevertheless, is unable to leave Grandma behind. She takes Grandma with her and together
acteristics of a distinctive aesthetics. One of the main factors that form this aesthetics is the mode they embark on their “magic-realistic” journey on the road. The play intertwines several seemingly
of transmission intrinsic to these arts and this is the main focus of this study. In order to put forward unrelated story lines in a tactful and fantastical way which amuses and alarms the reader and the
an emic approach, the research employs a local concept, which is particularly used in traditional spectator at the same time. Addressing the pressing issues of migrant workers and senior long-term
music, but is active also in other arts in question - meşk. The primary meaning of meşk is traditional care services in Taiwan, playwright Shen uses black humor and comedy to poke fun at phallocentric
face-to-face training method, which is based on the pupil’s instantaneous imitation of the master’s consumerism symbolized by Taipei 101 building and profit-driven neoliberal labor market in which
performance. This basic definition, which stresses repetition, seems as justifying the ill-reputation everything is commodified at a critical time when Taiwan is fast becoming an aging or aged society.
of tradition as characterised by stasis. However, this polysemic concept also denotes the actual per- All these issues and problematics are tightly woven with the motif of migration, be it the mythic
formance, which is combined by training and interestingly also the improvisatory creation. What journey of Nyai Roro Kidul, the religious pilgrimage of muslim believers to Mecca, the runaway of mi-
the artists do during a meşk performance is improvising according to certain structural conventions, grant workers, the roaming of the homeless, and the wandering of the senile dementia patient. The
as well as the reactions of the audience, by choosing from a range of already-known repertoire of purpose of this paper attempts to examine the motif of migration embedded in the play’s textuality
traditional patterns. In this sense, meşk is participatory and situational; its very being and quality and theatricality. Meanwhile this paper intends to employ an anti-essentialist viewpoint drawn from
depend on the actual presence of the actors, namely the artists and the audience who are there at the Subaltern Studies to explore the social issues exposed in the play.
that specific moment. Although it might sound contradictory, this renders change as one of the basic
conventions of the tradition itself. The research argues that this idiosyncratic correlation between Key Words
repetition and change in traditional performing arts of Turkey produces a unique aesthetics - the Qibla, migration, migrant worker, senior long-term care, Nyai Roro Kidul, pilgrimage, Subaltern
aesthetics of meşk. Studies, Alzheimer’s disease
Key Words
tradition, transmission, repetitionality, change, structure, improvisation, presence of actors, Turkey
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

322 323
 WG WG

Ursula Maya Tangeberg Anna Thuring

Performer, director, teacher and researcher of physical theatre and mime and specialist in Indian classical the- Anna Marjaana Thuring former Kurkinen has a Ph.D. in Theatre Research from University of Helsinki, Finland,
atre and dance. Studied also kunju and Lvju at NACTA in Beijing. although a great part of her research activity has taken place in United Kingdom, France and the United States.
Her research focuses on physical theatre, gender questions and cultural flows between Asian and Western
performance and performance training. In her methodology, she fuses practical training that is based both on
The World and the Word in two Hands her own experiences and observation and interviews of professional performers with academic theoretical
and historical approaches. She has served as the chair of the Finnish Theatre Research Society and actively
Decoding hand-gesture and mudras Hand-gesture, together with facial expression and body expres- promoted Asian theatre research in Finland by founding the Asian Art and Performance Consortium AAPC
sion form together the gesture code of human communication. To communicate through hand-ges- with her colleagues and securing research funding and opportunities for international exchanges for a team of
ture is in Europe since Cicero and Quintilian ambiguous and has artistically survived only in the researchers in this area. At the moment, she lectures and supervises doctoral and MA projects at University
French Pantomime of the 19th century. Mudras or hastas, as hand-gesture is called in Hindu-Bud- of the Arts Helsinki – Theatre Academy and edits two books that reflect her research interests. The first one
dhist cultures, found their way into the classical theatre of India. With the help of neurobiology and deals with Asian theatre and dance visits and their reception in Finland during the past 100 years and will be
neuro-aesthetic knowledge, as well as the Indian and European treatises and practice of classical published by Theatre Academy. The other one, Performance Otherness, is a publication of The Finnish Theatre
Indian theatre and dance, mudras and their use are analysed. The hand as a tool for action/ Mudras Research Society.
as abbreviations of physical actions/From daily gesture to artistic gesture/ The six basic elements
that constitute hand gesture- mudras explained as clusters of partial units of spatial and temporal Between East and West? Changing Reception of Asian
character. Performances in Finland
Key Words Culturally, Finland can be defined as border area between East and West and, in spite of its remote
handgesture, mudras, pantomime location on the map, it has a long history of migration and multiculturalism. Yet, especially after
the independence 1917, there was a strong tendency to define the country as a Western nation,
leading into an emphasis on genuine national culture and fierce denial of any possible Eastern, read
“Russian”, influences. How did this pro-Western cultural agenda, that stayed strong and fairly un-
challenged for half a century, reflect in the reception of occasional visiting performers from various
Asian countries? Did the average critical response follow the same pattern as in Western European
countries, i.e. were the performances looked solely through lenses of the general Western publicity
imagery? Did those rare Finnish individuals who had first-hand knowledge or experience of Asian
culture manage to convey their opinions to wider discussion that would have eroded the notion of
the “Asian” as the “Other”? From the 1970s on, pockets of Asian immigrants started to emerge in
Finland. However, their impact on performance culture was limited. In some occasions, bi-lateral
friendship societies collaborating with respective embassies managed to bring professional perform-
ers from Asian countries to the country. The late 1980s and 1990s marked a turning point. Two, par-
tially intertwined, phenomena are of special importance. The first one is a strong interest in butoh
among Finnish performers, which also caused small-scale migration of butoh artists of Japanese or-
igin to Finland. The second one is the annual Asia in Helsinki Festival, established by Veli Rosenberg
and Jukka O. Miettinen in 1986. During twenty years, the festival brought in visiting performers from
Asian countries and spread the knowledge of performance traditions to local audiences. To what
extent was it able to increase cultural understanding and did it possibly reach members of the local
population of Asian origin? The paper builds on a book project on Asian theatre and dance visits to
Finland during the past one hundred years, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Members of
the project team are Jukka O. Miettinen, Veli Rosenberg, and Anna Thuring.

Key Words
National Identity, Multiculturalism, Asian Performance Visits, Asian Communities
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

324 325
 WG WG

Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco Jessica Yeung

University of the Philippines Diliman Hong Kong Baptist University

Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco earned his PhD in Theatre Studies from the National University of Singapore. His essays Associate Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University, Yeung has worked as researcher, translator
have appeared in Journal of Homosexuality, Asian Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, JATI: Journal of and broadcasting critic of the theatre. She has also directed and acted in both English and Cantonese pro-
Southeast Asian Studies, Kritika Kultura, Social Science Diliman, Philippine Humanities Review, Modern Drama, ductions, and appointed by the Hong Kong Government to serve on a number of public arts administrative
and Humanities Diliman. He is the author of Entablado: Theatres and Performances in the Philippines UP Press, institutions. Her monograph Ink Dances in Limbo is one of the few full-length studies of the Chinese Nobel
2015, Performing Catholicism: Faith and Theatre in a Philippine Province UP Press, 2016 and Buhol-Buhol/ Laureate playwright and novelist Gao Xingjian. Her research publications on Hong Kong theatre, most notably
Entanglement: Contemporary Theatre in the Metropolitan Manila Peter Lang, 2017. An associate professor of on the dramatist Danny Yung, have been listed as reference reading in Hong Kong Theatre course syllabi in An-
theatre studies from the UP Diliman Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, Tiatco is cur- glo-American universities. A few years ago she participated as scholar-participant in a Hong Kong-Tokyo-Nan-
rently the Director of the UP Diliman Information Office and the Officer-in-Charge of the Office for Initiatives jing exchange programme of Noh and Kun Theatres. Her current project is on the pan-Asian intercultural
in Culture and the Arts. theatre of the prominent Hong Kong anarchist dramatist Augustine Chiu-yuMok. Yeung also researches on
Xinjiang Uyghur and Tibetan cinemas.
Revolution, Documentation, Condemnation: Toward a Genealogy
of Political Theatre on the Manila Stage A Pan-Asian Peoples Theatre about the Pan-Asian Histories: The
Works of Augustine Chiu-yu Mok, Hong Kong’s most Famous
This presentation interrogates the development of Manila political theatre in the Philippines by re- Anarchist Dramatist
flecting how it transformed itself into a concatenation of revolution, documentation and condemna-
tion against human rights abuses, colonial and neo-colonial oppression and authoritarian repression. Hong Kong is the oldest modern city in Asia. Its unfortunate stereotypical image is being “the Pearl
Generally, it asserts that political theatre in the Philippines or at least in its capital – Metro Manila of the Orient situated between East and West”. This is not only a gross simplification of the power
created an experience of solidarity by renewing a sense of community through dissent against forces relations of the world’s mega powers played out in the city, it also decontextualizes Hong Kong from
of oppression since the 1896 revolution. In the formation of community, the stage transforms itself its immediate circumstances of Asia. Hong Kong has shared the same histories of recent-centuries
into a public sphere where audience members are invited to transcend the violence and oppression colonisation and post-WWII economic boom with its Asian neighbours. It is now sharing the status
of the everyday as they rehearse for a social responsibility that recognizes others not as objects of of being situated within the immediate influence zone of the rising world power of China. Such
one’s enjoyment, work and possession, but as valuable members of community whose stories, lives shared destinies between Hong Kong as its Asian neighbours are highlighted in the pan-Asian Peo-
and experiences need to be afforded the complexity they deserve. ple’s Theatre projects by Augustine Chiu-yuMok, Hong Kong’s most famous anarchist dramatist. He
was trained as an economist in the capitalist model in Adelaide, and has actively involved in social
Key Words movements through the means of the People’s Theatre since the 1970s, drawing influences from
Political Theatre, Protest Theatre, Anti-Colonial Performance, Performing Human Rights, Revolution Japan’s Black Tent Theatre, the Phillippines’ PETA and other Asian counterparts. In the 1980s and the
in the Theatre 1990s he has produced a number of multi-cultural and multi-lingual People’s Theatre productions
intended as an alternative model to Peter Brooks’ high-profiled luxury intercultural productions.
Instead of drawing from myths and legends, the contemporary realities of colonisation and capitalist
exploitation constitute the main contents of Mok’s productions, written, devised and performed by
a cast and crew from across Asia. The proposed paper will analyse these productions, and reflect on
the possibilities and values of a pan-Asian People’s Theatre that articulates the pan-Asian histories.

Key Words
Pan-Asian Peoples Theatre Augustine Chiu-yuMok Hong Kong Theatre, Intercultural Theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

326 327
 Working CHOREOGRAPHY
AND CORPOREALITY
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

328 329
 WG WG

Eylül Fidan Akinci Miriam Althammer

The Graduate Center, City University of New York University Bayreuth

Eylül Fidan Akinci is a Ph.D. Candidate in Theatre and Performance program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Miriam Althammer is research assistant at the Chair of Theatre Studies at University Bayreuth and has a teach-
She is currently working on her dissertation on objects and nature in choreographic performance from a fem- ing assignment at the Dance Faculty of the Theater Academy Krakow. She studied Dance and Theater Studies
inist materialist perspective, “A Girl is a Thing: Dramaturgy of Objects in Contemporary Choreography.” She as well as Art History in Munich, Berne and Salzburg. Currently she completes her dissertation on “Traversing
published a book chapter on public protests in Turkey, “Sacred Children, Accursed Mothers: Performativities Knowledge – Performative archives for contemporary dance in post-socialist countries of Europe between
of Necropolitics and Mourning in Neoliberal Turkey” in Performance in a Militarized Culture eds. Sara Brady institution and artistic practice”.
and Lindsey Mantoan, Routledge, 2018. She curated panels and presented at PSi #22 and #23, and has co-con-
vened the working session “Bodies out in the Open: Necropolitics and Performance” at ASTR 2016. She is Body of histories – Movement repertoires in post-socialist
part of the inaugural team of the annual student conference of Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association, and Europe’s contemporary dance and performance scenes
currently in the organization committee of “Objects of Study” conference to be held on May 10, 2018 cuny.
is/objects. Her research areas include dramaturgy, contemporary dance, physical theatre, objects and materi-
ality, biopolitics and necropolitics, transfeminism, and continental philosophy. She works independently as a Repertoire as a place of discovery and register, as non-hierarchical system of transfer and enact-
performer and dramaturg across theatre and choreography. ment of embodied memory Diana Taylor refers to the non-discursive knowledge of the body. In
interviews with dancer-choreographers of post-socialist Europes contemporary dance and perfor-
mance scenes I have traced and re-actualized this knowledge and movement repertoires, both on
Inhuman Attunements: Eiko Otake’s “A Body in Places” at the Met a physical and an oral level.  Thereby the frictions of  transhistorical and -cultural formed dance
styles, techniques and practices become apparent. Whereas the movement repertoires of those
The Met edition of Eiko Otake’s A Body in Places presents the artist’s ongoing engagement with the
dancers bodies are predominantly shaped by their training in ballet, folk dance and military ser-
Fukushima triple disaster of 11 March 2011. This durational performance, which took place during
vice of Cold War period, it is shifted towards contemporary dance practices in the 1990s – which
the opening hours of the Met’s three locations over three Sundays, develops its own politics of
were often taught and mediated in formats which were limited in their temporal duration, such
representation in the face of the most alarming nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl. Eiko’s chore-
as workshops, residencies and festivals.  Beyond institutions, ideological and cultural borders my
ography pulls the audience into a profoundly visceral meditation over the destruction of the earth
paper examines the material potential of movement and its emancipation from those catego-
in Fukushima and beyond.
ries and pursues the thesis of hyper-corporeality and the refusal of the body Using the example
of two Romanian dancer-choreographers  – Mihai Mihalcea and Manuel Pelmus – for this thesis
Key Words
I want to underline two artistic strategies of them: firstly the play with movement repertoires on
necropolitics, corporeality, memory, authoritarianism the blurring boundaries of the arts and secondly their production of hybrid identities for exploring
the possibilities of conditions in the Bucharest as well as European dance and performance scenes.

Key Words
repertoire, contemporary dance, identity, Cold War, technique
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

330 331
 WG WG

Hetty Blades Stormy Budwig

Coventry University
Stormy Budwig is a choreographer / dance artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY, US. stormy has presented
Dr Hetty Blades is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Dance Research C-DaRE at Coventry Uni- dance projects and performance installations at Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, Rabbithole
versity. Her research and writing examines the philosophical questions posed by dance mak- Gallery, Five Myles Gallery, AUNTS, Dixon Place, Spoke the Hub, and Roulette. stormy has performed for Phoe-
ing, performance and documentation. Hetty is currently Co-I on the AHRC/ESRC funded proj- be Berglund from 2015 to present, most recently at MoMA P.S. 1 and Movement Research @ Judson Church
ect Performing Empowerment and was Researcher in Residence and the Digital Catapult in 2016. in NYC, and upcoming at the Whitney Museum in Fall 2018. stormy has taken recent movement and cho-
reography workshops with KJ Holmes, Thomas DeFrantz, JaamilKosoko, and lucianaachugar. stormy teaches
What’s it Worth? Dance, Value, Money and Politics intergenerational art workshops at senior centers regionally, and in 2017 lead a workshop called ‘Resistance
Fantasies’ at ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna.
Contemporary dance in the UK has historically relied upon Government subsidies, giving rise to a
context in which many artists appear to see the value of their work as to do with artistry, originality, The Dancing Body as a Site of (Overthrow and) Freedom
concepts, and form, rather than being primarily driven by economic reward through tickets sales
and large-scale commissions. The global financial crisis and subsequent period of austerity in the The dancing body in performance navigates overlapping choreographic codes: she responds simul-
UK had a significant impact on the arts and contemporary dance has been directly affected by the taneously to any number of intuitions, frameworks, and terrains. The dancing body allows invisi-
reduction to arts funding. Initiatives and terminology such as ‘creative industries’ arising over the ble systems to become seen, which means there is a space between how movement is “written”
past decade have sent the message to artists that they should ‘commercialise to survive’ (Waelde, and how it actually stumbles, melts, synapses into the live performance experience. How might the
Whatley and Pavis 2014:1). However, for many dance artists, monetization and commercialization dancing body, in this interstitial choreo-performative space, afford us a heightened attunement to
rub up against their individual and professional ethics ( Laermans 2016: 290-322), meaning that more quotidien systems which we—as global citizens in flux and in-between—navigate every day?
artists are having to find new ways to develop and sustain their work.    This tension raises criti- By discussing contemporary dance works by choreographers Cynthia Oliver, jumatatu m. poe, and
cal questions about the value art which date back to early Greek philosophy and are still widely Larissa Velez-Jackson, I hope to apply the practice of revealing invisible infrastructures of dance
debated today. The value of dance has also been theorised from multiple perspectives. Some see works to a potential reworking of those principles which govern a more universal (lack of) freedom
the form’s value as primarily social (Hanna 1987), whereas others focus on its aesthetic (McFee to take up space and move
2011) or political (Lepecki 2016) dimensions. In response to these discourses, this paper reflects
on interviews conducted with independent contemporary dance artists at various stages of their Key Words
careers, working in the UK and USA to discuss how they think about the value of their work and choreography, dance, performance, liminal space, governing systems, stillness, migration, decon-
how this informs the way they make and fund their work. In particular, I focus on how these dis- struction, translation, futurity
courses reveal the complex web of cultural, artistic, aesthetic, political and economic values, prob-
lematizing traditional thinking in analytic philosophical aesthetics about the categorisation of value.

Key Words
Contemporary dance, Value , Philosophy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

332 333
 WG WG

Rosemary Candelario Tomasz Ciesielski

Texas Womans University University of Łódź

Rosemary Candelario is a scholar, educator, and performer who specializes in the Japanese avant-garde move- Performer, dancer, theater researcher. Since 2009 member of the Theater Association Chorea, during this
ment form butoh, Asian American dance, dance and ecology, site-related performance, and arts activism. Her time worked within the projects workshops, performances developing the experiences of Jerzy Grotowski and
book, Flowers Cracking Concrete: Eiko&Koma’s Asian/American Choreographies was published by Wesleyan especially ancient music and dance: Antic/Dance in Re-Construction 2010, Koguty, BorsukiiinneKozły 2011,
University Press in 2016. She has also published in the Journal of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Oratorium Dance Project 2011 and other performances together with the Body, voice, rhythm workshops.
The Scholar and Feminist Online, and The International Journal of Screendance, among others. Rosemary In 2011 started cooperation with GranhojDans Aarhus, Denmark finalized with the international productions
earned a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA and is Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas Woman’s Men&Mahler and Rite of Spring Extended, both awarded ReumertVinder for the best performance of the
University. www.rosemarycandelario.net season. Following the individual doctoral studies program at the University of Lodz concentrated on the an-
thropology of theater, possibilities of applying neurosciences into dance and theatre studies.
Serve the People: Social Movements, Cultural Production and the case
of Asian American Dance Theater and the Asian New Dance Coalition Modelling the Dance Situations

In the United States, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act removed racial and national preferenc- Phenomenology, inspired by the works of Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, had a significant impact on the
es for immigration to the US, and eventually led to a significant shift in American racial demographics. formation of the contemporary dance studies. In recent years for exaple, the areas of gender studies
This reform of immigration policy occurred in the midst of a vibrant civil rights movement that before were more intensively explored.  Still, the models developed in the first half of the twentieth centu-
the end of the 1960s expanded beyond Black Americans to include Asian, Latin, and Native Americans. ry and earlier clearly influence the ways of theoretical organization of the objects, subjects and the
In New York City in the 1970s, the Asian American movement thrived in Chinatown in organizations relations between them on stage?.   The most popular are those partially shaped by Maxine Sheets-
like Basement Workshop and publications like Yellow Pearl. At the same time, the American concert Johnstone - phenomenology of dance, Susan Leigh Foster - kinesthetic empathy or Sondra Horton-
dance field was experiencing a boom, centered in nearby downtown venues. Although recent publi- Fraleigh - lived body. This list can also be extended by the proposals derived from theatre studies
cations and exhibitions have explored the vibrant cultural production that was part and parcel of the such as Bert OStatess - phenomenology of the stage presence, Tomasz Kubikowski’s - seven theatre
Asian American movement, the role of dance has been largely ignored. Asian American Dance Theater beings. All these take into account the relational characteristics of dance, but differ in spreading
and the Asian New Dance Coalition provide the opportunity to examine for the first time Asian Amer- the weight between the aspects of presence of the subjects that participate in it - both actively and
ican dance companies and choreographers who were active in the 1970s in both the Asian American passively. In my paper I would like to look at these proposals to compare the models of performative
movement and American concert dance. This article extends the project to recover the important in- systems forming out of them and recognise their limitations. As a part of my current research, I
tersections of art and activism in the Asian American movement of the 1970s by arguing that dance will confront these models/systems with selected contemporary dance and dance improvisation
performed critical political interventions in the 1970s that both directly and indirectly furthered practices that, with the democratization of knowledge, drew a lot of their exercises and language
the movement. Drawing from archival video, photographic, and print materials, I analyze dances by from phenomenology or contemporary cognitive studies. Thus I will try to sketch a map of different,
Asian American Dance Theater, the Asian New Dance Coalition, and allied choreographers to show practically and theoretically informed approaches to the experience of performative dance.
how their self-named “choreographic syncretism” variously grappled with how to integrate all the as-
pects of their corporeal training, identity, and immigration experiences into American concert dance. Key Words
Practice as research, phenomenology, dance technique
Key Words
Asian American Dance, choreographic syncretism, Asian American Dance Theater, Asian New Dance
Coalition, Asian American movement, New York
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

334 335
 WG WG

Raxá De Castilla Andrew Eglinton

Konan Women’s University Kobe
Born in Puebla, Mexico, and based in Barcelona, ​​Raxá is a Teacher in Theater Studies at the UB and the Theater
Institute. He studied the BA in Dramatic Art at the BUAP titled with honors. He has completed the Diploma Andrew Eglinton is Lecturer in theatre studies in the Department of English Language and Culture at
in Dramatic Body Mime, at the International Dramatic Body Mime School, MOVEO. His work as a researcher Konan Women’s University. His research focuses on the interplay between contemporary theatre and
begins with a first text on The use of emotion in the actors art, later he makes his final thesis of Masters stud- politics, disability and ecology. He is also a frequent contributor to The Japan Times stage section.
ies on The application of time-rhythm of Stanislavski. At the moment his investigations are directed towards
The use of the rhythm in the scenic action, focusing on the figure of the clown. He holds a Doctorate in Art
History at the UB, under the lines of film, theater and performing arts research. She has been a beneficiary
“Dwelling” on the Documentary Body in Takuya Murakawa’s
of FONCA, one of the most important institutions in the artistic and cultural field in Mexico. As a stage artist, “Independent Living”
Raxá has participated in all the shows, as an actress and director, among which stand out: Antígona, directed
by Cristina Flores, Nights of ephemeral love by Paloma Pedrero, the short films: Fires in the sky , with the Black The premise behind Takuya Murakawa’s “Independent Living” 2017, is deceptively simple. An audi-
Dog Producer and Hamlet Machine, with the Producer Bande a Part, among others. He was an active part of ence member is invited to play the role of a patient. S/he is instructed to lie in silence on an adjustable
the University Company of the BUAP. He has made awards and distinctions for his interpretive work, and has bed at the centre of a brightly lit stage. Three performers from Japan, China and South Korea take
participated in several Festivals, stories like World Congress of Theater in Liege, Belgium. International Theater
turns interacting with the patient. They carry out physical and verbal routines taken verbatim from
Festival. El Salvador, World Congress, Olympia Greece, PODIUM Festival. Moscow, University Theater Festival
UNAM, International Art Colloquium, in Havana, Cuba, among others. Raxá is co-founder of the Sonámbulos
their everyday lives as carers. Audio recordings of television news reports are intercut in the scenes
Company, which specializes in physical comedy shows and humor. Within it has been three shows. Danzones and are the only link with the world beyond the patient’s imagined room/house.  Murakawa spent
and kisses, Stones in the pockets, and Soloni. They have performed in different stages, inside and outside of time in all three countries during the play’s research phase. He looked for “landscapes” that might
Barcelona. speak to the “contested history, politics and territorial disputes,” that mark the countries’ current
connections. While the play’s caregiver-receiver relationship seems far removed from the geo-politi-
A World Where Other Worlds Fit: The Theater Made in Community cal power games of nation states, the process of constructing a body with disability on stage using a
borderless gestural vocabulary, confronts the audience with the problem of “dwelling.” Whose home
The company of which I am co-founder, and director, works between Mexico, and Barcelona. The does the patient inhabit? Whose body does s/he represent?  Critical border studies scholars, Ruben
people that integrate it are originally from Mexico, and Spain. In our shows, we use humor, as a vehi- Gielis and Henk Van Houtum, characterize Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of “dwelling” in his three-volume
cle to reach the public. We are a company that makes theater for migrants, and theater for migrants, work titled “Spheres,” as both “an immune system and a vehicle,” which is to say, “an inner world that
we are eternal foreigners, and this is part of our wealth. One of the guidelines through which we enables people to live with the total immensity of the globe” and “a place where people are involved
work is that of recognition in the other. In the summer of 2017 we were able to tour Latin America, in complex multidimensional relationships with others.”  In this paper, I read the patient’s body as an
taking two shows to El Salvador, C.A. and Mexico. From the places we visited, we were able to collab- example of a transcultural “dwelling” a body on which migratory exchange is inscribed a documentary
orate with the Mexican indigenous organization Tosepan Kali, which in Nahuatl language means To- body capable of resisting the reductive inside-outside dichotomies forged at the macro level of power.
gether we are stronger. Thanks to the first meeting we had during the summer of 2017 in Cuetzalan,
México, we intend to carry out a project together with the Tosepan Kali indigenous organization, to Key Words
assemble a work by the author Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, one of the most representative women of documentary body, dwelling, disability, migration, Japan
the Mexican, and international dramaturgy. The proposed project aims to be the first show made in
the Nahuatl language, and performed with indigenous people from the community. It has been
possible to carry out a first workshop, with students from the Tosepan Kalnemachtiloyan School
transtation: The organizations school, and it has been through the exploratory-essay methodology
that the Organizations way of working has been identified and the process adapted of the Company,
through interviews, analysis, and the important empirical basis of the project.

Key Words
inclusion, indigenous theater, performance in the original language, humor, new dramaturgies
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

336 337
 WG WG

Rachel Fensham Susanne Foellmer

University of Melbourne Coventry University
Rachel Fensham is a Professor of Dance and Theatre, and Assistant Dean of the Digital Studio in the Faculty of Reader in Dance, Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research. From 2014-2018director of the research
Arts, University of Melbourne. Her current research includes funded projects, such as “Creative Convergence: project “On Remnants and Vestiges. Strategies of Remaining in the Performing Arts” (DFG/German Research
Enhancing Impact in Regional Theatre for Young People” and development of the Theatre and Dance Portal for Association). Recent publications: Performance Research 22(8) 2018:On Leftovers (ed., with Richard Gough);
“AusStage 6: Visualising Venues in Australian Live Performance”. Rachel is currently preparing a monograph on Media Practices, Social Movements, and Performativity. Transdisciplinary Approaches, Routledge: 2018 (ed.,
“Movement: Theory for Theatre” Bloomsbury and continuing her research on the materiality of costumes in with MargrethLünenborg and Christoph Raetzsch).
twenty and twenty-first dance. Recent publications include Transmission in Motion Routledge 2016 and Digital
Movement Palgrave 2015, while writings on dance history include Dancing Naturally: nature, neo-classicism
and modernity in early twentieth century dance Palgrave 2011 as well as Scene, the Journal of Design History, Media Migrations in Dance
and Dance Research Journal. She is also co-editor of the award-winning book series, New World Choreogra-
phies for Palgrave Macmillan. In this paper, I want to propose the idea of migration as an artistic and documentary process in
dance. Since experiments and debates have started around the issues of remaining and preserving
Red Slashes and an Evening Cape: Fabricating Costumes as in dance – such as the challenges of re-enactment and archiving – questionsarise about the inter-
relations of corporeal characteristics of dance and its medial ‘other’. Contrary to regarding docu-
Post-migration Choreography
ments such as photographs or films asmere extensions or addendums of the ‘original’ event –and
For Hannah Arendt, the ‘permanence’ of the work of art lies in the ‘materializing reification’ whereby by this clearly distinctive of the former dancing bodies – I am asking about the particular processes
thought enters into fabrication: producing the tangible thing of thought, and in which a limited free- of media change especially from the perspective of reactivating bygone performances by addressing
dom might exist 170. In this paper, I will further my investigation of fabrication in the material history photographic remainders: Boris Charmatz’ performance “50 Years of Dance” (2010) will be critically
of the Viennese modern dancer, Gertrud Bodenwieser by examining what remains ‘in the trunk’ that revisited. By investigating the dancers’ restaging of the images in the book of the same name – deal-
artists carry under conditions of war, or when named enemy or refugee aliens. I will focus on Boden- ing with five decades of Merce Cunningham’s choreographies – I am arguing that boundaries of
weiser costumes that survived the journey, or were remade in Australia, and their role in choreog- images and bodies are blurring. Or more precisely: In the interspace of image and motion on stage,
raphies that expose the struggle, conflict and repression in Cain and Abel 1936, The Slavonic Dances it becomes increasingly uncertain where to attach the notion of the document as such. Is it denoting
1939, and The Masks of Lucifer 1944. These costumes held in the national collections were dispersed the book’s visual heritage, or rather the former dancers of Cunningham’s company re-performing it?
by the acolytes who helped re-make the Bodenwieser repertoire with scraps of fabric, copied de- In the ongoing transfer between photos and re-performances I will focus on the procedures of re-en-
signs, and limited exposure to European aesthetics. These clothes will be compared with Madame actment, putting them as processes of migration between media of different natures, namely: the
Bodenwieser’s own remnant costumes, jewellery and evening dresses.  This paper will focus on the dancing body and the visual ‘proof’ of a bygone choreographic moment. Oscillating between image
materialist aspects of costume history, such as suggested by Jane Bennett in Vibrant Matter 2010 as and movement, the methods of transfer, and thus migration of arts ‘content’ from one mode of pre-
well as concepts of ‘transmigration’ that I’ve previously elaborated 2012. By investigating the physical sentation to another comes to the fore. This provokes further questions regarding the ‘sustainability’
costs of choreographic migration and the everyday labour of making or caring for dance costumes, of dance on stage and in archives: Often bemoaned as fleeting art form, what exactly is the nature of
I will consider how everyday things of dance offer a minimalist form of resistance to totalitarianism. dance’s documents entering the archives? And who decides which ones will ‘survive’?

Key Words Key Words

materiality, costumes, transmigration, Bodenwieser, modern dance dance, media change, transfer methods
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

338 339
 WG WG

Kélina Gotman Seok Jin Han

King’s College London Korea National University of Arts

Kélina Gotman is author of Choreomania: Dance and Disorder Studies in Dance Theory, Oxford University Seok Jin Han is a lecturer at Korea National University of Arts in South Korea. She has completed her
Press, 2018 and Essays on Theatre and Change: Towards a Poetics Of Routledge, 2018, as well as co-editor of Ph.D. thesis in the School of Arts at the University of Surrey, UK where she investigated choreograph-
Theatre, Performance, Foucault! a Present History of Critique, with Tony Fisher Manchester University Press, ic practices embracing virtual, robotic, and cyborgian bodies. Now she has expanded her research inter-
forthcoming. She has contributed articles and chapters among others to SubStance, Textual Practice, Perfor- est into education, archive, and curation where dance/choreography and digital technologies converge.
mance Research, About Performance, Performance Philosophy for which she edits the [MARGINS] section,
Choreographic Practices, parallax, and edited volumes including The Neuroscientific Turn: Transdisciplinarity
in the Age of the Brain, A Cultural History of Tragedy vol. 6 1920-present forthcoming and L’illusion post-mod- Curating Dance in the Museum in South Korea
erne? Postmodern Illusion? forthcoming. She writes on the history and philosophy of disciplines and institu-
tions theatre, dance and choreographic movement translation and everyday multilingualism and the poetics This paper aims to address issues on the recent appropriation of dance for museum institutions
and practices of critical writing. She received her PhD in Theatre from Columbia University and previously by investigating a 2016 exhibition Multi-Arts Project Performance: Unforeseen at National Mu-
taught at Columbia University, The New School, and Bard College. She has also collaborated on over two dozen seum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea, collaborated with Korea National Contem-
productions in Europe and North America as an actor, dancer, director, choreographer, dramaturg, librettist, porary Dance Company. This exhibition, which brings a series of dance and performance into the
translator and curator, including for projects with the London Sinfonietta and Witness Relocation. She is Lec- museum space, attempts to go beyond the boundary between visual arts and dance and make
turer in Theatre and Performance Studies at King’s College London.
audiences encounter with expected events. This study addresses the context, value, and chal-
lenge of dance’s present in the museum. It also raises concern about the philosophic or artistic
Categorizing Dancing: Language in Motion reasoning of dance’s presence in the museum and the curatorial way of programming dance.
In the paper, I intend to not merely celebrate new opportunities and a wider audience brought
In The Feeling Balletbody: Building the Dancer’s Instrument According to BalletBodyLogic 2013, through dance’s inroad into museum institutions, but rather problematize museum’s renewed
Annemari Autere outlines her strategies for “mastering the dancer’s instrument – the body.” This interest in dance form in terms of its political and economic gain. I then lay emphasis on cu-
includes techniques that borrow from the language of nature and animality “The spine, our snake!”, ratorial responsibilities to build up knowledge of historical and theoretical lineages of dance
mechanics and industrial productivism “[t]o gain optimal movement potential”, geometry “a hori- and to afford dance the visual, spatial, or contextual completeness on a par with visual arts.
zontal line,” “a curve”, spiritualism “elemental lines of energy growing and growing and growing”,
everyday objects “an elastic band”, thinly veiled race “[t]echnique is black, dancing is white”, visual Key Words
arts “the multiple colors of artistic expression”, mathematics and philosophy “logic” geography, cos- Dance, Visual Arts, Museum, Curation, Choreography
mology, geology “the body is our globe”, the language of neuroanatomy “tendons, fibrous cords”
and emotional anatomy “[l]ayers of muscle contraction war with each other”. Although the density
of discourses is breathtaking in Autere’s prose, she is not alone in deploying an array of scientific,
spiritual and metaphorical terms to describe the complex workings of a pirouette or a plié nor is she
alone in fêting the “unforced, graceful, unproblematic joy of dancing, running, jumping, climbing…
of living.” Dance in this view is complex, full of scientific procedures and simple it is explainable, and
infinitely mysterious. This paper seeks to draw some very tentative lines of thought towards a proj-
ect which I hope will offer a history of recent ways of thinking the scientific and cultural models – the
figures of thought – that shape the way dancers talk about the “dancing body.” How have changing
scientific paradigms in particular contributed to transforming the way we imagine body articulations
– the extensions, pliabilities, transformabilities and plasticities of motion? How has the language
of fascia contributed to shaping the way dancers and choreographers envision structural relations
between architectural systems, ecological environments, everyday locomotion, and dance? How has
the movement of language contributed to laying the grounds for what we may term a form of plastic
critique, attentive not only to the transformation of body models historiographically but to the mi-
gration of conceptual paradigms and their language forms?

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

dance, plasticity, scientific modeling, anatomy, movement, ecology

340 341
 WG WG

Jeffrey Kaplan Alexandra Kolb

Manhattanville College University of Roehampton

Jeff Kaplan is an Assistant Professor in Dance and Theatre at Manhattanville College, in Purchase, New York. Alexandra Kolb is Professor of Dance at the University of Roehampton. She previously held positions at Middlesex
He holds an MFA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from University London, Otago University New Zealand, and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. She is the
the University of Maryland. His interests include embodiment, early twentieth-century theatre history, and author of Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism 2009 and many scholarly articles
dramaturgy. and book chapters, and the editor of Dance and Politics 2011. She is a recent recipient of the MarlisThiersch Prize
2017, the Gertrude Lippincott Award 2014, a British Academy/Leverhulme Grant 2015, and a Harry Ransom
Refugees in Motion: The Non-Hero’s Journey Fellowship 2013/2014. She is Reviews Editor for Dance Research and sits on the Executive Committee of the SDR.

“The Hero’s Journey” refers to a narrative template in which a hero undertakes a journey, confronts Multiculturalism in Contemporary British Choreography: Akram
inner and out conflict, and returns home transformed and triumphant. However, what happens Khan and Lloyd Newson
when a protagonist undertakes a passage, faces internal and external struggle, yet does not attain
the status of a champion? In fact, what happens when a people lose a sense of “home” and be- In a climate riven by national insecurities, anti-immigration movements and in the UK competing
come vilified as scapegoats by virtue of their motion? In other words, what happens when refugees visions of a post-Brexit future, this paper examines the contentious space that multiculturalism has
undertake the “non-Hero’s journey?” These questions are important because the signification of inhabited in 21st-Century choreography. It will examine two acclaimed contemporary dance works
refugee motion impinges on our understanding of the political implications of forced migration. This by Akram Khan and Lloyd Newson to examine the starkly differing perspectives which characterise
paper sets out a brief explication of the classical hero’s journey archetype and surrounding debates, current discourses on multiculturalism in the UK. As Falcous and Silk remark 2010, 168, multicultur-
contrasts the hero’s journey with refugee narratives, and then explores the ontology of refugee alism has been seen variously as a solution to the problem of national unity and inclusivity, and as an
flights from a body-level perspective. In particular, the paper focuses on agency in motion, and impediment to an integrated and harmonious society.  Khan’s and Newson’s works provide aesthetic
the ways in which displaced dancers who maintain corporeal agency can become proto-celebrities reflections of this conflicted discourse. Abide with Me, Akram Khan’s contribution to the Opening
from Soviet-era ballet defectors to Syrian dance star Ahmad Joudeh, whereas corporeally unem- Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, was part of a global media spectacle which asserted
powered refugees can experience dehumanizing categorizations. This paper is potentially part of a the UK’s post-imperialist and multicultural profile. By contrast, Lloyd Newson’s contemporaneous
larger project titled Involuntary Motion, which explores refugee narratives and performances from theatre work Can We talk about this? 2011/12 was highly critical of current British approaches to
a movement perspective. multiculturalism, particularly prevailing attitudes to Islam and Islamism.  The two choreographies will
be illuminated and assessed using a theoretical framework that draws on political thought Delanty,
Key Words Malik, Heywood as well as dance studies Mitra, Prickett, Balme. Both works share commonalities
Refugees Non-Heros Journey Corporeality in manifesting the entanglement of dance with British politics, and offer contributions to national
and, by extension, broader international debates around tolerance, culture and diasporic identities.
Taken together, they reveal ambiguous attitudes to multiculturalism and, indeed, to nationalism.

Key Words
multiculturalism, nationalism, British dance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

342 343
 WG WG

Adeline Maxwell Aoife McGrath

Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III Queen’s University Belfast

Adeline Maxwell earned a PhD in Arts, specialized in Dance. She also holds a diploma in Corporeality Re- Dr Aoife McGrath PhD Trinity College Dublin is a choreographer and a lecturer in Drama at the School of Arts,
searches and in Art History. After teach history and theory of dance at the university in Chile, she created and English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast. After a professional dance career in Germany and Ireland,
directed the Corporeality and Performance Arts Research Center UdeChile. She formed the Dance Festival in Aoife has worked as a dance critic, as Dance Advisor for the Irish Arts Council, and as an adjunct lecturer in Dra-
Non-urban Spaces and the Dance and Gender working group. In parallel of her work as main researcher at ma at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin. Her book publications include her monograph, Dance
the laboratory CTEL Unice in France, she became content editor of the program DanzaSur and director of the Theatre in Ireland: Revolutionary Moves 2013, and a co-edited collection with Dr Emma Meehan, CDaRe,
performance/workshop Cartographies Imaginaires MACMA. Her last book publications are LecturasEmergen- Coventry, Dance Matters in Ireland: contemporary processes and practices 2018. She is currently developing
tessobre Danza Contemporánea LOM, 2015, DanzaSur, Viajepor el Continente de las Maravillas CNCA, 2016, a project on Dance and the Maternal. Aoife is a co-convenor with PrarthanaPurkayastha, Royal Holloway, and
and Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion Eds. DEFRANTZ and ROTHFIELD, Palgrave, 2016. She is PhilipaRothfield, La Trobe, Australia of the Choreography and Corporeality Working Group of the IFTR, an ex-
currently making her postdoctoral research about post-identity in South-America’s contemporary dance at the ecutive committee member of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, a member of the board of directors of
Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3. Dance Limerick, and a performer/choreographer member of Dance Ireland.

Chilean Scenic Dance: A Practice Made of Migrations Dance and the Maternal
This article examines the concepts of “cultural transfers” and “national language” in the context of Chil- Dance practice provides a particularly rich site for exploring questions of maternal corporeality. This
ean scenic dance. This artistic movement is studied here with an ideological reading linked to the con- paper discusses a dance work developed as part of a research project on Dance and the Maternal
cept of Resistance in the specific exchanges between the so-called “independent Chilean dance”, and that investigates the communication of experiences of maternal corporeality through dance prac-
the forms of scenic dance of European tradition. The role played by European influences in the develop- tice and performance. The project’s underpinning theoretical framework aims to create a dialogue
ment of professionalization of dance, and in the search of an “own language” in Chile is interrogated here, between dance studies, maternal studies and affect studies, engaging with a strand of maternal
specifically from the work of the well-known Chilean choreographer Patricio Bunster as a case of study. studies that looks for ways to acknowledge maternal agency, and to escape the frequent positioning
of maternal subjectivity in the ‘melancholia-murder binary’ of psychoanalytical and philosophical
Key Words thought Baraitser, 2009. This paper will focus on an analysis of, With|in: Body + Time 2018, a piece
Travels, Dance, “cultural transfers”, “national language”, legacy, war I co-choreographed with a pregnant dancer about the experience of time in pregnancy. Considering
how the choreography of maternal corporeality engages with important current debates surround-
ing parenthood and feminism, and wider societal debates about issues concerning women’s corpo-
real autonomy, biopolitics, and ethics, I am interested in investigating how maternal agency can be
represented in dance practice and performance, and how this agency might creatively challenge the
often oppressive affective environments and circumstances from which it emerges.

Key Words
Dance and the Maternal, Maternal Corporeality, Choreography
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

344 345
 WG WG

Dara Milovanović Sofia Muñoz

University of Nicosia
Sofia Muñoz Carneiro. Anthropologist by the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano UAHC and Bach-
Dara Milovanović is an Assistant Professor in Dance and Programme Coordinator at University of Nicosia. Dara elor in Performing Arts by the Universidad Mayor. Worked in different research projects in Chile, focused in an-
is currently a PhD candidate in Dance Studies at Kingston University, UK. She holds an MA in American Dance thropology and performing arts. Worked as professor assistance at the UAHC, focused in the anthropology of
Studies from Florida State University and a BSc in History and Political Science from Drexel University. the ritual, semiotics, and linguistics, philosophy and history of performing arts. Currently, carrying out a cotutel
joint doctoral supervision between the Ph.D. in Philosophy, aesthetics and art history of the Universidad de
Challenging the Male Gaze: Subjectivity, Corporeality, and Chile and the Ph.D. in Theater Studies of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The doctoral research
is about the relationship between the concepts of touch and presence in contemporary dance.
Authorship of Female Dancers in Bob Fosse’s Choreography
Figures of the In-vention. Kurt Jooss in Santiago de Chile
A number of iconic performances by female performers stand out in the repertory of the American
choreographer and director Bob Fosse, including performances by Gwen Verdon in ‘Whatever Lola The issue of the foreign can invoke at least two movements: going abroad to the foreign as well as the
Wants’ Damn Yankees 1958, Ann Reinking in ‘There’ll be Some Changes Made’ All That Jazz 1979, arrival or coming of the foreigner. In either of the two senses or movements, the subject of the other
and Liza Minelli in the 1972 film Cabaret. Looking at Fosse’s work from a post-structuralist perspec- appears. On this occasion I would like to concentrate on the issue of the arrival - of the coming - of
tive shifts focus from the idea of Fosse as the creative originator and rather focuses on the dance, the foreigner as a dynamic and multiple movements related to the other regarding certain history, in
choreography, and performance as a collaborative practice. Drawing on Ronald Barthes’s idea of the particular of the coming of Kurt Jooss and his company to Chile in 1940. The arrival of the company
death of the author I seek to re-invigorate the creative labour of dancers as a fundamental compo- and the presentation of The Green Table produced a turn in the conception of dance in Chile, as well
nent of dance making and refute the idea of the choreographer as a sole originator of choreogra- as played a decisive role in the formation process of the School of Dance of the Universidad de Chile
phies. Urged by Susan Leigh Foster 1998 separation of choreography and performance as separate and of the Chilean National Ballet, as the Chilean historian María José Cifuentes states.  I have used
entities, this essay focuses on the work performed by the female dancers. This analysis concentrates the notion of invention in the title not only because it is closely related to history, institution and
on Liza Minnelli’s performance in ‘Mein Herr’ to examine ideas of corporeal presence and individual technique, but also because, following Jacques Derrida 2003, it allows one to examine that network
style as a powerful strategy to contest the stereotypical ideas of female images as passive objects of relationships regarding  the coming that is within the word in-vention. Coming from the Latin inve-
within the cinematic apparatus. Fosse imagines gender through choreography of gestures however nire, inventus, inventio, the notion of invention is composed of the prefix in, which means in, into or
it is the female performers who imbue these performances with their personal style challenging inwards, and from the verb venire, which means “to come”. In this sense, invention also means some-
ideas of authorship. Turning attention to actions of female dancers in choreography designed by thing that comes from within, that can not be understood without its foundational relationship with
a man disturbs the traditional patriarchal dominance in dance and provides a feminist lens to the the outside. The figure of the foreigner, in this sense, can be understood as a figure of the in-vention,
study. The performers undertake creative labour which becomes a conscious transgression of eco- of the coming, insofar as it has to do with a coming that can transform and reinvent in multiple direc-
nomics and politics. Female dancers assert subjectivity through their corporeality, material shifting tions.   In this sense, the members of the company of Jooss can be comprehended as the foreigner
of the dancing body which refuses passivity and objectification. Their bodily writing and corporeal who comes and brings with him a question, a call, a knowledge, or certain body as well, certain
inscription on screen is assertive, grounded, and feminist. For the purposes of this analysis, the danc- corporality or choreography, that it could be inscribed within a re-invention that occurs in multiple
ing body corpo-realises subjectivity of the women on screen. voices and reach different dimensions, that I would like to approach and discuss on this occasion.
Key Words Key Words
Fosse, Corporeality, Subjectivity Kurt Jooss, otherness, invention, foreigner, to come, reinvention
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

346 347
 WG WG

Róisín O’Gorman Leonie Persyn

University College Cork Ghent University

EDUCATION: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA, Ph.D. in Theatre Arts 2007 Leonie Persyn is a Belgian Researcher affiliated with the S:PAM research group at Ghent University. She has a
CURRENT POSITION: Lecturer, Dept. of Drama & Theatre Studies, UCC since 2007  background in Visual Arts and Performances Studies. Looking back on her trajectory up till now, Leonie states
PUBLICATIONS  *Storied bodies and bodied stories In Dance Matters, Aoife McGrath and Emma Meehan, eds., that sounds have been reciprocally triggering her curiosity and creativity. But this statement is a post factum
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 55-78 *Video essay: “Collaboration: Re-threading labyrinths of learning together one, as the first encounters with sounds came on spontaneously and quite unconscious. In the development of
through pedagogy and creative arts practices”. with Leslie Burton In The Cine-files, Special issue on The video ideas and due to her position as a researcher-as-dramaturge she is able to keep combining theory and practice
essay Fall 2016.  *“12-A-Day: Lighthousekeeping on the Irish Sea”, Performance Research, 2016 21:2, 25-31 in very inspiring interactions with different artists.
*Embodied Adventures in and out of the Irish Countryside with Jools Gilson Bernadette Cronin In: Alexander,
K, Garrett Brown, N. & Whatley, S eds. Attending to movement: Somatic perspectives on living in this world. Installing an Aesthetic Moment Sound as a Boundary - Crossing
Axminster, UK: Triarchy Press. 2015. *The Ontogenetic Body in Body and Performance, Sandra Reeve ed., UK,
Triarchy Press. 2013.  9-21 *On Failure editor with Margaret Werry for special issue of Performance Research Iteration for Itinerancy
17.1 February 2012.
Through my research I aim to understand the heautonomousHuvenne, 50 relationship between
Moving the Monuments of Motherhood: A Somatic Approach to sound and image within contemporary performing arts. In such a relation, both counterparts have
an equal importance and retain their autonomous grammatical functioning, which generates a
the Politics of the Maternal deepened experience of meaning and poetics. Persyn, s.n  Due to an ever-expanding range of new
digital technologies, where an overload of pictures is imposed to one’s retina looking becomes emp-
This paper will explore further threads and tentacles that found initial ground as part of a workshop
ty. Katz, vii Spectators are part of an everyday mass-audience Mitrou, 2, used to shortened distances
held at Queens University Belfast 2017 focussing on Dance and the Maternal.  The workshop was
and the failure of proximity Kagge, 82. The hollow action of swiping through each other’s lives via
based on a somatic exploration of the placenta as a site of “tenctular” exchange and possibility fol-
Facebook and snapchat embodies this tendency. Persyn, s.n. The intimate context of a live per-
lowing from Donna Haraway’s recent work, Staying with the Trouble. This contribution to the work-
formance provides a valuable alternative of deeper listening and seeing. A live performance is, as
ing group aims to further develop the video essay begun for that event “Moving the maternal: Explo-
Bachelard would say, an intimate constellation with direct relations, as all “intimacy hides from view
rations of placental breathing and tentacular kinships” and to reflect on the somatic possibilities and
Bacherlard, 109.”   A heautonomous relation of sound and image then opens up an in-between-ness
also consider the limits of such an approach.  Furthermore, this essay aims to link and listen for on-
where auditory imagination can arise. It is the only place where a geography of intimacy Labelle, Xvi
tological encounters through metaphoric placenta that will absorb and filter the particular politics of
can be deployed. It helps the spectator to explore its own acoustic territories and inhabit a relational
representations around motherhood within the context of the proposed constitutional referendum to
space, a meeting point, diffuse and yet pointed” Labelle, xvi. This means that sound provides the
Repeal the 8th Amendment in the Republic of Ireland due to take place in 2018. The politics of repre-
spectator not only with new possibilities to re-connect with the image, but also with other human
sentations of motherhood continue to haunt the current debates around maternal bodies in Ireland
beings.  In the article ‘Installing an aesthetic moment. Sound as a boundary-crossing iteration for
and elsewhere and to severely inhibit any multiplicity of understanding around maternity. This work
itinerancy’, I extensively explored the consequences and possibilities of such a heautonomous re-
explores how understandings of movement and corporeality afford other political possibilities for
lation, for the phenomenological experience and choreography of the audience. Due the corporeal
bodily agency and political action and decisive living within and beyond the terrain of the maternal.
collisions and energetic transmissions inherent to the characterisation of sound as a movement, the
working group Choreography and Corporeality would be an excellent and challenging environment
Key Words
to elaborate this article into a first chapter of my Phd-dissertation ‘The sound of a shared Intimacy.’
Maternity somatics Repeal the 8th Amendment
Key Words
Sound and image - phenomenological experience and choreography of the audience - acoustical
territories - auditory imagination
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

348 349
 WG WG

Stacey Prickett Prarthana Purkayastha

University of Roehampton Royal Holloway University of London

Dr. Stacey Prickett, Reader in Dance Studies at the University of Roehampton in London, researches identity Dr. Prarthana Purkayastha is Senior Lecturer in Dance at Royal Holloway University of London. Her monograph
issues, dance and politics, examining contemporary and historical practices in the USA and Britain. Stacey Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism was published in the Palgrave Macmillan New World
recently completed a two year British Academy/Leverhulme funded project on dance and cultural diplomacy Choreographies series in 2014 and subsequently won the 2015 de la Torre Bueno Prize from the Society of
during the Cold War.  She wrote the book Embodied Politics: Dance, Protest and Identities 2013 and has con- Dance History Scholars, and the 2015 Outstanding Publication Award from the Congress on Research in Dance.
tributed chapters to Dance and Politics 2011 and Dance in the City 1997, as well as entries in Fifty Contem- Her research has been published in Performance Research, Dance Research Journal, Asian Theatre Journal,
porary Choreographers 1999 and 2011. Her articles have appeared in publications such as Dance Research Studies in South Asian Film and Media, CLIO: Women, Gender, History and South Asia Research. She is cur-
Journal, Dance Research, Dance Chronicle and South Asia Research. rently working on the British Academy/Leverhulme funded research project ‘Decolonisng the Body: Dance and
Visual Arts in Modern India’. Prarthana is deeply committed to feminist scholarship and performance practice.
Post - War Identities: Britain, Migration and Ballet
Race on Display: Dance in Human Exhibits
Post-war migration trends transformed Britain’s population, marked by the arrival of the Empire Win-
drush ship from Jamaica in 1948 which brought vital labourers and service workers from the colonies In November 1885, a group of ‘natives’ were shipped to London from the Indian sub-continent by
to help rebuild a devastated nation.  Recent scholarship has examined how popular cultural forms such the luxury departmental store Liberty’s to be installed as human exhibits in a ‘living Indian village’ in
as jazz dance on television were influenced by the black diaspora see Burt & Adair 2016 in the 1960s and Battersea Park. It was the coldest winter in Britain in thirty years. The Indians were given European
1970s while cultural studies theorists Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy analyse wider trends that reshaped winter-wear to fight off the cold, much to the disappointment of English spectators who considered
British culture.  This paper will examine how different journeys of migration impacted the Royal Ballet them inauthentic. Among the ‘natives’ were two women, a mother-daughter duo, a pair of nautch
with the arrival of dancers from Commonwealth countries and the Soviet defector Rudolph Nureyev dancers, who were described as ‘“bewitching” objects of sexual curiosity’ Mathur, 2000: 503, and
in the 1960s.  Contrasting narratives of migration emerge. One is of Nureyev, the ballet star whose subjected to unsolicited physical touching by visitors to the living display. This paper uses 19th
leap to freedom helped transform the technical proficiency of the company, also becoming a muse century international journeys of subaltern dancers from the Indian subcontinent to consider the
to choreographer Frederick Ashton and starting an iconic partnership with Margot Fonteyn.  South contra-movements of British colonialism and Indian nationalism. The 1885 human exhibit acts as a
African, Australian and New Zealand ballet dancers made up a significant proportion of the compa- moment through which this ambitious yet disastrous financial venture of Liberty’s, a jewel in British
ny, achieving a cultural capital denied to black dancers.  The Commonwealth dancers and the Soviet entrepreneurship and culture, is pitted in conflict with the growing strength of Indian anti-colonial
star danced in ballets that circulated internationally as instruments of cultural diplomacy during the nationalism, which severely critiqued the treatment of its citizens abroad. Using Priya Srinivasan’s
Cold War.  Archival research includes interviews with ballet dancers and analysis of how Royal Ballet seminal Sweating Saris 2011 as a take-off point, this paper asks how subaltern dancers and their
performances and its dancers were represented in the British popular press and specialist journals. dance can become both the embodiment of, and the space for a theorising of, many types of con-
flicts: empire vs colony, primitivism vs civilization, mobility vs passivity, bodily objectification vs sub-
Key Words jectivity, and racism vs human rights.
British ballet, post-war migration
Key Words
Dance, Race, Colonialism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

350 351
 WG WG

Katja Schneider Nigel Stewart

Ludwig Maximilians University Munich Lancaster University

PD Dr. Katja Schneider, senior lecturer at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University Nigel Stewart is a dance artist and scholar. He is Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Contemporary Arts at
in Munich. Habilitation 2013 Dance and Text. Her studies focus on dance theory and history, intermediality of Lancaster University, UK, and Artistic Director of Sap Dance; the author of many articles and chapters on
contemporary dance and theatre, and performance art. Current research projects: Embodied Archives: Con- contemporary dance, dance phenomenology and environmental dance; and co-editor of Performing Nature:
textualization, Dance Aesthetics, and Democratic Agency, Choreographies of the Immobile in Contemporary Explorations in Ecology and the Arts (Peter Lang 2005). He has danced for various European choreographers,
Dance/Performance and on the Media Representation of Protest. She worked as a writer and editor of several including Thomas Lehmen, and as a solo artist. Apart from his choreography for Sap Dance, he has worked as
dance magazines and is the dramaturg of the Munich festival Dance. a choreographer and director for Louise Ann Wilson Company, National Theatre Wales, Theatre Nova, Theatre-
works Ltd., Triangle and many other UK companies, and Odin Teatret in Denmark.
Transmigrational Dance: The Self-logic of Cities and Sites
Kinaesthetic Cognition in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works
Three members of the Ballets Jooss, Ernst Uthoff, Lola Botka and Rudolf Pescht, were invited to
establish a school of dance at the University of Santiago de Chile in 1941 from which the Ballet This paper explores “I Now, I Then”, Act I of Wayne McGregor’s ballet Woolf Works (2015–17). The
Nacional Chileno emerged in 1945. Another example: The former student of Mary Wigman and paper is part of a longer essay on Woolf Works that is itself the first in a book-length series of essays,
Marianne Vogelsang Rolf Gelewski, dancer in Berlin until 1960, migrated to Brasil. There he taught each one of which focuses on a different twenty-first century contemporary dance work through
at the Universidad Federal da Bahia, formed a company and toured intensively. Invited by the phenomenology. In this essay I triangulate (1) McGregor’s finished ballet and his working practices
Goethe-Institut, Gelewski traveled to India where he started to combine his dance principles with with (2) Virginia Woolf’s literary experiments in Mrs Dalloway (1925), upon which “I Now, I Then”
integral yoga at Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1968 on. These transmigrants Glick Schiller/Basch/Szan- is based, and (3) Edmund Husserl’s work on consciousness and cognition in Logical Investigations
ton Blanc, 1995 rooted artistically in the so-called German Dance. Both cases can be considered as (1900, 1913) and Ideas (1913, 1921). For instance, I indicate that Woolf’s novel emerged not through
examples of micropolitics of exchange Elswit 2017.  My paper will examine the conditions under narcissistic introspection but her hard-won perceptions, freed from traditional assumptions, of the
which such interactions develop. What is the state of organisations, aesthetic systems, and insti- social and natural world of which she was a part; that McGregor generated and refined movement
tutional frames willing to transform? How come that different aesthetics like German Dance and material based on his dancers’ kinaesthetic cognition of the auditory and visual mental imagery that
ballet or German Dance and yoga link together and create new praxeologies like modern Chilean he encouraged them to have; and that both are thus true to the epoché, the first step in phenome-
ballet or DançaEspontânea? How one can identify agencies of otherness/alterity, change, and syn- nological reflection after which any habitualised response or empirical understanding of the world
thesis? Methodologically, I will refer to JurijLotmans concept of gradual development and explosion is suspended, and to intentionality in which noematic sensations of immanent objects conjoin with
2010 as well as to Martina Löws conception of Eigensinn der Städte the self-logic of cities, 2008. noetic attitudes towards those objects. I also argue that the experience of watching a performance
of this ballet is equivalent to, but not a duplication of, the experience of reading the novel, struc-
Key Words tured as it is by the flashbacks and fragments of impressions that constitute the characters’ states of
Transmigrational Dance, Jooss, R. Gelewski, agencies of Otherness, institutional frame consciousness. In particular, I demonstrate that Woolf’s handling of Clarissa Dalloway’s memories of
Sally and Peter, and Septimus’ of Evans, demonstrates a Husserlian grasp of internal time-conscious-
ness in which past, present and future interpenetrate each other, and identity is not stable and lin-
ear but dynamic and quasi-musical. This, I argue, is distilled with aching poignancy by the trios and
duets of McGregor’s work in which characters dance with past loves or versions of themselves with
whom they are never identical. The fact that McGregor can ultimately distil these fragile relations
down to delicate shifts of weight in the duet between the increasingly frangible Clarissa from the
present and the younger Peter from the past suggests that he has reduced the novel further to its
eidetic kinaesthetic essence.

Key words
Wayne McGregor, ballet, contemporary dance, choreography; Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway; Edmund
Husserl, phenomenology, perception, epoché, reduction, intentionality, memory, internal time-con-
sciousness, kinaesthetic cognition, eidectic essence.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

352 353
 WG WG

Aneta Stojnić Juan Ignacio Vallejos

Faculty of Media and Communication in Belgrade National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina

Aneta Stojnić, PhD, is theoretician, artist and curator from Belgrade, based in New York. Her main areas of Juan Ignacio Vallejos received his doctorate in history from the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences
professional interest include psychoanalysis, performance and new media studies, decoliniality, gender stud- EHESS in Paris. He has taught at the University of Buenos Aires UBA, at Nancy 2 University, the EHESS, and the
ies and artistic and theoretical practices that affirm critical thinking. She has published three books, most Centre Nationale de la Danse CND in France. He is cofounder of the Atelier d’histoire culturelle de la danse
recently a co-edited volume Regimes of Invisibility in Contemporary Art, Theory and Culture: Image, Racial- CRAL-EHESS. He has received research grants from the Getty Foundation at the National Institute of Art History
ization, History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. She has authored a number of papers on contemporary art and in Paris and from the ALBAN program. He worked with Dominique Brun on the recreation of Nijinsky’s ballet
media in international peer reviewed publications and realized numerous artistic and curatorial projects in The Rite of Spring with support from the program Aide à la Recherche et au Patrimoine en Danse of the French
collaboration with renowned institutions and organizations in Europe.  Stojnic was a postdoc researcher at the Ministry of Culture. His articles have been published in the journals Eadem Utraque Europa, Repères – Cahier
Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna 2015 and Basileus postdoc research-fellow at Ghent University, Research cen- de danse, Dance Research Journal, Musicorum and Cuadernos Dieciochistas, among others. He is currently a
treS:PAM. She obtained her PhD at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Interdisciplinary Studies—Theory of Art researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council CONICET in Argentina.
and Media 2013. She was the artist in residence at TanzQuartier Vienna in 2011, and the writer in residence at
KulturKontakt Austria in 2012. Since 2015 she holds the position of assistant professor at the Faculty of Media Dance and National Identity in Argentina: Adentro! by Diana
and Communications in Belgrade. Currently she is a candidate at IPTAR Institute for Psychoanalytic Training
and Research in New York. https://anetastojnic.wordpress.com/about/ Szeiblum
Adentro! a contemporary dance piece by Argentine choreographer Diana Szeinblum, was premiered
Trapped in Motion
at the Teatro La Rivera in Buenos Aires in November 2016. Szeinblum defined her work as a “physical
journey” through the gestures, postures and movements characteristic of traditional Argentinian
In this paper I will analyze the technologies of control in the context of contemporary Europe. Taking
dances. The artistic research led her to a deconstruction of folk dancing body, which conjures his-
into the account the genealogy of global changes that lead to the current mass migrations, commonly
torical and political conflicts between the countryside and the city of Buenos Aires, and the role of
known as “refugee crises” I will look at the processes of dehumanisation that precede the mechanisms
popular dance in the construction of national identity. Following Mark Franko 2006, it is argued that
of subjugation of the other. Contesting the “post-human hype” the question that will be examined is
dance has served, since seventeenth century, to fashion and project images of national, gendered
what are the new subjectivities and embodied politics, that could emerge in the above mentioned-
and racial identity. It could be said furthermore that its main political function is to embody an ideol-
conditions. Further on I shall analyse the meaning of the border-body relation in terms of the “soci-
ogy consistent with social order. Nonetheless, the self-reflexivity characteristic of postmodern dance
ety of control” Deleuze — form traditional to digital regimes of control. For example, when refugees
allows it to act conversely as a practice that exposes and questions the construction of bodies in
are fingerprinted at the fortress EU borders their bodies are immobilised because of the speed of
culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Szeinblums’s choreography as a political intervention
this digital information, which is at once, in a matter of seconds sent to all the border crossings inside
that comes into being as a response to a denial. The analysis presented here will thus be guided by
Europe. In other words by translating a body into digital data via fingerprint the border is digitally in-
the following questions. What is an Argentinian dancing body? Do folk dances represent the being
scribed into the body. This body is thus forced to carry the border in itself and as such prevented from
of the people? Is it possible to question and embrace a national identity at the same time? Are folk
free movement.  Within the discursive framework on the shift from biopolitics to necropolitics, as well
dances of Argentina an expression of colonialism or a resistance to it?
as a decolonial perspective I intend to question if we can we think of a change at the border through
the border and beyond the border today here and now?  I will do this by look at artistic activisticar-
Key Words
tivist performance examples such as the work by German based collective Center for Political Beauty.
Argentine Contemporary Dance, National Identity, National Theatre
Key Words
subjectivity, refugee, politics, dehumanization, technologies of control, immobility
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

354 355
 Working DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
Groups IN THEATER
RESEARCH
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

356 357
 WG WG

Harmony Bench Antje Budde

The Ohio State University University of Toronto

CURRENT ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT: Associate Professor, The Ohio State University, Department of Dance Af- Artistic research facilitator of the Digital Dramaturgy Lab and its Institute for Digital Humanities in Perfor-
filiated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Theatre, Folklore, and Translational Data Analytics. mance. Associate Professor and Associate Director graduate at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Perfor-
EDUCATION: 2009 PhD, Culture and Performance, University of California, Los Angeles. Monograph: Dance as mance Studies, University of Toronto
Common: Movement as Belonging in Digital Cultures in contract with University of Minnesota Press. DIGITAL
PROJECT: Movement on the Move http://movementonthemove.osu.edu/ARTICLES AND ESSAYS: 2016. “Map- Performing ACT247 – Intersectional Processes and Challenges of
ping Movement on the Move: Dance Touring and Digital Methods,” with Kate Elswit, Theatre Journal 68.4, pp.
575-596. 2016. “Dancing in Digital Archives: Circulation, Pedagogy, Performance,” Maaike Bleeker, ed. Trans-
Making Statistics as Performance
mission in Motion: The Technologization of Dance. London: Routledge, pp. 155-167. 2016 “Affective Tempo-
ralities: Dance, Media, and the War on Terror,” Gay Morris and Jens Giersdorf, ed. Choreographies of 21st In my contribution I will critically discuss how we build a digital body of mixed-media content com-
Century War, Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 157-179. GRANTS AND AWARDS: 2017 OSU Virginia Hull Research Award ing from different disciplinary interests and knowledges but serving research and pedagogical goals
$2,500 for “Transmissions: Katherine Dunham on the Global Stage. 2016. Battelle Engineering, Technology and for both a re-design of a second-year, large-classroom actuarial mathematics course “ACT247 In-
Human Affairs with OSU College of Arts and Sciences $55,000 for “Dance in Transit” Kate Elswit Co-Investigator. troduction to Life Contingency Models” of the Actuarial Science Program on the one hand and the
current practice-as-research creative project Between Life and Death – Explorations of Zen and
Dance in Transit: Katherine Dunham’s “Southland” and American Quantum Physics in/with/through Gao, Xingjian’s play. Experimental cross-cultural, mult-lingual,
Civil Rights on Tour mixed-media Zen theatre” by the DDL. Both these projects converged in an act of collaborative crit-
ical making, co-created and produced by idHIP and Vikki Zhang in 2016. For this project a profes-
For this Digital Humanities working group presentation, we discuss our current research project, sor of actuarial science, Vikki Zhang, turned into a dramatic writer, and members of the DDL and
Dance in Transit. Combining dance history, science and technology studies, data analysis, digital idHIP, directed by the scholar-artist Antje Budde, engaged in a dramaturgical learning process rele-
humanities, and archival research, Dance in Transit extends our work on the geography and net- vant to their creative project on interactive pedagogies of teaching the math behind life insurance
works of dance touring, with particular focus on the infrastructures of transportation that link cities, to a class of mostly Chinese students in Toronto. With increasing debates about the role digital
countries, and cultures. Dance in Transit addresses the conference theme by offering a unique per- humanities and its potential on the one hand and applications of creative methods in the scienc-
spective on digitally analyzing and representing technological systems facilitate both the production es as discussed, for example, in the context of STEAM http://stemtosteam.org/, we offer insights
and transmission of movement on the move. This presentation addresses our current case study: in a method of collaboration and critical making that insists on mutual interest, respect and pro-
African American choreographer Katherine Dunham, whose artistic and ethnographic work included cess-based learning whereby neither side becomes the product-oriented service provider of the oth-
research trips throughout the Caribbean, global travel for her work in the Hollywood film industry, er. This is a difficult territory of negotiations as we build digital bodies of knowledge and interaction.
as well as the domestic and international touring of her dance company. Through the lens of Dance
in Transit, we examine Dunham’s touring circa 1950-1953, which includes her premier of the contro- Key Words
versial work Southland in Chile in 1951 and its reprisal in France in 1953, placing the tours around STEAM, interdisciplinary collaboration, media content production, collaboration, deep learning, dig-
Southland in tandem with ship, train, and automobile routes/roads, as well as other spatial and in- ital dramaturgy
frastructural networks. Analyzing Dunham’s touring and choreographic work at the cusp of the Civil
Rights Era allows us to place the transportation systems upon which she relied in the context of the
racism that she and her mostly African America company members faced when engaged in travel.
We will show our work in progress on a web-based representation of Southland in the context of
both Dunham’s broader work and the travels of her and her company specifically.

Key Words
dance, touring, transit, digital, mapping, network, data analysis, civil rights, choreography, racism,
infrastructure
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

358 359
 WG WG

Kate Elswit Jens-Morten Hanssen

Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London University of Oslo

Kate Elswit is a scholar-artist whose research on performing bodies combines dance history, performance Jens-Morten Hanssen is PhD scholar at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo. He submitted his doc-
studies theory, cultural studies, experimental practice, and technology. She is author of Watching Weimar toral thesis “Ibsen on the German Stage 1876–1918: A Quantitative Approach” in 2017, in which he applied
Dance Oxford University Press 2014, which won both the Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research and research techniques and methodologies from the field of digital humanities. During 2001–2014, he was the
honorable mention for the Callaway Prize, and of Theatre & Dance Palgrave 2018. Further awards include the editor of the trilingual website Ibsen.nb.no formerly known as Ibsen.net. In 1997, he earned a cand.philol.
Lilian Karina Research Grant in Dance and Politics, the Gertrude Lippincott Award, the Biennial Sally Banes Pub- degree in German literature from the University of Oslo with a thesis on Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann. Since
lication Prize, a postdoctoral Mellon Fellowship at Stanford University, and most recently a Batelle Engineering, 2000, he has been heavily involved in building research infrastructure in Ibsen studies. His publications cover a
Technology, and Human Affairs BETHA Endowment Grant with Harmony Bench for collaborative digital work wide range of topics related to Ibsen’s oeuvre. Recent article publications: “The Introduction of Bjørnson and
on Mapping Movement on the Move, specifically Dance in Transit. She holds a PhD from the University of Ibsen on the German Stage” 2016, “Otto Brahm’s Ibsen Cycle at the Lessingtheater in Berlin” 2015, “The Fusion
Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar, and is now Reader in Theatre and Performance at the Royal Central School of of the Man and His Work: John Gabriel Borkman with Ibsen’s Mask” 2014, “The Biographers’ Tale of Ibsen’s
Speech and Drama, University of London. Childhood” 2010. E-mail: [email protected]

Dance in Transit: Katherine Dunham’s “Southland” and American The Global Production History of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” – A Quantitative
Civil Rights on Tour Approach
For this Digital Humanities working group presentation, we discuss our current research project, The initial decades of the production history of Ibsen’s Ghosts were surrounded by an aura of scan-
Dance in Transit. Combining dance history, science and technology studies, data analysis, digital dal and marked by the issue of censorship, exerted either by governmental bodies such as the Prus-
humanities, and archival research, Dance in Transit extends our work on the geography and net- sian board of censors or the Lord Chamberlain, or by major theatre institutions refusing to produce
works of dance touring, with particular focus on the infrastructures of transportation that link cities, the play out of moral concerns. It is orthodoxy in studies of censorship that the victim always wins in
countries, and cultures. Dance in Transit addresses the conference theme by offering a unique per- the end. The production history of Ghosts seems to support this: One of Ibsen’s most popular stage
spective on digitally analyzing and representing technological systems facilitate both the production plays, second only to A Doll’s House, the play ranks as a modern classic and continues to be produced
and transmission of movement on the move. This presentation addresses our current case study: on stage at venues on all continents of the world. This paper seeks to examine the global production
African American choreographer Katherine Dunham, whose artistic and ethnographic work included history of Ghosts from a quantitative angle using the performance database IbsenStage, currently
research trips throughout the Caribbean, global travel for her work in the Hollywood film industry, holding close to 23,000 records with data from Ibsen performances worldwide, as a research tool.
as well as the domestic and international touring of her dance company. Through the lens of Dance The database holds 3,021 event records associated with Ghosts. The dataset will be analyzed us-
in Transit, we examine Dunham’s touring circa 1950-1953, which includes her premier of the contro- ing data interrogation techniques and research methodologies pioneered within the field of digital
versial work Southland in Chile in 1951 and its reprisal in France in 1953, placing the tours around humanities. Particular emphasis will be placed on examining the dynamic interplay between two
Southland in tandem with ship, train, and automobile routes/roads, as well as other spatial and in- seemingly contradictory approaches to Ibsen’s play in the early phase of the production history: the
frastructural networks. Analyzing Dunham’s touring and choreographic work at the cusp of the Civil appropriation of Ghosts by the vanguards of the independent theatre movement on the one hand
Rights Era allows us to place the transportation systems upon which she relied in the context of the and the approach represented by exponents of commercially oriented theatre enterprises on the
racism that she and her mostly African America company members faced when engaged in travel. other hand. The play was introduced on stage at venues in the province rather than in the major
We will show our work in progress on a web-based representation of Southland in the context of cities. This was particularly the case in Scandinavia where aspiring stage directors running touring
both Dunham’s broader work and the travels of her and her company specifically. theatre companies operating in the province demonstrated the play’s viability, whereby the promi-
nent theatres in the major cities followed only reluctantly.
Key Words
dance, touring, transit, digital, mapping, network, data analysis, civil rights, choreography, racism, Key Words
infrastructure Ibsen Studies Digital Humanities Quantitative Research Methodologies Data Analysis Theatre Cen-
sorship
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

360 361
 WG WG

Franklin J. Hildy Klaus Illmayer

University of Maryland Austrian Academy of Sciences

Franklin J. Hildy PhD Northwestern Univ. is Professor of Theatre History in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Studied Theatre, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. In his PhD thesis he analyzed the role of me-
Performance Studies, at the University of Maryland where he is on the faculty of the Center for East Asian dia as a discourse in the field of Theatre studies. This included not only the analysis of historical discussions but
Studies and serves as Director of the International Program for Creative Collaboration and Research. He was also a brief look at the significance of digital humanities for theatre studies. He is currently working on a digital
elected to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in 2010 and elected as a Senior Research Fellow of research platform for theatre studies. At the Austrian Academy of Sciences he is involved in the European Com-
Shakespeare’s Globe, London, in 2015. He is the co-convener, with Dr. Nic Leonhardt of Ludwig Maximilian mission Horizon 2020 project PARTHENOS WP2/WP3/WP4, with a focus on standards and quality of metadata.
University in Munich, of the Digital Humanities in Theatre Research Working Group for the International Fed-
eration for Theatre Research and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Graduate Certificate in Digital Theadok – Collecting Metadata of Performances
Studies at the University of Maryland. He has twice served as a Fellow of the Maryland Institute for Technology
in the Humanities and was the organizer of the Theatre Panel of the Performing Arts Field Committee for the Theadok is a digital project situated at the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media studies TFM at Vi-
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage NINCH which won a $900,000 grant for the ”Virtual Vaud-
enna University [1]. The aim of Theadok is to build up a database of metadata on performances. This
ville” digital humanities project from the National Science Foundation.
includes information on places, dates, persons staff as well as cast and additional materials like re-
views. Input into the database started in the 1980s and is based on a collection of reviews at the TFM
Sustainability, Efficiency, and the Challenge of Crown Sourcing department. The documentation of performances span the time period from the late 1940s to the
with Citizen Scholars for DH Projects in Theatre Research 2000s and is focused on Austrian theatre. Since two years we are working on a redesign and a new data
model of the database [2]. This restructuring involves enriching the metadata by connecting it with
Issues of sustainability and duplication of effort face many digital projects in the humanities. authority files like VIAF [3] and building up theatre and performance documentation specific vocab-
In any given year numerous significant DH projects are taken down and their data lost to ularies. The new developed data model links entities, therefore fostering theatre studies research by
researchers. This presentation will examine those problems and explore the pros and cons of stimulating extended insights into performance practices. In addition, input of data is facilitated and
attempting to solving them using Citizen Scholars and existing infrastructures on the internet. semiautomatic harvesting of new datasets is provided. The fresh website is based upon open source
technology and complies with open data principles [4]. In my presentation I will showcase some
Key Words research approaches to be done with Theadok. Not only does this involve statistics on entities like
sustainability, digital humanities, DH, Citizen Scholars, internet theatre ensembles, but also more sophisticated analysis like research questions that fit the general
topic of the IFTR conference e.g. cultural mobility in theatre [5]. I also want to highlight how Theadok
can be integrated in other digital tools by advancing the data model into an ontology [6]. Finally, I
want to discuss best practices derived from digital humanities like standards and how to build up a
digital infrastructure for theatre and performance research where Theadok is one piece of a puzzle.

Key Words
Digital Humanities, Performance database, Ontology, Best practices, Use cases
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

362 363
 WG WG

Anna Lawaetz Douglas Reside

The Royal Danish Library New York Public Library

Anna Lawaetz is responsible for the Performing Arts collection at TheRoyal Danish Library. In 2014 she earned Doug Reside is the Curator of the Billy Rose Theatre division at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
a PhD-degree from Department ofArts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen with a dissertation- He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Kentucky and an undergraduate degree in computer science.
about voice aesthetics in the radio. Since that she has conductedaudience research at The Royal Danish The-
atre as part of the researchproject ‘A Suitcase of Methods. A core in her academic work is methoddevelopment The Illicit History of the Broadway Bootleg
of digital based methods and lately she has contributed withonline courses to #Dariah Teach. She has been
working as a freelancedramaturge for several years and has been curator on exhibitions basedon interactive
The canon of Broadway musical theatre has been largely shaped by the technologies that allowed
strategies at The National Museum. Her research ispublished in journals such as Nordic Theatre Studies. In
2016 sheco-edited the anthology ‘Stage/Page/Play – interdisciplinaryapproached to Theatre and Theatricality’. the form to be disseminated beyond New York City. As technological capacity often develops faster
than commercial and legal infrastructure, this dissemination has  frequently happened illicitly. Gil-
bert and Sullivan operettas became popular in the United States, in part, because of the rampant
Performing Arts and National Net Archives - A Case Study on How
bootleg productions of H.M.S. Pinafore. Bootlegs of the musical Carrie established the score of the
signa.dk is Stored in Two Net Archives notorious flop as a familiar title among audiences who never saw the original production. Wicked, a
musical that was originally received with mixed reviews by New York audiences became a mega-hit
Many artists are using the internet as a part of their artisticactivity, the traditional theatre selling at over 100% after the production was bootlegged on the early days YouTube. This paper will
program is often replaced by aweb-site, and the reviews of plays are published on blogs. examine the way in which bootlegs have shaped the canon of commercial musical theatre by estab-
Therefor itbecomes important to examine how performing arts are stored in webarchives. lishing an awareness of and fan base for the texts of musicals independent of the original production.
In this paper, I am exploring two different web-harvesting strategiesthrough a study of
what is harvested and archived of the Danish basedperformance group SIGNA (2001-) in Key Words
the American Internet Archive, archive.org, and the Danish internet archive,  netarkivet.dk. Bootlegs, Broadway, Musicals, Digital
The two archives are fundamentally different in their harvestingstrategies and the pol-
icy of access. The American Internet Archive is aprivate project. The archive dates all
the way back to 1996. Everybodyhas access to the ‘way back machine’ where it is possi-
ble to searchfor old versions of web sites through a search engine. The Internetarchive is
not restricted to American web-sites, but contains web-sitesfrom a large part of the world.
The Danish internet archive, netarkivet.dk, is a part of The RoyalDanish Library. It became a part of
the national legal deposit act in2005. The access to this archive is restricted, because it might contain
sensitive personal information. Mainly Danish (dk) domains are stored aswell as web pages in Dan-
ish. The harvesting takes place 4 times a year.
The Performance group SIGNA is operating outside Denmark e.g. inGermany. How does the transna-
tional aspect affect the archived material?And how do the archival strategies affect what is stored?

Key Words
internet archives, performing arts, archival strategies
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

364 365
 WG WG

Jennifer Roberts-Smith
University of Waterloo

Jennifer Roberts-Smith is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Theatre and Performance at the Univer-
sity of Waterloo. As an administrator, she has also served as Director of Academic Programs at the University
of Waterloo’s Stratford Campus, which houses its digital media design programs. As principal investigator of
the Stratford Festival Online project, for which she won an Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2014, Jennifer is
developing domain-specific encoding protocols, metadata structures, and interfaces for the Stratford Festival’s
promptbook collection. She also leads the Virtual Reality cluster of the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation
project, developing first-person VR narratives told by former residents of the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured
Children, for use in grade 11 history classrooms. Jennifer’s recent publications include co-authored chapters
on audience engagement in Making Humanities Matter (ed. Sayers) and on simulations of historical theatre
in New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (eds. Estill, Jakacki, and Ullyot), as well as an arti-
cle on possible shared futures for Theatre and Digital Humanities in Revue d’Historiographie du Théâtre. Her
co-edited book, Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media, was published by Routledge in 2018. 

What Would a Lab That Integrated Theatre and Digital Humanities

Look Like?
This paper proposes a mandate, theoretical framework, and foundational methodologies for a
not-entirely-hypothetical “lab” (as we tend to call them in the digital humanities) that explores the
potential for an integration of theatre and the digital humanities to open up new objects of study
and means of inquiry. As the recently-announced schedule for the 2018 NEH Institute on Digital
Technologies in Theatre and Performance demonstrates, our field still largely conceives of itself as:
1) historically and still centrally concerned with the use of digitally-enhanced research methods in
traditionally humanistic studies of theatre (resulting primarily in analyses of primary data and edi-
tions of primary sources, complemented by the occasional simulation); 2) expanding into studies
of the use of digital technologies in mediated performance; with 3) media theory as a theoretical
umbrella that can accommodate 1) and 2) without necessarily integrating them. While the NEH in-
stitute is obviously forward-looking and much-needed, this paper looks to a question even farther
into the future, namely: since we can now conceive of theatre and digital humanities as co-existing
in a shared theoretical frame, what other shared concerns can we identify, and what might their
consequences be for future work? Rather than conceptualizing theatre and digital humanities as
separate fields linked by a third compatible to each, this paper hypothesizes the characteristics of
(and precedents for) a distinct, integrated field by exploring the epistemological models, modes of
knowledge production, methodologies, objects of study, desired participants, intended outcomes,
and strategies for validation and impact assessment that may be common to both theatre and the
digital humanities. The paper represents an attempt to translate a manifesto I have recently offered
as an exclusively hypothetical provocation (Revue d’Historiographie du Théâtre 4, 2017) into plans
for a workable TDH “lab”.

Key Words
digital humanities; theatre; performance; prototyping; inventive knowledge; research lab; prac-
tice-based research; research impacts
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

366 367
 Working EMBODIED RESEARCH

Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

368 369
 WG WG

Ozgul Akinci Sevi Bayraktar

University of California, Los Angeles
Born in 1983, in Turkey. Completed her BA at Boğaziçi University in Psychology and MA at Sabanci University
in Cultural Studies. Her master thesis was published as a book Humorous and Iconic Memory of An Art Event: Sevi Bayraktar is a Ph.D. student in Culture and Performance at UCLA. Her Ph.D. research involves dance, gen-
Reading the Rural-Urban Divide in the Memory of Assos International Performing Arts Festival by VDM Verlag der, and politics, with a particular attention on the ways in which traditional choreographies are manifested to
in 2009. Completed her practice-based PhD at the University of British Columbia in Interdisciplinary Studies. affirm or contest contemporary policies in Turkey. She is an international dancer and choreographer exploring
Her dissertation is entitled The Embodied Labour of Femininity in Sex Work and Performance in Contemporary traditional dances of the Asia Minor.
Turkey: Theory and Practice. She published articles on performance and practice in journals such as forthcom-
ing Performance Research and Liminalities. Embodied Research in Turkey Today: Two Examples in Conversation
Embodied Research in Turkey Today: Two Examples in Conversation This paper looks at two practices of embodied research in Turkey. One of the research is Sevi Bayrak-
tars, the other one is Özgül Akıncıs. The methods they used in their work and the research questions
This paper looks at two practices of embodied research in Turkey. One of the research is Sevi Bayrak- are different in two practices. However, this paper argues that as both works are informed and took
tars, the other one is Özgül Akıncıs. The methods they used in their work and the research questions shape by the political and social realities of contemporary Turkey, they can reflect different dimen-
are different in two practices. However, this paper argues that as both works are informed and took sions in the challenge of pursuing embodied research in Turkey today. Two authors of this paper will
shape by the political and social realities of contemporary Turkey, they can reflect different dimen- be in dialogue while writing and experiment non-conventional ways of writing in order to make each
sions in the challenge of pursuing embodied research in Turkey today. Two authors of this paper will voice independent yet inter-relational. Özgül Akıncıs work is based on performance and embodied
be in dialogue while writing and experiment non-conventional ways of writing in order to make each application of conceptual questions on sexuality, femininity, labour and body in the workshops she
voice independent yet inter-relational. Özgül Akıncıs work is based on performance and embodied organized with women. She devised and organized performance-based work and workshops in İs-
application of conceptual questions on sexuality, femininity, labour and body in the workshops she tanbul/Turkey to start and build a conversation around the contemporary reception of the figure of
organized with women. She devised and organized performance-based work and workshops in İs- the prostitute and the topic of sex work. In the hope of tracing the marks of prostitution in a womans
tanbul/Turkey to start and build a conversation around the contemporary reception of the figure of imaginary and embodied world, the most significant inquiry of these research-workshops has been
the prostitute and the topic of sex work. In the hope of tracing the marks of prostitution in a womans how to attain an embodied criticality in relation to the notion of prostitution and its associations in
imaginary and embodied world, the most significant inquiry of these research-workshops has been ones own imaginaries. In this paper, she will situate her work in relation to other works based on em-
how to attain an embodied criticality in relation to the notion of prostitution and its associations in bodied research that have been done in Turkey so far and examine the challenges she encountered
ones own imaginaries. In this paper, she will situate her work in relation to other works based on em- throughout her practice process. Sevi Bayraktar applied “improvisation” as her embodied research
bodied research that have been done in Turkey so far and examine the challenges she encountered methodology to investigate how popular traditional dances are used by activists in recent political
throughout her practice process. Sevi Bayraktar applied “improvisation” as her embodied research protests in Turkey. Once coded and codified in the first half of the twentieth century through the
methodology to investigate how popular traditional dances are used by activists in recent political 1970s, these traditional dance genres have been recontextualized by protesters first in cities and
protests in Turkey. Once coded and codified in the first half of the twentieth century through the then rural towns since the 1990s. She conducted a field research in Turkey 2016-2017 where she had
1970s, these traditional dance genres have been recontextualized by protesters first in cities and a chance to watch, move, and dance alongside the practitioners note how they have adapted the
then rural towns since the 1990s. She conducted a field research in Turkey 2016-2017 where she had dances and what decisions they have made regarding movement sequencing and style of execution.
a chance to watch, move, and dance alongside the practitioners note how they have adapted the Such choreographic analysis with an emphasis on improvisation both practitioners of the dance and
dances and what decisions they have made regarding movement sequencing and style of execution. the researcher in the field allows her to develop ideas on what kinds of statements protesters make
Such choreographic analysis with an emphasis on improvisation both practitioners of the dance and with their movements.
the researcher in the field allows her to develop ideas on what kinds of statements protesters make
with their movements. Key Words
#embodiment #ethnography #performance #Turkey #gender
Key Words
Embodied research, Turkey, sex work, dance, movement, politics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

370 371
 WG WG

Alexander Boyd Elizabeth de Roza

University of California at Davis Lasalle College of the Arts

Dr Alexander Boyd is a practitioner-scholar who graduated from the University of California at Davis ‘Per- Elizabeth de Roza is an artist-researcher/educator, performance maker, theatre director, a multi-disciplinary
formance Studies’ Ph.D programme in June 2014. His dissertation entitled The Sustainability of Traditional performance artist, collaborator and theatre academic based in Singapore. Her work draws from contempo-
Knowledge Systems draws on 20 years of professional practice and coaching in the Daojiao Lishi Quanfa: a Chi- rary performance practices on notions of hybridity, interactivity, cross-disciplinary+cultural art and collabora-
nese Daoist system of cultivation that includes alignment, breath and energy work. The central practice of his tion. Her training in performance-making, draws from traditional Asian theatrical training/performing meth-
dissertation was to develop the first ever degree programme in the West that values the learning inherent to ods, martial arts kalaripayattu and contemporary art practices. Her curiosity in cross-disciplinary works led
Eastern embodied practices and to research connections between training, practice, embodied and traditional her to pursue a MA Fine Arts at Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore. Her research focused on issues of the
knowledge. He is currently working as an Associate Researcher in Theatre and Dance at UC Davis to research body in space and cross-overs between performance and performance arts whilst redefining performance
how Asian training in energy enhances acting. He is the founder of the IFTR Embodied Research Working installations. She has presented her research on developing cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performances
Group and has developed a new organisation called Intercultural Roots for Embodied Practice Research that and performance methodologies at international conferences and workshops. Over the years she has also col-
aims to develop international collaboration between practitioners, performers, teachers and researchers to laborated with various international performance groups creating works that are cross-disciplinary, inter-cross
benefit health, wellbeing and growth. Dr Boyd lives in Yorkshire in the UK and teaches regular embodied Daoist cultural and beyond borders. She is a full-time lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts, School of Dance and
philosophy workshops in London, across Europe and in North America. http://arts.ucdavis.edu/faculty-pro- Theatre in the Faculty of Performing Arts. For more information, please do visit www.elizabethderoza.com.
file/dr-alexander-boyd
The Body Remembers: an Excavation of Embodied Memories
Developing Methodologies for Reciprocity in Embodied Practice
Research: Foregrounding People before Performance How do we, as a contemporary, social, post-colonial body, begin to excavate the act of recalling and
recovering the buried spaces of silence within? What do these excavations reveal? Can the recovery
During this inaugural ERWG year members have worked internationally with diverse groups of em- of these buried spaces of silence go beyond the act of remembering and into the act of recalling?
bodied practitioners to consider, experiment and propose theories, principles and methodologies The act of remembering highlights the image of the mind as a keeper of memory and the act of
for developing best practice for collaborative embodied research. When people from diverse na- recalling calls attention to the body more as the keeper of memory.  This call to attention to the
tions, cultures and practices collaborate through embodied practice what is sedimented within each body as the keeper of memory acknowledges that the body is a vessel through which we experience
person’s identity may become visible in the performativity of expression. The inclusive emergence our lives. With the body as the keeper of memory, I am investigating how our embodied cultural
of new knowledge and understanding requires an attentive care and sensitivity, one that fosters and memories are expressed through the body as a site of action, re-action and sometimes even a site
foregrounds each person within the group ahead of performance. In critically evaluating the validity of non-action within my practice as a performance maker in contemporary experimental Singapore
of any research it is important to consider the people involved and what they bring to it, in conjunc- theatre.   So, what is being expressed through the body and how do these embodied memory travel
tion with the methodology being followed. The consideration of cultural and inter-personal sensi- through the body? What are these embodied routes? These are questions that I will unpack as I ac-
tivities may be expanded from the intimate proximities of embodied practice and research to wider knowledge that the route of the embodied memory reveals a silence within and becomes a process
institutional framework issues of power, control and appropriation. A new independent organisa- of recalling and reclaiming. This process actually creates a space for the alternative narrative to be
tion called Intercultural Roots for Embodied Practice Research has been born through the work of heard. A kind of revealing of the shadow of a tale that seemed to get buried within. This revealing
members of the ERWG Institutional Frameworks work-strand. It aims to improve the health, well- highlight that boundaries are drawn and that, since boundaries are drawn, means that they can
being and growth of people worldwide through, promoting, sustaining and developing, embodied be erased and when we start erasing boundaries, we are beginning the process of remembering.
practice. Reflection on the formation, development and potential application of this body, provides
an opportunity for critical perspectives on embodiment, identity and methodology. The authors Key Words
propose to encourage members to reflect on, through an open participatory laboratory session, Embodied Research, Embodied Memory, Post-colonial, Cultural Identity
practical methodologies for such foregrounding. Through this work they aim to consider how issues
of power and control may be transformed to achieve the reciprocity required for collaboration at
micro and macro levels of activity, locally between individuals and interculturally through the ethical
application of institutional frameworks. In other words how can the migration of meaning intrinsic
to intercultural collaboration enable the fabrication of horizontal themes for organisational growth?

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

collaboration, embodied, practice, research, sediment, identity, performativity, institutional, health,
reciprocity, intercultural, migration

372 373
 WG WG

Nathalie Fari Melissa Ferreira

Nordic Summer University Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto
Nathalie Fari São Paulo, 1975 is an independent performer, researcher and teacher based in Berlin. She holds a Melissa Ferreira - director, performer, researcher and professor of performing arts - holds a PhD in
degree in Art Education from the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado University and in acting from the TUCA Theater UDESC - University of the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. She wrote the book Istonão é um
theatre school of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, and the Centro de Pesquisa Teatral Insti- ator. O teatro da SocìetasRaffaelloSanzioPerspectiva, 2016. As performer and director, she participat-
tute under the direction of Antunes Filho. In 2009 she received a MA in Space Strategies - Exploratory Art in ed in festivals in Brazil, Costa Rica, Germany and Italy. Melissa is cofounder of Cria - Collective of The-
Public Contexts from the Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin, with a thesis about migration processes entitled ater, Education and Gender. She investigates articulations between theater pedagogy, actors training
as: MY SPACE: An investigation into the loss of certainty. Since 1997, she has developed several performance and artistic creation in her current research postdoctoral at the Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil.
projects in collaboration with other artists and researchers at the most different contexts and places: art-ex-
hibitions, performance-art, performing-arts and multimedia festivals, theater-, opera-, and film productions,
architecture-, design-, and fashion events and as well at the public space. In addition, she has been promoting
Embodied Research and Childhood in Contemporary Theatre
since 2010, the concept of Body Mapping, designing workshops and research labs with the focus on the rela-
tion between body and space, body and city. From 2011-15, Nathalie was also a co-organiser of the indepen- The central proposal of my current research is to identify the specificities of artistic phenomena
dent Platform Month of Performance Art Berlin and since 2016 she is part of the artistic research study circle that involve the presence of children in creative processes, spectacles and formative practices. The
Practicing Communities of the Nordic Summer University. Currently she is developing a research project at the objective is to understand how the childrens ways of being and acting and their specific qualities of
historical site Teufelsberg in Berlin. scenic presence could provoke reformulations of the “classic” conceptions of actor and training in
the contemporary theatre: the abilities to get into the game, to perceive the world with all senses
The Body as Translator and to move naturally between fiction and reality being themselves on the stage become a kind of
guide to reach some dimensions of scenic creation such as dramaturgy, reception and mainly acting.
Some of the key ideas of my embodied research work has been designing performances and work- My work will be presented in format of academic paper with some images and videos of artistic
shops by looking at the different ways of how to embody the space . Therefore I have been dealing experiences. The paper approaches the notion of embodied research in the context of scenic ex-
with the concept of Body Mapping in order to investigate how can the body and space inscribe periments that engenders artistic partnerships between actors, performers and children in the con-
themselves into each other by using the body especially as a translator. With this approach, I have temporary theatre. My research links with Interdisciplinary Connections, since it involves a critical
been developing since 2016 a research project at the historical site Teufelsberg in Berlin . This project thinking about pedagogy, anthropology and philosophy. I am also interested in Institutional Frame-
gathers artists and researchers mostly from the performing arts field to explore within a ten-day pro- works I already participate in the team lead by Alex Boyd and in Multimedia Publishing mainly in de-
gram, different body techniques and research methodologies based on the notions of embodiment, veloping alternative ways of publishing and sharing the results of my artistic and academic research.
site specificity and performativity. Furthermore, this project aims to generate various out-puts, from
daily field notes taking during the program, to the final presentation or collaborative performance Key Words
on the last day of the lab and finally to the elaboration of academic papers or video-essays. For the Contemporary theatre, Acting, Childhood, Embodied research
next meeting of the ERWG, I would like to present a video-essay about 20 minutes that illustrates
the idea of the body as translator. Therefore, I will use some images taken during the last program
as a framework, to discuss about the key approaches of this form of seeing and training the body.
Divided into five chapters: making the body available - navigating in the darkness - adapting to a
space - finding a body language - translating gestures, this video-essay examines the body as meta-
phorically speaking, a „migratory vessel“ for all kinds of signs, movements and expressions. In doing
so, the communication modes or interaction with not only the environment, but also with other
bodies, seem to be crucial to enable a continuos and diverse negotiation and translation process of
one’s body. What this means in the perspective of the topic of migration, is the possibility of finding
other ways of either adapting to a space or of creating an own bodily language. It is about the idea,
of using the body not only as an agent, but also as an agile material that invents and re-invents new
strategies of how to appropriate and also engage with a space. In this regard, I see the possibility of
presenting this video-essay not only as a chance, to deepen the issues around the body as transla-
tor. More than this, I see this approach as a form to contribute with the current migration discourse
where the notion of a flexible, adaptable and fluid identity has become unquestioned.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key Words
Embodiment, Site Specificity, Translation

374 375
 WG WG

Leslie Gray Xanthe Hunt

University of Maryland College Park Stellenbosch University

Les Gray is third year PhD student at the University of Maryland College Park. Their research examines black Xanthe Hunt is a PhD candidate and junior researcher at Stellenbosch University. She has a background in Psy-
cultural production and performances of everyday life that come out of times of terror and trauma. Les recent- chology, Media Studies, and Public Health, and works in the fields of disability, sexual and reproductive health,
ly published an article in Theatre Youth Journal entitled Performing the Black Epistle and Transmission of Racial maternal health and global health. Her PhD explores attitudes towards the sexuality of people with physical
Embodied Knowledge: Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Word Becomes Flesh.” They most recently presented at Perfor- disabilities, and the experiences of sexual and reproductive health services and sexuality of people with phys-
mance Studies International a paper titled “Performances of Terror and the Virtual Flowing of Blackpain.” Les ical disabilities, in South Africa.
has also presented at the American Society for Theatre Research and the Mid-Atlantic Theatre Conference.
Migration in Bodies, Negotiations in Gender: Using Photography
The Resistant Slow Drag: Black Depression, the Erotic and the
to Explore Embodiment for People with Acquired Disabilities
Threat of Hope
Migration in bodies, negotiations in gender: Using Photography to explore embodiment for people
Employing an auto-ethnographic embodied approach alongside dance and performance discourse, with acquired disabilities after acquiring a physical disability, men and women must encounter and
this paper seeks to answer multiple questions incorporating a framework of blues social dance and negotiate their altered embodiment. Sensation shifts, boundaries change, and – importantly – one’s
its relationship to trauma and oppression. How does the corporeality of the dancer inform the per- conception of physical intimacy is altered. This plays out against the context of others’ altered ways
formance gesture? What histories of trauma and terror are invoked in performances of the gesturing of relating to one, and – often – in a disablist society. If migration is considered a way of being and
body? Blues dancing and the slow drag is characterized by its use of asymmetrical movement, a bal- a way of relating, “a process of moving from one point to the other that necessitates meander-
anced or grounded athletic posture, lagging slightly behind the beat, the use of everyday movement ing, wandering, changing of pace, transformation, negotiation, and adaptation”, then the process
vocabulary, pulsing, polyrhythms, and finally a couple that is comprised of a lead and a follow. Jacqui of coming to know one’s body, sexuality and gendered self following physical disablement is itself
Malone aptly builds upon pre-existing scholarship arguing that an embodied knowledge embedded migratory. Drawing on photographs taken during the course of a photovoice project, we explore how
in dance gestures can be and has been historically transferred in social dance forums offering that notions and sensations of intimacy and sexuality migrate, diffuse, and are experienced, within the
in blues traditions, the dancer responds most visibly to the music but also the way in which they re- bodies of 7 people with acquired physical disabilities in South Africa. Examining their narratives and
spond offers up information. Consequently, acts of continuous movement through times of ruptured photographs, we propose that conceptions of sexuality and intimacy can be usefully framed through
rhythm can be read as a way of surviving in the United States. As diasporic activists and dancers look the notion of migration, if the latter is employed as a theoretical frame through which to understand
for ways to negotiate and respond to systemic oppression, institutional brutality and parts of cultural the negotiation of boundaries and the shifting of sexual selfhood. We explore how gender, altered
memory, this project seeks to illuminate the ways in which we perform as erotic dancing bodies a sensation, and thinking about physical boundaries are understood by people with acquired physical
series of interconnected gestures that serve as survival strategies. For the purposes of this project, disabilities how they represent these changes in photographs, and how they perform them in their
I examine the Slow Drag, an idiomatic blues dance, in its historical and contemporary contexts with daily lives.
the hope of forming a transhistorical analysis of a dance that has always already contained the erotic
residue of black sexualities. Key Words
sexuality, embodiment, physical disability, gender studies, photovoice
Key Words
embodiment, praxis, blues dancing, performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

376 377
 WG WG

Adriana La Selva Andrea Maciel Garcia

Ghent University/ KASK- School of Arts Ghent University of Bristol
Adriana La Selva is a theatre maker and a PhD candidate at Ghent University and KASK- School of Arts working Ph.D in Performing Arts at UNIRIO with a visiting scholarship at New York University – Performance Depart-
on a practice-based research called ‘What are you training for? Current directions for embodied research in ment with a dissertation “Body without wall: the relationship between body and city in the political perfor-
performing arts’. mances”. Masters in Performance and Culture from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and
B.A. in Theatre for the same University. Andrea was professor of the Department of Theatre at Pontifice Catho-
Developing Methodologies for Reciprocity in Embodied Practice lic University – Rio and University of the City – Brazil and she has conducted several research groups in the field
Research: Foregrounding People before Performance of Performance to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Bristol, New York, and Feder-
al University of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, Brazil. Andrea has 15 years of practice on physical theatre Grotowski
technique training for actors and dancers. She works mainly with urban performance, with emphasis in the
During this inaugural ERWG year members have worked internationally with diverse groups of em-
relationship between body and memory, choreography and architecture, performance and politics. Currently
bodied practitioners to consider, experiment and propose theories, principles and methodologies she is conducting a post-doctoral research entitled City’s Body Writing at Queens Mary University of London.
for developing best practice for collaborative embodied research. When people from diverse na- http://citybodywritings.wordpress.com
tions, cultures and practices collaborate through embodied practice what is sedimented within each
person’s identity may become visible in the performativity of expression. The inclusive emergence Developing Methodologies for Reciprocity in Embodied Practice
of new knowledge and understanding requires an attentive care and sensitivity, one that fosters and
foregrounds each person within the group ahead of performance. In critically evaluating the validity
Research: Foregrounding People before Performance
of any research it is important to consider the people involved and what they bring to it, in conjunc-
During this inaugural ERWG year members have worked internationally with diverse groups of em-
tion with the methodology being followed. The consideration of cultural and inter-personal sensi-
bodied practitioners to consider, experiment and propose theories, principles and methodologies
tivities may be expanded from the intimate proximities of embodied practice and research to wider
for developing best practice for collaborative embodied research. When people from diverse na-
institutional framework issues of power, control and appropriation. A new independent organisa-
tions, cultures and practices collaborate through embodied practice what is sedimented within each
tion called Intercultural Roots for Embodied Practice Research has been born through the work of
person’s identity may become visible in the performativity of expression. The inclusive emergence
members of the ERWG Institutional Frameworks work-strand. It aims to improve the health, well-
of new knowledge and understanding requires an attentive care and sensitivity, one that fosters and
being and growth of people worldwide through, promoting, sustaining and developing, embodied
foregrounds each person within the group ahead of performance. In critically evaluating the validity
practice. Reflection on the formation, development and potential application of this body, provides
of any research it is important to consider the people involved and what they bring to it, in conjunc-
an opportunity for critical perspectives on embodiment, identity and methodology. The authors
tion with the methodology being followed. The consideration of cultural and inter-personal sensi-
propose to encourage members to reflect on, through an open participatory laboratory session,
tivities may be expanded from the intimate proximities of embodied practice and research to wider
practical methodologies for such foregrounding. Through this work they aim to consider how issues
institutional framework issues of power, control and appropriation. A new independent organisa-
of power and control may be transformed to achieve the reciprocity required for collaboration at
tion called Intercultural Roots for Embodied Practice Research has been born through the work of
micro and macro levels of activity, locally between individuals and interculturally through the ethical
members of the ERWG Institutional Frameworks work-strand. It aims to improve the health, well-
application of institutional frameworks. In other words how can the migration of meaning intrinsic
being and growth of people worldwide through, promoting, sustaining and developing, embodied
to intercultural collaboration enable the fabrication of horizontal themes for organisational growth?
practice. Reflection on the formation, development and potential application of this body, provides
an opportunity for critical perspectives on embodiment, identity and methodology. The authors
Key Words
propose to encourage members to reflect on, through an open participatory laboratory session,
collaboration, embodied, practice, research, sediment, identity, performativity, institutional, health,
practical methodologies for such foregrounding. Through this work they aim to consider how issues
reciprocity, intercultural, migration
of power and control may be transformed to achieve the reciprocity required for collaboration at
micro and macro levels of activity, locally between individuals and interculturally through the ethical
application of institutional frameworks. In other words how can the migration of meaning intrinsic
to intercultural collaboration enable the fabrication of horizontal themes for organisational growth?

Key Words
collaboration, embodied, practice, research, sediment, identity, performativity, institutional, health,
reciprocity, intercultural, migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

378 379
 WG WG

Bridie Moore Daniel Mroz

University of Huddersfield University of Ottawa

Bridie Moore is Lecturer in Drama Theatre and Performance at The University of Huddersfield, she is also an Daniel Mroz is a theatre director and martial artist. His recent performances have been presented at the Can-
AHRC funded PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield where she is just completing corrections for her ada Dance Festival and the Évènement Zones Théâtrales. His book The Dancing Word Brills, 2011 presents an
study Effects, Metaphors and Masks: Reading and Doing Age in Contemporary British Theatre. Her article approach to the creation of contemporary theatre based on training in the Chinese martial arts. Daniel studied
‘Depth Significance and Absence: Age Effects in New British Theatre’ was published in Age, Culture, Human- acting and directing with Richard Fowler, the director of Canada’s Primus Theatre. He has been a student of
ities in 2014 and her The Age Performances of Peggy Shaw: Intersection, Interoception and Interruption’ was Chinese martial arts since 1993 and currently trains under Chen Zhonghua. He holds a Ph.D. in the practice
recently published in the 2017 Palgrave edited collection, Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture: of interdisciplinary arts from l’Université du Québec à Montréal and instructor’s licenses in several styles of
Reflections, Refractions and Reimaginings Gongfu Chinese martial arts and Qigong Chinese somatic and restorative arts. He serves on the review board
of the Journal of Embodied Research and the Journal of Martial Arts Studies and is an enthusiastic participant
Significance and Accomplishment: Migrating towards an Aged in the Cross-Pollination Artistic Exchange led by MarijeNie and Adriana La Selva and hosted by the Nordisk
Teatr-Laboratorium. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre of the University of Ottawa in
Female Embodiment Canada where he teaches acting and directing.

Significance and Accomplishment: Migrating towards an Aged Female Embodiment Following Kath-
Spontaneous Generation: The Alchemy of Emergent Insight in
leen Woodward 1991, to reject our mirror image as we age produces a disconnection between the
visible manifestation and the subjective experience of identity, producing a crisis of embodiment Artist Exchanges
and legibility. Woodward proposes that at the end of life there is an equivalent stage to Lacan’s mir-
ror stage of infancy, in which in a reversal of the Lacanian infant – who understands and accepts the Daniel Mroz and MarijeNie propose an active reflection on embodied artistic exchange through
image in the mirror as a representation of his or her own body – the old person rejects their mirror practical work and structured conversations, based on their current research and practice. The tem-
image as not a true representation of their embodied self. This rejection brings on a psychic crisis: porary stasis created by exchange and research enables migrations of information and emotion be-
‘[w]here then would we be located? Outside the mirror? Caught between the double and the ab- tween artists, techniques and contexts. We would like to take the opportunity that extended group
sent?’ Woodward, 1991: 67. How is it possible for the ageing female body to be inhabited and to be work offers to follow several correlate threads of investigation:  Unexpected insights and new per-
read? Developed partly in conjunction with Terry O’Connor Forced Entertainment and meditating spectives arise spontaneously through the reciprocity of teaching and sharing. Exposure to what and
on the exquisite dilemma of ageing female embodiment, in which ones own ageing is both perceived how other practitioners do results in nourishment and growth within one’s own embodied prac-
and rejected, this autoethnographical performance lecture will expose the reflexive dilemma and tice.  The complementary relationship between the ‘doing’ and its articulation in embodied practice
the phenomenological experience of a migration towards ageing femininity. Performance, as Ham- seems mutually productive: articulation is illuminated by practical experience practical experience
let claims, is the mirror ‘held up, as ‘twere, to nature’. As such it is also able to bring into appearance produces articulations that are poetic in and of themselves. For example:  a. Practical instruction
acts that counter normative assumptions about the ‘natural’ ways of reading the embodiment of age in Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese martial arts was complemented by the composition of imagistic
accordingly the piece proposes, discusses and demonstrates scenographical and physical strategies poems and songs called quanpu which frequently adopted the metaphorical vocabulary of jindan,
designed to encounter the phenomenon of ageing femininity as well as questioning the constitutive a Daoist process of transformative meditation often likened to alchemy.   b. Renaissance Alchemy
acts that perform age in its intersection with femininity. It finally proposes a radical embodiment of required both practical and theoretical activities of its exponents and shared its fruitions in docu-
‘significant shape’ and ‘accomplished form’ Cristofovici, 1999 as a possible performative practice ments that were visually eloquent, combining text and image in a meaningful and scenic relation
that might be undertaken by the ageing female body. Emerging out of Bridie Moore’s practice as and juxtaposition.  We intuit an attitude or attitudes enabling the practice and sharing of embodied
research PhD project and drawing on an understanding of social gerontology and age critical analy- knowledge. Poetic articulations are able to convey these attitudes and require practical experience
sis of photography, this Performance Lecture proposal addresses the conference strand of Interdis- from the reader, completing a loop of doing and thinking. Is it possible to relate these attitudes
ciplinary Connections, by drawing connections between embodied research methods and critical to poetic forms such as rituals, games and songs which can be strong carriers of approaches un-
thinking around age studies. derpinning the fruitful practice of a technique? The creation of poetic archives seems a strategy
well worth considering when communicating the emergent insights offered by embodied exchange.
Key Words
Performativity performance practice research ageing ageing femininity age studies Key Words
alchemy, articulation of practice, artistic exchange, Chinese martial arts, embodied knowledge, po-
etic archives, stasis, tap dancing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

380 381
 WG WG

Marije Nie Sandra Parra

Universidade Estadual de Londrina
Tap dancer MarijeNie is a performer and musician with her feet, fascinated by the power and poetry of steps
and their ability to navigate different worlds and cultures. With more than 15 years of professional experience, Sandra Parra is an actress and art performer. BA in Communication and Body Arts at PUC-SP Master in Arts at
she dances on international festivals and concert stages, working in classical, improvised and jazz music. She UFMG, with the theme Studies for body movement/voice integration in the work of contemporary actor. She
creates interdisciplinary and intercultural theater pieces, community art projects, artistic interventions in or- is in PhD studies at in the Post-Graduate Program in Performing Arts at University of Campinas – UNICAMP. She
ganizations, lectures and workshops. She received the Dutch JurNaessens prize for innovation in music and is an actress-researcher of physical theater, having studied with Yves Lebreton, and Thomas Leabheart she has
held a TEDxtalk called ‘the poetry in the pause’. Sharing knowledge and working methods of artists between also attended several workshops with Lume group in Brazil. As a performer, she has been working since 2003
disciplines and with professionals from outside the arts is a main point of interest in her work, fueling artist with Toshi Tanaka, Japanese performer based in Brazil since 1994, in his research on Seitai-ho and artistic cre-
exchanges and shared research. Her multi-award winning dance documentary One Million Steps places dance ation and Fu-gaku performance during this period, she was able to study with Butoh masters as Tadashi Endo,
as a catalyst in the public space in the midst of the Istanbul protests of 2013.  She co-founded artist-driven Yukio Waguri and Yumiko Yoshioka. She works as a performance teacher since 2001, having taught classes for
research lab Radio Kootwijk Live, which operated from 2009 until 2015. In 2017 she was invited by director non-actors in needy communities from 2001 to 2008. In 2005, she became professor of higher education at
Eugenio Barba to become long-term artist in residence at Nordisk TeaterLaboratorium in Holstebro, Denmark, the Federal University of Ouro Preto - UFOP-MG. She´s currently lecturer of the Performing Arts course at State
where she organized the Cross Pollination performers meeting with Adriana La Selva in December 2017. University of Londrina - UEL-PR. Member of IFTR since 2016 member of Embodied Research Working Group
since 2017.
Spontaneous Generation: The Alchemy of Emergent Insight in
Artist Exchanges The Notion of Rigor in Embodied Research

Daniel Mroz and MarijeNie propose an active reflection on embodied artistic exchange through We, performative artists, have complete understanding about what rigor is: it accompanies us in
practical work and structured conversations, based on their current research and practice. The tem- every step and every moment of our work, since the beginning of our professional qualification.
porary stasis created by exchange and research enables migrations of information and emotion be- However, as we enter the academy, we are confronted with a notion of rigor in research that is
tween artists, techniques and contexts. We would like to take the opportunity that extended group mainly shaped by the criteria and objectives of the hard sciences. It does not serve us, and most of
work offers to follow several correlate threads of investigation:  Unexpected insights and new per- the time hinders us much. On the other hand, trying to apply the notion of rigor from performative
spectives arise spontaneously through the reciprocity of teaching and sharing. Exposure to what and creation into artistic academic research can put us in a trap: we may, inadvertently, create reports of
how other practitioners do results in nourishment and growth within one’s own embodied prac- self-referential character, given the enormous subjectivity of which it is composed. This then raises
tice.  The complementary relationship between the ‘doing’ and its articulation in embodied practice the following question: what is it, or what can be understood as rigor in an embodied research?
seems mutually productive: articulation is illuminated by practical experience practical experience Clarifying what may be the notion of rigor in an embodied research is important for a number of rea-
produces articulations that are poetic in and of themselves. For example:  a. Practical instruction sons. Among them, we can highlight: have coherent criteria to evaluate if the results of an embodied
in Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese martial arts was complemented by the composition of imagistic research is relevant / contributes to our field create pedagogical relationships modeled on less intu-
poems and songs called quanpu which frequently adopted the metaphorical vocabulary of jindan, itive relations or personal bias on the part of students as well as teachers because we, performers,
a Daoist process of transformative meditation often likened to alchemy.   b. Renaissance Alchemy love rigor, and that matters to us. That said, I believe that this communication connects mainly with
required both practical and theoretical activities of its exponents and shared its fruitions in docu- the strand of Institutional Frameworks. Both because it could help us understand better the scope
ments that were visually eloquent, combining text and image in a meaningful and scenic relation of Embodied Research, and because of the political relevance of it. About the format, I would like to
and juxtaposition.  We intuit an attitude or attitudes enabling the practice and sharing of embodied propose a round table, where I could present my findings, as well as listen the ideas of my fellows
knowledge. Poetic articulations are able to convey these attitudes and require practical experience on the subject.
from the reader, completing a loop of doing and thinking. Is it possible to relate these attitudes to
poetic forms such as rituals, games and songs which can be strong carriers of approaches underpin- Key Words
ning the fruitful practice of a technique? The creation of poetic archives seems a strategy well worth Embodied Research rigor Institutional Frameworks
considering when communicating the emergent insights offered by embodied exchange.

Key Words
alchemy, articulation of practice, artistic exchange, Chinese martial arts, embodied knowledge, po-
etic archives, stasis, tap dancing
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

382 383
 WG WG

Shrinkhla Sahai Brian Schultis

Jawaharlal Nehru University
Brian Schultis received his PhD in drama from the University of Kent in 2016. His research built theory around
Shrinkhla Sahai is presently pursuing her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Jerzy Grotowski’s Paratheatre and Theatre of sources periods by applying the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research concerns include the body and tech- Guattari among others. The practical arm of this research, The Sojourner Project investigated performative
nology in performance, embodiment, gender and movement, and sonic studies. meetings in relation to landscapes based on travel transition. He is currently developing this work into an un-
dergraduate course. He did undergraduate and MA level work at Bennington College and Kent State University
Sit, Stay, Move: Negotiating Gender in Public Spaces in Urban India respectively. Brian was an apprentice for three years with the Akron, Ohio, based New World Performance
Laboratory. His publications include book reviews on Grotowski related books in Studies in Theatre and Per-
formance and New Theatre Quarterly, and a contribution to a special section in the Anthropology journal
Public places in the city are constantly in flux, people are in transit and the space often appears
The Unfamiliar. Brian is a collaborator in the interdisciplinary project Walking Threads, which uses embodied
different at various time periods during the day and night. They also have specific contexts and func- interactions with threads to investigate perception and thought. His research is turning increasingly towards
tions. The demography of bodies in the space are driven by identities and cultural norms. The access threads and textiles. Most recently, he co-led a project on weaving and embodied environmental interaction
to these spaces and the way bodies move through them are often gendered, for instance in most for the Cabbage School – a new experimental education initiative in Asheville, North Carolina USA, with which
urban public places in India like parks there are hardly any women who would be seen just loitering he is involved.
around or sleeping on the benches specially late in the night whereas these are frequented by men
very easily. In this research, I analyse two case studies aimed at stirring up public spaces in urban Sojourn: An Experiment in Emplacement within Transience
Indian metro cities and making them actively transformative through embodied intervention, per-
formance and performative gestures that challenge gender-based territoriality. In November 2014, A sojourn is a short stay in one place. It implies both stasis and movement. In this way, to sojourn
Blank Noise, a community arts collective started ‘Meet to Sleep’ campaign that invited women to is a strategy for addressing the human need for emplacement while acknowledging and accepting
come to parks, and sleep there to challenge the notion of fearing for safety. Here, the daily activity of the many dis-placements which attend modern life, both voluntary and forced. To Sojourn it is not
sleeping becomes an embodied performative gesture that is political and potentially transformative enough to inhabit where I am – I must also find the way to inhabit my own transience. It was with
for the space. The second case study is ‘Genderventions’, a performance project by movement artist hope to develop such a practice that I began the Sojourner Project with a small group of Graduate
Niranjani Iyer in 2015-16. Brief performances of everyday life scenes were enacted in bus depots and Students at the University of Kent in 2013. Our objective was simple – to find a way to relate to
other spaces, emphasising how men and women behave differently in urban public places, inviting the places around us through a process group movement and improvisation which occurred not in
the passing public to engage and discuss what they noticed. Analysis of these participatory and place but along trajectories of travel. Unlike the psychogeographic origins of much contemporary
embodied interventions addresses the research questions—how do public spaces in the city affect walking and promenade performances, the inspiration for the Sojourner Project was the Paratheat-
bodies? What is the cultural context that governs bodies within this space? How are embodied prac- rical research of Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Laboratory Theatre. The core focus of that research – the
tices gendered and how can they be transformed through embodied research? encounter, with others and with the place – remained intact. Changed was the attitude towards the
matecznik, the refuge or lair which allowed the deep interpersonal opening of paratheater to take
Key Words place. Rather than construct the matecznik as a place outside the everyday much as in theatre, the
Gender, movement, embodiment, public spaces, urban black box acts as an extra-quotidian “neutral” space we sought to find it in our wanderings, to allow
it to surprise us. Never fully formalized, this practice nevertheless evolved and developed – culmi-
nating in the development of semester-long course for undergraduates in the Experimental College
of Oberlin College for the spring of 2018. The purpose of this presentation is to share and reflect on
these 5 years of embodied research – raising questions along the way of emplacement, memory and
documentation, and the role of embodied research in higher education.

Key Words
Embodied research, site-based performance, walking, memory representation and documentation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

384 385
 WG WG

Melina Scialom Georgia Snowball

University of Campinas Federation University Ballarat

Melina Scialom is a dance researcher, performer, choreographer and choreologist. With a PhD in Dance from Georgia has recently submitted a PhD thesis in the field of Performance and Ecology at Federation University,
the University of Roehampton, UK and a specialist diploma in Choreological Studies Trinity Laban, UK Melina is Ballarat. She also holds a BA hons and MA from Victoria University, Melbourne. The title of her practice-led-re-
author of the book Laban Plural Brazil, 2017. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Theatre Department search in site-specific performance is, ‘Ecological Practice: Performance Making in the Age of the Anthro-
of the University of Campinas - UNICAMP Brazil where she lectures and researches movement dramaturgy and pocene.’ Georgia’s focus in performance making has been to work with both human and more-than-human
affect, and is a visiting research fellow at the Department of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University. participants of particular sites to create performance works that respond to place. Her live and documented
performance works span local and regional walking tours, plus solo and collaborative dance works both inside
Australia and in Malaysia. Georgia has presented her research at several Australasian Association for Theatre,
Embodying Dramaturgical Consciousness: Choreology in Action Drama and Performance Studies ADSA conferences, in Australia and New Zealand.
In this workshop-presentation I aim to unpack how the embodiment of Choreology – Rudolf Laban’s
movement principles of space Choreutics and dynamics Eukinetics can contribute to develop a pro- The Body as Permeable Border
cess of dramaturgical thinking in the performers actions. Within the field of embodied practices/
research Spatz, 2015 and having the medium of the body as the place where research happens and In this paper I propose to discuss the dynamic processes of the dance training practice of Body
is also the place where research can be processed understood, this paper consists of a workshop ses- Weather. Body Weather derived from the Japanese dance form Butoh is a training and movement
sion, leading the participants to experience the research in a small experiential session. The session practice that takes place mainly outdoors within extreme environments, weathers and geographies.
is directed at having the participants experience a mode of dramaturgical thinking through the ex- Body Weather improvisation forefronts immersion and participation in the world the body moves
ploration of an embodiment or understanding through the body of Choreology. This investigation is through. The paper will outline examples of the training process through to live performance, which
supported by the understanding that Choreology is an embodied knowledge Preston-Dunlop, 2010 has been achieved through experience of the author as the performer/dancer. The epistemic out-
and as such can be accessed in order to create a state of dramaturgical consciousness Midgelow, come of a Body Weather movement practice that embodies nuances of place is potentially able to
2015 and influence dramaturgical choices of performers as in Stalpaert, 2009 when in a performa- generate new knowledge. I will argue that the movement practice deepens a more complex under-
tive situation. This session is based on a number of workshops that I have been giving as part of a standing of place. A unique and embodied understanding of place provokes new ways of knowing
laboratory practice-as-research I have been carrying out, set over improvisation tasks alongside the and unknowing and creates a platform for empathy, towards both human and more-than-human
study embodiment of the basic elements of Choreology. In these workshops I investigate possibili- life. Body Weather involves prolonged practices of movement and stillness in response to place. The
ties of having a “dramaturgy from the inside” or from the performer’s perspective where dramaturgy dance therefore, becomes a physical conduit that suspends barriers and borders between inside
emerges through action in a logic of “thinking while doing” and thus meeting ways of doing dra- and outside the body and its many places. Bodies are shaped by their experiences some bodies are
maturgy. This proposal is linked to the Institutional Frameworks strand of the Embodied Research able to move freely and some are not. Bodies are permeable and porous they weather the elements
Working Group, as it is related to methods of training and institutionalisation of practice. as well as life events. These themes are developed in the paper through Harraway’s expression of
‘becoming-with’ and looks to Rosi Braidotti’s further understand of the same term.
Key Words
Dramaturgy, Laboratory, Choreology Key Words
movement, Body Weather, permeable, embodiement, boundary
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

386 387
 WG WG

Ben Spatz Alba Vieira

University of Huddersfield Federal University of Vicosa

Ben Spatz is author of _What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research_ Routledge 2015 Alba Pedreira Vieira is a dancer, performer and artistic director of the Dance Group ‘Mosaico’. She holds a
Arts & Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow 2016-2018 and Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Ph.D. in Dance from Temple University (USA, 2007), and since 1997 she has been an Associate Professor at
Performance at the University of Huddersfield. They convene the Embodied Research Working Group within the the Department of Arts and Humanities of the Federal University of Vicosa, MG, Brazil. Her work has been
International Federation for Theatre Research and edit the new videographic _Journal of Embodied Research_ presented in several venues including IFTR, NDEO, WDA, daCi, CORD, and PSI conferences, and published in
published by Open Library of Humanities. Recent talks and workshops include a series of performative research journals including Dance Therapy, Moringa, Dance Current Selected Research, Possible Dialogues andJournal
presentations with Nazlıhan Eda Erçin and Agnieszka Mendel at University of Leeds, University of Manchester, Scene. Since 2012, she has served as a National Representative for Dance and the Child International/DaCi.
University of Kent, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Centre at CUNY, NYU Performance Studies, Wesleyan University, In 2013 she joined the board of Directors of  the World Dance Alliance/WDA-Americas. She is the author of
the Institute for Somatics and Social Justice, and the Central School of Speech and Drama as well as invited solo book chapters and papers published in Brazil and abroad, and the organizer of two books: “Art and Violence:
talks and workshops at Ghent University, University of Cardiff, University of the Arts Helsinki, and University Essays in Movement” (2017), and the digital book “Education for the Arts” (2010). She has experience in Arts,
of Aberdeen. For more information and audiovisual materials please visit www.urbanresearchtheater.com>. with an emphasis on Dance, developing research on creative processes in dance, performance, improvisation
and somatic education. She is the co-writer of the Dance Report and Recommendations by the “Experts on Art
Making a Laboratory: Embodied Research and the Audiovisual Education in Latin America and the Caribbean – Unesco”. Contact: <[email protected]>. Webpages: albavieira.
com.br and https://ufv.academia.edu/AVieira 
Body
This multimedial session will introduce a new research method for experimental practice that
Migration of Movements and Thoughts during the Creative
generates a new kind of audiovisual document. Situating the proposed method in the context of Process of “Kuhim”
artistic research and practice studies, I offer a theoretical framework that combines insights from
historians and philosophers of laboratory science to propose the first rigorous definition of labo- Could art play a role in encouraging resistance to fear the ‘so-called’ minorities’? If so, how would art
ratoriality outside a technoscientific paradigm. This definition supports the implementation of the help us increase our understanding, respect and even affection across cultural differences? These
research method “Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video” DCTV, which can be under- questions led me to visit the Khraos (2017), a traditional Brazilian Indigenous community – no chil-
stood as an extension of Jerzy Grotowski’s work inflected and adapted through feminist and queer dren and few adults speak Portuguese (our official language). There are no Christians among them.
critiques to produce a new type of “poor” but critical laboratory. Depending on the interests of Kraho means ‘our flesh’. The impact of the Portuguese colonization was keenly felt by the Krahos,
the participants, the session can address: 1 practical implementation of the new laboratory meth- who had to migrate many times from their original land until they received from the Brazilian Gov-
od in a variety of performative and pedagogical contexts 2 onto-epistemological questions aris- ernment, in 1990, their own reservation, Kraolandia. The aim of my presentation is to discuss the
ing from the method, including a new approach to the politics of embodiment and 3 theoretical creative process of the performance created from this lived experience with the Krahos, “Kuhim
and legal issues related to embodied audiovisual research, such as co-authorship and intellectu- - Being Bricolage (Kupem and Mehim)”. The Krahos call themselves Mehim; Kupem means white
al propery. Across these diverse approaches, what remains constant is a commitment to reinvent person. This performance bodily formulates a critical dimension of the interactions and engagement
the increasingly dominanet global paradigm of audiovisuality from the perspective of embodiment. between the so-called white Brazilians and the Brazilian indigenous communities. The creative pro-
cess was nourished by connections created between my ‘traditional’ culture (I was born and raised
Key Words in a big city; I am a dancer, professor and researcher) and this culture ‘new’ to me. I felt a ‘migration’
theatre laboratory, embodied research, audiovisual body, micropolitics, politics of embodiment of movements and thoughts during my participation in many of their spiritual rituals, and other rou-
tine practices such as parties/Amikin, swimming on the river together, hunting. I perceived spiritual
connections and a strong sense of community are embodied as the Khraos live day-by-day. I hope
by sharing, with non indigenous people, the creative process of the performance “Kuhim”, and by
reflecting on their particular way of living  might increase  the possibility of one deepen comprehen-
sion and appreciation of the Krahos’ culture, and to think about intercultural exchange as an affec-
tive-existential dimension that might increase the landscape for performance as research. (Research
funded by FAPEMIG)

Key Words
Indigenous, performance, embodied research,Brazil
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

388 389
 WG WG

Carmen Wong
University of Warwick

Carmen C. Wong is a curiously hungry nomad, performance-maker and practice-based PhD candidate at the
University of Warwick with the School of Theatre and Performance Studies. Her research explores ecologies
and sites of belonging within places of food-making, everyday cooking choreographies, and food micro-ethnol-
ogies, expressed through participatory performances or installations. Her dialogical method of working with
communities employs embodied listening practices and utilizes food as plastic, sensory and affective material
with the ability to hold personal mythologies, and social-political metaphors. Her gastro-performance series,
evolved since 2009 has propagated a body of projects that examine interactions by, with, and around food and
its eaters.

Embodying Place and Food Memories in “Breakfast Elsewhere”

My paper looks at participation within my PaR performance “Breakfast Elsewhere”, as an invitation
to embody a migration story through cooking choreographies that result in an Arabic breakfast dish
of ‘tese’yeh’. The story and recipe by Rola Nejmah, a Coventry cook who has hailed from many
homes, is embodied and voiced by the project’s ‘surrogate speaker’ an audience volunteer who
provides oral instructions to a small group of fellow participants who co-prepare the dish. I pro-
pose that this participatory co-cooking requires an empathetic embodied listening by and among
participants to produce ‘affective attunements as method of conversation’ Heddon, 2017:20. These
sensory, gestural and nonverbal ways of knowing and doing-cooking afford a mode of participation
that opens the potentialities of transcribing or translating Rola’s accounts of place and food-making
to one’s own memory of food and belongings. As I reconstruct how the performance enables a small
relational community to form, I question to what extent participating in such an event that attends
to sensory, everyday gestures with food opens up one’s ability to listen and dialogue about food in
diaspora, personal memory and identity construction, and the malleability of belonging in an age of
migration and fast-changing ethnoscapes.

Key Words
practice-as-research, food, belonging, embodied listening, food memories, identity, dialogue, rela-
tional aesthetics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

390 391
 Working FEMINIST RESEARCH

Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

392 393
 WG WG

Sarah Balkin Marla Carlson

University of Melbourne University of Georgia

Marla Carlson is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator for the Department of Theatre and Film Stud-
Sarah Balkin is a Lecturer in English & Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne, where she teaches ies at the University of Georgia. Affect, Animals, and Autists: Feeling Around the Edges of the Human in Per-
courses on theatre and performance, modernism, and genre fiction. Her work appears in Modern Drama, formance, forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press in 2018, maps connections across performances
Genre, Theatre Journal, TDR, Public Books, and The Conversation. She is the Assistant Editor of Theatre Re- that patrol, navigate, and in some cases redefine the borders of the human to include, on the one hand, peo-
search International. ple whose neurodiverse experiences have been shaped by the diagnostic label of autism and, on the other,
animal-human performance relationships that dispute and blur anthropocentric edges. Earlier publications
include Performing Bodies in Pain: Medieval and Post-Modern Martyrs, Mystics, and Artists in Palgrave Mac-
The Killjoy Comedian: Hannah Gadsby’s “Nanette” millan 2010, articles in Theatre Journal, Research in Medieval and Renaissance Drama, European Medieval
Drama, Modern Drama, and contributions to several essay collections.
In her 2017 show Nanette, Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby announced she was quitting come-
dy. Gadsby argued that as a marginalized person—a gender-nonconforming lesbian from rural Tas- Pig, Pussy, and Public Sphere: Ann Liv Young’s “Elektra”
mania—she was doing herself a disservice when she invited audiences to laugh at her trademark
self-effacing humor. In line with Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “feminist killjoy” who “ruin[s] the Interpreting Sophockles’ Elektra as “the tragedy of a young woman punished for being outspoken
atmosphere” with her humorlessness, Gadsby intentionally stopped being funny, creating tension and ‘clear about her path,’” Ann Liv Young’s production 2014-16 brought a piglet onstage along with
without dispelling it. The resulting show has won prestigious comedy awards and is still touring three female performers whose violent movement often exposed their genitalia even as their rap-
internationally. In their 2017 special issue of Critical Inquiry on comedy, Lauren Berlant and Sianne id-fire speech obliterated the text. The juxtaposition made some sense as well as intensifying affect.
Ngai note competing trajectories of modern social life: on the one hand, “people are increasingly Like Klytemnestra’s vengeance for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Demeter’s intense grief at the loss of
supposed to be funny all the time,” and on the other, “humorlessness is on the rise.” This schol- her daughter Persephone created danger. Young’s staging brings to Klytemnestra’s death some of
arship departs from existing comedy theory by philosophers such as Simon Critchley and Alenka- the restorative laughter that vulvic display brought to Demeter, to whom piglets were sacrificed.
Zupančič in which “true” comedy is understood to be politically progressive. Berlant and Ngai sug- The Greeks associated both pigs and daughters with bitter loss and renewal furthermore, their word
gest most comedy theory is structuralist and limited by the assumption that comedy’s significance χοῖρος choiros designated both female genitals and pigs. I analyze Young’s Elektra as a both hilarious
lies in power relations. But “humorless comedy,” Berlant argues, is a “comedy of confusion about and terrifying refusal to make life easier by letting go of rage. This paper is part of a larger work in
what and where sovereignty is.” Gadsby’s show was not humorless comedy in Berlant’s sense in- progress that also considers Jean-François Peyret’s Tournant autour de Galilée 2007, another work
deed, in Nanette and during recent marriage equality debates in Australia, Gadsby adopted an ac- brings a live pig onstage with female dancers in an effort to revise the historical silencing of women
tivist position. In Nanette Gadsby performs humorlessnes for political ends. The effectiveness of in dramatic art as well as public life.
this performance relies on Gadsby’s known funniness, which she demonstrates early in the show.
This paper will focus on moments in Nanette when Gadsby manipulated conventions of spectator- Key Words
ship, cutting off applause or silencing laughter, to consider the implications of a killjoy comedian. animals, affect, public sphere, women

Key Words
comedy, feminist killjoy, humorlessness, applause, audience behavior
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

394 395
 WG WG

Aishika Chakraborty Elin Diamond

School of Womens Studies, Jadavpur University Rutgers University

Aishika Chakraborty is Associate Professor and Director of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur Univer- Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Author of Pinters Comic Play, Unmaking Mimesis. Editor of
sity, India. With her doctoral thesis on ‘Widowhood in colonial Bengal: 1850-1930’ the focus of her current Performance and Cultural Politics. Co-editor of Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill and Performance,
research has been the journey of modern/contemporary dance in Bengal as she looks at its artistic legacies, Femininism and Affect in Neoliberal Times
pedagogic practices and feminist politics of performance. Her books include Ranjabati: A Dancer and Her
World edited, 2008 and The Moving Space, Women in Dance co-edited, 2018. As a performer-choreographer Fornes and Split Britches: Two Interventions by the Common
of Dancers Guild, Kolkata, Aishika has performed widely across the world and her recent choreographic
collaboration, ‘Jajnaseni’ and Chitrangada toured at major festivals as part of the cultural delegation of the
World
he Indian Council of Cultural Relations.
My contention here is that interventions in theatrical power structures and perhaps theatrical in-
Partition, Migration, Independence: Refugee Dancers of Bengal terventions in state power are linked to a reimagined theater phenomenology. Chomping on the
Brechtian cigar has lost the allure of subversion because subversion is no longer a straightforward
1947 comes as the breaking point in Indian history. At the stroke of the midnight hour when India get in art practice.  Might we lean on new materialists and, before them, ecofeminists, to imagine
woke into life and freedom, the celebratory moment of independence also sparked off the largest nondualist interactions of body and environment wherein the materials and energies of stage and
transfer of human population across borders of the triple-sliced nation. Set against the defining mo- off-stage worlds are seen to belong to a radical entity we might tentatively call “the common world”?
ment of partition, my paper explores the disparate journeys of uprooted refugee women of Bengal In Irene Fornes’s Mud, the set sits in earth, “wood has the…texture of bone,” bodies are porous
who crossed the boundary in search of freedom and livelihood before carving out new identities sensoria, and agency circulates through nonhuman commodities props! that bear the second-na-
as dancers, artists and entertainers. At a time when women’s bodies were routinely marked and ture fingerprint of their purchase. In Unexploded Ordnances UXO, Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw
conquered as rival territories of communal violence, this paper maps the individual artistic forays interrupt their show about any-minute nuclear disaster with a mini long-table of random “elders”
of migrant women who lived through dislocation and trauma and yet transcended the homochro- props of another order who explode, or fail to, theater’s order of business.  To gesture toward, to
mous narrative of loss and betrayal by crossing into new realms to take over the domain of public invoke a common world, is, in these bad new days, as difficult as the V-effekt was in the bad old ones.
performance. Breaking the newly invented hierarchic structure of the national classical, they moved
in varied and contradictory rhythms across wide-ranging performative spaces—from classical to cre- Key Words
ative, from contemporary to cabaret, barging into the performing tradition of the new nation. While non-dualism, common world, intervention
some dancers celebrated resistance in radical cultural refrains, few others emerged as symbolic im-
ageries of transgressions. By dancing ‘dirty’ in Calcutta’s nightclubs did they violate the honour of the
community, by extension, the nation? Tracing dancer’s agency and voice, my essay maps the public
‘staging’ of women’s subjectivity in myriad dimensions, as they inscribed different meanings, both
‘high’ and ‘low’, in dynamic inter-relationship with politics and culture of the city.

Key Words
Bengal, partition, refugee, dancer
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

396 397
 WG WG

Mika Eglinton Lisa Fitzpatrick

Kobe City University of Foreign Studies University of Ulster

Mika EGLINTON is Professor of English Theatre and Cultural Studies at Kobe University of Foreign Studies, Dr Lisa Fitzpatrick is Senior Lecturer in Drama at University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. She completed her PhD
Japan. Her areas of research are on early modern and contemporary British drama, with particular emphasis at University of Toronto, in contemporary Irish theatre, and her current research is on violence and performance
on productions of Shakespeare in both European and Asian contexts. Her academic publications include con- and feminist performance in Ireland. She has published on the ethics of performing violence, post-conflict the-
tributions to The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare Routledge, 2008, Shakespeare Studies 49 atre in Northern Ireland, and violence and gender in theatrical performance. Her recent monograph Rape on
2011, Shakespeare 7.3 2011 and A History of Japanese Theatre Cambridge University Press, 2016. She is also the Contemporary Stage was published this year by Palgrave. She is currently exploring the idea of honour and
actively involved in the creation of theatre as a dramaturg, translator and critic. Her recent translation works gender, particularly in relation to nationalism. This paper is part of that research, for its interest in forms of
were commissioned by F/T, Kyoto Experiment, PARASOPHIA and SPAC. She is a regular writer to English and freedom, gendered conceptions of vulnerability, and the induction of the individual subject into subalternity.
Japanese language media including the Japan Times http://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/int-mika_ eglinton/.
She is one of the core members of Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive A|S|I|A and Asian Women Per- Freedom From or Freedom To: Conflicting Feminisms
forming Arts Collective AWPAC and a co-researcher of Scene/Asia, Art Commons Tokyo.
The phenomena #MeToo and #Time’sUp has been criticized by a number of celebrity women, but per-
On Migration and Consciousness in Naoko Tanaka’s haps most notably by Germaine Greer. Greer often courts controversy, particularly in relation to sex-
“Uninternalized light” ual violence and to the laws on sexual offences. In this instance she argues that women should ‘react
immediately’ to ‘slap down’ foolish male advances, saying that ‘In the old days … we weren’t afraid of
The act of resettling overseas unsettles the idea of home itself. It ruptures the narrative of be- [a leering man] and we weren’t afraid to slap him down’. She says that her concern is for women, that
longing that we construct through attachments to people and places. For the migrant, home is the resulting legal battles will ‘pit woman against woman’ and that those who have given testimony
no longer an immutable fact, but a space between memory and desire — always elsewhere. This will be ‘taken to pieces’.   Although Greer’s reaction to the most recent wave of feminism by women
sense of estrangement is most strongly felt when “looking back.” As Trinh Minh-ha, points out in in their twenties is often critical, her contribution to the Women’s Movement has been extraordinari-
her book “Elsewhere, Within Here” 2011, shifting between places, new and old, brings the com- ly important. This paper therefore explores some of the tensions between Greer’s proposed method
plexity of “engendering meaning” and “installing a subjectivity” in those locations into focus, but of dealing with sexual harassment and her concerns about #MeToo. Some of this appears to emerge
tends above all to disturb one’s sense of identity.” This paper is part of an ongoing research proj- from the fear that identity-based feminism will position women as victims, or as conventionally vul-
ect on experiences of migration from the perspective of contemporary Japanese women in the nerable. But I suggest that there may also be a fear that the fight for ‘freedom from’ sexual harass-
performing arts. The project addresses how changing places affects the lives and works of these ment could see limitations placed on women’s ‘freedom to’, which was so central to second-wave
women, with regard to the politics of identity, cultural representation, and the critique of Japanese feminism.   This paper draws on theories of freedom from Arendt and Bergson, and Elizabeth Grosz’s
society, particularly patriarchal power structures. Here, I propose an analysis of a performance ti- reworking of Bergson’s theory, to explore the issue of freedom in relation to a new wave of feminism
tled Uninternalized light by Berlin-based, Japanese performance artist, Naoko Tanaka, presented that challenges violent or oppressive sexual practices that marginalize and disempower women.
at Kyoto Experiment in 2017. Uninternalized light stages the interplay between light and shadow
in a live exploration of consciousness and memory. I read Tanaka’s work as a form of applied art, Key Words
a medium for accessing the traumatic core of personal experience. The twisted and contorted freedom, vulnerability
shadows that fill her stage are symbolic of what Tanaka herself terms “the unknowable inner out-
side world of consciousness.” In attempting to stage this unknowable consciousness, Tanaka pro-
duces a series of migrations that merge geography with psychology and provide insight into the
disturbance of identity that Minh-ha describes. To what extent does the notion of migration pro-
vide grounds for mapping the relationship between trauma, memory and place in Tanakas work?

Key Words
migration, consciousness, trauma, installation, performance, Naoko Tanaka
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

398 399
 WG WG

Rebecca Fraser Aastha Gandhi

University of Exeter Jawaharlal Nehru University

University of Exeter: PhD in Drama 2013−2017 ‘History in the hands of the Contemporary Playwright 2000- Aastha Gandhi is a performance researcher, lawyer and dancer. She is currently a part of the research project
2015: a feminist critique of normative historiography in British theatre.’  Supervisors: Professor Kate Newey Cultures of the Left between Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and University of Warwick, UK.
and Professor Jane Milling.  AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council Postgraduate Studentship Award She was also a part of a research project Gendered Citizenship, by the same Universities. Her published essays
Holder.  University of Exeter: MA in Drama Research awarded with Merit  2010−2011  AHRC Postgraduate include: Laws and Marginalised Bodies: Sex Trafficking, Child Labour and Circus as a Site of Negotiations Gen-
Studentship Award Holder.  Public Engagement: Fraser, R. 2018 ‘In the Engine Room: Representation vs Re- dered Citizenship: manifestations and performance, 2017, Emerging choreographies: developing new peda-
ality of the Female Whip.’ In: Inchley, M. and Vice, J. eds. Amending Speech: Womens Voices in Parliament, gogies in dance Contemporising the past: envisaging the future, 2015, Constructing and performing the Odissi
1918-2018, London: Hansard. [Forthcoming]  Selected Conference Papers: STR New Researchers’ Network body: ideologies, influences and interjections Journal of Emerging Dance Scholars, 2013 and Who frames the
Third Annual Symposium, Bristol July 2016 Feminisms and Performance Symposium, Roehampton Sept 2015 dance: writing and performing the trinity of Odissi Dance Dialogues: conversations across cultures, artforms
TaPRA, Royal Holloway Sept 2014  Conference Organising: ‘Audience, Experience, Desire: interactivity and par- and practices, 2009. She has presented research papers in International Foundation for Theatre Research
ticipation in contemporary performance & the cultural industries’ University of Exeter, Department of Drama  Conference 2015, 2016 and Indian Society for Theatre Research Conference 2006, 2007. She has presented
29th−30th Jan 2016 Joint lead organiser of a two-day international conference including two keynote lectures her research work in World Dance Alliance Summits over the years 2008, 2014 and 2015. Her current area of
Dr Josephine Machon, Dr Adam Alston, a keynote artist presentation Tassos Stevens and performance RE- research engages with laws, circus and discourses of performing body. She is currently pursuing PhD in Theatre
MOTE by Coney, seven panels, performance installations and research posters.  Teaching: University of Exeter and Performance Studies from School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Occasional Teacher Oxford Brookes University Associate Lecturer Bath Spa University Visiting Lecturer.
Displaced and Exploited: Performing Bodies of Indian Circus
The RSC, Tara Arts, and Representations of the Victorian Empire: under the Changing Laws
Institutional Power on and Off Stage
Critical to this paper would be the two laws animal ban in and the child labour laws being applied
This paper is an intersectional interrogation of the representation of Victorian Empire in Tanika Gup- to the circus. Child and the woman performer, who migrate from marginalized sections, find them-
ta’s The Empress which premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre in 2013. The selves largely displaced vis-à-vis the changing laws and perception of state and the public. I would
Empress stands as a rare example of new writing in the mainstream British theatre industry that be making the connection between child labour and the change in public perception which has more
directly engages with themes relating to Victorian migration and imperial rule. Notions of nostalgia recently seen the circus as an exploitative entity and how it has impacted the performative body in
underpin the The Empress and are present throughout the RSC as an institution. I address how this circus. The paper would focus on: - Shift in Gendered codes in Performance Briefly examining dif-
rhetoric reinforces gender inequality, by foregrounding the male experience, both in a performance ferent discourses on body as created and in practice for a women performers in circus, who migrate
context and in reference to the institution as a whole. Dramaturgical analysis of the play highlights from economically vulnerable sections, I would look at the performances and performative bodies
recurring theatrical devices used to represent women within this historical setting and indicates the with a gendered critical perspective within the cultural specificity of the suburban and semi-urban
recurrence of the heteronormative romantic plot. This paper employs theories of neo-Victorian- Indian milieu. - Gendered middle- class audience I would look at how the performer’s body is re-
ism, in conjunction with feminist discourse, to facilitate further exploration of the gender politics ceived by the middle- class audience in cities and small towns constantly contesting/ negotiating
operating within this recurring dramatic plot structure.  Through this case study I explore the RSC in between the notions of the circus body as the eroticized body, further objectified by the performa-
relationship to Tara Arts and consider the contrasting historical narratives of the Victorian Empire tive codes, costumes and the gendered young male audience. I would then look at the position of
offered by these institutions. From this, I address how the politics of programming maps onto con- the performers’ bodies as a double discourse between the ‘eroticized bodies’ and what would in
temporary feminist debate. The critical framework is shaped by literature from Daboo 2017, 2018 the public perception come to be termed as the ‘exploited body’ of a non middle class perform-
and Dadswell and Ley 2012 regarding British South Asian theatre and Poore’s 2011 writing on stag- er. - Laboured body vs. Performing body I would engage with the constant negotiation between
ing the Victorians. Reviews of The Empress indicate the politics of the social structures in which the the “labored” body and the “performing” body in light of the recent debates regarding the women
RSC operates, as critics reduce the narrative of the play’s central character, a working class Indian performer as a ‘child’. With the precarious characteristics to distinguish between the performer as
woman, to a subplot in favour of the storyline concerning Queen Victoria. Through intersectional an adult or a child, this has attained more complexities in relation to the recent controversies of the
feminist analysis of The Empress, and exploration of themes of Victorian Empire staged by Tara Arts, performers being mostly underaged.
this paper highlights how, when left untroubled, recurring dramatic and institutional conventions
perpetuate gender inequality within contemporary British theatre. Key Words
Displaced Exploited Women performers Circus Marginalized
Key Words
Feminism Intersectionality Neo-Victorianism Contemporary British Theatre Victorian Empire
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

400 401
 WG WG

Nivedita Gokhale Sarah Gorman

University of Lincoln Roehampton University

Currently pursuing PhD in Drama from University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. Research paper on ‘Voicing SARAH GORMAN is a Reader in the Department of Drama, Theatre & Performance at Roehampton University,
Domestic Abuse Against Women in India through Digitized Theatre’ is accepted and widely received at the London. Her research focuses on contemporary feminist performance and European/North American exper-
8th Conference of Doctoral Studies in Theatre Practice and Theory – Politics and Community Engagement in imental theatre and Live Art. She is currently working on a book project for Routledge provisionally entitled
Doctoral Theatre Research, by the Theatre Faculty of Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts Brno, Women, Failure and Contemporary Performance. She is co-editing a special edition of Contemporary Theatre
Czech Republic and at the INTERSECTIONS 2018, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of Review on Contemporary Feminist Theatre and Performance with Geraldine Harris and Jen Harvie due out Au-
London. Currently working on a theatre model titled, ‘Tejomaya’ Enlighten to be implemented for female gust 2018 and is developing a series of ‘Performance Dialogues’ to document the interviews she has held with
victims of domestic abuse in India. experimental female performance practitioners. These interviews can be found at http://readingasawoman.
wordpress.com.
“Kanyadaan”: A Study on the Controversial Production of an
Indian – Marathi Modern Political Play by Vijay Tendulkar Questions of Diversity in the Work of Selina Thompson, Jamila
Johnson-Small and Season Butler
Language without an innate experience and expression is a massive abyss of thoughts. The core mo-
tive of any text is to converge the writers expression into performer’s experience and in this context This paper will consider the potential limitations of the Arts Council of England’s ACE ‘Creative Case
it is the script of a Marathi  play titled, ‘Kanyadaan’, i.e. A ritual of giving away the daughter to son for Diversity’ ACE website 2018. I will analyse the writing and performance work of contemporary
in law according to Hindu customs of marriage written by an Indian playright, Vijay Tendulkar 1928 – UK/US artists Season Butler, Jamila Johnson-Small and Selina Thompson in order to question wheth-
2008. ‘Meaning’ in theatre originates from either ends or it persists in the text with a dense insight er ACE’s imperative to demonstrate ‘diversity’ might actually work to further marginalise and en-
the responsibility is neither of a performer to make its audience recognise the ‘textual’ meaning trench the work of black female artists as ‘separate’ and ‘other’.   In Fair Play: Art Performance and
nor of a viewer or a reader to recognise it by themselves. How do we hence validate the need of Neoliberalism 2013 Jen Harvie draws attention to the way that UK arts policy has encouraged artists
meaning in theatre, the need of gendered perspectives about meaning, or an outcome of ‘mean- to be ‘entrepreneurial’ and to, ‘realize or at least stimulate financial profit.’ Harvie 2013: 62 She
inglessness’ that a female performer is bound to encounter in her performance? As the multiplicity writes, ‘such insalubrious capitalist characteristics might often … struggle to thrive within art’s do-
of meaning co-exists with a performer’s exposition on the text, it is very important to be familiar main but dressed up as art, exploiting the artist’s attractive characteristics as whitewashing disguise,
with the formation of literary perspectives as well. This paper hence aims at researching the gaps they pass, bringing their invidious effects along with them.’ Harvie 2013: 63 Harvie’s emphasis She
between the struggle to find a meaning to a performance and a sense of ‘meaninglessness’ that describes this as a form of ‘instrumentalization’, which reinvents the role of the artist so that it can
the female performers acquaint themselves with, once it is performed in the context of gender. be aligned with neoliberal capitalist ideology. Thinking along similar lines in relation to ACE’s policy,
Season Butler, recipient of the 2017 Live Art Development Agency’s ‘Diverse Actions Leadership
Key Words Bursary’ states that diversity is a ‘vexed term’. She questions how, as a mixed-race artist, she can
Modern Indian Theatre, Marathi Theatre, Activism, Playwriting, Feminism avoid being ‘instrumentalized’ and co-opted into a similarly ‘whitewashing’ scheme that will draw
attention away from the exclusionary practices informing the UK Heritage and Culture industry. She
states, ‘there is a euphemistic vagueness around diversity – it keeps white supremacist logic intact’
Butler 2017. Whilst being mindful of Lynette Goddard’s warning that the work of these black female
artists should not necessarily be cited as ‘feminist’ solely because it is ‘created in institutionally
racist and sexist conditions’ I want to use the work of these artists to interrogate the ways that a
patriarchal white supremacist ideology has affected the conditions of labour for black female the-
atre workers and consider how UK public policies run the risk of ‘whitewashing’ over the prevailing
culture of meritocracy that fundamentally informs UK government policy of the late 20th and early
21st Century.

Key Words
Diversity, Black artists, UK Arts Funding, Selina Thompson, Season Butler, Jamila Johnson-Small
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

402 403
 WG WG

Miriam Haughton Rebecca Hayes Laughton

National University Ireland, Galway Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
Dr Miriam Haughton is a Lecturer at the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance at the Na- Rebecca Hayes Laughton @hayeslaughton Part time first year research student at Royal Central School of
tional University of Ireland, Galway. Her monograph, Staging Trauma: Bodies in Shadow, is recently published Speech and Drama, London, UK Visiting Tutor, MA / MFA Advanced Theatre Practice, RCSSD Visiting Practi-
with Palgrave 2018. She co-edited the collection Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ire- tioner, MA Applied Theatre, RCSSD Intersections Conference paper: ‘Ethical Border Zones: the tortured fe-
land Carysfort, 2015, and published essays in multiple international journals, including Contemporary Theatre male body as performer/victim/activist’ Jan 2018 Crisis in Humanities Symposium, Dec 2017: ‘Surviving the
Review, Modern Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Mortality, and Irish Studies Review. Miriam is a supporting Neoliberal University: Revaluing the labour of the Performing Arts’ for upcoming special issue of RiDE Chair:
member of the National Women’s Council of Ireland NWCI, an elected executive committee member of the Professor Kim Solga Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Freelance Community Theatre Director / Produc-
Irish Society for Theatre Research ISTR, and a member of the feminist working group of the International Fed- er, current projects include • Women for Refugee Women weekly drama workshops at Southbank Centre •
eration for Theatre Research IFTR. Co-Producer PsycheDelight Theatre Company, Borderline, the satire set in the Calais Refugee Camp devised
and performed by refugee and European actors • Rewrite Creative English weekly drama workshops for newly
On Producing: Theatre, Industry and Change arrived school children Previous work as a television Commissioning, Production and Studio Manager at BBC,
ITV, MTV and Independent Production Companies 1993-2014
This paper will report from interviews conducted with a selection of theatre producers based in Ire-
land regarding the histories and practices of producing theatre. The analysis will foreground the pace Women and Children First: Do Drama Projects with Refugee
and complexities of changing relationships, particularly regarding the role of gender, funding, glo- Women Reinforce Traditional Notions of Paternalism or Enable a
balisation, and cultural politics in local and international contexts. This is the first phase in a longer Feminist Aesthetic of Body and Voice which Effectively Campaigns
project, and so the outcome of these interviews is intended to identify scope, themes, and questions for Social Change?
to shape potential future research. The context for this paper is informed by the current feminist
momentum in the cultural, social and political arenas. The synergies harnessed by the #WakingTh- When refugee and migrant women cross geographical borders and enter the UK they are also nego-
eFeminists campaign, as well as the global feminist activist and consciousness-raising campaigns, tiating political, legal and cultural boundaries. The women’s lived experience, embodied knowledge
such as #MeToo, have created an appetite and space for conversations regarding change. Gender and activist narratives are like de Certeau’s “story” that “cuts across” what the official map “cuts
politics is embedded in these revelations regarding discrimination and harassment, and this gender up”. In my work as Drama Facilitator at London campaigning charity Women for Refugee Wom-
politics operates as a result of structurally embedded work practices and cultural conditions. It is this en I explore performance practices that foreground these stories and experiences however, I also
structural discrimination, practice and wider culture that the research seeks to identify in micro and witness both “benevolent” and “hostile sexism” from those supporting and those antagonistic to
macro levels. This series of interviews also asks these producers, how can the industry, locally and these women. With particular reference to Imogen Tyler’s work on resistance/the abject, and Silvia
globally, enact change in the short, medium, and long-term. Twentieth-century history has shown Federici’s Politics of the Commons, I here explore how our feminist drama work might reclaim the
that waves of feminist energies tend to be followed by periods of political and social backlash, with female potentially pregnant body as representing neither the a nativist hope of the nation nor the
certain gains being challenged to suppress feminist activities, identities and networks. In thinking ‘reproductive migrant who threatens to populate our country’. How can we resist these gendered
about change informed by this history, one must also ask how does change become permanent and aesthetic tropes that use women as a cypher? Writing and performance practice by refugee and
embedded? For the purposes of this study, the remit of ‘change’ will include: training, network- migrant women arriving from diverse international locations can, I argue, reject discriminatory la-
ing and mentoring contracts and hiring practices collaborative artistic opportunities in production belling, but must also be wary of Gramsci’s ‘extraordinarily ordinary social relation[s]’ with which we
decision-making regarding theatre content and form publicity and advertising and, legacy and the may, unwittingly, frame our work. In my analysis of reactions and feedback from the women, myself
production of theatre archives and knowledge. and the audience after the refugee women’s performances at their Mass Lobby Event All Women
Count at the British Houses of Parliament on International Women’s Day 8 March 2018, I provide
Key Words insights for ways we might proceed. This analysis is set against the backdrop of Doreen Massey’s
Producing, Change, Gender, Funding, Cultural Politics theories of space as an active, political concept where our social relations are a “power geometry”
of “domination and subordination”: I propose that a theatre space can provide a holding form in
which to host negotiations around an embodied feminist aesthetic of political agency, visibility and
social change.

Key Words
Drama, Refugee, Women, Activism, Sexism, Resistance, Abject, Commons, Feminism, Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

404 405
 WG WG

Shonagh Hill Birgitta Johansson Lindh

University College Dublin University of Gothenburg

Dr. Shonagh Hill is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow 2016-2017. She is currently teaching at Uni- 2014 Received funding from the Swedish Research Council for research on the reception in Europe of plays
versity College Dublin while completing her monograph: Embodied Mythmaking: A Genealogy of Women in by Anne Charlotte Leffler within the project  “Swedish Women Writers’ Work on Export” The results will be
Irish Theatre. Shonagh has published articles on women in Irish theatre in Theatre Research International and published in an anthology in 2018. 2014 Received funding for research about reviews of women’s playwriting
Etudes Irlandaises, as well as the recent edited collections The Theatre of Marie Jones Carysfort 2015 and Radi- in the 1880s from SRC within the project Turning Points and Continuity: The Changing Roles of Performance in
cal Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland Carysfort 2015. Her most recent publication, ‘Feeling Society 1880-1925. Within the project the article “Affective Economies in the Tug of War between Idealism and
Out of Place: The “affective dissonance” of the feminist spectator in The Boys of Foley Street’, was published in Anti-idealisms. Reviewers’ Reactions to Anne Charlotte Leffler’s Sannakvinnor True Women” is published in
the edited collection Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Nordic Theatre Studies, vol 29 No 1 2017.  2012 Received funding for a 3-year long research project  ”Emotion
and liberation – sentimental and melodramatic elements in women’s socio-realistic plays of the Scandinavian
“Not at Home”: Migration and Abortion Journeys from Ireland modern breakthrough. The result is a monography “Like a wild fowl in a cage” which will be published in 2018.
2010, Associate Professor, University of Gothenburg  2008, PhD, Comparative Literature with a specialization in
Theatre dissertation title: Befrielsenärnära. Feminism ochteaterpraktiki Margareta Garpesoch Suzanne Ostens
Ireland has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. The insertion of the Eighth Amend-
1970-talsteater Liberation is near: Feminism and theatrical practice in MargarethaGarpe’s and Suzanne Osten’s
ment into the Constitution of Ireland in 1983 explicitly protects the right to life of an unborn child, theatre of the 1970’s.
and equates a woman’s life with that of an embryo. Since 1980, at least 160,000 women have trav-
elled outside Ireland to procure safe abortions. This paper seeks to position these journeys through
Theorizing Experience Anew
the conference theme of migration and stasis and will focus on a 2017 Dublin Fringe Festival per-
formance, Not at Home: a four day durational art campaign by Emma Fraser Nine Crows and Grace
As part of the postmodern western project, poststructuralist gender theory has focused on desta-
Dyas THEATREclub. The hypocrisy of forcing women in Ireland to journey outside the State for safe
bilizing or deconstructing knowledge and decentering the knowing subject. In its extreme, the sub-
abortion services is captured in the title, ‘Not at Home’. Feelings of shame and isolation result from
ject is reduced to a variable and complex function of discourse. The #me-too-campaign, based on
the silencing of women’s experiences and I intend to explore the role of sound and affect in the
personal stories, in which experiencing the world from the position of having a female body, asks
transmission of testimony. From April 2016, Dyas and Fraser amassed women’s testimonies and in-
for a shift of focus from discourse to the experiencing embodied subject. Firstly, shared person-
vited women to further contribute their stories at the installation. The installation is defined by tran-
al stories by individual women in different contexts who perform gender differently point to the
sitional spaces from the taxi parked outside the venue, to the waiting room which holds performers
fact that sexual harassment is not so much the consequence of what they do, but of what they
and audience alike. Highlighting the tension between movement and stasis invites reflection on the
are individuals with bodies that are categorized as female. Secondly, the personal shared stories
consequences and contradictions of Ireland’s abortion laws, including issues of mobility and access.
seem to have the power to disrupt hegemonic, oppressive discourse and to disclose its mecha-
nisms.  Women’s shared experience was an important political strategy within the women’s move-
Key Words
ment of the 1970’s. It has since then been criticized for being based on ideas of a female iden-
Ireland, abortion, journey
tity with exclusionary effects. In order to fully understand and to theorize a the vulnerability of
having a female body and b the power of shared personal narratives as a political tool I propose
an exploration of phenomenological gender theories that draw on Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas.
How can these theories be combined with a poststructuralist understanding of genders as dis-
cursive constructs and with a recognition of the power of discourse. How can phenomenological
feminism be revisited to shed light on the mechanisms that the #metoo- campaign demonstrated
without relapsing into binary gender oppositions and a politics of identity built on sameness? How
can phenomenology illuminate gender structures and power relations as something that goes on
between people in their daily lives, without loss of the insights of poststructuralist gender-theory.

Key Words
#metoo, experience, phenomenological gender theory, embodied subjectivities, discourse
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

406 407
 WG WG

Minakshi Kaushik Claire Keogh

Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University Trinity College Dublin

I have completed Honours and Masters in English from Hindu College, Delhi University, and M.Phil English Claire Keogh is a first year PhD student in the Drama Department at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focus-
from Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. I am currently enrolled for Phd in Theatre and Performance Studies at School es on Irish women playwrights before and after #WakingTheFeminists, investigating the relationship between
of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. I have taught as Assistant Professor, English ad-hoc, feminist dramaturgies and the location of production. She is the Playography Researcher/Editor at Irish The-
at Lakshmibai College, Delhi Univ. I have attended a workshop on Research Methodology conducted by Tracy atre Institute.
C. Davis and a workshop on “affect” by Brian Massumi and Erin Manning in JNU. My area of interest is wom-
en in Indian theatre. My current research deals with reconceptualisation of directorial paradigms by women Between the Centenaries: “Shush” at the Abbey Theatre
directors, focusing on dramaturgical adaptations, scenography, theatre of roots and authorship. It aims to
reconstruct a historiography against male-centred linear histories. My publications are in this area as well as
When the #WakingTheFeminists movement criticized the paucity of female playwrights in the Ab-
performance art, Indian poetry and fiction and immigration experiences. I am a member of IACLALS and pre-
sented papers at national and international conferences at University of Hyderabad International Federation bey Theatre’s 2016 “Waking the Nation” programme, many people felt echoes from the Abbey’s
for Theatre Research conference, JNU and Jadavpur University. 2004 centenary when the lack of female playwrights in the “abbeyonehundred” programme was
similarly lamented in the press. Between the controversies of the two centenaries, Elaine Murphy
Politics of Relocation: Collaboration and Potential Conflict in became the first women other than Marina Carr to have a play produced on the Abbey’s main stage
in twenty-five years. This essay will focus on the 2013 production of Murphy’s Shush to interrogate
Cold War Alignment the language, structure and themes of the play against the patriarchal status quo of the theatre’s
programming between the centenaries. Drawing on the work of feminist linguists, the language of
‘National theatre’ has relevance for feminist theatre in India not just for geographically dislocated
the play will be analysed against Robin Lakoff’s theory of women’s language to question whether
artists but also in terms of adopting ‘foreign’ forms towards challenging ‘tradition’ and evolving new
the play was written in a typically gendered style. The dramaturgical structure of the play will also
modes for creative expression. This is tied up with a gender sensibility. Elin Diamond emphasizes the
be analysed through a feminist lens to interrogate its use of the traditional comedic form and how
significance of undoing mimesis and untangling women from male-derivative studies. This paper
this framed the production. Situating the play within FiachMacConghail’s tenure as Artistic Direc-
explores Vijaya Mehta’s direction with Fritz Bennewitz of the Indian Sanskrit classic Shakuntala Ger-
tor (2005-2016), its preoccupation with heterosexual relationships will be contextualized within the
man, 1979-80 in Germany, which subtly deconstructs the male-authored canonical play. This work
broader cultural narrative propagated by the national theatre during this period. Focussing primarily
redefines notions of the national presenting a quintessential ‘Indian’ play in a ‘foreign’ language
on Shush’s linguistic construction and dramaturgical structure, Murphy’s relationship to feminist
whereby it gains in form from its German repositioning and evolves a non-classical acting vocabu-
dramaturgies will be investigated. A novelty in the theatre’s programming, this essay will question
lary. German actors performing this ‘traditional’ Indian play in a somewhat Brechtian/intermingled
why this play was chosen for the Abbey’s main stage, and why it failed to pave the way for a greater
fashion subvert fixed ideas of tradition and character that Shakuntala represents. As part of the cul-
representation of work by women at the national theatre.
tural programme of the GDR, Bennewitz’s collaboration was in keeping with his Brechtian interests.
Mehta, seeking a formal vehicle for experimenting with the folk and classical, sought a Brechtian
Key Words
negotiation with the Indian. The ideological ramifications can be sought beyond a postcolonial redis-
feminism, Irish drama, playwriting, dramaturgy, comedy, linguistics
covery of the traditional, as contemporary politics pervaded the productions and Brechtian-Indian
fusion yielded a hybrid methodology. The play is a continuation of Mehta’s non-mainstream work,
wherein she evolved ‘sensuous’ acting and visual theatre, making space both specific and mobile.
The self-conscious body language, paintings of Dushyant and Shakuntala and structures conveying
both the court as well as the forest, inscribe a personal element onto the political drift of the play.
These, along with the Brechtian alienation make art autonomous in a migrant location, especially
vis-à-vis the Emergency in India right after which the play was produced. In doing so, Shakuntala
emerges as resistant to State politics.

Key Words
Feminist, Brechtian, classical theatre, non-classical acting, postcolonial, tradition, national, Vijaya
Mehta, Fritz Bennewitz, sensuous body language, visual theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

408 409
 WG WG

Irene Lehmann Stefania Lodi Rizzini

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg Paris 3 Nouvelle Sorbonne

Irene Lehmann, M.A. PhD completed, studied Theatre Studies, Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Freie Stefania Lodi Rizzini, born in Mantova Italy.  I graduated from UniversitàdegliStudi di Milano, with a thesis
University Berlin, Germany and completed her PhD in Theatre Studies with Prof. Dr. Clemens Risi at Fried- called, “The female identity in contemporary British art: Jenny Saville, Gillian Wearing, Tracey Emin and Mona
rich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany with her thesis: “The Quest for a New Musical The- Hatoum”  An extract of my thesis was published in the Culture, Journal from the Anglo-American Institute of
atre. Luigi Nono‘sPoltical and Aesthetic Experiments between 1960 and 1975“. Adjunct Teaching Position and the UniversitàdegliStudi di Milano. The main focus of my research and personal interest deals with the concept
PostDoc project on “Gendernonconformity in the Performative Arts” at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. of female, identity and culture and I am currently a Phd student at the University of Paris, Nouvelle-Sorbonne
Paris 3, as part of LIRA Laboratoire International de la Recherche sur les Arts, at the Theater Institute.   My
Gender Relations on the Stage of Contemporary Music: Two current research under the direction of Joseph Féral is related to the question of gender, performance, body
and myth specifically in contemporary theater, Motus, Jan Fabre, Phia Menard, Emma Dante. Conference:  The
performances by Jennifer Walshe and Eva Reiter subversive potential of Gender Reversal, 2016 – IFTR Stockholm

Jennifer Walshe and Eva Reiter are both composer-performers in the highly male dominated system
The Non-conforming Body – Politic of Representation of
of contemporary music. In analyzing performances from 2017 of their pieces The Lichtenberg Fig-
ures Eva Reiter and Everything is Important Jennifer Walshe I‘d like to ask how they question and Difference
counteract gendered aspects of the traditional concert form. Both work with hybrid media forms on
In a very provocative article appeared on January 2018 the philosopher Paul Preciado alerted the
stage and center, in different ways, also the institutionalized gender relations between themselves
reader that after the breach and turn of the sexual revolution and post-colonial theory appeared 
and their ensembles. Interestingly, the neutralized male form of the classic music concert became
during the last century, the heterosexual patriarchal system has started a project of counter-refor-
visibile in both performances and in the same moment the illusion of neutrality vanished. I‘d like to
mation to whom “feminist voices” who desire to continue to be “bothered” are joining. This would
show how institutionalized gendered elements are undermined, how maybe others are confirmed
be the most important war, that we are going to be asked for to fight during the next years, being
and thus a conflicting experience is created. Furthermore, I‘d like to ask how the scrutinizing of fixed
aware that this would impact politics and the process in which the subject will constitute himself
gender relations is related to the hybrid use of the arts, breaking with the ideas of ‚pure‘ non-vi-
politically. For the author the battlefield in which this war would take place is around the theoretical
sual music making and ‚pure‘ listening through introducing theatrical, visual and dance elements.
tool and materiality of the body, of life and of pleasure. Undoubtedly confronting and inheriting
the perspective of feminism and Foucaultian’s influence the body is figured as a blank page, as a
Key Words
surface of a cultural inscription, imprinted by history and culture. The landscape of Preciado indi-
Gender Relations, Music Theatre, Performance Analyzes, Institution and Aesthetics
cates an increasing number of non-conforming bodies that currently destabilizes the patriarchal
system, putting in discussion our code of representation. My paper would investigate the body in
performance in relation of the concept of non-conforming bodies and new codes of representa-
tions.  I will take some example mainly from Italian performances where the body is central, such
as R.OSA from Silvia Gribaudi,  or Silvia Gallerano in order to articulate an European/Italian vision.

Key Words
body, feminism, Preciado
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

410 411
 WG WG

Trish McTighe Sharanya Murali

University of Birmingham
Sharanya is a researcher and pedagogue. She completed her PhD at the University of Exeter in late 2016 on
Trish McTighe is Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Birmingham. Previously, she lectured at Queen’s Uni- performance-ethnographic encounters with walking in New Delhi, and taught in the Department of Drama at
versity, Belfast and was an AHRC post-doctoral researcher on the Staging Beckett Project at the University of Exeter as a teaching assistant until mid-2017. Her current project explores the intersections of Indian and Brit-
Reading 2012-2015. Her book, The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett’s Drama, was published with Palgrave ish-Asian womens performance, the labour politics of grief and transnational violence. Her work has appeared
in 2013, and she recently co-edited the double volume Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland and in Performance Research 2017 and the Cambridge History of Indian Poetry in English 2016.
Staging Beckett in Great Britain Bloomsbury-Methuen, 2016. She has published in the journals Modern Drama,
Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, and the Irish University Review, on topics such as Beckett’s drama, em- An Eye for an Eye: Transnational Photo-Performance and the
bodiment, and Irish culture and performance histories. She is theatre reviews editor for the Journal of Beckett
Studies.
Hapticality of Collaboration in “Native Women of South India”
In the 19th century, colonial administrator Maurice Vidal Portman photographed inhabitants of the
Beyond Cleaning: Maintaining the Stage Andaman Islands. These portraits of Andamanese men and women framed against a monochrome
chequered board, with metal props supporting their bodies, were part of a commonplace impe-
As debates about the treatment of maintenance workers come into sharp focus in these neoliberal
rial attempt to ethnographically ‘measure the natives’ through photography. Portman eventually
times, we might ask in what ways theatre is responsive to these issues. Among academia, King’s
generated an archive of the colonial photo studio subject which he donated to a British Museum
College London was recently forced, through protests and strikes, to reverse its decision to out-
collection.
source its cleaning workers to a company whose working conditions do not include key benefits,
Centuries later, Bangalore-based performance artist Pushpamala N. and the British photographer
such as cover for sick leave. There is a growing sense that institutions that might be the scene
Clare Arni composed a performance series titled Native Women of South India: Manners and Cus-
for the communication of lofty ideas about equality, democracy and leftist thinking, might in ac-
toms (2000-2004), exhibiting “a fantasy photo studio” as a “theatre museum” (N and Arni 2017).
tuality, when it comes to their maintenance workers, be replicating the inequalities that perme-
Native Women explores a dynamic satirical response to endeavours such as Portman’s, by centring
ate much of the rest of the working world – this may include theatre companies and institutions
contemporary Indian women—in one instance, by using metal supports and a grid as props—and
themselves and these inequalities intersect along lines of both gender and race. This paper will
casting the history of colonial archive-making as a historical performance of exploitation. The artists
address the extent to which theatre seeks to represent the everyday work of maintenance, ex-
playfully reckon with colonial and immigration histories, recreating transnational feminist visions of
amining in particular Alexander Zeldin’s Beyond Caring 2015, with a particular focus on the poli-
labour through this performance.
tics and temporality of cleaning performed on stage, as well as commentary on Zeldin’s working
Working with Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of ‘hapticality’ (2013) and Chandra Talpade
methods, and the ways in which material disenfranchisement is imaged on the UK stage in general.
Mohanty’s constructions of solidarity (2003), I ask:how does Native Women situate the gendered
It will enquire into how the replication of the hired labour of maintenance, specifically cleaning,
gaze of photo-performance work? How does a collaborative transnational retelling of colonial eth-
might mirror, reflect or ironise the status of the cleaner-worker within the theatre building itself.
nographic practices inform feminist methodological imagination(s)? Lastly, how does the aesthetic
achieved by this performance develop citation as a form of hapticality, and thus attempt transna-
Key Words
tional solidarity?
cleaning, care, labour, theatre
Works cited:
British Museum Collection Database. “As,Portman,B30.1” www.britishmuseum.org/collection, Brit-
ish Museum. Online. Accessed 06/12/2017.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism Without Borders. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions, 2013.
N, Pushpamala and Clare Arni. “Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs.” Pushpamala
N. Online. Accessed 06/12/2017.

Key Words
transnational performance, feminism, Indian performance, colonialism, labour, ethnography
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

412 413
 WG WG

Promona Sengupta Kirstin Smith

International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie University Berlin University of East Anglia

Promona Sengupta is a PhD Scholar of Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Kirstin Smith is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of East Anglia, where she teaches dramatic literature, fem-
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests mainly lie in the field of political movements in inist approaches to theatre and scriptwriting. She undertook her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London,
contemporary Asia, particularly those that are led by young people. She is currently a PhDfellow at the Interna- analyzing the emergence of stunts in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, supported by the AHRC.
tional Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures at Freie University, Berlin. She has presented her She spent three months at the Library of Congress, and won the TDR Student Essay contest in 2014. Previously,
work in conferences and summer schools, such as the International Federation for Theatre Research, Summer Kirstin worked as an actor, dramaturg and audio describer. She is currently at the beginning of a new research
Institute Cologne and Political Performance Summer School at the University of Warwick, Cultures of the Left project focusing on theatrical casting.
colloquium, 6–7 June 2017, University of Warwick and Performance Studies International, 8–11 June 2017,
Hamburg. The Inscription of Gender in Theatrical Casting
Good Youth Gone Bad: Exploring Juvenility, Criminality and New Casting, the selection of actors for dramatic roles, is a highly contested and often mystified meeting
Feminisms in a Post-Nirbhaya Moment point of fictional roles, the politics of representation, bodies, and professional and social identities.
It is at once an artistic practice of translating text to performance, and also a gateway to professional
The concepts of law, justice and criminality come back time and again when delving into literature work, which tends to involve objectification and is routinely associated with exploitation. Casting’s
that talks about the sociological category of youth. These concepts intertwine very strongly with combination of material, representational and political concerns make it a fertile subject for analysis,
concepts of sexuality and the permissible age of sexual activity. I will try to explore the construc- not only for insight into the contemporary practice and history of theatre, but also as a means of
tion of the good youth versus the bad within a historiography of youth protests in India, where the understanding how theatrical ideas of personhood and work intersect with broader constructions of
imperative of the righteous youth had a notable precedence in the Young Bengal Movement of the identity and labour. Yet casting remains ‘one of the least explored areas of theatre studies’, and exist-
1830s, that consolidated the righteous protesting youth body as a necessarily upper class, upper ing research focuses upon the resulting performance event rather than the process itself Rogers and
caste, English-educated male. This was followed by the age of consent debate in the wake of the Thorpe, 2014. Currently, the practice and ethics of casting are under scrutiny. In 2017, the UK actors’
death of the young child-bride Phulmonee in 1890, which created a slightly different but connected union, Equity, launched a manifesto for casting, in response to discrimination across gender, race and
narrative around the idea of youth, in conjunction with discourses on childhood, innocence, purity ethnicity, sexuality, class and ability. Along with recent reports of sexual harassment and violence,
and virginity of women’s bodies. In this paper, I look that how the eventual co-existence of these two the manifesto attests to an industry in which consistently ethical working practices, as well as legal
affective definitions of youth plays out in the feminist youth protests of 2012-13 in the wake of the and representational equality, are an aspiration rather than a reality. Casting is a site in which con-
gangrape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey, and what the prioritizing of the deceased rape victim’s trasting conceptions of personhood and the work of acting collide, in the context of highly asymmet-
dynamic youth over the living juvenile rapist who most the young protestors wanted hanged and his rical power structures.  This paper will be the result of anonymized interviews with casting directors
wasted youth might mean for feminist politics of the future. I bring in feminist analysis of the play based in the UK, viewed alongside institutional debates, traced in administrative records and corre-
Nirbhaya 2015 vis-à-vis a Hindi production of Nigel Williams’s Class Enemy 2010 from the collegiate spondence for the Young Vic and National Theatre. It will probe working practices in casting process-
circuit of Delhi University, to illustrate the ways in which cultural productions instrumentalize and es to understand how gendered identities have been inscribed in institutions, both on and off stage.
prioritize certain young bodies, which have lasting effects on feminist politics of the new generations
Key Words
Key Words Casting, gender, institution
Youth, Criminality, Juvenile Justice, Intergenerational Feminism, Protest
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

414 415
 WG WG

Kim Solga Maja Šorli

Western University Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana
Kim Solga is Professor of Theatre Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University. Her lat- Maja Šorli works as a researcher at UL AGRFT and as a freelance dramaturg. In 2014 her monograph Slovenska-
est book is A Cultural History of Theatre in the Modern Age ed., from Bloomsbury 2017. Her next monograph postdramskapomlad [The Slovenian Postdramatic Spring] was published by MGL Library. She is a member of
for students, Theory for Theatre Studies: Space, will appear in January 2019. the international research group STEP – Project on European Theatre Systems, the IFTR Feminist Research
Working Group as well as of the Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia. She is also the
Practicing Non-binary Gender in Performance at the Stratford editor-in-chief of the journal of performing arts theory Amfiteater.
Shakespeare Festival, 2018
Performing Gender Structure in Slovenian Devised Theatre
What will it require to practice not just represent gender diversity at the Stratford Festival, North
Americas largest Shakespeare-oriented repertory company, in the twenty-first century? In this pa- Professional theatre productions or events in the field of performing arts in Slovenia are carried
per co-authored with Dr Erin Julian, who will not be able to join us in Belgrade, we will unpack and out by public institutes, private companies and independent artists. The 13 public institutes, so
explore this question by shadowing Chinese-Irish director and Stratford Festival Playwrights Unit called national and municipal theatres that receive most of their funding from the state budget pro-
coordinator Keira Loughran as she creates The Comedy of Errors for the 2018 Stratford season. Be- duce performances mainly based on existing drama texts and the majority of them remains written
ginning from the casting and design process, through to rehearsals, previews, opening, and reviews, in patriarchal mode. Private companies or so called non-governmental or independent scene on
we will be embedded in Keiras process in order to observe and discuss the production with Keira and the other hand, produce the majority of devised pieces, where gender roles are distributed more
her team in real time. Our methodology will include a mix of first-person accounting, journaling, and equally. In this article Im interested how the same patterns of patriarchy are repeated in institu-
interviews, as well as thick description and cultural materialist analysis. Our goal will be to impose tional theatre even when the main reason - a play written by white male for the majority of male
no narratives, but only to understand the material and ideological obstacles facing Keiras vision for roles - is cancelled. In Slovenian institutional devised theatre some directors and productions re-
the production which is gender-queer, as well as racially complex, and to take careful account of peat the same structure of dominating males onstage and backstage and the others work more
how those obstacles including the Festivals economic considerations, its obligation to a range of equally. Productions directed by JernejLorenci, Oliver Frljić, ŽigaDivjak and WeronikaSzczawińska in
stakeholders, and its audience challenges shape both what is possible and what might yet become the last few years will be analysed more thoroughly and reasons for gender inequality discussed.
possible for productions that seek to establish diversity as a practice at Stratford and similar venues.
Key Words
Key Words devised theatre, public theatres, gender inequallity, contemporary theatre
Shakespeare in performance, diversity on stage, non-binary gender on stage, gender-queer perfor-
mance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

416 417
 WG WG

Mara Valderrama
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Mara Valderrama is a doctoral candidate in the Theatre and Performance program at The Graduate Center,
CUNY. She works as an instructor in the Communication Department at Baruch College in New York and she is
the regional managing editor for Spain at The Theatre Times. Her dissertation analyzes innovative representa-
tions of gender and sexuality in Spanish experimental theatre and performance since 1990 to the present. Her
interests include feminism and gender studies, Spanish contemporary theatre and performance, marginality,
and migration and refugee theatre. After earning her Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language and Literature
at the Complutense University in Madrid, she completed two Masters degrees in Theatre and Performance
Arts and in Comparative Literature. Valderrama graduated from the Music Conservatory of Ferraz in Madrid,
and has been a Language and Literature teacher in public high schools in Spain and the US. In addition to her
current ventures as a scholar, she has wide experience as a performer.

Measuring the Female Body as Contestation in Spanish

Contemporary Performance from Esther Ferrer to La Ribot
In the early 90s, Spanish dancer and performance artist La Ribot, wearing only a towel over her
naked body, measures her nose with a measuring tape and happily exclaims “1 meter!” to the laugh-
er of the audience that surrounds her, then continues to measure the distance from the top of
her head to her crotch and other random parts of her body humorously critiquing the futility of
obsessively measuring women’s bodies. Years before her, in 1975, Esther Ferrer, one of Spain’s pi-
oneering performance artists, had meticulously measured all parts of her naked body writing the
measurements in a human body silhouette on the wall. An action that she has continued to re-
peat until the present, foregrounding the contrast between the modern obsession with numbers
and scientific rationality and the physicality of bodies and biological materiality, exemplified in
the changes in her own body over the decades. This paper will analyze two works by Spanish fe-
male performance artists that embody a resistance to the cartesian rule of the numerical order
used as a tool to control women’s bodies: Ferrer’s Íntimo y personal and La Ribot’s “Caprichomío.”
Women’s bodies continue to be a site of contention between patriarchal male domination and
feminist resistance. In Western societies, where women oppression is exercised in the bodies by
the rule of “controlling cultural norms and productions of beauty, sexual desire and behavior”
Wendy Brown, feminist performers and activists use their bodies as a site of contestation. By
appropriating a tool that society uses to control them, Ferrer and La Ribot apply the measuring
tape to our own gaze to quantify the extent of our submission to the dictatorship of numbers.

Key Words
female body, feminism, performance art
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

418 419
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

420
Groups
Working
HISTORIOGRAPHY

421

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Ruthie Abeliovich Gautam Chakrabarti

Haifa University Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Ruthie Abeliovich is a lecturer at the Theatre Department at Haifa University. Her research focuses on au- Gautam Chakrabarti is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the ERC-Sub-Project “Learning ‘the Moscow Rules’:
dio-visual aesthetics in 20th century theatre and live-art. Her work appeared in academic journals such as Theatre Artists from Postcolonial India in the Eastern Bloc, 1950-80,” in the Centre for Global Theatre History,
TDR, Theatre Journal, Performance Research, Theatre Research International. She is has recently completed a Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is also an Assistant Lecturer in Berlin and German Studies at
monograph devoted to a collection of sound recordings of signature productions from the modernist Hebrew the Freie Universität Berlin FUB. He has, previously, taught South Asian Studies at the Humboldt-Universität
theatre. zu Berlin and English and Comparative Literature at the FUB, where he was a Dahlem Research School HON-
ORS Postdoctoral Fellow 2014-15 with the project “Non-Committal Involvements: Literary Detectives and Cold
Between History and Reality: Rolf Hochhuth’s “The Representative” Warriors across Eurasia. He was, in 2016, a Global Humanities Junior Research and Teaching Fellow at The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also finished, at the FUB, his PhD on Familiarising the Exotic: Intro-
ducing European Drama in Early Modern India 2011-14 the dissertation is currently in preparation as a book
In 1964 Habima—Israel’s national theatre—staged a theatre production of Rolf Hochhuth’s contro- manuscript. He has studied English Literature and Culture Studies in Calcutta and Delhi Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-
versial drama The Representative, that narrates the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. versity, and has taught in various colleges of the University of Delhi 2003-10. He was a Visiting Lecturer in two
While Hochhuth’s drama is one of the most discussed plays in modern German drama, its Israe- universities and institutes in St Petersburg, Russia 2008-9. He has also delivered invited lectures in Finland, the
li production, featuring Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees playing the roles of Nazi officers, Baltic States, Poland, Israel and South Africa 2006-.
Christian priests and clerks, has surprisingly not been addressed outside of its contemporary local
newspaper theatrical discourse. In its sociopolitical context, following Eichmann’s trail and execution A Month in India: Boris Babochkins Theatrical Passage to the
1961-1962, the theatrical image of Jewish refugees dressed in Nazi attire transduced victims into Subcontinent
perpetrators, stratifying the drama with political meanings. This paper tells the unknown story of
one of the actors that participated in this production for a brief period of time: Rafy Rakovsky, who In 1957-58, a Soviet cultural delegation – with a theatrical interest – toured India. It was led by Boris
as a child during the Holocaust found sanctuary in a Christian monastery, and in Habima’s produc- A. Babochkin 1904-75, an iconic face of Soviet cinema and theatre, who was, in 1952-53, the Artistic
tion, played the role of a converted Jew. Following this experience Rakovsky hospitalized himself in Director of the Moscow Drama Theatre Named after A. S. Pushkin. Babochkin’s work was marked
a mental institution where he spent the rest of his life. In this paper, Rakovsky’s forgotten person- both by international acclaim after his eponymous role in the Soviet classic film Chapaev 1934 and
al tragedy opens a multifaceted discussion on the interrelations between the drama and its social difficult equations with, among others, Ekaterina Furtseva 1910-74, the long-standing Soviet Min-
context, the overlapping of life and theatre, actor and role, fiction and reality. Probing into related ister of Culture 1960-74. He seems to have been well-known in India, especially to K. A. Abbas and
archival materials, this paper focuses on the making of this production: the rehearsal process, the Balraj Sahni, the latter having met him in Moscow in 1956. His Indian sojourn, along with some
directing approach and its reception. other foreign trips – events that could, by no means, be taken for granted in the USSR – was de-
scribed in his memoirs, In Theatre and Cinema. One of the first blanket statements, which he makes
Key Words in the beginning of the chapter “Месяц в Индии” “A Month in India”, is that there seems to be no
History, rehearsal, trauma, war, game, play professional theatre in the country. There are, he writes, perhaps a dozen or a maximum of twenty
professional theatre-troupes in a country with a then population of 400 million people. However, he
finds this to be quite compensated with what he sees as people’s art, amateur in principle, but very
vibrant. The sole stated purpose of this delegation of three-four people was to find out more about
Indian theatre. They landed in Delhi, where the 8th IPTA Conference was taking place at the Ramlila
Maidan Ground in December 1957-January 1958. The Soviet observers spent eight days attending
the performances, which included various kinds of folk and classical dances, et al. This paper will
seek to process archival work to be done in the GITIS and GA-RF in Moscow and assess the signifi-
cance of this visit.

Key Words
Cultural Cold War, Boris Babochkin, IPTA, Soviet Theatre Diplomacy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

422 423
 WG WG

David Coates Jim Davis

University of Warwick University of Warwick
David is an Early Career Researcher based at the University of Warwick. He has recently submitted his thesis Jim Davis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. His major research interest is in nine-
titled The Development of Amateur Theatre in Britain, 1789-1914. David has been a member of IFTR and the teenth-century British theatre and his most recent books are Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and
Historiography Working Group since 2013, and was the Administrator for the IFTR Warwick World Congress Regency England Cambridge University Press, 2015, winner of the David Bradby Prize for international theatre
in 2014. He is also a long-standing member of the Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA and research, and theatre & entertainment Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. He is also joint-author of a prize-winning study
the Society for Theatre Research STR, and has served on the Executive Committee of both organisations. For of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century, Reflecting the Audience: London Theatre-going 1840–
the latter, he founded the New Researchers’ Network NRN, and served as its Chair. David is also a member of 1880 2001. He has edited a book on Victorian pantomime for Palgrave Macmillan and also published several ar-
the British Association for Victorian Studies BAVS and is one of the founding members of RAPPT, an organi- ticles on pantomime.A two-volume edition of nineteenth-century dramatizations of Dickens with Jacky Bratton
sation that aims to unite scholars carrying out ‘Research into Amateur Performance and Private Theatricals’. for Oxford University Press was published in 2017. He is also an editor of Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.
Alongside David’s PhD, he has worked in Arts Administration at Warwick Arts Centre in various departments.
David’s current projects include: applying for funding to investigate the cultural heritage of the Shelley family
in Dorset, England constructing a proposal to publish his thesis as a monograph considering grave hunting as
A Long Farewell: Touring and Migrating Actors in Mid-nineteenth
part of research methodology, and writing on queer subcultures in nineteenth century amateur theatre. Century Australia

Theatre Historian as Grave Hunter This paper considers the distinctions between touring and migrating with reference to the pres-
ence of British Actors, such as Clarence Holt, George Coppin, Gustavus Brooke and Avonia Jones, in
On a cold afternoon in October 2017 I arranged to meet a grave hunter at Kensal Green Cemetery, Australia. While some touring actors passed quickly through Australia, others made it their home
in London, to locate the final resting place of the ‘celebrated amateur of fashion’, Robert ‘Romeo’ on a permanent or temporary basis. The presence of the latter raises questions around national
Coates 1772–1848. Although this was my first attempt at finding the grave of one of the subjects of identity and colonial culture, as well as the crossing and re-crossing of borders. There is a clear dis-
my research, I knew that colleagues shared this practice. In 2016, Prof. Viv Gardner had invited me tinction between actors who stayed even if only for a few years and actors who regarded Australia
to Plas Newydd House, Wales, to view archival materials relating to the ‘dancing’ fifth Marquis of as a lucrative stop-over or an opportunity for cultural imposition. Of Brooke, who was very popular
Anglesey 1875¬–1905. Before leaving the estate she wanted to visit the grave of her subject in the in Australia, the critic, James Smith, commented that ‘[his] greatness was only revealed in these
local churchyard. Other colleagues have shared their grave hunting activities with me, including Dr colonies people in England have no conception of what he really was.’ Clarence Holt eventually
Janice Norwood and Dr Catherine Hindson. On announcing my interest in theatrical grave hunting left Australia because of home-sickness, but his son, Bland Holt, was to play a significant role in
on social media, even more came out of the woodwork, and I was inundated with emails and tweets the history of Australian theatre, as was George Coppin. However, this paper will focus on those
from academics from a range of disciplines who had similarly tracked down the graves of their sub- who stayed, either permanently or for a reasonable amount of time, the ways in which they ac-
jects and were keen to attach photographs to prove it. This paper considers grave hunting as a re- climatized to living and working in Australia, and the point at which touring turns into migration.
search method used by theatre historians. Firstly, it analyses cemeteries and gravestones as sources
and proposes how these are used in the construction of theatre history. Secondly, it asks why else Key Words
theatre historians seek out and visit the graves of their subjects. It will consider this practice as pil- touring, migration, Australia, nineteenth-century
grimage and ritual, and will look to borrow from areas such as literary tourism and memory studies
to better understand this practice.

Key Words
Historiography, Grave hunting, Cemeteries, Methodologies, Theatre History, Actors, Iconography,
Evidence, Literary Tourism, Pilgrimage
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

424 425
 WG WG

Anita Gonzalez Tancredi Gusman

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor Freie Universität Berlin

Anita Gonzalez is a Professor of Theatre and Drama at the University of Michigan where she heads the Global Tancredi Gusman is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Institute of Theatre Studies of the Freie
Theatre and Ethnic Studies minor. Her research considers dialogic performance and how it reveals histories Universität Berlin with the Project: Between Evidence and Representation: History of Performance Art Doc-
and identities in transnational contexts. She has published two books, Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth umentation from 1970 to 1977 [EU-Horizon 2020, MSC grant agreement No 747881]. In 2016 he was a Post-
and Reality U Texas Press, 2010 and Jarocho’s Soul U Press of America, 2004 and a co-edited anthology with doctoral Fellow at the Università degli Studi di Milano for the EU-Cooperation Project: Senses: the Sensory
Thomas F. DeFrantz Black Performance Theory Duke, 2014. Her twenty scholarly essays have been published Theatre. New Transnational Strategies for Theatre Audience Building, co-funded by the Creative Europe Pro-
in the books Black Acting Methods 2017, British Dance: Black Routes 2016, The Oxford Handbook of Dance gramme. He studied Philosophy at the Università di Pavia and in 2012 he obtained his Ph.D in Theatre History
and Theater 2015, The Community Performance Reader 2007, Latina’s Onstage 2000 and journals including Studies at the Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” with a Dissertation on Alfred Kerr, Herbert Ihering and theatre
Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, Performance Research International, Modern Drama, Dance criticism in Germany from 1887 to 1933. During his doctoral research he was Associated Fellow of the Inter-
Research Journal and Theatre Topics. Gonzalez is also a deviser, writer and director of theatrical works www. national Research Training Group “InterArt Studies” at Freie Universität Berlin. He is editor and translator of
anitagonzalez.com. the Italian edition 2014 of Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Ästhetik des Performativen and recently published his first
monograph: L’arpa e la fionda. Kerr, Ihering e la critica teatrale tedesca tra fine Ottocento e il nazionalsocialis-
Maritime Migrations and Transatlantic Performance mo 2016 [The Harp and the Sling. Kerr, Ihering, and the German Theatre Criticism from the End of Nineteenth
Century to Nationalsocialism].
Prior to 1950, when air travel became prevalent, maritime highways were the primary way in which
global populations migrated and experienced the world. While humanities scholars tend to focus Performance Art in the 1970s: Approaching the Formation of a
on ports and land-based economic and social systems, first encounters of races and cultures, par- Transnational Art Field through its Documentation
ticularly between 1500 and the middle of the twentieth century, happened within maritime spaces.
Most sea travelers were illiterate working class or enslaved people who managed the mechanics of In the early 1970s the category Performance Art, coined in the US art-scene, spread into the inter-
the ships, lifted goods and cargo, and risked their lives to earn money. Often, they were escaping national art-world and became, in a few years, a recognized label for identifying a wide spectrum of
poverty or persecution, or were forced into servitude. Encapsulated in the ship, sea travelers com- live actions performed by artists. This development, bolstered by art magazines, art exhibitions and
municated with one another across language and cultural boundaries through performed gestures scholarly publications, was the terminological part of a process of creation of a new transnational art
or actions. I am in the midst of a writing fellowship at the Institute for the Humanities University of field for live-art practices within the visual arts. Despite the vastness of the research into the history
Michigan where I am writing a book called Shipping Out which analyzes maritime performance. The of performance-practice in the Twentieth Century, the dynamics and the agents that led this global
project investigates how performances on ships and in maritime ports enables cultural encounters process and shaped what we now know as “performance art”, have not as yet been studied in detail.
and dialogic exchange. Central to my writing is an interest in performance as mechanism for working The aim of my current Marie Skłodowska-Curie Project – Between Evidence and Representation:
class communities to articulate identities and comment upon their economic and social status. I History of Performance Art Documentation from 1970 to 1977 – is to develop a new methodological
apply to the historiography working group because my project brings dance methodologies, coupled approach to investigate this historical subject in which a crucial role is assigned to the history of per-
with analysis of visual materials, to historical analysis of working class performance. The nineteenth formance art documentation. The documentation was the device which allowed the containment
century maritime archive consists of architectural ship plans, lithographs, paintings of port perform- of live action and events in the framework of the visual arts, making them suitable for exhibition,
ers, sea shanty lyrics and descriptions of unusual festivals or parades. My chapter on Port and Pub in conservation and collection. In doing so, performance could reach a broad international audience.
particular, grapples with interpreting this kind of data. The project as a whole engages strongly with Through the analysis of the role of documentation the project takes into account different strategies
the 2018 IFTR theme of migrations and identity formation. I hope you will consider my application. for framing performance within the visual arts, and investigates how these produced the art-his-
torical object called performance art. My contribution to the Historiography Working Group, which
Key Words will consist of an article of 5000 words maximum, will present this new methodological approach
working class, theatre, dance, maritime, migrations, nineteenth century through the analysis of special case examples. In so doing I will raise the question as to whether the
epistemic object “performance” can be considered as being historical and determined by the differ-
ent frameworks in which it is produced and presented.

Key Words
Performance Art History Performance Documentation Performance in Theatre and Visual Arts Epis-
temology of Theatre History
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

426 427
 WG WG

Michal Kobialka Hanna Korsberg

University of Minnesota University of Helsinki

Michal Kobialka is a Professor of Theatre in the Department of Theatre Arts & Dance at the University of Hanna Korsberg has been Professor of Theatre Research at the University of Helsinki since 2008. Her research
Minnesota. He has published over 100 articles on medieval, eighteenth-century and contemporary European interests include the relationship between theatre and politics in Finland, a topic which she has studied in two
theatre, and theatre historiography. He is the author of A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifes- monographs. She is also the author of several articles discussing theatre history, historiography and perfor-
tos, 1944-1990 University of California Press, 1993 Further on, Nothing: Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre University of mance. She has been an active member of the International Federation for Theatre Research IFTR Historiog-
Minnesota Press, 2009 and This Is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages University of raphy Working Group since 2001, an executive committee member in 2007–2015 and Vice President during
Michigan Press, 1999 the editor of Of Borders and Thresholds: Theatre History, Practice, and Theory University 2015– 2019. She has served as a member of the advisory boards for Contemporary Theatre Review and Nordic
of Minnesota Press, 1999 and a co-editor with Barbara Hanawalt of Medieval Practices of Space University Theatre Studies. She is also a member of the Teachers’ Academy at the University of Helsinki.
of Minnesota Press, 2000 and with Rosemarie Bank of Theatre Historiography: Time, Space, Matter Palgrave,
2015. Survivals from the Past: a Film as a Source for a Theatre
Historian?
Migration and the Trans-Atlantic British Community: 1715-43
In my paper, I am discussing questions on using an artwork as a source material for theatre history.
The concept of migration draws attention not only to the mobility of bodies, identity, gender, or My case study is a short film, Theatre, directed by Jack Witikka in 1957 discussing the making of Sam-
ethnicity, but also to that which is mobile, that is, the “matter” of identity, gender, or ethnicity. uel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Finnish National Theatre. The stage production premiered on
Following this insight, this essay, rather than focusing on migration per se, will bring this notion into the 5 October 1954. Theatre is not a documentary, but there are a lot of connections to the theatre
a momentary standstill to recognize both the contingency of historical events and indeterminacy of production. As Desmond Bell, a documentary film maker, has captured: “The photographic image
historical categories by which we grasp them. These categories, which are often associated with the still of moving can be seen as “a fragmentary survival from the past.” For a theatre historian, I am
idea of migration, capture only a partial aspect of historiography as thought travels across temporal arguing, a film is more than a picture. For example, in the scenes of Theatre, it is possible to see the
and spatial cultural boundaries, moving in and out of conceptual frames and, in the process, ab- physicality of the actors, their moving bodies and their positions on the stage and hear their voic-
stracting them. It is only when we become cognizant of non-synchronic temporalities and spatialities es, to recognize things that were included in theatre practice in 1950s. I propose that Theatre can
accumulated in these diverse categories, the violence of real abstractions Marx, Sohn-Rethel and the be analyzed with Walter Benjamin’s theorization of memory as an aesthetic of ruins and traces in
need for a dialectical engagement with the past become evident. In order to substantiate this point, mind. The ruin for Benjamin is both the most material and most symbolically powerful form of the
this essay will explore the tension between a cultural artifact John Gay’s “Polly” [1729] and real allegorization of history. The fragments of a ruin are testimony of the past that has gone and at the
abstractions produced by trans-Atlantic entrepôt capitalism. The play ends with a strong sense that same time they are the indicative of a loss that never can be repaired. Theatre is like a ruin: it is an
virtue and generosity will secure happiness that the marriage between Cawwawkee and Polly, who incomplete record of the theatrical event it purports to represent. Yet, it is a testimony of the past.
migrated to the West Indies, offers the promise of a new sociability that will resolve a contradiction
between hospitality and hostility. Virtue and generosity, coded into Polly, are however no longer cul- Key Words
tural devices used to bring about the resolution of the play, but abstractions produced by trans-At- theatre historiography, film, theatre, 1950s
lantic entrepôt capitalism to secure and consolidate its commercial reality. Thus, “migration” comes
to itself in a determinate negation that, as Marcuse avers, is not only a critique of a conformist logic,
which denies the reality of contradictions, but also a critique of the forces of negation, which are
either defeated or reconciled with the status quo.

Key Words
migration, commerce, theatre historiography, XVIII-th century, John Gay’s “Polly”, entropt capitalism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

428 429
 WG WG

Mechele Leon Jane Milling

University of Kansas University of Exeter

Mechele Leon is a theatre scholar and artist. She focuses on French theatre in the context of national identi- Jane Milling is Associate Professor at Department of Drama, University of Exeter
ty, cultural history, and performance practices. Her book, Moliere, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical
Afterlife University of Iowa Press, 2009 is winner of the 2010 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research Performing Services: Historiographies of Performing Servants on
in Theatre History. She is editor of A Cultural History of Theatre in the Enlightenment, the fourth volume in
the series A Cultural History of Theatre Bloomsbury Press, 2017. She has translated and directed several of the Eighteenth-century British Stage
Molière’s plays, as well as plays from the European and American avant-garde tradition. Dr. Leon received her
PhD in Theatre Arts from Cornell University and a D.E.A. in Theatre et arts du spectacle from the University of What was the cultural work done by the representation of stage servants on the eighteenth century
Paris. Living in France from 1996-2001, she taught theatre history, theory, and acting at the American Univer- British stage? The increasingly frequent appearance of servants centre stage in the drama, epito-
sity of Paris and held a post as lecturer in English at the University of Paris. mised by Fielding’s The Intriguing Chambermaid 1734 or Garrick’s The Lying Valet 1741, draws at-
tention to these roles as fit for more than supernumerary players. How might we recover the perfor-
Theatre Historiography and Cultural Diplomacy mative triumph of Kitty Clive as Lettice, Fielding’s eponymous chambermaid, in a role where ‘almost
all that we admire is in this actress we give to the author the praise which belongs to her.’ John Hill
Recent studies, such as Charlotte Canning’s “On the Performance Front: US Theatre and Interna- The Actor, 1750: 230 While we can recognize the dramaturgical cross-fertilization of European influ-
tionalism” have sparked renewed interest in the uses of theatre by agencies of the state to promote ences from commedia, French and Spanish comedy in adaptation and translation, it is more difficult
national political interests. This is the history of theatre and cultural diplomacy. My current research to capture the intra-theatrical performance conventions that underpinned comic success in these
project on French theatre in the United States in the 20th century similarly delves into the sporadic, servant roles. Tim Hitchcock recently defended micro-history against calls for a return to nationalist
contradictory, and often fraught efforts of the French state to use theatre to promote its image in the grand narratives, arguing ‘history from below has been a remarkably successful form of cultural
United States. I analyze this “soft” diplomacy in relation to other activities such as the establishment politics and Politics, that owes its basic success to the creation of an imaginative and empathetic
of French institutes and cultural centers. I also explore how French theatre artists understood their connection between individuals, past and present.’ historyonics.blogspot.co.uk, July 2015 This paper
role—often thrust upon them—as cultural emissaries. The story of how state efforts employ theatre responds to Hitchcock’s call to build our detailed studies of complex particularity into larger narra-
in order to move the hearts and minds of foreign populations is an exciting and important topic in tives that might help us refocus the jingoistic simplification of the present. What are the implications
theatre history, even as it raises historiographical questions. In this short 2,000-word “think piece,” I for our historiography if we see the representation of servants and service not as a matter of British
will take up a few of these questions. Specifically, I plan to address the following: 1 How should the- exceptionalism, but as part of a porous European and international network of dramaturgies, perfor-
atre historians understand the definition of cultural diplomacy? How do we determine the boundar- mative conventions, and migrating stage personnel. [Submission for 2,000 word discussion panel]
ies of its research? 2 Given that official pronouncements of the state rarely present uncomplicated
truths, where do we locate information about cultural diplomacy in the past and how do we uncover Key Words
a range of historical testimony about its actions and intentions? popular culture, servants, cross-fertilization

Key Words
Historiography, Cultural Diplomacy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

430 431
 WG WG

Kate Newey Rashna Darius Nicholson

University of Exeter Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Kate Newey is Professor of Theatre History at the University of Exeter. She is an historian specialising in nine- Rashna Darius Nicholson recently submitted her doctoral dissertation The Theatre of Empire at the LMU, Mu-
teenth century British popular theatre. Her recent books include Politics, Performance and Popular Culture in nich. The thesis is a critical history of the nineteenth century Parsi theatre, South and South East Asias earliest
the Nineteenth Century, edited with Peter Yeandle and Jeffrey Richards MUP, 2016, John Ruskin and the Vic- and most prolific commercial theatrical phenomenon. Her interests include early modern and modern Asian
torian Theatre with Jeffrey Richards Palgrave, 2010 and Women’s Theatre Writing in Victorian Britain Palgrave, and Middle Eastern performative traditions, world literature, fascism, religious reformations and the global-
2005. She is a contributor to several reference texts on Victorian literature, most recently the Cambridge Com- ization of opera.
panion to Victorian Women’s Writing edited by Linda K. Peterson. She is currently finishing a book on Victorian
pantomime, emerging from her Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘A Cultural History of On the ImPossibilities of a Free Theatre
English Pantomime, 1837-1901’ with Jeffrey Richards and Peter Yeandle.
This paper traces the impact of non-governmental and governmental funding on theatre with ad-
How to Write about Pleasure Historically ditional examples from the visual arts and music in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 1983
to the present day. Foreign aid to both the Palestinian Authority through the Ministry of Culture as
Short paper option B How to write about past silliness and fun and pleasure? This is my current task: well as non- governmental organizations has played a key role in determining the ways in which the
to write about the ultimate trivial, frivolous, and ephemeral performance that was English panto- Palestinian cultural sector has developed over the last two decades. However, this transformation
mime of the nineteenth century. I’m approaching this through an exploration of how we can use the has not been viewed by local actors as an unmixed good. By using the arts as a means of promoting
substantial body of archival material - text and illustration and material ephemeral traces if we’re development, international donor agencies contributed towards the ‘NGOization’ of the Palestinian
lucky – to try to recover the experience of pantomime in the nineteenth century. However, these cultural sector. In the aftermath of the Oslo agreement, the sudden and enormous influx of foreign
traces are partial, and after the ‘linguistic turn’ the truth claims of historical method have come un- funding impelled a race amongst local associations to secure public grants and private endowments.
der scrutiny. Yet in these sources of evidence, however partial and situated, there are traces of the This lead not only to a proliferation of minor organizations working with smaller budgets and staff
lived and embodied experiences of theatre workers and audiences. I want to use Michael Pickering’s but also to the transformation of informal fine arts companies into NGOs executing short-term pro-
trenchant statement in support of an engaged, sympathetic, and materialist historiography as a start- grams based on social inclusion, democracy building, gender equality, and children and youth activi-
ing point: Historical practice is then, finally, about keeping faith with […] ordinary men and women ties. By tracing this development, this article delineates how the inflow of international aid has come
[…]. It is their historical experience which we strive to reconstruct, however complex, fragmented at the expense of not only longer term, sustainable strategies that promote the arts for the sake of
and contradictory that experience may have been, and unless we wish to jettison any sense that is the arts but also the economic stability and social acceptance of the sector as a whole.
their experience which is primarily in the frame, then we have to work with some epistemological
claim to referentiality. I’ll use his belief in ‘complex, fragmented and contradictory’ experience to Key Words
explore how we might reconstruct, and understand on its own terms, the frivolous and silly practices Occupied Palestinian Territories, NGOs, theatre
of Victorian pantomime. More broadly, I will address the historiographical issue of the debates over
experience pace Scott, in the light of Pickering’s statement cited above. I am also interested in my
strategies as an historian of popular culture, working from an assumption of a politically oppositional
view point, in dealing with the racism and triumphalist jingoism of Victorian pantomime.

Key Words
Popular performance pantomime historiography pleasure experience
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

432 433
 WG WG

Ewa Partyga Sabine Päsler

Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences University of Cologne

Associate Professor and Head of Theatre Department at the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, War- Sabine Päsler is a research assistant at the Department of Media Culture and Theatre, University of Cologne.
saw. Research interests: cultural and social theatre history (XIX-XX century), comparative drama, Henrik Ib- In 2015 she gained her Master of Arts in Media Studies, Theatre Studies and Art History at the University of
sen, contemporary drama. Author of the books: Chórdramatyczny w poszukiwaniutożsamościteatralnej (2004) Cologne. Since 2016 she is a PhD candidate in the Regular Track of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Hu-
[The Dramatic Chorus in Search of Theatrical Identity], Wiek XIX. Przedstawienia (2016) [Nineteenth Century. manities Cologne with a dissertation on the history and historiography of theatre directing in Germany.
Performances], Ibsenowskiekonstelacje. Ćwiczenia w patrzeniuiczytaniu (2016) [Ibsen in Constellations. Exer-
cices in Looking and Reading]. Naming a New Theatrical Practice: A Question of Mutation and Its
Methodological Challenges
Some Real and Many Imagined Borders in the History of 19th
Century Theatre in Poland In order to address my general historiographic question ‘how to write a history of directing in Ger-
man speaking theatre’, in this paper, I take a closer look at the history of the term “Regie” and
During the 19th century Polish theatre developed in a ghost country, in a territory partitioned be- its theatrical context. Today, the German term “Regie” is used to define artistic practices to put
tween three neighbours (Russia, Prussia and Austria). Consequently, migration of artists and spec- something on stage, but etymologically it comes from the French term “régie“ referring to fi-
tators, topics and texts across state borders and across cultural boundaries was a common practice nancial management and administration. Eighteenth-century French theatre, especially the
in the theatre of 19th century Poland. Paradoxically enough the very existence of those borders ComédieFrançaise in Paris, was a role model for theatre-making at German speaking court theatres.
contributed to the successful construction of the imagined identity of the so-called Polish (national) The ComédieFrançaise assigned all the functions of a dramatist, principal actor, and director to one
theatre. The necessity of crossing state borders while travelling between Polish theatres strength- person who was responsible for the “mise-en-scène” of the dramatic text. “Mise-en-scène” was
ened the desire of seeking all that was perceived as common tradition, common experience etc. On the main focus in French theatrical practices. By contrast, on German-speaking stages, in general
the other hand the inevitable competition with German or Russian theatres, working right next door the lead actor directed the play only with respect to his part. The idea of the French “mise-en-
to Polish venues, encouraged differentiation of Polish from any other theatre. Yet in practice the scène“ only appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The term “Regie” first appeared
audiences were mobile and moved easily between different venues and diverse cultures. The phe- in German in Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müllers 1772 book “GenaueNachrichten von beydenkai-
nomenon of garden theatres in Warsaw, especially popular from late 1860s until 1890s, with their serlich-königlichenSchaubühnen” about the Vienna court theatre, where it was used to describe a
extremely diverse and multi-ethnic audiences, can serve as an excellent example. principal actor’s managerial task. In the same book, he also wrote about a French theatre troupe
In Polish theatre historiography the idea of cherishing the unity and uniqueness of Polish theatre has at the Vienna court. In my paper, I will analyze how this term was introduced in this and similar
always been much stronger than the idea of emphasising its cultural diversity – attitudes that both publications toward the end of the eighteenth century, as well as their respective descriptions of
result from and influence the contemporary reality. In the current political atmosphere in Europe French and the Viennese theatrical practices. I regard the transfer of terms and theatrical prac-
this tendency could easily become even stronger. Therefore my paper posits the question of what tices from French- to German-speaking theatrical contexts as a form of mutation: terms stay the
kind of research and what kind of approach is needed in order to persuasively reshape the dominat- same but their meanings mutate through practices. Ultimately I will argue that a history of direct-
ing narrative and inscribe diverse theatre traditions in it. A broadly understood notion of migration ing can develop a useful method and source critique to think and address processes of mutation.
could be a useful vehicle for transforming the concept of Polish theatre history into open and inclu-
sive cultural histories of theatres in Poland. Key Words
historiography, directing, Regie, French, German, court theatre
Key Words
theatre history, 19th century theatre in Poland, multi-ethnic audiences, cultural mobility of audiences
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

434 435
 WG WG

Dassia Posner Nora Probst

Northwestern University University of Cologne

Dassia N. Posner is Associate Professor of Theatre at Northwestern University and Director of the Interdisci- Nora Probst M.A. is research assistant at the theatre collection of the University of Cologne Theaterwissen-
plinary PhD in Theatre and Drama program. Her books include The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the schaftlicheSammlung and currently working in a collaborative research project between the Theaterwissen-
Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde 2016, an analysis of the directorial innovations of Meyerhold, Tairov, and Ei- schaftlicheSammlung TWS, University of Cologne, and the Institute of Theatre Studies, Freie Universität Berlin,
senstein, and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance 2014, co-edited with Claudia in co-operation with the Cologne Center for e-Humanities CCeH.  She studied theatre and film studies, German
Orenstein and John Bell. She is the dramaturgical translator for Tracy Letts’s version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters literature and art history at the University of Cologne and graduated in 2012. Her research interests include
2016. Her current book project is a history of the Moscow Kamerny Theatre. theatre and performance art of the early twentieth century, theatre and digital humanities, and the history
of theatre studies within Europe. She is also interested in different forms and patterns of cultural memory
especially within theatre collections and archives. Nora Probst is currently finishing her PhD aiming to explore
Bulgakov’s “The Crimson Island” at the Moscow Kamerny Theatre the cultural history / cultural stories of early theatre studies with their different traditions between humanities
and ethnography working title: Kulturgeschichten der Theaterwissenschaft. Zu Traditionen der Forschungzwi-
2,000-word essay option preferred Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Crimson Island received its world premiere schenGeistesgeschichte und Ethnographie.
at the Moscow Kamerny Theatre on December 11, 1928. This play about censorship, performed for
the censors, took particular aim at the head of the Central Repertory Committee Glavrepertkom. It Re-Collecting Theatre History. Theatre Archives and the
was also a satire about the deadliness of artistic hackwork that serves a good cause: here, the glori-
fication of the 1917 Revolution. Looking back on the history of Stalinist artistic repression, it seems
Epistemology of Historiography
baffling that a play so directly critical of censorship could not only be approved for production, but When traces and documents of theatre performances are collected to be preserved in research
could run for a full season—so baffling that some scholars have claimed it was banned immediately institutions they often find their way into the archive as personal collections. These personal col-
or played only a few times. Glavrepertkom did pass the play, however, after which the production ran lections of theatre practitioners e.g. actors, directors, stage or costume designers, puppeteers
64 times before closing in June 1929. All of Bulgakov’s plays were banned shortly after. The Kamerny do not only provide a material base for examining a person’s work and collaborations over time,
went on to develop one of the most acclaimed productions of the Soviet period: Vishnevsky’s An but also might reveal tensions between the biographical and the historical narrative. In my paper,
Optimistic Tragedy 1933, which became a model for Socialist Realism in the theatre. Only in 1936, I would like to introduce the research project Re-Collecting Theatre History of the University of
when the Kamerny staged a play that was inadvertently misaligned with Stalin’s political goals, was Cologne and the Free University Berlin that aims to digitally interconnect archival resources from
The Crimson Island used retroactively as evidence of the Kamerny’s profound disservice to the State. personal collections of different institutions in an online platform. The main goal is to make se-
The Crimson Island is well-known among Bulgakov scholars for having fueled one of Bulgakov’s fa- lected archival material digitally accessible and to examine the networks of theatre practitioners
mous letters to Stalin. The Kamerny and its subsequent Soviet-era scholars essentially wrote the in Germany between 1900 and 1960. The project aims to analyse the relationships between texts,
production out of the theatre’s history, however, aside from footnote apologies for this “mistake.” images and objects within paradigmatic personal collections and furthermore to examine the
Drawing on a variety of previously untapped archival sources, including the censor’s copy of the play, connecting lines between exemplary agents of German theatre. By studying multiple theatre bi-
this paper will reclaim this production’s key role in the identity and fate of the Kamerny, poised as it ographies, networks of theatre practice emerge that counteract the common pattern of histor-
was inadvertently on the precipitous edge of Stalin’s plunge into collectivization and the repression ical structures: They often reflect neither the familiar epochal thresholds in Germany e.g. 1914,
of individual thought. 1918/19, 1933, 1945 nor the dividing lines between the disciplinary history/histories of art, cul-
ture, society and politics. Instead we are looking at material ingredients, intellectual coordinates
Key Words and cultural products of different mindsets and styles of operation that ostensibly without effort
Soviet theatre, historiography, Bulgakov, Kamerny Theatre cross and stride through sociocultural milieus including theatre, fashion, fine arts, architecture,
engineering, different systems of discourse and historical timeframes. To what extend can digital
forms help to rehabilitate biographical narratives? How can we visualize networks of theatre practi-
tioners? And what are the institutional, technical, and scholarly boundaries to such an enterprise?

Key Words
Digital Humanities, Networks, Archive, Biography, Germany
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

436 437
 WG WG

Janne Risum Jo Robinson

Aarhus University University of Nottignham

Risum, Janne Dr. Phil., Associate Professor of Dramaturgy at the School of Communication and Culture at Jo Robinson is Associate Professor of Drama and Performance in the School of English at the University of Not-
Aarhus University, Denmark. She is co-editor of the standard work, Dansk teaterhistorie Copenhagen Gyl- tingham. Her broad research interests in theatre and performance focus on the relationships between perfor-
dendal, 2 vols, 1992-1993. She has published widely in English and other languages on past and pres- mance, place, community and region. She led the AHRC project, ‘Mapping the Moment: Performance Culture
ent theatre and acting in Europe and in Asia. Her dissertation in English on the guest appearance of the in Nottingham 1857-1867’, outputs from which were published in Performance Research and Nineteenth-Cen-
Chinese male performer of female roles Mei Lanfang and his Beijing opera troupe in Moscow in 1935 tury Theatre and Film, and which now underpins the HLF-supported ‘Our Theatre Royal Nottingham: Its Sto-
and its effects, The Mei Lanfang Effect 2008, was based on extensive archive studies in Russia and else- ries, People & Heritage’ project and the AHRC Follow on Funding for Impact project, ‘Citizen Scholarship in
where, as are her subsequent follow-up articles exploring complementary aspects of this seminal event. Nottingham’. She is currently co-editing the Bloomsbury Companion to Theatre History and Historiography
with Claire Cochrane.
The Myths and the Facts: Who Said what at the Concluding
Russian Debate on 14 April 1935 to Sum Up the Experiences from Onstage, Backstage and in the Archive: Re-arranging the Record
the Chinese Performer of Female Roles Mei Lanfang’s Guest with Volunteer Historians at the Theatre Royal Nottingham
Appearance in Moscow?
This paper reflects on the UK Heritage Lottery Fund supported ‘Our Theatre Royal Nottingham’ proj-
The Myths and the Facts: Who said what at the concluding Russian debate on 14 April 1935 to ect, a two year project that began in March 2017 as a collaboration between the University of Not-
sum up the experiences from the Chinese performer of female roles Mei Lanfang’s guest appear- tingham, the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham, and over 70 volunteers with the aim
ance in Moscow? Due to world politics as well as to Soviet and Chinese censorship, the written of co-researching and co-curating a digital archive to be shared with the general public and visitors
reactions to the Chinese performer of female roles Mei Lanfangs guest appearance in Moscow to the theatre. While projects such as the British Library’s recently launched In the Spotlight and
in 1935 later became accessible to posterity in a grossly distorted order. The same fate befell the New York Public Library’s Ensemble utilise volunteer input through crowdsourcing, with volunteers
transcript of the concluding debate hosted by All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with For- asked to carry out defined microtasks to tag and transcribe documents from theatre history, ‘Our
eign Countries VOKS on 14 April to sum up the experiences from this event. Inaccessibility and si- Theatre Royal Nottingham’ has instead provided training and opportunities for what we are calling
lence led to myths and to sustained attempts at overcoming both. Quite recently, I was the lucky ‘citizen scholarship’: volunteers have been supported to develop the skills required to instigate and
foreigner who finally succeeded in finding the original transcript. Of course, what really hap- investigate their own interests and projects within set themes, with results that have mobilised their
pened in VOKS on  14 April  more fully emerges from the full transcript, and how and why VOKS own local knowledges and networks to uncover stories and documents outside as well as inside the
censored it also comes into full view, as does the breeding and interplay of the ensuing myths. official archives. Focusing on the outcomes of the project so far, this paper reflects on the working
practices of historical research that involves ‘non-professional’ volunteers, examining and evaluat-
Key Words ing our model of ‘citizen scholarship’ and its relationship to historical research within the academy.
Mei Lanfang, VOKS As historic theatres and venues seek to develop archival resources and record their histories, while
struggling to find the resources and support to do so, I consider the potential and challenges of col-
laboratively developing collaborative research practices that are inclusive and robust.

Key Words
Theatre history theatre historiography volunteer professional amateur citizen scholarship
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

438 439
 WG WG

Rebecca Rovit Laurence Senelick

University of Kansas Tufts University
Rebecca Rovit is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Kansas, where she teaches courses in Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory, Tufts University Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
script analysis, theatre history, and topics in theatre historiography and cultural memory at the undergraduate most recnet publications: Soviet Theatre: A Documentary History, and Jacques Offenbach and the Making of
and graduate levels. She serves as Editor of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Her research exper- Modern Culture.
tise is on the cultural heritage of the Holocaust and during wartime, evident in such publications as her micro-
history, The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin University of Iowa Press, 2012 and co-edited
with Alvin Goldfarb Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Documents, Texts, Memoirs Johns Hopkins Emigre Cabaret and the Reinvention of Russia
University Press, 1999. She has published widely on topics in theatre historiography, performance, and trauma
in such journals as American Theatre, PAJ, TDR, Theatre Survey, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, An engaging historiographic problem is the co-existence of two competing cultures: one evolving
and The Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Theatre History Studies. She has been awarded fel- in real time and another preserved and idealized in the minds of those who have left it. Before the
lowships and stipends for research on her new book-in-progress that explores the re-emergence of theatre in October Revolution, political exiles and Jewish refugees spread the image of Russia as a vast pris-
Berlin and Vienna under multinational occupation in the aftermath of WWII. As a 2016-17 Fulbright-IFK Senior on, riven by violence and corruption. After the Revolution, émigrés who scattered across the globe
Scholar to Austria, she was affiliated with at the Internationales Forschungsinstitut Kulturwissenschaften in broadcast their idea of a fabulous, high-spirited Russia. Cabaret, an arena for theatrical innovation,
Vienna Austria. She spent Trinity term 2016 as a Visiting Senior Associate at Pembroke College, University of
stylistic experimentation and avant-garde audacity, was a choice medium to dramatize this idea to
Oxford UK.
non-Russian audiences. Throughout the 1920s, émigré cabarets enjoyed great popularity: Nikita
Baliev’s Chauve-Souris in New York, Jurij Jushnij’s Die Blaue Vogel in Berlin, J. Son’s Maschere in Italy,
Reclaiming Heimat: Hubs of Exile, Migrating Histories, and Theatre Eugénie Léontovitch’s La Revue russe in Paris. Although the acts were polyglot and the compère pat-
in Occupied Post-war Vienna tered away in a pidgin version of whichever language was dominant, the chief attraction was an arti-
ficial Russianness. Cabarets promulgated a vision of a fairy-tale Russia, akin to the pictures on Palekh
On October 30, 1943 in Moscow, three world powers declared Austria the first victim of Hitler’s ag- boxes. In the interest of light entertainment, even the ubiquitous “Volga Boatman”, based on Repin’s
gression, the Anschluss “null and void,” signaling hope for the country’s independence from Nazism. painting, was leached of its social protest. Such skilled designers as Sudeikin, drawing on folk art,
The Moscow Declaration of 1943 established a multinational assessment about Austria’s annexation puppetry and caricature, portrayed the empire of serfdom and the knout as quaint and picturesque
to the Reich with regional repercussions for the immediate postwar period. The signatories pro- “Mother Russia.” This candy-box depiction was then transmitted by night-clubs staffed by waiters
claimed that Austria must bear responsibility for collaborating with Hitler’s Germany, making clear in Cossack blouses and balalaika orchestras. The “Russian Pierrot” Aleksandr Vertinsky distilled a
that the world anticipated Austria’s “own contribution to her liberation.” The geopolitical order in longing for the past into evocative ballads with plangent melodies, to which the émigré Russians
spring 1945, however, complicated the country’s liberation by the Soviets and its ensuing cultural themselves succumbed. In contrast, Soviet Russia came to look more hostile and desolate than that
significance during the military occupation by four powers. The Red Army’s advance “liberated” Na- of the tsars. Nostalgic regret for a factitious homeland deepened among the departed. With time,
zi-occupied terrain, re-mapping the region, while creating Soviet zones of influence. Soviet officers the distance between the lives they had lived and those portrayed to foreigners increased, and be-
determined the swift resumption of cultural life in Austria’s Second Republic, specifically Vienna. In came unmoored from reality.
late April, the first theatre events took place in bomb-damaged theatres. Using Vienna as a cultural
anchor, I examine the resurgence of theatre and effects of cultural diplomacy in the wake of WWII Key Words
1945-1948. The re-emergent culture after 1945 arose from a collaboration between German-lan- Cabaret, Emigre, Russia, Invention of Tradition
guage artists and military officers from four zones of foreign occupation. I draw on archival research
and cultural memory discourse to explore the interplay of forces that defined the cultural heritage
of Austria’s occupation. Tapping the historiographical, national narrative of “victimhood,” I consider
the re-establishment of the arts and the spoken-word theatre repertoire in four occupation zones,
including Vienna’s central sector, governed by multinational powers. How did the displacement of
artists and transnational performance networks affect postwar theatre and the reclamation of an
Austrian theatre tradition? Hubs of exile and the migrating histories of theatre-makers enabled the
cross-fertilization of the arts across spatial and temporal borders, while showing via a network of
cultural influence and collaboration, both continuity and rupture.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Theatre historiography post-WWII Vienna victimhood military occupation exile cultural networks
collaboration

440 441
 WG WG

Lisa Skwirblies Dorota Sosnowska

University of Warwick University of Warsaw

Dr. Lisa Skwirblies recently obtained her PhD from the School of Theatre and Performance Studies at the Uni- Between 2002 and 2007 I studied cultural sciences at University of Warsaw where I received my MA degree.
versity of Warwick, where she also holds an Early Career Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Lisa Between 2007 and 2012 I was a PhD student at Institute of Polish Culture IPC, Department of Theatre and
is a member of staff at the Academy for Dance and Theatre in Amsterdam and a regular guest lecturer at the Performance University of Warsaw. For thesis about three actresses popular in communist times in Poland
University of Amsterdam, the University of Leuven and the University of Warwick. I was granted with PhD degree in 2013. It was published as a book entitled Królowe PRL Queens of PPR in
2014. Since 2014 I’m an Adjunct at the IPC, Department of Theatre and Performance, University of Warsaw. I
was also working on the project “Sources and Mediations – Performance Art”, researching the subject of the
Theatres of Colonialism relation between theatre and documentation, body and archive, performance and memory. Now I work on
the Polish-German project “Performing Memory” researching the subject of re-enactment in art and culture.
This paper is part of a book chapter 5000 words and investigates the nexus of colonialism and the- I published articles on the subject in the renowned scientific magazines in Poland and Slovenia as well as in
atre in the German empire through a so far unacknowledged set of performances from the former the “Performance Research” Journal. I took part in many international conferences including 2015 IFTR con-
German colony South-West Africa. While the German empire never established a permanent the- ference.
atre in its ‘model colony’ South-West Africa it nevertheless showed a vivid theatre scene upheld
by the amateur theatre societies of the European settler community but also by a community of Theaster Gates’ “Black Space” and Robert Kuśmirowskis “Trauma
migrant workers from the British Cape Colony. The tensions, negotiations, and collaborations be- ruins” - archives, Leftovers and Performance
tween these two theatrical spheres form the case studies of this chapter. With regard to the in-
sight that German history did not “unfold solely within the boundaries of the nation state” as his- In my text 5000 words I address the issue of material traces, leftovers, remains that shape our re-
torian Sebastian Conrad has argued 2010, this chapter argues for a new methodological approach lation to the past in the archive and in the performance art. Performance historiography has to
towards German theatre history by tapping on the so far ignored sources from the colonial and deal with leftovers as those material traces are the only link to the past event, a valid evidence of
imperial archive. In doing so, it questions what constitutes a historical object in German theatre something taking place, an archival matter that allows to conduct historical investigation. By look-
history today and opens new potential case studies to the field. Beyond the German context, the ing at the artistic practice of two seemingly very different and distant artists: Theaster Gates from
chapter also examines the possible blind-spots of the current transnational and global approach United States and Robert Kuśmirowski from Poland I propose the leftover theory – meditation on
in theatre historiography. Especially with regard to the conference’s theme on migration, it asks the leftovers ontological status and its methodological consequences. I compare works by Gates and
for critically revisiting the impact that colonial orders or imperial hegemony have had on what is Kuśmirowski as two ways of playing with leftovers and I present two models of thinking about the
often described as an increase in mobility, growing networks and a general flow of people and ob- relationship between history and present day mediated by leftovers, remains and ruins. But in the
jects. Especially in light of the re-emergence of nationalism and increased anti-immigration pol- end, I use those examples to show how seemingly homogenous and supposedly white Polish identity
icies a reassessment of the limits of social and geographical mobility in the age of globalization is entangled in racial context how almost inexistent blackness and lost during war and communist
and empire and the implications that a disavowal of Europe’s colonial past and might have for times Jewish identity play in Poland a role of the migrating leftover – remain that strongly subvert
the inclusion and exclusion of minorities and migrants in the EU today seems more than pressing. the cohesion/stasis of national identity and launches some new performative and artistic strategies.
This text is a part of my current research project concerning relationship between material objects,
Key Words performance and time. I see leftovers, material traces, remains and ruins as performative – granted
Historiography, Colonialism, German Theatre History, Archive Fever, Colonial Theatricality with specific kind of agency rather vibrant, as Jane Bennett puts it, than just simply present. In this
context, the historiographical question is crucial: if leftovers perform than how can we define the
archive? What methodological consequences lie in such shift in understanding material remains of
performance? I would like to address those questions in the discussion.

Key Words
historiography, performance, leftovers, Theaster Gates, Robert Kuśmirowski, object, matter, archive
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

442 443
 WG WG

Susan Tenneriello Nazli Ümit

Baruch College, City University of New York Istanbul University

Susan Tenneriello is Associate Professor of Theatre in the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Baruch I completed by Bachelor’s degree on English Literature and Performing Arts at Istanbul Kultur University in
College, CUNY. She specializes in interdisciplinary studies with particular interest in the intersections of 2007 and I gained my M.A from Exeter University, Department of Drama in 2010. I am now a PhD candidate
dance, theatre, visual art, and new media. Her work often focuses on spectacle entertainments and strat- at Istanbul University, Research Institute of Turkish Studies. My thesis is on the social and political dimensions
egies of visual display in performance history. She is the author of Spectacle Culture and American Identi- affecting theatre historiography in Turkey between 1850 and 1950. It focuses mainly on the influence of West-
ty: 1815-1940 Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, a study of the growth of immersive entertainments in U.S. history. ern orientalists who laid the foundations of theatrical research in Turkey and wrote the first works on Turkish
Her current book project examines the history and development of the modern Olympic Opening Ceremony. theatre history. My publications so far have been on puppetry, late Ottoman-early Republican playwrights,
20th century Western approaches to Turkish dramatic literature and popular performances, translation and
Sport and Spectacle in Olympic History: Moving the Body Politic at transcription of plays from English language or Ottoman Turkish. I have worked as a language instructor and
the 1912 Stockholm Games drama facilitator in the UK and in Turkey. I have been involved in several applied drama projects as well as the-
atrical productions, staging and acting. I am also a member of UNIMA International Puppetry Association and
a Karagöz shadow theatre practitioner. I am currently working as research assistant at at Istanbul Kultur Uni-
My paper addresses the particular methodological problem of writing about global performance.
versity, department of Arts Management. For academic research: https://istanbul.academia.edu/NazliUmit.
Transnational analysis as applied to globalization and performance access networks or systems of
exchange: social, political, economic, cultural. Political history, sociology, anthropology, geography
as well as performance studies perspectives inform the increasing scope of transnational debates. Theories of Origin Reconsidered: Narratives of Migration and
There remains to develop the implicit condition of movement that occurs historically, structurally, Central Asia in Turkish Theatre Historiography
and in practice as forms of global performance migrate over time, through space, and across na-
tional boundaries. In relationship to the conference theme Theatre and Migration theatre, I explore With the founding of the Turkish Republic, longstanding debates over the nature of Turkish the-
a line of thinking that puts global theatre history into dialogue with motion. My essay focuses on atre and whether an indigenous Turkish theatrical culture existed at all, took on a new urgency.
the relationship between Olympic idealism and its cultural expression in the Olympic spectacle. I Since the 1850s, prominent literary figures had been arguing over the pasts, presents and futures of
examine the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympics, which introduced the first mass gymnastic dis- Turkish theatre. Some favoured European-style productions and dramatic literature over unwritten
play in the opening ceremony. The inclusion of mass gymnastic demonstrations not only helped “degenerate” popular performances while others argued for the retention of traditional practices
to popularize the social and educational values of sport, but also asserted the power of the na- after reforming them along Western lines and it was the beginnings of the 20th century when these
tional body within the spread of the physical culture movement in Europe. I align the coupling of debates were dominated by theories of origin. Casting the Turks out from the Aryan heritage and
sport and performance as movement system of cultural practice rather than as a specific theatre denying them Hellenic roots, enduring Western narrative had long seen them as barbarian nomads
or performance genre, acknowledging while also expanding on its meaning beyond categories, occupying the lands where once the ancestors of European civilisations lived. In the 1930s, Turkish
such as scenography, site-specific performance, or public performance. Such transnational forms scholars, -driven by romantic nationalism- appropriated and recast this narrative. After a series of
of theatre and performance often forge complex systems that remain transient yet also contain conferences, ‘Turkish History Thesis’ was formulated in accordance with politicised disciplines such
reproductive power and competing ideological frameworks. By exploring how mass gymnastics as archaeology, anthropology and linguistics. The major claim was that there had been a diffusion
popularized the Olympic movement, I consider how patterns and phrases in the performance of of Turks from Central Asia – the cradle of civilisations - towards Anatolia - the bridge between East
sport encourage the intercommunication of motion in transnational and global theatre history. and West- via waves of migration over thousands of years and this migratory history was supposed
to give Turkish civilisation its distinctive national identity. This paper explores how Turkish theatre
Key Words historians turned such accounts into an explanation for the diversity of Turkish theatre and into a
Transnational History Sport and Spectacle Movement Methodolgy reconstruction of theatrical past. In particular, it demonstrates how the prevailing origin theories en-
abled theatre scholars to suggest links between the shaman’s drum and Greek dithyramb while cel-
ebrating the blend of Byzantium mime with Chinese shadows of Karagöz. It concludes by discussing
how Turkish theatre historiography was thus provided with a secular narrative of westward progress
starting from Central Asian origins.

Key Words
Turkish theatre, theatre historiography, origin theories, migration, Central Asia
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

444 445
 Working INTERMEDIALITY
IN THEATRE AND
Groups PERFORMANCE
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

446 447
 WG WG

Aikaterini Arfara Vincenzo Del Gaudio

Onassis Cultural Centre Athens University of Salerno

Katia Arfara is an Athens-based researcher, writer, teacher and curator. She received an MA in theatre studies Vincenzo Del Gaudio, phd in Metaphysics at Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele of Milan. He holds The digital
from Athens University and a PhD in art history from Sorbonne University. Her essays at the crossroads of perfomances laboratory and coworks at University of Salerno at chair of Sociologiadegliaudiovisivisperimentali
theatre, dance and visual arts have appeared in french, english, spanish, arabic and greek in various journals and Sociologiadeiprocessiculturali.Among his last works. He edited Il corposottile. Hypokritès Teatro Studio:
and critical anthologies such as Bastard or Playmate? 2012, Mapping Intermediality in Performance 2010. Her scena, media e società 2016 and  A.Abruzzese theatrical works Il dispositivosegreto. La scenatrasperimentazi-
current interests focus on interdisciplinary practices and public works. She has lectured extensively in France one e consumi di massa with A. Amendola, 2017.
and Greece. Dr Arfara is a Fulbright fellow, a DAAD and Clemens Heller scholar and a member of the Inter-
mediality working group of the IFTR. Since 2009 she has been the theater and dance artistic director at the Zombie Performance in Italian Intermedial Theatre
Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, where she conceived and curated numerous festivals and platforms with a
specific focus on socially engaged projects and site-specific installations. Dr Arfara is the author of the book Belgian director Fabrice Murgia stages in 2011 the show “Exils”. He imagines a relation between
Théâtralités contemporaines 2011 and the editor of the special issue ‘Scènes en transition-Balkans et Grèce’ zombie and migrants. Migrant, like zombie, has no identity, and as the sociologist Oliver Marchart
for Théâtre/Public 2016. She is a member of the Prize Council for 2016-2018 Vera List Center Prize for Art and noticed “zombie wave reminds tv images where thousands of African migrants undermine European
Politics. enclave”.We are going to investigate the zombie character as a significant figure in some Italia theat-
rical productions, constituted between Theatre and digital media. In particular we focus on the work
The Migration of Stories: On Wael Shawky’s Intercultural called “Zombitudine” by company Timpano/Fossini  and on the project Artist=Zombie by Giaco-
Narratives mo Verde.“Zombitudine” project 2014 unifies horror imagination, aesthetics and logics of tv series,
b-movies, besides happening ad social protest. The company imagines a zombie apocalypse in which
The ongoing violent changes in the geopolitical map of the Middle East reveal the complex sociopo- two actors take refuge in an old theatre. This project has a big transmedial value because the show is
litical and economic relations between the West and the Arab region, both historical and of today. surrounded by happenings with common people, who join actors by the internet with flashmobs, pro-
The present paper aims at exploring Wael Shawky’s The Song of Roland. The Arabic Version Theater moting on street zombie awareness. These performance are then uploaded on youtube by the com-
der Welt 2017 as an exemplary music performance which confronts issues of national and religious pany and become extra contents of its spectacle. Finally the project includes a series of workshops to
identity by the migration of cultures, traditions and stories. Based on an extensive periods of re- educate human body to the zombie body logics.Giacomo Verde, for his part, sees in zombie bodies
search, this latest stage work reflects the current power struggles in the Middle East from an Arab the possibility to think at a body open to a sense production, a body that symbolically feeds of real and
point of view. Arguing that there is no one single historical truth neither a linear historical narration, expels excremental simulacra. On this basis Verde organizes a series of performances: Artist=zombie
the Egyptian interdisciplinary artist revisits the epic poem La Chanson de Roland, one of the earliest 2013, Zombie: To Be or not to Be? 2013, I’m a Target 2013 and Warhol Zombie 2013. Starting from
major works of French literature which tells the story of Charles the Great and his nephew Roland’s these experiments it is possible to define a zombie performers’logics, suspended between digital
war against the Saracens in what is now Spain. Shawky translates the 11th century poem into Clas- media and stage, between rotten bodes and digital doubles, until the embodiment of digital media.
sical Arabic and perform it with a fidjeri ensemble, a vocal music sung by the pearl divers of the
Persian Gulf states. Having already used fidjeri in The Cabaret Crusades 2010-2015, his acclaimed Key Words
film trilogy on the Crusades with marionettes, he is now working with the musicians on stage. In- zombie theatre, zombie media, inntermediality theatre, migrant wave
terweaving various mediums and traditions far beyond neocolonial interpretations of Islam, Shawky
reinvents avant-garde theatre and more specifically Brecht. By appropriating an old music, he ex-
plores epic methods of de-dramatization and alienation in order to question dogmatic models of
narration and representation. Through a detailed analysis of his musical and theatrical installation,
this paper analyzes the discursive quality of Shawky’s project as an intercultural experiment which
questions current political events and dominant versions of history while redefining the very notion
of spectatorship.

Key Words
intercultural, interdisciplinary, history, installation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

448 449
 WG WG

Marleena Huuhka Liam Jarvis

University of Tampere University of Essex

Marleena Huuhka, MA, is currently working as doctoral researcher in the Centre for Practice as Research in Liam is a Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Essex in the Literature, Film and Theatre LiFTS department and
Theatre in the University of Tampere. Her PhD thesis examines video game worlds as places of performative Co-director of Analogue theatre company. He is co-convener of the Intermediality in Theatre & performance
resistance, and searches for new counterplay practices. Working Group.

Into the Void – Examination on Non-Human Performativity, Errors Appification & Technologies of the “Other”: Performing
and Immersion Neurodivergence and “Obscene Immortality” in VR Apps
Video games are a notorious for their immersive nature: the helpless player is sucked into a world “There’s an app for that”®, the trademarked slogan originating from Apple’s iPhone 3G commercial
of passive spectacle, from which they are unable to retreat. A harrowing but untrue scene – the in 2009, rapidly became an ironic meme, remixed by internet users to parody the hollow promise
player is anything but passive. Not only is gaming an active, physical experience, but also the mental of limitless app-based solutions to life’s complex and innumerable problems. The proliferation and
engagement with certain kinds of games is much more complex than passive receiving.  Gordon promotion of health-related mindfulness apps in work-related contexts has been criticized because
Calleja has argued that certain types of games invite players to inhabit the game environment, the they constitute workers as ‘self-managed’ and ‘responsibilised’, consigning the user to isolation in
virtual world. The world is in that sense real to the player, as the players’ actions have an effect on digital culture and making them responsible for their own wellbeing as the ‘ideal neoliberal subjects’
the world, and the world has an effect on the player. Video games are performative, the world is cre- Gill and Ngaire: 2016 98. Correspondingly, experiential theatre apps could be critiqued as a kind of
ated through common sign language transgressing borders of materialities.   In this paper, I analyze ‘self-service’ theatre, emerging at a time when neoliberalism is firmly passing on the responsibility
non-human performativity based on new materialist theory see eg. Bennett, Dolphijn& van der Tuin, for the purchase of goods and services to consumers. But in the third sector, VR apps are increasingly
Barad. The main goal of this approach is to reconsider the position of humans: new materialism is being used to position a downloading public within simulations of neurodiverse experiences, such as
about giving space to the other. In my examples, the others can be anything from my controller to the sensory overload of a 10-year-old autistic boy in a shopping centre in Autism TMI Virtual Reality
the individual pixels of the game environment.   I argue that the non-human performer – especially Experience or as a nascent form of digital reminiscence theatre to ameliorate the lives of people
when talking about video games – is able to reveal their agency through an error. This error can be with Alzheimer’s disease by transporting them to historical events of shared cultural significance in
technical, visual or auditive. Through game play examples I will demonstrate how performership The Wayback.      SlavojŽižek has argued that video games interpellate the gamer into a specific mode
and agency of the non-humans is created through unexpected mishaps. Further, I argue that this, of subjectivity – immersion in the ‘undead’ space of video games offers an ‘obscene immortality’ in
performative, active error is a way to tackle the possible mental numbness caused by immersion. which after every destruction the player can return to the beginning and start the game again Žižek
2017. But how might we read the taking up of simulated first-person perspectives ‘inside’ ostensibly
Key Words fragile virtual bodies in light of the impunity of ‘obscene immortality’? Especially when ‘immersion’
immersion, performance, video games in fields such as simulation-based training in healthcare principally concerns the belief that ‘the
consequences of the actions taken are represented as if they would occur in a real situation, even
though they are not’ Hagiwara et al 2016.  References:  Gill, Rosalind and NgaireDonaghue 2016,
‘Resilience, Apps and Reluctant Individualism: Technologies of Self in the Neoliberal Academy’, in
Womens Studies International Forum. Elsevier. 54: 91-99. Hagiwara, Magnus Andersson, Per Back-
lund, Hanna MaurinSöderholm, Lars Lundberg, Mikael Lebram and Henrik Engström 2016 ‘Measur-
ing Participants’ Immersion in Healthcare Simulation: The Development of an Instrument’. Advances
in Simulation. 1:17. Žižek, Slavoj 2017 ‘The Obscene Immortality and its Discontents’. International
Journal of Žižek Studies. 11.2. http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/IJZS/article/view/1016

Key Words
Undead subjectivity, SlavojŽižek, obscene immortality, VR apps, A Walk Through Dementia, Theatres
of mislocalized sensation, immersion, simulation, Autism TMI Virtual Reality Experience, The Wayback
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

450 451
 WG WG

Maria Kapsali Chiel Kattenbelt

University of Leeds Utrecht University

Dr Maria Kapsali is a Lecturer in Physical Performance in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries Chiel Kattenbelt is associate professor in intermediality and media comparison within the Department of Me-
at the University of Leeds. Her research has appeared in international peer-reviewed journals and she is cur- dia and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. He teaches in different programs, in particular in the BA Media
rently working on a monograph on Technology and Performer Training, to be published by Routledge as part and Culture, the MA Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy and the Research MA Media, Art and
of the Perspectives on Performer Training series. She is working on the development of Sonolope, a system of Performance Studies. He is co-founder and former convener of the IFTR research working group Intermediality
movement sonification, and this has informed her latest article in IJPADM ‘Making the Body All Ears’ 2017. She in Theatre and Performance. Since 2012 he is a board member of the International Society for Intermedial
is the convenor of the TaPRA Performer Training WG. Studies. In teaching as well as in research, his fields of interest are theatre and media theory, intermediality
and media comparison, and aesthetics and semiotics.
Attention in the Cellular Age: Mobile Phones and Theatre
Practice Exploring the Affordances and Intentionalities of Virtual Reality
and Motion Capture in the Hamlet Project with CREW
GalitWellner 2015 suggests that we now live in the cellular age. Indeed, the mobile phone has nearly
reached a hundred-percent rate of penetration of the global population, it has seeped into virtual In my contribution to the preconceived panel on our Hamlet-project with CREW, I would like to in-
and real public spheres as well as private lives Goggin and Hjorth 2014 and it is often experienced troduce a further developed concept of intermediality with a focus on the performative aspects of
as an extension of the user’s identity and indeed the user’s body Fortunati 2014. The use of mobile the technologies which are used in the project, namely virtual reality VR and motion capture MoCap.
phones has also been problematized in relation to etiquettes of theatre attendance Home-Cook These technologies will be discussed in terms of their affordances Gibson 1966 and 1979, indicating
2015 Richardson 2014 and has been connected to a decrease in student academic performance possibilities of interaction, and intentionalities Don Ihde 1990 and 2002, characterizing the triadic
Lepp et al 2015. Within these discussions, the attention of students as well as theatre audiences is relationships between human beings, technologies and their lifeworlds. In my sign-pragmatic and
often understood as the prize for which performers and performer trainers have to fight in a battle postphenomenological approach of intermediality I will discuss how we can learn from the technol-
with the mobile phone. Drawing on a year-long fellowship on the use of mobile phones for the de- ogies we use in or project, in particular with regard to how media technologies provide or facilitate
velopment of digital creativity in performing arts and beyond University of Leeds, this paper has two specific forms of performativity in terms of world-making, staging which assumes performing as well
interconnected aims. It will first seek to analyse in what ways mobile phone use in theatre practice as spectating, self-referencing and self-reflecting Kattenbelt 2010. The underlying question is: what
can become a problem. Based on this analysis, it will argue that an understanding of attention as is it that we do with media and what is it that media do with us? In order to understand our project
scarce and disrupted is no longer an adequate explanatory framework. It will rather claim that per- within the broader context of our mediatized culture and society, I will focus on matters of play,
former training, and performance in general, offer alternative models of attention that move beyond performance and participation. Gibson, James Jerome. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual
the focus-distraction divide. Utilising the post-phenomenological concept of multistabilityIhde 1990 Systems. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Gibson, James Jerome. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual
Verbeek 2005, this paper will also argue that theatre practice can offer strategies towards appropri- Perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden
ating mobile devices for creative purposes. Thus, this paper aims to address two areas of the CfP: to Earth. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Ihde, Don. Bodies in Technology.
the focus on attention economy and the way intermediality can serve as a practice-based research 2002. Mineapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Kattenbelt, Chiel. 2010. “Intermedi-
methodology. It is also proposed as part of a shared panel with the Scenography WG. ality in Performance and as a Mode of Performativity” in Mapping Intermediality in Performance,
edited by Bay-Cheng, Sarah, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender and Robin Nelson, 29-37. Amsterdam:
Key Words Amsterdam University Press.
mobile phone, attention, multistability
Key Words
Intermediality, performativity, virtual reality, motion capture, affordance, intentionality, agency
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

452 453
 WG WG

Lynne Kendrick Rosemary Klich

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London University of Essex

Dr Lynne Kendrick is a Senior Lecturer in New Theatre Practices and Course Leader of MA/MFA Advanced Prof. Rosemary Klich is Director of Research at East 15 Acting School,University of Essex. Her re-
Theatre Practice at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Publications include: search investigates media, sound andspectatorship, and she teaches contemporary perfor-
Theatre Aurality Palgrave Macmillan 2017 ‘Aural visions: sonic spectatorship in the dark’ in Theatre in the Dark: mance practice. Priorto joining East 15 in 2017, she was Head of Drama and Theatre at theUni-
Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre Alston, A., & Welton, M., eds. Bloomsbury 2017 ‘Aura- versity of Kent where she taught since 2007. Her co-authored bookMultimedia Performance was
lité´ et performance de l’inaudible’ in Le Son du ThéātreLarrue, JM., &Mervant-Roux, MM., eds. CNRS Editions published with Palgrave in 2012 and she hassince published in journals such as Contemporary Theatre Review,
2016 ‘Aurality, Gestus and the Performance of Noise’ in Sound und Performance Ernst, WD., Niethammer, N., Performance Research, International Journal of Performing Arts andDigital Media, and Body Space Technol-
Szymanski-Düll, B., Mungen, A., eds. Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann 2015 ‘Mimesis and Remembrance’ ogy. She has also undertakenvarious practice-as-research projects working in collaboration withperformers,
in Performance Research: On Technology Vol 17:3, 2012 ‘A Paidic Aesthetic’ in Theatre, Dance and Perfor- videographers, sound designers and photographers. Rosemaryholds a PhD from the University of New South
mance Training, Vol 2:1, 2011 Theatre Noise: the Sound of Performance co-edited with David Roesner CSP Wales in Sydney, Australia.
2011.
Untangling the Visiophonic Knot: Audio-Visual Immersion in
Migratory Sounds: Theatre Aurality and Resonance in Intermedial Performance
Performance
This paper explores the relationship and reception of audio and visual mediation in productions
Theatre aurality refers to emerging practices of sonic-led theatre and a critical field of theatre and such as Vox Motus’s _Flight, _in which sound and visual content are distributed via separate me-
performance analysis. It explores sound in and as theatre it refers to the phenomenal and discursive dia platforms. In hisanalysis of the listening experience of the headphone-wearer, Jean-PaulTh-
field of theatre sound and to the structures in which sounds occur the socio-political and philosoph- ibaud refers to the ‘visiophonic knot’ to describe the point ofconvergence between the audible
ical, as well as the aesthetic. Theatre Aurality is, in many ways an intermedial field, even theatre and the visible. Thibaud describes theexperience of headphone-listening as involving harmony be-
made purely through sound is by no means a rejection of light, sight and vision, rather theatre tween themusic, the listener’s body and the exterior environment. This paperlooks to moments
sound recasts these on its own terms. One the ways in which this takes place is through movement. of disharmony, where asynchronicity between the audioand visual in intermedial performance
We know that sound travels and it is often assumed that it immerses sound moves and surrounds, result in an untying of thevisiophonic knot.These moments of sensory unsettlement draw at-
but it can be directional and specific as well as encompassing. Working with sound as theatre is an tention to sensory bias andstage audio-visual calibration, making the listener acutely aware oft-
important manoeuvre from stasis it disrupts fixed positions and blatantly ignores borders. In the- heir own perceptual processing. While the individual audio and visualmedia streams may each
atre practice, sound has the capacity to propel audiences, to migrate listeners in ways that invite proffer immersive content, the potential forasynchronicity across these streams enforces a kind
encounter across divides. Yet distance is as important as proximity in the encounter in particular, of criticalawareness, a reflective immersion, that distances the consumer from themedia con-
resonance involves movements away from as well as towards and through borders. This paper will tent. The separation of audio-visual information streams andthe potential for disharmony in au-
articulate some of the ways in which sound migrates in performance, the experience of proximity dio-visual processing, stands incontrast to the kind of ‘synaesthetic’ engagement that is oftenas-
and distance within it and will consider how sound creates the conditions for an encounter with sociated with immersion in digital performance environments. As such,this paper will position
identity and difference. Drawing on the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy and his theories of resonance asynchronicity and sensory disjunction inaudio-visual installations within the context of ‘postdig-
and syncope, I will explore the movement of sound through feeling and hapticity and how it can ital’aesthetics, and suggest its relevance as a postdigital strategy fordisrupting digital immersion.
literally move its audience without recourse to the ocular and the borders of visual representation.
Key words
Key Words audio-visual, intermediality, headphones, post digital,installation
Aurality Sound Border Stasis Resonance Nancy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

454 455
 WG WG

William Lewis Aneta Mancewicz

University of Colorado Boulder University of Birmingham

PhD 2018 University of Colorado Boulder Peer Reviewed Articles ---“Theatrical Reception and Shifts in Twen- Aneta Mancewicz is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. Her research fo-
ty-First Century Perception: A Case Study for the iGeneration” Theatre Topics 27, no.2 2017: 123-136 ---“Per- cuses on Shakespearean performance, intermediality, and European theatre. She is the author of Intermedial
forming ‘Posthuman’ Spectatorship: Digital Proximity and Variable Agencies,” Performance Research 22, no.3 Shakespeares on European Stages Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 and Biedny Hamlet [Poor Hamlet] Ksiegarnia Ak-
2017: 7-14. Book Chapters ---“Approaches to ‘Audience Centered’ Performance: Designing Interaction for the ademicka Press, 2010.
iGeneration” in New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts, eds. Anne Fliotsos and Gail Medford New York: Pal-
grave, 2018. forthcoming. Book Reviews ---“Review of Embodied Consciousness: Performance Technologies,”
eds. Jade Rosina McCutcheon and Barbara Sellers-Young Theatre Research International 41 no. 1 2016: 88-
Shakespeare in Cybertheatre
89. ---“Review of Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance by Josephine
Machon,” New Theatre Quarterly 31 no. 3 2015: 293. ---“Review of Theatre in the Expanded Field: Seven This paper examines the challenges of applying VR and MoCap to staging Shakespeare. It briefly
Approaches to Performance by Alan Read, New Theatre Quarterly” 31 no. 1 2015: 93. National Grants/Fellow- analyses uses of cybertechnologies in The Tempest the RSC and To Be With Hamlet NYU. These two
ships ----John S. and James L. Knight Foundation – Media Innovation Prototype Grant – Interdisciplinary Group very different projects exemplify distinctive approaches to the incorporation of technology in perfor-
Research Funding – 2016 $35,000 National Service ---Managing Editor – PARtake: The Journal of Performance mance. They also provide a valuable context for the discussion of staging strategies adopted in on an
as Research ---Graduate Student Representative – ATHE Performance Studies Focus Group – 2016/18 ---Com- on-going Practice as Research project, Hamlet Encounters by CREW. Drawing on insights from these
munications/Publicity Officer – ATHE Directing Focus Group – 2017/19 ---Graduate Student Representative three examples, the paper explores the potential of cybertechnologies for theatre, particularly for
– ATHE Directing Focus Group – 2015/17 staging the textual complexity of Shakespeare’s plays. Recent applications of VR headsets and Mo-
Cap suits on stage suggest the experience of audiences and the boundaries of theatre as a medium
Between Potential and Actualization in Corporatized Theatres of might be expanded by these means. At the same time, it is clear that practitioners and researchers
Virtual Reality still need to develop effective strategies for the use of cybertechnologies in staging dramatic texts.
The key question is: How can VR and MoCap be meaningfully applied to stage a play? More specifi-
When Brian Massumi 2002 invoked virtuality as a site of potentiality from which a new becoming was cally, how can these technologies support the design of the production, the dramaturgy of the text,
possible, virtual reality technologies were largely out of reach of the everyday consumer. Writing fif- and the experience of the audience?
teen years later, Mathew Causey 2016 argues that ideologies of the virtual and analog are no longer
useful as distinct spaces and affects. Mediatization and technogenesis allows us to enter a postdigital Key Words
condition where the virtual is real and the real is virtual. With today’s corporate entities having taken Shakespeare, Hamlet, cybertechnologies, dramaturgy, Practice as Research
the vanguard on the deployment of interactive virtual tech, what are the ethical and political con-
sequences for embodied subjectivities that navigate the in-between of commercially driven VR per-
formances? This essay investigates the use of virtual immersion as a market-driven aesthetic placed
on twenty-first century performance practices. Through critical readings of the VR game Farpoint
and The Void’s Ghostbusters: Dimension “Hyper-Real” extension of the 2016 film reboot, I question
how haptics in virtuality offer potentiality via embodied and performative spectatorship. I argue, this
potential is subverted through capitalism and entertainment economics. Arguing for a posthuman
mode of understanding contemporary spectators, I explore the affective consequences of expanding
the reach of the human body into commodified virtual spaces. How will “becoming” avatars affect
our potential to resist the control of the multi-national corporations who develop and deploy the
games and experiences accessed virtually? As the virtual becomes more real through multi-sensory
engagement, who will control the flow to global politics, ethics, and community building?

Key Words
Virtual Reality, Affect, Embodiment, Spectatorship, Corporatized, Gaming, Ethics, Avatars
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

456 457
 WG WG

Anna Maria Monteverdi Eirini Nedelkopoulou

University of Milan York St John University

I am a researcher at the University of Milan Department of Cultural heritage I joined the Department in 2017 Dr. Eirini Nedelkopoulou is a Senior Lecturer in Drama & Performance at York St John University, UK. Her
after having taught “History of Theatre” at Academy of Fine Arts of Lecce, Brera and Turin. My work focuses work as author and editor appears in the International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media,
on the relationships between technology and theatre. I have written extensively about Robert Lepage, Konic Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Research and other. She is the co-editor of Performance
thtr, Motus, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Giacomo Verde. I have written on the subjects of interactive theatre, and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations Routledge, 2015, 2018. Eirini is currently
Italian video-theatre, videomapping and augmented theatre. Other tematics: the drama and the stage of the working on her monograph entitled In Solitude: The Philosophy of Digital Performance Encounters.
Balcanics Jeton Neziraj, Tomi Janezic. Publications: Frankenstein del Living theatre with introduction by Judith
Malina Nuovi media nuovo teatro 2011 Memoria maschera e macchina nel teatro di Robert Lepage 2018, Le
arti multimediali digitali con A.Balzola, 2004. I was invited at the the first Robotics festival in Pisa Sant’An-
Performing in Solitude: The Lonely Machine/Participant in
na-School of Advanced studies, Pisa, 2017 in the section of robotics in arts and drama and at the international Networked Environments
conference Masks and technologies: immersion, expression, interaction University of Saint Denis, Paris8, 2017.
Robert Coplan and Julie Bowker identify solitude as ‘a ubiquitous phenomenon’ and claim that ‘His-
Memory as Wunderkammer: ‘The Seven Streams of the River Ota’ torically, solitude has been considered both a boon and a curse, with artists, poets, musicians, and
philosophers both lauding and lamenting being alone’ 2014, 3. Speculating on our highly connect-
and ‘The Dragons Trilogy’ by Robert Lepage
ed, augmented and networked reality, this paper explores how performance in its conception and
reception is constantly informed by experiences of solitude and/or shared solitude.  The aim of this
Geography is the symbol of the theatre of Lepage, with its internationalist and multicultural voca-
paper is to discuss the role of solitude in performance contexts where the former seems to antago-
tion the East has been explored by Lepage since the Eighties, in The trilogy of the dragons on the
nise as well as transform the noise, crowds, and indoctrinated participation of experience economy.
families of Chinese immigrants in Canada, 1985 in Les sept branches de la rivière Ota inspired by
Reflecting on different artworks by CREW, Blast Theory, Gob Squad, and Julian Hetzel, this presen-
the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, 1995 in Le dragon blue 2008. His shows inspired to the East present
tation explores how the interactions and exchanges between human and non-human singularities
shadow plays, for remembering the great tradition of the Javanese theater the wayang and Chinese
redefine performance subjectivity and questions existing ecologies while postulating the potentiality
the piyingxi combined with the live video projections together they create a game and an exchange
of non-anthropocentric environments. Rather than creating a collective experience, some of these
between the frontal part and that behind the scene, both live action space of actor and machine
performance encounters foreground and often displace individual audience’s contribution, test the
scenography in movement. Lepage inaugurates the archive age. The archival impulse - theorized by
probability and/or possibility of singularity, either in relation to machine’s dexterity and why not
the American critic Hal Foster - is one of the themes underlying the work of Lepage in which History
virtuosity or their overall intelligence.  The role of the digital is integral and yet not causal in these
has become a simplified paradigm: without producing shock and without inspiring a documentary
performances of solitude, where all participants are potential solitary authors that contribute to,
analysis, it has lost its connotations dramatic to become a Wunderkammer, hypertrophic collection
disrupt and become involved in a collective narrative. Solitude appears as an inextricable part of
of “mirabilia” of contemporary culture. The great moments of the History Hiroshima, postcolonial
performing and performance engagement between spectators, performers, and technologies. The
Algeria, separatist Québec, Communist China, reconstructed on a reduced scale, are a film already
paper finally asks whether machines and humans are two different sets of singularities, or just soli-
seen, a slogan for commercials: in this familiar dimension the protagonists are not “witnesses” but
tary components of the same ecology/ies.
“testimonial”. No systematic cataloging of events, no mapping, no reportage: the reconstruction of
memory is given by fragmentation
Key Words
Solitude, Digital, Networked Performance, Singularity
Key Words
Media theatre, Multicultural theatre, Robert Lepage, Orientalism, Tecnological theatre, video the-
atre, Memory and theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

458 459
 WG WG

Robin Nelson Christina Papagiannouli

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London University of South Wales

Director of Research and Professor of Theatre and Intermedial Performance at Royal Central School of Speech Dr Christina Papagiannouli is a postdoctoral research assistant at University of South Wales, where she also
and Drama, University of London, July 2010 - Dec 2014, Robin remains in semi- retirement an Emeritus Profes- lectures in performance and new media. Her research interests focus on the political character of cyberfor-
sor of Manchester Metropolitan University where he held a range of posts over many years. He has published mance. Papagiannouli has presented her work at a range of international events and conferences. Her most
widely on the performing arts and media. Recent books include Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, recent publications include a chapter titled ‘Internet, Theatre and the Public Voice’ in Breed, A. and Prentki, T.
Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances 2013, Stephen Poliakoff on Stage and Screen 2011, and Mapping Interme- eds. Performance and Civic Engagement and her monograph ‘Political Cyberformance: The Etheatre Project’
diality in Performance co-edited with S.Bay-Cheng et al. 2010. 2016, both published by Palgrave Macmillan. She currently serves as co-convener of TaPRA’s Performance and
New Technologies working group.
PaR and CREW’s “Hamlet Encounters”
Internet, Theatre and National Identity: The Dis-United Kingdom
Drawing upon the Hamlet Encounters project in development by Brussels-based company CREW, and its National Theatres
this paper offers a working example of professional practice as Practice as Research PaR. Bearing
out Nelson’s 2013 model of praxis theory imbricated within practice, the presentation illustrates the The paper examines national identity and nationhood in online theatre and performance in ‘small’
iterative interplay of modes of knowing and the heuristic processes of both professional practice and nations to investigate emergent economic, social and political implications and interactions of the-
PaR. It reveals how informing ideas ‘know that’ are intertwined with new and established artistic atre and the Internet with physical space and society. In particular, I will look at the cases of the
practices ‘know how’ and reflected upon critically ‘know what’ in both intelligent professional prac- National Theatres in Wales and Scotland - they are both key examples of ‘small’ National Theatres
tice and the PaR methodology. Hamlet Encounters created by CREW involve a VR immersion com- that use the Internet to produce online performances - in comparison with the digital innovation
bined with motion capture set in a theatrical frame. Consonant with the conference theme, Hamlet practices of the Royal National Theatre in London. National Theatre Wales NTW has no permanent
Encounters take experiencers on a journey through time and space inviting them to confront, and building instead, NTW created an online Community blog from the very beginning of its existence, a
reflect on, codes of honour and the ethics of action, both today and in eC17. Shakespeare’s Hamlet website that serves as a venue for artists, audience and the community to engage with and partici-
presents a dynamic sensibility confronting a moment of intellectual and ethical ferment and, as pate in the company’s work. According to Steve Blandford, national theatre institutions of newly de-
Hamlet discovers in Shakespeare’s dramaturgy, to do nothing is to take a position. Likewise, today, volved nations, such as Wales and Scotland, adopt ‘radical non-building-based models’ that reflect
what is to be done in a world of fake news where bearings on ‘reality’ are slipping fast? Who can be the spirit of ‘democratic engagement’ within their old yet emerging national context and represent
believed? To do or not to do: take a suicide exit or take arms against a sea of troubles? their national identity 2013, p. 12. However, as noted on The German Society for Contemporary
Theatre and Drama in English CDE 27th Annual Conference call for papers SCUDD, 21 October 2016,
Key Words ‘definitions of both nation and nationhood are being stretched on both sides of the [referendum on
PaR, digital culture, intermediality, ethics Britain’s EU membership – ‘exit or remain’] question’, affecting not only the ‘Dis-United Kingdom’
but governments worldwide. This paper will address these on-going social and political changes,
referring to National Theatre’s ‘My Country: a work in progress’ 2017, National Theatre Wales’ with
the Space ‘Bordergame’ 2014 and National Theatre of Scotland’s ‘The Adam world choir Eve/Adam’
2016-17 productions.

Key Words
cyberformance, nationhood, national theatre, online theatre, small nations
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

460 461
 WG WG

Antonio Pizzo Ralf Remshardt

Universita degli Studi di Torino University of Florida

Antonio Pizzo teaches Dramaturgy of Performance at the DAMS of the University of Turin. He directs the Ralf Remshardt is professor of theatre and director of the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of
CIRMA Interdepartmental Research Center on Multimedia and Audiovisual. He founded and coordinates the Florida. He attended universities in Munich and Berlin, Germany, and received a Ph.D. in Dramatic Art at UC
OffIcine Sintetiche project www.offciesintetiche.it>. He has been conducting research on the contaminations Santa Barbara. He previously taught theatre at Denison University. Remshardt has worked in professional and
between entertainment, technology and digital multimedia. He is the author of several volumes including, university theatres as a director, translator, and dramaturg. His publications have appeared in many journals
Teatro e mondo digitale Marsilio, Venice 2003, Neodrammatico digitale: scena multimediale e racconto inte- and edited collections. His book, Staging the Savage God: The Grotesque in Performance, was published in
rattivo Accademia University Press, Turin 2013. He studies virtual characters and their dramatic implications 2004 and reissued in 2016. He co-produced a documentary film about New York Hispanic theatre in 2015.
by publishing various interventions for the journal «Acting Archives Review». He is currently involved in the
development of a computational ontology for drama in the Drammar project www.di.unito.it/wikidrammar/>. Intermedial Borderlines: Performance Capture and Its PreHistory
For the journal Mimesis Journal he has published papers on queer and LGBT issues, including the L’epica queer
in Angels in America and Omofobia nell’Arialda di Testori.
In an article ten years ago, I suggested that Performance Studies had not found adequate analytical
modes to come to terms with digital performance, virtual reality, or CGI, and that a turn to Post-
Devising a Space with Dramaturgical Intelligence humanism might allow us to recuperate categories such as presence and body. Since then, per-
formance capture technology which has emerged from motion capture to offer the possibility of
The talk leverages on an ongoing project of CIRMA www.cirma.unito.it named DoPPioGioco: an in- creating a comprehensive spatio-temporal simulacrum, has re-sutured the physical presence of the
teractive storytelling performance that presents a digitally enhanced model of performer-audience performer but also redefined it, making him or her a cyborgian performer in an increasingly fluid
communion, based on an intelligent prompt system the model has been implemented as a proto- relationship to the utilized technology, within a posthuman medial construct. Andy Serkis, who as
type. The audience response is taken into account through emotion detection the performer decides Gollum in Lord of the Rings or Caesar in Planet of the Apes has become identified with performance
about her/his attitude towards the audience the intelligent prompt advises the performer about capture at the same time that he is, paradoxically, utterly concealed by it, argues that it is no dif-
how to continue the story, and the appropriate digital contents are automatically selected accord- ferent than any process you go through to create a role, whether youre on a stage, or in front of a
ingly. Along the history of digital performance there has been an important focus on the interaction screen in a more conventional sense. The actors performance is the actors performance. But such a
among the performer’s physical actions and other elements of the performance such as objects, de- simplification acknowledges only Serkiss own insistence on maintaining his grounding in prior pro-
vices, and digital contents. Nevertheless, there is another relevant line of research and experimen- cesses within a radically changed medial environment. In truth, performance capture challenges the
tation that uses AI methodologies to enhance the actor’s activity. The talk grounds on this line and phenomenology of performance as well as its semiotics as Philip Auslander has recently argued, the
uses the DoPPioGioco as an example to put forth the theoretical implication of a performance where technology shifts the nature of film acting away from its indexical functions it scrambles institutional
the algorithm is part of the dramaturgical process that governs the performance and participate to and legal categories neither the Screen Actors Guild nor AMPAS have recognized its operational dis-
the final outcome. Thus, at the crossing of three relevant and broad notions digital performance, in- tinctions and as an extractive process open to unlimited remediation, it poses a significant problem
teractive storytelling, audience engagement I discuss the idea of an interactive dramaturgical space for the ethics of performance. In tracing the history of this debate, the paper also rewinds by exactly
where the actor- audience relation is the center of an event that is augmented and assisted by an in- 100 years to set it into the context of the crisis posed to acting by the cinematographic apparatus.
telligent model of dramatic stories that takes into account the emotion of the audience and produce
a virtual environment, and where the gaming experience breaks the fourth wall. Key Words
performance capture posthumanism film acting
Key Words
drama, interactive storytelling, game, artificial intelligente, enhanced performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

462 463
 WG WG

Vincenzo Sansone Yaron Shyldkrot

University of Palermo University of Surrey

Vincenzo Sansone, master’s degree in Digital Performance at Sapienza University of Rome, is PhD stu- Yaron Shyldkrot is a practitioner-researcher undergoing a Practice-as-Research PhD at the University of Surrey,
dent in European Cultural Studies at the University of Palermo. He was visiting scholar at Pompeu- exploring the composition of uncertainty and performance in the dark. Yaron currently serves on the Executive
Fabra University of Barcelona and at Polytechnic University of Valencia Department of drawing with Committee of the Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA and the editorial board for The Jour-
a research about video projection mapping and its relationship with performing arts. The focus of his re- nal of Arts Writing by Students JAWS. http://www.yaronshy.com
search concerns these areas: performing arts, new media, animation, AR technologies, urban design.
He is actor and digital set designer and since 2015 he has been working with Teatro Potlach Fara Sabina,
Rome, realizing theatre performances and site-specific projects both in Italy and abroad US, Iran, Hungary.
When Robots Breathe: Dislocation and Non-human Performers
In this presentation I seek to examine how robotic voices as non-human performers trouble the
Drawing and Animation in Marcel•lí Antúnez Roca’s human/non-human binary and challenge the stasis of anthropocentrism. While I acknowledge the
Technological Theatre current discourse around posthumanism and cyborgs, this paper embraces an ecological perspec-
tive, one that considers the multiple relationships between humans, the environment and the oth-
Marcel•líAntúnez Roca is considered one of the fathers of technological performance for the use of er-than-human world. I will follow recent ecological scholarship Morton 2016 Lavery 2016 Donald
digital systems and robotic machines. That’s because in his performances he does not realize a sim- 2016 to suggest that the presence of robotic voices in performance can unsettle the boundaries
ple juxtaposition of languages, rather he creates a perfect hybridization that combines acting, body, between the natural and the artificial, the organic and the technological. I will examine Solastalgia
digital technologies, robotic machines, audiovisual elements. But in spite of this, all the elements of 2018, a sonic journey guided by robotic voices, which took place in total darkness and resulted from
his scene depend on an artisan practice to which the artist is closely linked: drawing. In his works, my practice research. Coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht, Solastalgia is a feeling of dislocation or
drawing is not just design but dramaturgy, which replaces writing and defines all the phases of cre- distress caused by environmental change. Unlike nostalgia – which in its original meaning refers to
ation, working in three ways. 1 Drawing that, through the practice that the artist calls Dibujos-Raíces homesickness and distress when one is separated from home – Solastalgia is ‘the homesickness you
Drawings-Roots, delineates concept and dramaturgy. 2 Drawing that designs robotic devices and have when you are still at home’, the recognition that the place in which one resides is changing and
staging. 3 Finally, the Dibujos-Raíces are transformed into interactive animation and become ele- crumbling Albrecht 2003, 2012. By placing the audience together with non-human performers in
ments of the scene, characters that the artist, like a puppeteer, controls with the help of machines darkness, Solastalgia sought to echo the dislocating experience of Solastalgia, and to draw attention
and sensors. It can be said that Antúnez Roca, following the post-dramatic theatre, works with a to the encounter with the non-human and its significance for thinking about climate and environ-
visual dramaturgy, in which the drawing organizes the articulation of all the elements of his scene. mental change. Thus, at a time when robots tell jokes, sweat or even gain citizenship, this paper will
consider the aesthetic, ecological and political role of non-human performers, in order to highlight
Key Words the voice non-humans might have physically and politically beyond performance, and what might
Drawing Visual Dramaturgy Interactive Animation Technological Performance Robotic Theatre Inter- happen if we listen to it.
action Design
Key Words
Robots, non-human, voice, homesickness, dislocation, ecology, politics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

464 465
 WG WG

Lib Taylor Clio Unger

University of Reading The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

Lib Taylor is Professor Emerita of Theatre and Performance at the University of Reading. She has pub- Clio Unger is a PhD student at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She holds an MA in theatre
lished widely on the body in performance, women’s theatre and contemporary British theatre and perfor- and performance from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a diploma in dramaturgy
mance, including articles in Theatre Research International, Performance Research, Studies in Theatre and from the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. Clio has previously written on the experience of intimacy and
Performance and Contemporary Theatre Review. Shas also written on the boundaries of the perceptions alienation in contemporary intermedial performance. She was awarded IFTRs New Scholars Prize in 2015, and
of performance within extraordinary and unexpected events.  She is a theatre director and devisor of re- her essay “‘SHOOT HIM NOW!!!’ Anonymity, accountability and online spectatorship in Wafaa Bilals Domestic
search performances, including multimedia devised performances and stagings of Marguerite Duras’s Eden Tension” was published in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. During her studies,
Cinema and Savannah Bay and the theatre writings of Gertrude Stein. Currently she is Principal Investiga- Clio has also worked as a freelance dramaturg of various productions in Munich and New York City.
tor of AHRC/EPSRC funded project ‘User Not Found: Social Media Technologies as Immersive Performance’.
Extra/Ordinary Orgasms: OMGYES and the Virtual Disciplining of
Death and the Migration of Identity: Social Media Traces as Sexual Pleasure
Performance
Since 2015, the sex education platform OMGYES has been working on closing the orgasm gap. The
Currently, the lives and memories of most people in developed countries are expressed and accom- website, aimed at improving the female orgasm, offers videos and ‘hands-on’ touch screen interac-
panied by electronic communication, their social media interaction and their collections of data such tion to teach its users different techniques of external sexual stimulation. Having collected research
a photographs, video and music. The relationship between people and their social media lives be- data from approximately 2000 women, the websites presents its data via videos of women demon-
comes particularly problematic after death and increasingly, as people prepare for death, they reflect strating on their own vulvas and subsequently instructing online users to emulate their actions on
on their identity and attempt to shape their digital legacy as their identity migrates from the corpore- image captioned vulvas via touch screen. Ordinary female bodies stand in for bodies of data. This
al to the virtual.   This fifteen minute paper will explore migration of identity following death through paper analyzes how the affective performances of these data bodies effect the performance of the
an analysis of theatre company Dante or Die’s User Not Found. In the performance, the central char- female orgasm. It interrogates how the user’s technical interactions with these data bodies struc-
acter experiences bereavement and mourning via the digital traces of his dead partner and the per- ture and interpret cultural narratives of female desire. Implementing Harvey and Gill’s concept of
formance focuses on the relationship between life, death, identity and social media, using immersive the “sexual entrepreneur,” it dissects the websites emphasis on technique over fantasy or desire, its
technology developed specifically for the performance.  The performance is part of the project, ‘User sterile design, its implicit encouragement of self-surveillance, and its techno-plastic transference of
Not Found: Social Media Technologies as Immersive Performance’, an AHRC/EPSRC funded research erotic touch. This critical analysis of the OMGYES explores the entanglements of the data bodiess
project in the Creative Economy Programme. The project is designed to enhance immersivity and disciplining function and neoliberal iterations of sexual entrepreneurship. It draws out key questions
participation In theatre via software applications that can form an integral part of a performance.  It surrounding claims of neutrality and feminist emancipation in the context of sextech and data rep-
brings together academics, Dante or Die and the technology agency Marmelo to explore how to ex- resentation.
ploit the capability of live interactive social media technologies to engage with spectators both col-
lectively and individually. The paper will analyse how performance integrating social media can rep- Key Words
resent and analyse the contemporary, uncanny, posthumous migration of identity into the virtual. data bodies, sex-tech, sexual entrepreneurship, female orgasm, techno-plastic touch
Key Words
Death, social media, immersivity, interactivity, virutality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

466 467
 WG WG

Joris Weijdom Piotr Woycicki

University of the Arts Utrecht Aberystwyth University
Joris Weijdom founded MAPLAB in 2012. His background being 3D computer animation, he loves to combine Piotr is a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the Aberystwyth University. His research interests concern the
real and virtual environments and enabling the creation of interactive mixed-reality experiences. Joris is always intersections between political and aesthetic theory, particularly the work of Lyotard, Deleuze, and Rancière and
looking for the ‘inter’ in everything: inter-disciplinarity, inter-connectivity, inter-action and inter-faces. Joris contemporary intermedial performance practice. He has recently published a monograph Post-cinematic Theatre
obtained a European Media Master of Arts inInteractive Multimedia (EMMA-IMM) at the Faculty of Art and and Performance Palgrave Macmillan 2014. He is an active member of the Intermediality Working Group within
Media Technology of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, validated by the Portsmouth University in the UK the International Federation for Theatre Research IFTR. He has also collaborated as composer and deviser with the
in 1998. Between 2008 and 2012 he led the research group Virtual Theatre of HKU Research Centre Theatre UK based intermedial company Imitating the Dog and director Pete Brooks on a number of international projects.
Making Processes.

Exploring the Affordances and Intentionalities of Virtual Reality Manufacturing ‘Dissent’ in Thoughts that can be Danced, an
and Motion Capture in the Hamlet Project with CREW Intermedial Tango Performance

In my contribution to the preconceived panel on our Hamlet-project with CREW, I would like to in- One of the key concepts behind public democratic debate is that of representation. This represen-
troduce a further developed concept of intermediality with a focus on the performative aspects of tation may commonly be understood as a representation of political interests of a group of people,
the technologies which are used in the project, namely virtual reality VR and motion capture MoCap. and an image of the people as a political grouping. Rancièreproblematises the notion of political
These technologies will be discussed in terms of their affordances Gibson 1966 and 1979, indicating representation by calling it ‘the distribution of the sensible’. He argues that this representation is not
possibilities of interaction, and intentionalities Don Ihde 1990 and 2002, characterizing the triadic an image based on a mimetic relationship to a ‘real’ community, but one that functions within the
relationships between human beings, technologies and their lifeworlds. In my sign-pragmatic and logic of a particular political strategy. He defines this as a modality of representation which produces
postphenomenological approach of intermediality I will discuss how we can learn from the technol- and maintains a certain political ‘consensus’. He then defines a second modality that of ‘dissensus’
ogies we use in or project, in particular with regard to how media technologies provide or facilitate which has the capacity to disrupt the former by creating ‘a modification of the co-ordinates of the
specific forms of performativity in terms of world-making, staging which assumes performing as well sensible’. This paper will focus on Thoughts that can be Danced, an intermedial tango performance
as spectating, self-referencing and self-reflecting Kattenbelt 2010. The underlying question is: what devised by Karoline Gritzner, BiljanaLipic, Stephen Ellis and myself. My particular focus will be on the
is it that we do with media and what is it that media do with us? In order to understand our project intermedial strategies and digital scenography which I designed for the piece. The paper will assess
within the broader context of our mediatized culture and society, I will focus on matters of play, the possibilities of these intermedial aesthetics to challenge and reflect upon the mechanisms which
performance and participation. Gibson, James Jerome. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual produce the ‘the distribution of the sensible’ within contemporary global culture and try to locate
Systems. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Gibson, James Jerome. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual intermedial practice as a potential praxis of ‘dissensus’.
Perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden In the first instance, the article will address how the piece stages CGI as a self-reflexive process of
to Earth. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Ihde, Don. Bodies in Technology. re-imagining and re-animating history, through an intermedial staging of the 2013 protests in Turkey
2002. Mineapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Kattenbelt, Chiel. 2010. “Intermedi- where protesters decided to dance Tango as a form of street demonstration. It will then analyse how
ality in Performance and as a Mode of Performativity” in Mapping Intermediality in Performance, intermedial aesthetics interrupt the ‘the distribution of the sensible’ by interjecting what Rancière
edited by Bay-Cheng, Sarah, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender and Robin Nelson, 29-37. Amsterdam: defines as ‘singular mechanisms of subjectification’. In the second instance, the article will look at
Amsterdam University Press. the ‘sublime’ aesthetics of fractal graphics and their role in determining the symbolic constitution of
the social within global media culture. With reference to specific examples from the piece, the paper
Key Words will contend that the piece deconstructs and unsettles the sensory experience of the ‘sublime’ thus
Intermediality, performativity, virtual reality, motion capture, affordance, intentionality, agency creating an intervention into ‘the distribution of the sensible’. Finally, the paper will contend that
the piece foregrounds representation as an unstable concept which lies between the polarities of
‘perception’ and ‘sensation’, effectuating a politics of representation that constitutes a negotiation
of the unstable grounds located between the processes of production of ‘consensus’ and ‘dissensus’.

Key Words
Intermedial dramaturgy neo-medievalism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

468 469
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

470
Groups
Working
MUSIC THEATER

471

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Jerri Daboo Tereza Havelkova

University of Exeter Charles University, Prague

Jerri Daboo is Associate Professor of Performance in the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter. Her Tereza Havelková is assistant professor in musicology at Charles University in Prague. She received her PhD from
work examines the performance and culture of the British South Asian communities and transnational con- the University of Amsterdam, and held scholarships at the Royal Holloway University of London, Humboldt Uni-
nections with the Indian subcontinent. She has recently published a monograph related to her paper: Staging versity in Berlin, and Columbia University in New York. Her research concentrates on contemporary encounters
British South Asian Culture: Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre Routledge. between opera and the media, and the intersection of aesthetics and politics in opera and music theatre both
present and past. Her work in English has appeared in publications such as Sonic Mediations CSP 2008 and Inside
Knowledge CSP 2009. She is the founder of a Czech journal for contemporary music called His Voice, and has
Transnational Migration in Musicals: Bollywood on the British published extensively in Czech on contemporary composition, experimental music, opera, and music theatre.
Stage
Documentary Gesamtkunstwerk or Can Lenin Sing?
This paper considers the migratory movement of music, song, dance and aesthetics from Bollywood
films in India to being incorporated into musical theatre productions in Britain. It investigates the During the early years of political “normalization” after the Russian-led invasion into Czecho-
reasons for the increased popularity of Bollywood in Britain from the late 1990s, and the transna- slovakia in 1968, the Prague National Theatre produced a new Soviet opera of Ukrainian prove-
tional connection to the economic liberalisation in India from the early 1990s that led to the devel- nience titled 10 Days that Shook the World, based on John Reed’s infamous account of the Bol-
opment of a new type of Bollywood film which was also aimed at the NRI market. This has led to shevik Revolution. With a large cast, two choirs and scores of extras from the Czechoslovak
forms and aesthetics from the films being reproduced in theatre productions in Britain, causing a People’s Army, it was the largest opera production the National Theatre ever put on.  In this pa-
reconsideration of cultural codes and conventions that are found in such a translation and adapta- per, I will probe the usefulness of the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk for this particular junc-
tion of medium and cultural context. The particular use of music, song and dance found in the films, tion of aesthetics and politics, where the myth making involved is shrouded in a documentary
and influenced by traditional forms of Indian theatre and performance, as well as philosophical rhetoric of witness accounts and archival records. I am particularly interested in how this late-So-
approaches from the Natyashastra offer a somewhat different approach to the way that song and viet take on the total work of art positions itself in relation to film, in this case Eisenstein’s Oc-
dance is understood within western musical theatre, and this difference will be examined, leading to tober 1928, and I will also touch upon the ramifications of the opera’s purported depiction of
the question of whether the Natyashastra may provide an alternate model for considering the use of true events for its main protagonist’s ability to express himself in song. Last but not least, I will
music, song and dance in western musical theatre as well. The paper will discuss productions includ- address the issue of using a transplanted Soviet model for the purposes of operatic “normaliza-
ing Tamasha’s Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral 1998, an adaptation of the Bollywood tion” of the Czech nation after 1968, and ponder the failures of such aesthetico-political migration.
film Hum Aapke Hain Koun… Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Bombay Dreams 2002 featuring
music by film composer A. R. Rahman, including songs recycled from films and the re-performance Key Words
of song and dance sequences from Bollywood films on stage in large-scale revue productions such Soviet opera, Gesamtkunstwerk, politics, song, migration
as The Merchants of Bollywood. The influence of western musical theatre is now also being seen in
India, with productions such as Feroz Abbas Khan’s recent stage musical adaptation of the historical
epic film Mughal-e-Azam drawing in audiences to see the film recreated in the theatre, thus leading
to further complex transnational migrations of musical theatre between India and Britain.

Key Words
Musical theatre Bollywood British theatre adaptation migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

472 473
 WG WG

Phoebe Rumsey David Savran

The Graduate Center, City University of New York City University of New York, The Graduate Center

Phoebe Rumsey is a PhD Candidate in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She holds an MA in Performance David Savran is a specialist in twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. theatre, musical theatre, popular culture,
Studies from New York University, an MA in Theatre University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a BFA in Dance Simon and social theory.  He is the author of eight books, whose wide-ranging subjects include the Wooster Group,
Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests include musical theatre, memory studies, dance, Tennessee Williams, Tony Kushner, white masculinity, musical theatre, and middlebrow cultural production. 
and embodiment. She has presented papers at PSi, IFTR, ATHE, ASTR, and MATC. Recent publications include: His most recent book is Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class, the win-
“The New Choreography of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro” in Studies in Musical Theatre. She is an ac- ner of the Joe A. Callaway Prize.  He has served as a judge for the Obie Awards and the Lucille Lortel Awards
complished dancer, choreographer, teacher and adjudicator. She currently teaches Body Movement and The- and was a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.  He is the former editor of the Journal of American Drama and
atre History at The City College of New York. She is the recipient of the Cohn-Lortel Award from The Graduate Theatre and is the Vera Mowry Roberts Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City
Center, the Lew Wasserman Scholarship from NYU, and the New Scholars Prize from IFTR 2017. University of New York.

Social Dance in the Musical Allegiance: How the Dancing Body The Cosmopolitanism of Korean Musical Theatre
Permeates Boundaries of Nationhood and National Identity in
As South Korean musical theatre has flourished since the 1990s, Koreans have become ex-
Musical Theatre tremely adept at producing their own versions of Broadway-style musicals. Despite the cos-
mopolitan musical and theatrical vernaculars employed by most of these musicals, how-
As part of the ongoing effort to find new ways to approach the interdisciplinary nature of musical ever, their subject matter remains determinedly and uniquely Korean. Perhaps the most
theatre, this paper investigates how the embodied perspective brought forward by dance in musical Korean of them all is the award-winning 2010 musical Seopyeonje, adapted from a 1976
theatre provides a unique method of permeating borders between “them” and “us.” Taking the 2015 short story by Yi Chung-jun that had been turned into “an unlikely hit [film] that dominat-
Broadway musical Allegiance as the main object of study, this paper explores how dance, in particu- ed the box office in 1993” and is credited with having begun the Korean Wave (hallyu) in film.
lar social dance, becomes an integral component both as a universalizer and survival tactic towards
defining nationhood and national identity, enabling greater understanding of how identity is shaped The Korean-ness of all three versions is defined in several ways, but most notably by their inclu-
and embodied. Directed by Stafford Arima and choreographed by Andrew Palermo, Allegiance was sion of performances of pansori, the foremost traditional Korean musical theatre form (some-
motivated by the experiences of actor George Takei and his parents in a Japanese internment camp times called “mono-opera,” performed by a solo singer and drummer), which dates back to the
after World War II in rural Wyoming. This paper exposes how the dramaturgical structure of Alle- eighteenth century but which, at the end of the twentieth century, was being eclipsed by West-
giance uses swing dance to indicate identity and community. In so doing, Palermo employs social ern entertainment forms. The two adaptations of Seopyeonje use pansori—often characterized
dances and music of the 1940s in the United States to break down racial tropes and demonstrate as utterly antithetical to Western musical performance styles—both to mourn the loss of an es-
how dance in musical theatre can be used to indicate and inspire inclusion, compassion, and un- sential Korean-ness and to plea for pansori’s revitalization. Most important, however, both ad-
derstanding across cultures. I argue Japanese bodies engaged in American social dances challenge aptations stage this plea using formulaic Western media styles. The musical, in particular, juxta-
common assumptions about America’s past, and how an embodied nostalgia inherent in the dance poses the musical conventions and structures of Broadway-style musicals against the guttural,
form recovers the notion that a Japanese body can also be American and a vital part of American explosive vocal techniques of pansori to produce a hybrid music drama (that incorporates the
culture. On a broader scale, this discussion explores how the interplay between social dance and the rock song “Proud Mary” as well as Wagner’s Wesendonck Lied, “Im Treibhaus”). Seopyeon-
music it grows out of can be used in musical theatre as a way to understand longings for nationhood je the musical thus epitomizes the kind of cosmopolitan hybridity at which Koreans excel, un-
and how these longings are imbedded in a complex partnership between past and present. In this leashing the elemental power of pansori within the framework of Western musical theatre.
paradigm greater meaning is gained of embodied history, racial difference, and identity in the the-
atre and culture both in the United States. Key Words 
South Korea, pansori, Broadway musical, heritage performance, cosmopolitanism
Key Words
Musical Theatre, embodiment, social dance, Nationhood, nationality, identity, culture, racial differ-
ence, nostalgia, survival tactics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

474 475
 WG WG

John Severn Christine Snyder

Macquarie University The Graduate Center, City University of New York

John Severn is a Macquarie University Research Fellow in the Department of International Studies: Languages Christine Snyder [email protected], PhD student, Level II, The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 5th
and Cultures, Macquarie University. His current research project is on opera and community, with a focus on Avenue, New York, NY 10016 MA, 
the work of the Komische Oper, Berlin. His wider research interests are in operatic and musical theatre adap- Theatre History and Criticism, Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210 
tation, especially of Shakespeare, European cultural history, community and arts policy. He has published on Presentations/Conferences:  
opera, musical theatre and film, Shakespeare and contemporary theatre in Music & Letters, Cambridge Opera “He-Men and Habaneros: The Branding Culture of Hot Sauce and the Ghost Peppers of Hegemonic Mascu-
Journal, Theatre Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, Australian Literary Studies, Studies in Musical Theatre and Per- linity,” Working Group: Consuming Bodies: Food, Performance, and Policing the Extra/Ordinary, American
formance Paradigm. His monograph, Shakespeare as Jukebox Musical is forthcoming with Routledge. He has Society for Theatre Research, Nov. 16-19, 2017, Atlanta, GA;  “’This Ethic of Appearances’: Problems of
taught theatre at the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and European studies Identity and Audience Identification in Musical Adaptations of Bright Lights, Big City and American Psycho,”
at the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University. He received his PhD in Theatre and English Panel: The Role of the Audience, Comparative Drama Conference, April 6-8, 2017, Orlando, FL ;  “Consuming
from the University of New South Wales, and also holds a Masters with Distinction in Shakespeare and Theatre Pauline: Confirming and Conforming to the Middle-Class Woman Through Pauline Cushman’s 1864 Publicity
from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, separate first-class honours degrees in Theatre Materials,” Panel: Images as Performance, Performance as Image, Comparative Drama Conference, March
Studies and in Opera Studies from the University of Manchester/ Rose Bruford College, and an LLBHons in Law 26-28, 2015, Baltimore, MD 
and French from the University of Edinburgh. Awards:
CUNY Graduate Center Five Year Graduate Student Fellowship, 2016-2021 Dean’s Pin, Brooklyn College, 2015
Operagoing, Migration, Asylum, Displacement Charles Bale Scholarship, Brooklyn College, 2014 
Research Interests/Fields:
This paper aims to identify networks of practises beyond the operatic work itself that might combine Popular Performed Americana musical theatre, theme park performance, reenactment U.S. Nostalgia and
the Cultural Products of War Visuality in the Theatre Photography and Performance and Photography as
to enhance, neutralise or undermine an opera production’s ability to contribute creatively to current Performance
discourses around migration, refugees and displacement. It considers a number of recent opera
performances in Germany and Denmark that attempt to engage with these issues in different ways.
Critical approaches to the political aspects of opera are frequently thematically driven and work-fo- “In America, the Streets Are Paved with Gold”: U.S. Nostalgic
cussed, whether in terms of the ‘work’ of score and libretto, or in terms of a specific production on Constructions of the Immigrant in Titanic, Transnational
stage, often with a focus on the role of the director. Indeed, several works central to the current Iteration, and the Contemporary Migrant
performance repertoire thematize population displacements, refugees and migration. On the face
of it, therefore, opera and opera criticism are well placed to engage with and shape discourse on “I want to be a lady’s maid!” “An engineer!” “A millionaire!” “In America!” So sing the third-class passengers/
pressing contemporary matters despite the art form having a repertoire dominated by works at least immigrants in the first act of Maury Yeston’s and Peter Stone’s musical, Titanic. Differentiated by dress and
a century old. However, an opera’s thematic engagement does not in itself necessarily encourage twice by language lines are sung in Italian and German, in chorus, they perform monolithically as good, aspi-
audience engagement with contemporary issues. This paper examines how aspects of operagoing rational, future U.S. Americans. Herein lies a deeper poignancy, present in Broadway’s nostalgic ache for the
might combine to influence – positively or negatively – audiences’ engagement with migration, asy- assimilating European immigration of American grandparents and great-grandparents, but also produced by a
foreknowledge of the ship’s destiny and the imminent immigrant deaths in open ocean waters, a fate similarly
lum or displacement. Its case studies examine the ways in which approaches to such diverse issues shared by many contemporary migrants seeking better lives. While drawing on a familiarity with the original
as security policies, front-of-house practises, instrumentation and orchestration, programmes and Broadway production, I concentrate on a recent transnational staging: Eric Schaeffer’s South Korean Titanic,
cast lists, casting strategies, linguistic policies, season planning, merchandising and direct audience first performed at Virginia’s Signature Theatre. I am drawn to the production, not only as a possible and rath-
address beyond the performance can work together to encourage, distract from or otherwise shape er unique Seoul-to-Broadway migration, but also for its depiction of the third-class passengers, unmoored
discourse and action on migration, asylum and displacement, whether or not the opera-as-work from U.S. nostalgic renderings of early 20th century immigration by a lack of embodied cultural/historical/
thematizes these in terms of libretto and score or overt directorial intervention. hereditary knowledge within the audience and performers. Without radically altering Yeston’s score, this dis-
connect enables Titanic’s addressing of larger 21st century immigration issues, as does Schaeffer’s direction
Key Words and, particularly, Paul Tate dePoo III’s set. By immersing the audience and performers in a series of gangways,
Operagoing, migration, refugees, Germany, Denmark bridges, and stairwells, Schaffer and dePoo III replicate frightening aspects of migration – inadequate space,
entrapment, and refused access to safety based on origin and class. In this paper, I will explicate how these and
other dramaturgical ruptures from the original Broadway production’s proscenium storytelling and the musical
text’s U.S. immigrant nostalgia allow for alternative audience affects that can seek to broaden and challenge
U.S. and world understandings of current migrant crises.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key Words
U.S. Immigrant Nostalgia, Titanic the musical, Audience Affect in Set Design, Death and the ImMigrant

476 477
 WG WG

Marcus Tan Millie Taylor

Nanyang Technological University University of Winchester

Marcus Tan is Assistant Professor of Drama and programme leader of drama studies at the National Institute Millie Taylor is Professor of Musical Theatre at the University of Winchester. She began her career as a free-
of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He is the author of Acoustic Interculturalism: Listening to lance musical director and, for almost twenty years, toured Britain and Europe with a variety of musicals
Performance Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, and has published extensively on intercultural theatre, music and sound and pantomimes musicals including West Side Story, Rocky Horror Show, Little Shop of Horrors and Sweeney
in performance, and Asian Shakespeares in journals such as Theatre Research International, Contemporary Todd. Publications include British Pantomime Performance Intellect, 2007, Singing for Musicals: A Practical
Theatre Review and The Drama Review. He is also the convenor of the Music Theatre Working Group at the Guide Crowood Press, 2008, Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment Ashgate Press, 2012/ Routledge
International Federation for Theatre Research, and is currently editing a book on contemporary Southeast Asian 2016. With Dominic Symonds she wrote the text book Studying Musical Theatre Palgrave, 2014 and edited
performance and working on a research project addressing empathy and immersive virtual environments. the collection Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance Oxford University Press, 2014
and with Robert Gordon and Olaf Jubin she wrote British Musical Theatre Since 1950 Methuen, 2016. She
“A plague o’ Both Your Houses”: Affective Frequencies in two is co-editor with Symonds of two book series: Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre and Oxford Critical
Perspectives on Musical Theatre. Forthcoming publications include the monograph Theatre Music and Sound
Romeos and Juliets at the RSC 1960-2010: Macbeth to Matilda Forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan.

Ontologically, sound and music, as musicologists and psychoacousticians posit, move listeners. As Macbeth to Matilda: the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Musicals
affect, it migrates between bodies, as a body, and moves bodies to action. Laughter provokes new
laughter noise triggers emotional and/or physiological responses in listening bodies Dance music, This paper will explore the musicality of RSC productions and consider whether it is theoretically
which stimulates movement in synchrony, acts as an ‘affective glue’. Such sonic affect is beyond cog- possible to link all the RSC productions – from Macbeth to Matilda - along a continuum of musical
nition and always interpersonal, found in the intensities that move between bodies, body to body, practice a continuum that counters the historical separation of ‘plays with songs’ from ‘musicals’.
human, nonhuman, part-body, and otherwise. It interchanges, transfers, and circulates between Such musicality may result in practice from the presence of a permanent music department and
bodies and between these intensities and resonances themselves. This inter-personal, inter-bodily the increasing amount of music being composed for all productions, the introduction of Christmas
intensity, from one experiential state of the body to another, augments or diminishes that body’s shows that are often musicals in all but name, and the increasingly hazy separation between plays
capacity to act. In performance, such vibrational affects can be employed to regulate listening and with songs and musicals. The lyrical function of verse-speaking, and the rhythms its rhyme schemes
dictate reception, and this paper will examine such a politics of affective frequency in which the and meters set up, slows down naturalistic time. When Hamlet delivers the soliloquy ‘to be or not
circulation and modulation of sound, as affective vibrational force, can shape perception, reception, to be’ the pace and poetry of events moves outside a ‘realistic’ sense of time. The same is true of
agency and non-agency of the conscious, pre-conscious and post-conscious body. It will critically song when Emile de Becque sings ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ in South Pacific the show expands into
compare a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – what Scott McMillin refers to as ‘lyric time’ for the character to sing in what is effectively a bubble of
Jerome Robins’s West Side Story 2017 and the National Changgeuk Company of Korea’s Romyo and time 2006. Similar disruptions occur but because the story continues coherently and the characters
Juri 2009 – to explore affect as the state of what Brian Massumi defines as ‘in-betweenness’ – of expand on their psychological state audiences perceive both orders of time to be part of the fabric
acting and being acted upon, of movement and stasis. As music features prominently in musical of the scene and story. The difference is that the tonal range is prescribed in song and the rhythm
and intercultural theatres that employ Asian performance traditions and can be said to be primary constrained by an accompaniment. However, the combination of the lyric qualities of voice and
actants in the mise en scène and fundamental dramaturgical devices integral to the performance music, the poeticisation of language, and their effects in time and space unites musical theatre and
mode, such affective frequencies in performance have distinct effects on audience reception. Sound Shakespearean productions.
can regulate and move listening bodies, thereby modulating meaning and interpretation of what is
seen they contain the ‘yet-ness’ to re-compose comprehension of Shakespeare’s revered tragedy. Key Words
Musical Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Musicality
Key Words
Sonic affect, vibrational affect, movement, West Side Story, Romyo and Juri
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

478 479
 WG WG

Demetris Zavros José Batista Zebba Dal Farra Martines

University of Wolverhampton University of Sao Paolo

Demetris Zavros is a lecturer in Drama at the University of Wolverhampton where he teaches on the BA Drama Director, actor, musician, professor and researcher in the Departamento de Artes Cênicas (Department of
and the MA in Contemporary Theatre and Performance. He is research group depute for CCHIP Centre for Cre- Performing Arts), at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, in the field Body, voice and actuation. His theatri-
ativity, History and Identity in Performance.  His research interests lie in the areas of contemporary theatre and cal qualification is based on the experience with many directors, actors and musicians in Brazil and Europe,
performance praxis postdramatic theatre composed theatre and musical dramaturgies intermedial theatre prac- including Augusto Boal, Flávio Império and Myrian Muniz. In 2011, he developed the post-doctoral research
tices and Practice-as-Research methodologies. He has published in the areas of Composed theatre Roesner and Language, experience, memory: the narrator’s and singer’s voice poetic as subjects of the actor, at the Univer-
Rebstock, 2012 Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Rodosthenous 2016 Postdramatic music theatre sitat de Barcelona, under the supervision of the philosopher Jorge Larrosa. Currently, he is the director of the
and music-centric re-conceptualisations of myth in theatre and performance through practice and publication. Ausgang de Teatro. His musical qualification has been constructed in several courses - with Nelson Aires, Paulo
Belinati and Hans Joachim Koellreuter, among others - and in acting as a musician, singer and musical director,
“Musical dramaturgy” and Migratory Practices in Development in Brazil and abroad. In 1975, he graduated in Civil Engineering and Mathematics. In 1999, he developed his
doctorate at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo, with the thesis Lightweight Structures. Con-
nections with the Theatrical Space. Design of a Mobile, Multiple and Transformable Theatre (TMMT).
I am proposing a paper in relation to alternative approaches to ‘musical dramaturgy’ in relation
to migrating and developing practices across Europe. This paper, which I am hoping will form part
Voices in State of Siege
of a larger research project, specifically looks at and is presented in collaboration with Anna Hele-
na McLean who trained and performed as a principal member of Gardzienice Centre for Theatre We are Voices in State of Siege. The pressure of neoliberal policies, implemented on a global scale
Practices for seven years. Now rebased in England, she works internationally developing her own in the West, requires the control of collective and individual actions, in a growing and sometimes
training [‘ACT Actor-chorus-text Ensemble practice and Workshops’] and extended performance imperceptible way. The semantic saturation of words serves political interests and has as a strategy
practice with Moon Fool International Theatre and Music Exchange. The paper will be examining the cover-up. The manipulation of words by propaganda establishes effective social control, which
this case study as an example of a migrating practice which is developed, re-contextualised and dispenses with military regimes. The article approaches a theatrical pedagogy as the construction
re-imagined into the ACT approach. Primary material will be collected through interview and pos- of a course between master and apprentice in this minefield, based on a reverse, foreign, non-tem-
sible video examples/Skype conference with Anna if a bursary for covering her travel expenses pered listening.
cannot be provided.The main focus of the analysis lies in the ways the unfolding ‘musical drama-
turgy’ guides the creative process and alternative hierarchies this creates in the rehearsal/perfor- Key words
mance. The paper will discuss possible connections between the centrality of ‘musical dramatur- State of Siege, Voice, Non-tempered listening
gy’ in ensemble theatre practice to the sociocultural and geopolitical context the original practice
flourished in or flourished in response to, and how the developing migrating practice through
the work of associated artists reinvents its hybrid identity in the new socio-political environment.

Key Words
migration, musical dramaturgy, Anna-Helena McLean
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

480 481
 Working PERFORMANCE
AND DISABILITY
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

482 483
 WG WG

Margaret Ames Andres Aparicio

Aberystwyth University Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

I am a lecturer in theatre studies. I have made specific contributions to new understandings about learning Andrés Aparicio is currently in his third year of his PhD in the Doctorate in Arts Theatre program at Pontificia
disability and devising theatre. Through my practice as research I have made contributions to understanding a Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile. He is a computer scientist who worked for ten years at the Center
widening of aesthetic appreciation of work made by people with learning disabilities, awareness of culturally for the Development of Inclusive Technologies CEDETi UC at the same university researching, designing, and
specific theatre practices and contributed to the debate about constructions of learning disability in the con- implementing technologies for people with disabilities. His current research interests lie at the intersection of
text of the social model of disability. I foreground the experiences of making work with people with learning theatre, disability, and technology.
disabilities, their concerns and interests and the complex interpersonal negotiations involved in this practice.
Stasis and Disability: Challenging Mobility Assumptions in Theatre
The Centre of the World Practice
A migration from social, margins of dependency to an agentic unruliness, is an example and a possi- Alberto Vega is a Chilean actor, playwright and director who has Locked-In Syndrome, a neurological
ble intersection between disability cultures and geographic, occupational cultures. An intersection condition characterized by preserved cognition, quadriplegia, aphonia, and, in some cases, some
emerges that enables a migration from private margins to public domains in process and perfor- kind of preserved voluntary ocular movement. I started collaborating with him several years ago
mance. I will develop a discussion of a process, the particular information and knowledge emerging during the design and implementation of the assistive communication device he used to write and
within it, in the context of a migration from hidden experience into public display. I will consider my direct a play. However, he is yet to be included as an actor in a professional theatre production, an
themes form practice via Virilio’s critique of progress and: ‘the synchronized democracy of public omission that speaks about exclusionary practices based upon assumptions of normalcy and ability
emotion that was to ruin the fragile balance of societies supposedly emancipated from real pres- that ignore the unique offerings of disabled bodies. My research project intends to question these
ence’ 2007,9. Unruly creative actions are real presence that throws out democracy and demands a assumptions by approaching the matter from a disability perspective, focusing on body diversity, and
new conduct. Warner’s Counterpublics will be recruited to consider how alternative modes of com- exploring how immobility may inform theatre practice as a creative perspective.
munity and interest might intersect and perhaps suggest a communal structure that our group per-
forms once a week and holds in our memories and imaginations throughout the year. His discussion Key Words
on the public and the private draws attention to a category of the private that has: ‘no correspond- disability, ableism,locked-in syndrome, movement, complex embodiment,diversity
ing sense of public including: related to the individual, especially inwardness, subjective experience,
and the incommunicable’ 2002, 30. How does this migration of subjective experience that my col-
league desires to communicate, into the public realm, contend with, or example Warner’s proposal
of counterpublics whose: ‘particpants are marked off from persons or citizens in general’? 56 Public
emotion in real presence as Virilio recuperates, perhaps assert an antidote to virtual public emotion,
coerced by the speed of the digital which is not available to my colleagues with learning disabilities.

Key Words
Private, Public, Challenge Agency
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

484 485
 WG WG

Dave Calvert Christiane Czymoch

University of Huddersfield
Christiane Czymoch was a student of Theatre Studies, German Philology and British Studies at Johannes
Dave Calvert has been a Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, from which she graduated in 2012. In her Masters thesis, which
since 2006. Previously, he worked as Director of Theatre Education for Mind the Gap theatre company in was published in 2014, she searches for the subversive potential in the performative reflection of imag-
Bradford. His research into performance and learning disability includes publications on Back to Back, es of femininity and their transgression in three British live artists work, based on Judith Butlers and Vic-
Mind the Gap, Heavy Load and Susan Boyle. He is also the current Chair of Dark Horse Theatre Company. tor Turners theories of performativity of identity and culture. After two years of working as an assistant
director at a theatre in the North of Germany she now lives in Berlin where she works at a broadcast-
There are Storms We Cannot Weather: Dialectics of Stasis and ing station as an editor for subtitles for people with hearing disabilities. This work and her general inter-
est in matters of accessibility in media, theatre and performance led to a greater involvement with learn-
Dynamism in the Case of Susan Boyle ing about Deaf culture and German sign language. Her current academic work is concerned with the
intertwining of politics and aesthetics in dance, theatre and performance created by artists with disabilities.
Licia Carlson 2010 has outlined a conventional opposition between the static and the dynamic in
learning disability, according to the potential improvability of the impairment. Within dramatic per- Freaks of Culture. Bodily Negotiations of Solidarity in Rehearsal
formance, representation has tended towards the static, with learning disabled protagonists act-
ing as either the benchmark or the catalyst for the development of non-disabled characters.   In
and Performance
relation to disease, rather than disability, Carslon 2010, p.28 offers an alternative definition of dy-
In my thesis I am asking in which ways certain features of a disability aesthetics are related to soci-
namism as ‘causing a disruption of the general equilibrium of human beings’. This is closer to the
etal utopia and alternative concepts of community. The underlying assumption being, as supported
perceived dynamism of learning disabled performance, in which the performer troubles the equilib-
by the theories of Judith Butler and Victor Turner, that culture and identity are fluid and can be
rium of its context, either by destabilising the form and meaning of the performance event.   Broad-
created and modulated through performative processes. The intertwining of two levels of perfor-
ly speaking, then, the interplay of stasis and dynamism in learning disabled performance centres
mativity is of importance. The first one being the performativity of social interactions through which
on the tension between a performer who themselves remains static while simultaneously dyna-
the second one is negotiated, namely the formal and effect aesthetics of a dance, theatre or perfor-
mising the context around them. Migration in such a situation is an impossibility, since performer
mance piece.  To examine this question I accompany three rehearsal processes led by three different
cannot move and context cannot settle. The net result is often an impasse in which audience and
artists and generate data with the help of the sociological approaches of participant observation
performer are both immobilised by the event.  In this paper, I shall examine this dialectic of sta-
and narrative interviews as well as interviews which I use for feedback on my interpretative analysis. 
sis and dynamism through a consideration of the phenomenon of the Scottish singer Susan Boyle.
The first rehearsal process is led by Vienna based performer and choreographer Michael Turinsky.
Celebrated for her transformation in the 2009 television contest Britain’s Got Talent, I will argue
His dance performance Reverberations deals with the tension as well as the potential joy in a playful
that the event was ultimately non-migratory, and neither Boyle nor the audience accomplished
oscillation between subjection and objection, concepts of the Marxian general intellect looking for a
the perceived move from learning disability to superstar. At the same time, a series of more nu-
collective body in precarious times, as taken from Franco Berardis “The Uprising”, bodily features of
anced interactions of the static and dynamic were happening within and around the event that
the other that becomes self reverberating in different bodies.  While my observation of the produc-
open up the social and performative understandings of learning disability.  Carlson, L. 2010 The
tion process is currently ongoing, my intermediate findings suggest that alongside verbal discussions
Faces of Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Turinsky communicates impulses through physical thinking and thus makes the performers adopt
qualities of each others bodies, creating movements that follow a shared pattern, endowing a sense
Key Words
of solidarity on a physical basis, that is then individualised according to each performers own quali-
Dialectics, stasis, dynamism, Susan Boyle, learning disability
ties. These echoes and their modulations resume into the rhythm of music, light and language, as if
a singular bodys features got amplified and diversified until it reverberates on an atmospheric scale.

Key Words
disability disability aesthetics dance performance art solidarity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

486 487
 WG WG

Arseli Dokumaci Vibeke Glørstad

University of Copenhagen VID Specialized University

ArseliDokumaci is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, the Department of Anthropolo- Work: Lecturer at VID Specialized University, Faculty of Health. Sandnes Norway. Teaching at the following
gy. Between 201 and 2016, she was a Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et cultureFQRSC postdoctoral programs: Bachelor in Social Education with focus om learning disability &  Masterprogram in Citizenship and
fellow at McGill University, Social Studies of Medicine Department. Arseli received her PhD in performance cooperation in social and health services.  Education:  Cand. polit.  Sociology University of Oslo, 2005 and Social
studies from Aberystwyth University and completed postdoctoral research at Concordia Universitys Mobile Educator Ostfold University College 1984. Publications: Glørstad, V. 2013. ‘The Members and Ivhu versus the
Media Lab. Arselis research lies at the interface of performance, disability and science studies. Its central State. Two plays debating the nation in Zimbabwean Community theatre’. In South African Theatre Journal.
question concern the way everyday life is practiced and experienced in ill health, on the one hand, and the Published online 2 Oct 2013 . DOI 10.1080/10137548.2012.838336, pp 109-138. Glørstad, V. 2011. Citizens
way these practices and experiences are turned into a form of measurement in medicine, on the other. Arseli stories - or theatre as performing citizenship in Zimbabwe’. In KeneIngweonued: ‘Trends in  twenty–first cen-
is a video-maker, and her visual ethnographies proposes to rethink the theory of affordances in relation to the tury African Theatre and performance.  Chapter  9 page 243-261. RODOPI/ International Federation of Theatre
embodiments of disease and disability. Research. Amsterdam. New York. Glørstad, V. 2007. UtfordringeravidentitetiZimbabwiskteater I: Norsktidss-
krift for Migrasjonsforskning.1/2007 Norwegian Journal of Migration Research 1/2007: Challenging Identity in
Micro-activist Affordances: An Ecological Approach to Disability Zimbabwean Theatre.
and Performance
Performing Citizenship
Drawing on the materials of two ethnographies where I worked with differently disabled indi-
viduals, this paper proposes a materialist approach to disability through an out of the discipline This paper will be a continuation from the paper last year where I presented What is cultur-
contribution: A re-theorization of James Gibsons theory of affordances 1979 within the context al citizenship for people with learning disabilities? Artistic expression as acts of citizenship. I re-
of disability and performance. Originally developed in ecological psychology, affordances refer to lated – preliminary-  artistic expression and theatre to the notion of political agency  and radical
the possibilities of action that emerge through the complementarity of organism-environment re- citizenship and democratization The CPRD article 30 states that person with learning disabilities
lations. When the concept is thought in relation to disability however, a strange paradox arises: have their right to take part in cultural life as any other - and the state should make sure equal
Affordances originate in the mutuality of organism-environment relations disability issues precisely access. And Article 30, number 2 is much more explicit on the right to expression than is being
from their disruption. What to make of this anomaly that disability poses to the theory of affor- emphasized in the Norwegian context in the white paper NOU 2016:17.  Art 30 Realizing human
dances?  Drawing from the visual materials of my fieldworks in Istanbul and in Quebec, I propose rights for persons with learning disability 2. States Parties shall take appropriate measures to en-
that we begin theorizing affordances not with the reciprocity of organism-environment relations, able persons with disabilities to have the opportunity to develop and utilize their creative, artistic
as in the way Gibson did, but with its very rupture. To this end, I bring in a series of mundane and intellectual potential, not only for their own benefit, but also for the enrichment of society.
details and encounters, in which people with different forms of physical and sensory disabilities My further research question is: How could one more specifically describe what ’the enrichment
undertake tasks that are simple as standing up from a chair or as banal as buttoning a shirt. In for society ‘could mean in political citizenship terms, and how to obtain it? The paper will pres-
view of these everyday choreographies, I then suggest the following reading of affordances: ent initially result from a literature review of theatre plays and studies of them where the actors
A disabled person, upon facing the limits of what the environment currently affords, may begin have a learning disability. The emphasis will be on the process of how to read the democratic voice
moving, sensing and acting in such particular ways that these action possibilities that she brings -  the voice of those who reject the prevailing social distribution of roles, who refuses the way a
into life would not count as just another body technique. Instead, they would be the exterioriza- society shares out power and authority, the voice of ‘floating subjects that deregulates all rep-
tions of the persons bodily singularities the expressions of her physical pain and/or ill health in resentations of places and portion. Saur & Johansen 2013, s.49 with references to Rancier. How
the form of an otherwise unimaginable affordance. Drawing from Canguilhems 1989 insights into can the democratic voice be located in the plays - what is the political argument in the plays?
disease as a new way of life, I propose to consider these mundane practices as vital affordances.
Key Words
Key Words Thetatre, political citizenship, democracy, learning disability
affordance, performance, disability, everyday life
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

488 489
 WG WG

Megan Johnson Maria Koltsida

York University
School of Early Childhood Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Megan Johnson is a performance scholar, mezzo-soprano, arts administrator, and dramaturg based in Toronto, Maria Koltsida is a PhD candidate in the School of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education of the Ar-
Canada. She is currently a PhD student in the Theatre & Performance Studies department at York Universi- istotle University of Thessaloniki. She is also teacher of Primary Education supporting students with learning
ty. Megan holds MA degrees in theatre & performance studies York University and musicology University of disabilities and theater-pedagogy practitioner in drama workshops for disabled and non-disabled individuals.
Ottawa, and a BMus in voice Acadia University. Her doctoral research is focused on disability performance, She studied Education and Disabilities in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She received her Master’s degree
infrastructural politics, and inclusive dramaturgy. Megan’s performing life ranges from the traditional to the in Creative Arts in Education from the University of Exeter. She also participated as an actress in numerous
wildly theatrical and in recent years she has turned to practice-as-research PaR methodologies to serve her theatrical performances with the artistic group En Dynamei along with other non-disabled and disabled actors.
interest in both academic inquiry and live performance. Megan is a recipient of the Elia Scholars Program at
York University. White Dystopias and Fish in the Fish Bowl: Issues of Stage
Representation of Disability
Disability Performance, Rhizomatic Migration, and Shifting
Embodiment Onstage The purpose of our contribution is to explore new and different life scenarios on stage processing
and representation of disability in relation to socially directed identities. The material for this ex-
Central to critical disability studies CDS, a discipline which Margaret Shildrick has described as en- ploration is derived from the theatrical play The “Other” Home, a project of the artistic group En
gaging with a “postconventional theoretical approach”, is the dismantling of binary thinking around Dynamei which is based in Thessaloniki/Greece and consists of disabled and non-disabled actors.
disability and embodied states 2012: 32. While the distinctions between non/dis-abled, de/ab-ility, The analysis of the audiovisual data from the rehearsals and performances of the group on the one
and non/impairment are therefore understood as fluid and unbound, so too is there a mobility to hand and the theatre script created by the disabled and non-disabled members of the group itself
the lived experiences of these distinctions which “travers[e] social, geographic, and political spac- revealed the central categories of our research: the socially dictated migration of disabled people
es” and become “modulated across historical time, geopolitical space, institutional mandates, and from their family home to institutions, the personal space in the institutional structures, the disabled
discursive regimes” Puar xiv.  This movement across boundaries of impairment and disability can person as eternal child and the -free from one-dimensional, stereotypical- depictions of the disabled
be conceived as an act of migration. In taking up this conference call to consider migration as re- body and its options/possibilities on stage and life. In this paper, we are attempting to raise aware-
lational, I further understand these relations to be constantly shifting and conceptualize migration ness of the role Performing arts could play against the dominance of stereotyped representations of
as a rhizomatic or multi-directional experience that may retrace well-worn ground as often as it disability in society in a society where the disabled person still has no voice, no word.
enters into new territory. To elucidate this conception, I turn to disability-identified stage perform-
ers, who, as they engage with the unique embodiment of a fictionalized character, as they enhance Key Words
their own lived experiences for the purposes of theatrical interest, or as they perhaps obscure their theater group, theatrical performance, disability, representation of disability
own impairment in an effort to align with a more mainstream representation of the virtuosic per-
former, further complicate this notion of rhizomatic migration.  Excavating recent performances by
Canadian disability-identified artists including Niall McNeil in King Arthur’s Night and Myles Taylor
in Kill Me Now, I ask what dramaturgical choices allowed these performers to shift conceptions of
their embodiments while onstage? In what ways is their embodiment and the perceived limita-
tions to their embodiment, which, as Petra Kuppers has suggested, may overshadow their perfor-
mances 26 understood as either fixed or malleable? Finally, in an effort to connect the work of
these performers to wider discussions within the field of CDS, I explore the potential of these shift-
ing representations of embodiment to reflect the broader rhetoric of disability justice in Canada.

Key Words
disability performance theatre borders migration identity Canada rhizomes embodiment
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

490 491
 WG WG

Antonis Lenakakis Kate Maguire-Rosier

School of Early Childhood Education, University Campus - Education Faculty Tower Thessaloniki City Macquarie University

Antonis Lenakakis is assistant professor of Drama/Theatre Pedagogy at the Department of Early Childhood Kate Maguire-Rosier is a PhD student in dance and disability performance at Macquarie University, Sydney.
Education, Faculty of Education, of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He studied Education, Sociology, Her ethnographic research is on care in dance theatre practice by and with artists with disability. For this
Intercultural Education, Cultural Studies and Drama/Theatre Pedagogy in the Universities of Crete, Essen and research, she has studied the work of three Australian performance groups at both rehearsal and live
Berlin. He received his Master’s degree and his PhD from the University of the Arts of Berlin. performance stages. She is also a dancer trained in Senegalese sabar, theatre blogger and committee member
for Treehouse Theatre, a performance group for young refugees. Her research journey, inflected by all of
the above, has led her towards a deeper consideration on the role of care in our current cultural climate.
White Dystopias and Fish in the Fish Bowl: Issues of Stage
Representation of Disability Politicising Performances of Care: Dance Theatre by and with
The purpose of our contribution is to explore new and different life scenarios on stage processing
Australian Artists with Disability
and representation of disability in relation to socially directed identities. The material for this ex-
In this paper, I present my doctoral research, discussing performances of care that materialise in
ploration is derived from the theatrical play The “Other” Home, a project of the artistic group En
the development and presentation of three professional dance theatre works. These contemporary
Dynamei which is based in Thessaloniki/Greece and consists of disabled and non-disabled actors.
Australian performance productions are Murmurations first major work by Sarah-Vyne Vassallo with
The analysis of the audiovisual data from the rehearsals and performances of the group on the one
Dan Daw, Days Like These 2017, Force Majeures collaboration with Dance Integrated Australia, Off
hand and the theatre script created by the disabled and non-disabled members of the group itself
The Record 2016 by Danielle Micich and Philip Channells, and Dianne Reids collaboration with Me-
revealed the central categories of our research: the socially dictated migration of disabled people
linda Smith, Dance Interrogations a Diptych 2015. This research documents traces of Australian con-
from their family home to institutions, the personal space in the institutional structures, the disabled
temporary dance theatre practice turning towards incorporating the aesthetics and lived experienc-
person as eternal child and the -free from one-dimensional, stereotypical- depictions of the disabled
es of disability.  First, I contextualise my project sitting at an intersection between dance, theatre and
body and its options/possibilities on stage and life. In this paper, we are attempting to raise aware-
performance studies, and disability and Deaf studies. Reviewing theoretical discussion of dance and
ness of the role Performing arts could play against the dominance of stereotyped representations of
theatre practice by and with disabled practitioners, I call for disability performance theory to engage
disability in society in a society where the disabled person still has no voice, no word.
critically but explicitly in care as a relational category. I mobilise a tension identified by care research-
er Christine Kelly 2016 between feminist calls to reattribute value to care and disability perspectives
Key Words
which regard care as a masquerade for oppression, and argue this tension presents a generative
theater group, theatrical performance, disability, representation of disability
framework for exploring the instances of care surfacing in my fieldwork. I apply this tension inherent
to care to James Thompsons 2015 aesthetics of care and suggest an extension to his theory - a fem-
inist disability aesthetics of care.   Second, I explore my ethnographic observations of dance theatre
spanning rehearsal and performance spaces, supplemented by semi-structured interviews with di-
rectors, key artists and an audience group. I distil particular materialisations of care from acts of dis-
closure, a Deaf-hearing world confrontation and live performance encounters. I politicise these dis-
tillations of care by drawing on the tension inherent between feminist care ethics and disability care
politics. Finally, I consider these politicised performances of care in my proposal of a crystal of care.

Key Words
dance theatre disability care
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

492 493
 WG WG

Tony McCaffrey Riikka Papunen

National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Arts, Ara Institute. Different Light Theatre The University of Tampere

Tony McCaffrey has a BA in English, Kings College, Cambridge and a Ph D in Theatre and Film Studies from Riikka Papunen, MA, is a Doctoral Student in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Tam-
the University of Canterbury, New Zealand: “Incapacity and Theatricality: Politics and Aesthetics in Theatre pere in Finland. She has conducted an artistic PhD project titled “Acting with the other” since 2013. She has
Involving Actors with Intellectual Disabilities.” He is Lecturer in Creative Industries at the National Academy a strong background as a professional performer in several theater performances and she is a proud mom of
of Singing and Dramatic Art, Ara Institute and since 2004 has been Artistic Director of Different Light Theatre her two little sons.
Company, an ensemble of people perceived to have intellectual disabilities. He has given papers at Perfor-
mance Studies International and the International Federation for Theatre Research. A book based on his thesis Acting With the Other - Politics of Inclusion in Theatrical
is due to be published by Routledge in the series Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies. Recent arti-
cles include: “A dance that draws you to the edge of your seat: acting and disability faced with technology”
Performance
Sorbonne Nouvelle/University of Quebec and “‘We will look after you’: Back to Back Theatre’s Lady Eats Apple
and the promise of ‘the time after’ in the narratives of theatre involving actors with intellectual disabilities.” in The paper examines inclusion through a critical reflection between a theatrical performance 8
Social Alternatives. He is contributing a chapter “Institution, Care and Emancipation in Contemporary Theatre esitystäelämästäni 8 stories of my life, Papunen&Papunen, 2017 and theories of ethical encoun-
Involving Actors with Intellectual Disabilities.” to a forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture ter Ahmed, 2000 and cultural hybrid Bhabha. The performance is part of an artistic doctoral re-
and Media. search conducted for a doctoral degree at the University of Tampere in the years 2014-2019. The
title of the research is “Acting with the Other”.  It consists of two artistic parts and a monograph
Welcome to Our World: the Promise of Hospitality and the reporting its results. The performance introduced in the paper is the second artistic part of the
Threat of Hostility in Contemporary Theatre with Actors with research. The ensemble includes an actor-researcher, an actor with Down Syndrome and a musi-
cian with bass and a laptop. The starting point of the performance was a desire for the two ac-
Intellectual Disabilities tors to work together with one another. The actors had a shared history of being relatives but to
act together was unfamiliar to them. The process of learning how to act with one another and
Theatre involving actors with intellectual disabilities would appear to be a theatre whose time has to devise a performance together challenged the criteria of inclusion in multiple ways. The pa-
come. Back to Back, Mind the Gap, Theater HORA and Blue Teapot Theatre have emerged from per understands inclusion as an experience of being with e.g. Ahmed, Levinas, Bhabha and es-
origins in institutions and therapeutic environments to a high public profile at international theatre pecially as acting with. Through the performance process acting with is a way of acting togeth-
and film festivals. This journey, however, is haunted by the past and present histories of abuse of er where actor’s goal is the same, but the activities are independent and different. Acting with
people with intellectual disabilities within institutions, the loss of financial and other vital supports does not require a mutual way of acting, instead the actors define each other’s acting from the
in current austerity regimes, and the disavowal of their very right to future existence in eugenicist very beginning to the phase of meeting the audience and, thus, re-defining the acting with again.
screening programmes. The initial and ongoing welcoming to the world for people with intellectual
disabilities is often one in which hospitality is tempered with the hostility of stigmatization, margin- Key Words
alization and exclusion. Hospitality for people with intellectual disabilities in theatre is likewise often Inclusion, being with, acting with
troubled with hostility. Historically inclusion has often been on ‘special’ terms, both appearing to
offer, and at the same time undermining, participation. Institutionalization and lack of educational
and social opportunities inevitably impairs participation in theatre as an institution of mediatization,
representation and normalization. This has led to a radical questioning of the terms of ‘inclusion’ by
theatre companies with a longstanding commitment to developing this work: how can theatre be
made, and made more hospitable, by and for people with intellectual disabilities? These companies
do not disavow histories of institutionalization and exclusion but transform their retelling as sub-
versive, humorous, productively uneasy hosts of the narrative and event of theatre. Mind the Gap’s
Contained and Blue Teapot’s Sanctuary play on histories of confinement, segregation, and exclusion
but find within them possibilities of emancipation. They threaten the safety of the contained time
and space of theatre and confound expectations of migrations between the thresholds of ability and
disability: of who is supposed to accommodate and look after whom.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Intellectual DIsabilities. Hospitality and Hostility in Theatre and Performance. Emancipation.
Thresholds of Ability and Disability

494 495
 WG WG

Yvonne Schmidt Ildiko Sirato

Zurich University of the Arts Hungarian National Széchényi Library

Yvonne Schmidt, PhD, Senior Researcher/Lecturer and currently head of the SNSF-research project “DisAbility Ms. Sirató, Ildikó Ph.D. – theatre and literature researcher, teacher and theatre person from Budapest, Hun-
on Stage” at the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film of the Zurich University of the Arts in cooperation gary, born in 1966. Head of Collection of Theatre History at Hungarian National Széchényi Library, and assis-
with Swiss universities, theatre/dance companies, and festivals. She holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the tant professor at University of Pannonia, Veszprém in theatre studies, lecturer at different Universities and
University of Berne and was awarded a 9 month SNSF-fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Pro- post-gradual Courses. Theatrical activities as stage director and dramatist. Curator of numerous exhibitions.
gram on Disability Arts, Culture, and Humanities supervisor: Carrie Sandahl. Since 2012 Dr Schmidt is the Research fields: comparative theatre research, dramaturgy, history of Hungarian theatre and the national type
co-convener and founder of the IFTR Working Group Performance & Disability. She has also worked for differ- of theatres of Europe. Author of books e. g.: A Short History of Hungarian Theatre, 2017 National Theatres in
ent festivals, such as the integrative festival NO LIMITS in Berlin and the Biennale “New Plays from Europe”. Her Europe. Institution of National Theatre, Comparative Studies on Theatre History. 2007 Theatre in the Northern
research focuses on socially engaged theatre, performance and disability, amateur or outdoor theatre prac- Light. Estonian and Finnish Drama on the Hungarian Stage. 2005 editor of Hungarian Theatre Lexicon, 1992
tices in Switzerland and practice-led research methods in/with the performing arts and film. Her research has book-series Studia Theatralica and journal Színpad [Stage]. Membership in HAS Hungarian Academy of Scienc-
been published in Forum Modernes Theater, RiDE: Research in Drama Education, and the Journal of Literary & es, ITI, IFTR/FIRT, ASSITEJ, OISTAT, TeaTS Finland and others.
Cultural Disability Studies. Currently she is co-editing the collection “IPF – Die erste Dekade. 10 Years of Artistic
Research in the Performing Arts and Film”, together with Anton Rey Theater der Zeit, 2018. Therapy, Integration, Art. Theatre Companies of People with Down
Syndrome in Hungary
Belonging together – The role of the ensemble in “Freie Republik
HORA” Therapy, Integration, Art. Theatre Companies of People with Down Syndrome in Hungary: The paper
is dealing with introduction of theatrical activity of Hungarian groups of people with Down Syn-
In the German-speaking theatre and in other European countries, the necessity of a permanent en- drome. There is already quite a long history of the professional Balthazar Theatre founded in 1998,
semble structure is a topical issue. The mobility within the theatre raises the question, how belong- but there are now other amateur or private groups and companies on the theatrical field. As with
ing together is negotiated, performed and questioned in the creation process and on stage. The pre- an example study we’ll get familiar with working and training principle & methods of Balthazar The-
sentation examines these approaches by using the practice-based case study “Freie Republik HORA” atre, with their programme and audiences, with professional criticism written on performances. The
in the context of the SNSF-research project “DisAbility on Stage” in Switzerland. In the process of introduction is based on written and visual documentation of Balthazar Theatre, on interviews with
this long-term performance project of Theater HORA in Zurich, six ensemble members – profession- members of the company, and on own viewer’s experiences. There are not systematic researches on
al actors/actresses with cognitive disabilities – created their own work not only as performers, but the effects of performances and existence of Balthazar Theatre and other groups on the audiences
as directors. Drawing from my first-hand observations and embodied experiences of having worked yet, but there are of course some sporadic data we could delineate. As well as we could consider
with HORA, I will argue that “Freie Republik HORA” references a shared memory, as they are used the position and functions of theatre of disabled people in contemporary Hungarian society, based
to working together as an ensemble in the rehearsal room as a space of collective memory. Taken upon a few examples of artistic therapy of other types, for other disabilities than Down Syndrome,
all six performances together, “Freie Republik HORA” creates nothing less than a project about the too. Book, music, movement, art therapy groups and theatre / movement or physical theatre as in-
aesthetics of Theater HORA – a staging of the company history of 25 years all the performances, tegration tool of blind, of deaf, of moving disabled, of mentally disabled, of autistic, or of otherwise
working methods, previous roles, characters, movements and gestures are incorporated in the en- physically or mentally disadvantageous people. There are some really intriguing questions on divi-
semble’s body. sion of functions to therapeutic, to integrating, and to artistic ones. And one of the most important
problems is that of the societal efficiency of this type of theatre as art. The paper gives an opportuni-
Key Words ty to think about disabled minority cultures as integrated part of a European national contemporary
ensemble rehearsal processes belonging disability Theater HORA culture, but from the both sides of the stage-lights: what does it mean to run and to see a theatrical
institution of disabled artists.

Key Words
disabled people, theatre activity, theatre as therapy, art as integration, societal effectivity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

496 497
 WG WG

Jessica Stokes Michael Stokes

University of California, Davis
Education:  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Bachelor of the Arts in English, With Distinction Awarded
Education: University of California Davis, CA PhD in Performance Studies Degree Expected: 2021 Boston Uni- December 2014 Associate of the Arts, Theatre and Performing Arts Grand Rapids Community College, Grand
versity, Boston, MA Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Awarded 2015 University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI Rapids, MI Graduated: May 2013 Select Conference Presentations and Seminars:  “Paranoia, Prosthesis, and
Bachelor of Arts in English, Highest Distinction, Honors in Creative Writing Awarded 2011. Select Publications Affect: A Disability Studies engagement with John Dies at the End” Popular Culture/American Culture Asso-
“Scars for Lifes” Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies, 18:2 Winter 2018 “A Decade of Progress ciation Annual Conference. Indianapolis. 29 March 2018. “’All You Zombies—‘ Using Scars to Question the
in Eugenics” riverSedge Literary Journal, University of Texas Pan-American Press, October, 2015 “Dance of the Connections of Emotion, Body, and Identity” Disability and Emotion Lecture Series. Liverpool Hope University.
Seven Hospital Gowns” Liminoid Magazine, Issue 2 June, 2015 “7:52 in fairborn, ohio” and “mon●ster” The Liverpool, U.K. 4 October 2017. “Orphans of the Genre: Repurposing the Artifacts of Classic Science Fiction”
Mayo Review, Vol. 50, Spring issue 23 April, 2015 “geriatric manual” Chaffey Review, Vol. XII February, 2015 Centre for Cultural and Disability Studies Bi-Annual Conference: Disability & Disciplines. Liverpool Hope Uni-
Select performances/Conference Presentations: “Messy Bodies: Disabled Embodiment in Performance Studies veristy. Liverpool, U.K. 5 July 2017. Select Publication: “Access to the Page: Queer and Disabled Characters in
Theory” Popular Culture Association Annual Conference. Indianapolis. March 2018. “Bodily Symbols: Inter- Dungeons and Dragons” Journal of Analogue Game Studies. Vol IV.3. 30 May 2017. Research Interests:  Science
preting Meaning in Dynamic Context” International Federation for the Research of Theatre Annual Confer- Fiction, Disability Theory, Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory, Queer Theory, Contemporary American Litera-
ence. Disability Studies Working Group. Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil July 2017. “Power No Button” Davis, ture.
CA. University of California, Davis. Wright Hall. 23 May 2017. “WALK ZONE” Davis, CA. University of California,
Davis. Arboretum. 6 March 2017 Performing Science Futures: The Migration of Disability
Performance in Science Fiction
WALK ZONE: Un/Intentional Transgression Beside Disabled
Embodied Performance “Performing Science Futures: The Migration of Disability Performance in Science Fiction” address-
es the issues that surround the re-creation of science fiction sf narratives that were spawned in a
WALK ZONE discusses the relationship between everyday disabled existence and the performativity time and culture that was overwhelmingly white- and male- dominated. In particular it focuses on
of disabled embodiment. Using the signs which frame a particular zone of assumed able-bodiedness, the ways that sf performs culture in the United States. In addressing the television series Battlestar
WALK ZONE moves across borders of the so-called discursive from the Latin: “to run,” something Galactica, this presentation thinks through the ways that science fiction and disability interact in
that this performer’s body does not do to generate an understanding of what it means to migrate a cultural artifact that uses migration and travel as a central component to its narrative. After ad-
through boundaries meant to delineate time, space, and populations. This understanding of the con- dressing this formation of a cultural idea of the future in the series’ first iteration, the paper goes
versations that are within, beyond, and beside the discourse attempts to unify a coalitional politic on to question how the performance of American culture changes as the series migrates through
around migration and people in motion. This coalitional politic is advanced both through the engage- time. Twenty-five years after the original run of the series, the show was rebooted first as a minise-
ment of disabled embodied performance as well as a phenomenological reading of signage. Signs ries and later as a weekly television series that ran from 2003-2009. How have the lives of disabled
attempt to delineate expected bodies in multiple times and places, and this everyday conversation characters, characters of color, and queer characters changed between the first run and the reboot?
is often disrupted by the presence of disabled bodies. A phenomenological reading of airport signs What storylines are re-created? How has two and a half decades changed how series writers and
in particular offers insight into the movements of bodies over multi-spatial, temporal, and political audiences imagine the potential future? This presentation engages with these questions and others
boundaries. Using poetry, performance, and queer/crip theory, WALK ZONE engages with everyday to approach an understanding of the question: how does science fiction perform culture in imagined
repetitions and movements to disrupt assumptions of able bodiedness. WALK ZONE accomplishes futures? Engaging with cultural theorists such as Colin Milburn, Queer/Crip authors such as Robert
this by questioning fundamental assumptions of performance theory and by entangling itself with McRuer, and disability performers such as Petra Kuppers, this presentation attempts to highlight the
Sedgwick’s ideas of the “beside.” way that science fiction as a genre has both shaped and is shaped itself by moving and transforming
ideas of race, disability, and the future. Tracing these cultural migrations through time, “Performing
Key Words Science Futures: The Migration of Disability Performance in Science Fiction” re/disorients the audi-
Disability, Performance, Repetition, Coalition, Queer/Crip ence’s understanding of sf as a significant force in cultural speculation on the future.

Key Words
Science Fiction, Performance, Disability, Culture
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

498 499
 WG WG

Akhila Vimal C Jessica Watkin

Jawharlal Nehru University University of Toronto

I am AkhilaViimal C, PhD Candidate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Arts and University of Toronto Teaching Assistant 2016-Present, Theatre Research in Canada Editorial Assistant
Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I am working on “Disfiguration in Indian performance and 2018-Prsent, Research Assistant and Accessibility Consultant for Theatres and Drama Department 2015-Pres-
texts as part of my PhD research. My research interests are Disability, Gender, Dance, Political Theatre and ent, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Theatre Workshop Research and Facilitator 2015-2016, Canadi-
Rituals. My important publications are, Prosthetic Rasa: Dance on Wheels and Challenged Kinaesthetics,’in The an Theatre Review 2 articles, Canadian Association of Theatre Research Disability and Performance Working
Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Special Issue: International Perspectives on Performance, Dis- Group Co-Facilitator, American Society for Theatre Research Working Group 2017
ability, and Deafness Research in Drama Education. August, 2017. ‘Performing Disfiguration: Construction Of
The ‘Primitive’ And The Ambiguities Of Representing Pain In Kathakaḽi’.in The Journal of Emerging Dance Schol- Convention and Precarity in Theatres and Spaces for Artists with
arship, Issue, Dance in Practice, Pedagogy and Policies, World Dance Alliance, September, 2017. Presented a Disability in Canada
paper, titled, ‘Embodying Disfigurement: Performing Body in PottanTeyyam’ During the annual conference of
IFTR, University of Warwick, UK. Presented a paper ,titled, Performing disfiguration: Pain Death in Sanskrit Performances created by artists with disabilities are finding their way into theatres, somehow, de-
treatises and performance in  16th World Sanskrit Conference, Bangkok, 2015,  presented a paper, titled,  From spite the majority of stages not being physically accessible. Theatres and Festivals in Canada are
Royal Stages to Public Stage changing perceptions of performing disfiguration and pain in Kathakaḽi in the  IFTR
committing to improving accessibility for audience members who might experience barriers to their
Annual Conference, Hyderabad,  2015.  I was a scholar at Mellon School 2016-17 batch in Harvard University.
performances, the access to the stage however implies a larger statement: performers will be able
to use the stairs. If a performer uses a mobility device such as a wheelchair the number of stages
Where the Hand goes…? Imagining Practice Based Dance Pedagogy available to present their work in diminishes.  Carrie Sandahl comments on the assumptions of the
for Blind and Low Vision Performers theatre world that performers all require the same or “neutral” space to perform from, yet neu-
trality of the body for a disabled performer is likely unattainable.    The lack of accessible stages
The pedagogy of Indian classical dance substrates on transmitting a developed grammar to a student does not deter artists who experience physical barriers from creating work, they find alternative,
through rigorous training by a guru revered teacher. Therefore, the performer’s agency over her/zis/ potentially unconventional spaces to perform within. At the 2017 Summerworks Festival in Toron-
his movement is relatively limited. It prevents the student from experiencing one’s own body and hing- to, Ontario, the Boys in Chairs Collective presented their interdisciplinary piece Boys in Chairs in
es on the restructuring of one’s ability to follow a grammar. The performances and texts  Nāṭyaśāstra a large, empty room that resembled a classroom at the ArtscapeYoungplace building on Shaw St.
and other ‘manuals of classical dance’ that I studied stresses the importance of pursuing this gram- The Festival supported this one-time performance with American Sign Language, and staff to con-
mar while dancing even when I watch a performance the ‘ghost’ of my training forces me to evaluate figure the space appropriately. The three performers, who all use wheelchairs, rolled confidently
a performance through an ‘ideal’ standard. As a performer, who identifies as disabled, when I started around the space.  This paper analyzes the use of an unconventional performance space to put
looking at disability in performance, my objective was to look beyond the classical normative that I pressure on the restrictions of “neutrality” both in theatre performers and space, while consid-
carry from my learning and teaching process. I envision a pedagogy and practice that anticipates a ering the implications of supporting work in festivals and theatres that are navigating access pre-
disabled performer’s expression-what she/ze/he wants from a dance rather what others want to see cariously in their spaces and programming. What does it say about the way we learn access? How
from her/zis/him. Here, I propose a preliminary plan of making of dance pedagogy that is influenced can we gain knowledge and share what we know from and with other countries? And finally, what
by the notion of somatic dance experience for the blind and low vision community.  My exploration does the use of conventional performance space for disability performance say about our per-
here is towards imagining and delineating a practice based pedagogical model for blind and low-vi- formance culture in Canada if there is no “traditional” theatre space to support disabled artists?
sion dance practice in India. Hence, the main objective of this study is to contribute to the core of
dance where dance is an expression rather than a product. How to create space where I/we can de- Key Words
cide what my dance should be or assert the position that disabled performers can create their own Disability, Dramaturgy, Artist, Space, Theatre, Creation
dance. I propose that central to this method is the cultural unlearning of classical dance understanding
of the body that a trained body such as mine, through movement based workshops, i.e. the concept
of collaborative learning through a somatic engagement where agentive actions come from within.

Key Words
Disability, Pedagogy, Blind and Low Vision, Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

500 501
 WG WG

Benjamin Wihstutz
University of Mainz

Benjamin Wihstutz is Assistant Professor Juniorprofessor of Theatre Studies at the University of Mainz, Ger-
many. He holds a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin, where he was a member of the Interdisciplinary Research
Centre “Aesthetic Experience” between 2007-2015. His research fields include performance and disability, the
politics of aesthetics in contemporary theatre as well as German theatre around 1800. He is the co-editor of
Transformative Aesthetics Routledge 2018 and Performance and the Politics of Space Routledge 2013, both
with Erika Fischer-Lichte as well as co-editor of Disabled Theater with Sandra Umathum, diaphanes/Univ. of
Chicago Pr. 2015, among others. He is also the author of the German monographs Theater der Einbildung 2007
and Der andere Raum: 2012. Currently he is writing on a book on Judgment and leading a research project on
dis/ability performance.

Migrating Forms of Dis/ability Performance: Challenging the

Performance Principle
The paper queries the historical relationship between ability, impairment and performance in differ-
ent frame settings such as theatre, sports, and side show. It particularly focuses on the migration of
specific modes of presentation that imply a “performance principle” Marcuse which highlights the
effectiveness and productivity of a “Can-do-attitude” McKenzie, despite visible impairments. In this
sense, today’s TV commercials for the paralympics “We are the Superhumans”, channel 4, Harasser
echo certain modes of presentation of side shows as well as a specific logic of performing disability
as a demonstration of a Can-do-attitude that we also find in some disability performances within
the arts. The talk seeks to question this attitude, calling for a disability aesthetics that interrupts the
performance paradigm, developing alternative modes of presentation, ‘cripping‘ concepts of tempo-
rality Kafer, Sandahl as well as of productivity, efficiency, and performance that resist a economized
post-fordist culture.

Key Words
disability, performance, side show, Paralympics, productivity, crip time
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

502 503
 Working PERFORMACE
AS RESEARCH
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

504 505
 WG WG

Juan Manuel Aldape Munoz Joanna Bucknall

University of California Berkeley University of Birmingham

Juan Manuel is a working-class, formerly-undocumented immigrant from Mexico. He is concerned about cho- I am a theatre practitioner- scholar whose research interests include immersive performance practices, live art,
reographic processes, contemporary dance, latinidad, undocumented bodies, and sweat citizenships. He is a practice-as-research, performance documentation and cognitive approaches to reception theory. I am the ar-
Ph.D. candidate in performance studies at UC Berkeley. He is the co-director of the Festival of Latin American tistic director of Vertical Exchange Performance Collective VEX, co-artistic director of KeepHouse Performance
Contemporary Choreographers, now in its fourth edition in San Francisco, California. and an Associate Artist at the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth. Since completing my PhD at the University of
Winchester in 2011 I have been concerned with exploring, making and understanding work that includes its
audiences in fundamental ways. I have collaborated with The Barbican in Plymouth, Camden People’s Theatre,
Border Wounds, Alienage, and Corporealities: Foreign Feelings in The Basement in Brighton, Performing Arts Centre Lincoln, the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, ArtReach
Performance Research UK, the British Red Cross, Coastguard Studio, Big Adventures and Battersea Arts Centre. I am currently a lec-
turer in Drama & Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham.
To be considered for Collaborative Facilitator. Abstract 250-500 words workshop proposal: I want
to take-up this year’s call for proposals and examine the connections between the kinds of writing “Reflective Hypermnesis”: Recall, Remembering and
about, in or on PaR that are emerging from the overlap of practices and research within and outside “Rememberance”
the university. I respond to these concerns by evaluating the embodied, material, and performative
responses that can happen in performance workshops, in and outside of the university, when we The proposed workshop will explore practical strategies of “reflective hypermnesis” and will provide
attend to the testimonies of documented citizens and undocumented immigrants. For the past two participants with the opportunity to engage in acts of affective recall and remembering to produce a
years, I have been co-facilitating performance workshops in and outside of the university where we performative “Rememberance”. I propose to lead a series of task-based laboratory exercises that will
take a disembodied approach to hearing and processing testimonies about undocumented migra- generate the conditions for affective remembering and recall that will lead to participants producing
tions into the United States. I propose a workshop where we will prepare our bodies to hear and a localised and subjective “Rememberance” that will be devised to either locate another/others
investigate the feelings of documented and undocumented bodies in motion across borders. I want inside the participants experience of an instance of witnessing or spectating or will be generated to
to center our time together on the complexities and residualities of the foreign body, considering provide transmittable insight into the participants experience of an instance of witnessing or spec-
memory, culture, and belonging. I will use the seven stages of energy, or seven chakras, to explore tating. Process The workshop will have three distinct sections: Recall & Remembering, Constructing
the way immigration systems function to create feelings of foreignness. We will gradually build up to a “Rememberance” and Scratching. The first section of the workshop, Recall & Remembering, will
the neurosomatic level to heal ourselves from state oppression and violence that is enacted through employ visualisation and mindfulness exercises to lead participants through the process of firstly,
immigration policies. For example, we will spend time in chakras one and two to assess how the identifying and selecting a significant moment in their localised and personal experience of an in-
rhetoric of international immigration functions to control the bio-survival and territorial energy stance of witnessing or spectating. Secondly, participants will be guided through a process of “Re-
flows. In addition, we will use lemons, armadillos, imagery, and breathing to help us move through flective Hypermnesis” in order to re-access that instance of witnessing or spectating affectively. In
these energy centers and prepare our bodies to hear the testimonies. Then, we will spend time the second section of the workshop, constructing a “Rememberance”, participants will be split into
exploring through our bodies the residue of those testimonies, ultimately creating a scenario of the two groups one group will explore the process of devising a “Rememberance” that locates another/
testimonies to bring an aesthetic rendering to those emotions. The objective of the workshop is to others inside the perception of the participants originating experience affectively the other group
use body-centered practices that are focused on the circulation and residualities of migrant and for- will work to generate a “Rememberance” that directly captures and transmits the participants per-
eign feelings. This workshop is done to examine the limits and possibilities of performance practices sonal perception of the experience of the instance of witnessing or spectating. In the final section
that are driven by social justice values and that try to attune to the feelings of migration injustices. of the workshop, scratching, participants will have the opportunity to share the “Rememberances”
This workshop prioritizes the reception of the testimonies in and outside of the university. The that they have created and participate in a group feedback, discussion and reflection session, led by
workshop exercises reflect my current PaR priorities and preoccupations with the performative and a series of questions and provocations.
material dimensions of citizenship and belonging alongside of the documented and undocumented
bodies that move across borders. Since 2012, I have examined these elements inside and outside of Key Words
the university by conducting movement-based workshops in Mexico and the United States. I have Practice as research, Performance as research, practice-based research
observed that the embodied, material, and performative dimensions of political citizenship impact
who enters the university and who gets left out of the colonial institution, ultimately impacting how
we conduct performance research about foreignness. More importantly, I have observed that it is
difficult to assess the value of the pain experienced by the foreigner when feelings circulate in new
performance and social networks inside of the university. Do you wish to participate in the Pre-Con-
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

ference Workshop? Unfortunately, no. I’ll be coming from another conference.

Key Words
Migration, Feelings, Performance Research

506 507
 WG WG

Diana Damian Martin Flavia Domingues Davila

Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Royal Conservatoire of Scotland/University of St Andrews

Generative Constraints is a committee that practises open-ended collaborative research into art, politics, and Flavia DAvila is a native of the border between Brazil and Uruguay and moved to Edinburgh in 2006. She
theory. We experiment with processes and structures of criticism, performance, poetics, and writing. Our trained as a director at Queen Margaret University and is currently doing her PhD at the Royal Conservatoire
activities include organising conferences and public dialogues, teaching, making original creative works, as of Scotland, researching syncretic theatre and its use in devising. Flavia has collaborated with various theatre
well as digital publishing and exhibition curation. As researchers, the members of Generative Constraints have companies across the UK and abroad and founded award-winning company Fronteiras Theatre Lab in 2011,
various areas of interest: affect theory and feminism, performance criticism and political philosophy, dramatic focusing on transcultural theatre and international partnerships. She has directed for Stage to Page and is a
radio poetry and sound theory, experimental feminist poetics and translation, time and performance philos- member of the Traverse Theatre Directors’ Programme, IFTR, TaPRA and a review editor for the Scottish Jour-
ophy, experimental fiction and lexicography. As writers and art practitioners, we work with various forms: nal of Performance. Recent directing credits include: The Illusion of Truth 2017 Green Knight 2017 Volante
page-based poetics, criticism, radio poetry, image and video, live art, the novel. As members of a committee, 2016 - reading The Devil in the Belfry 2016 La Niña Barro 2014.
we understand our dynamics in terms of the desire to collaborate and the inevitability of conflict. Committee
Members: Diana Damian Martin Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Kate Potts Royal Holloway, Nisha Performance Research Tests on Syncretic Theatre and Devising
Ramayya University of Kent/Royal Holloway, Nik Wakefield Royal Holloway, Eley Williams University of Green-
wich. www.generativeconstraints.com
Research into syncretic theatre has hitherto largely focused on the adaptation of classical or canoni-
cal texts into a different culture and language Balme 1999 Fischer-Lichte 2010 Cox 2014 Sörgel 2015,
Break Up Variations but very little has been documented regarding its use in devising – the closest examples of which are
pieces of multicultural Verbatim theatre found in Emma Cox’s work on theatres of migration 2014.
Break Up Variations concerns itself with the disciplinary and geographic migration of the ‘break-up’.
Therefore, the aim of these practice research test was to experiment with a hybrid methodology
Taking an ecological perspective, the performance examines how group division and dissolution,
to work with a group of multicultural/multilingual actors in Glasgow, Scotland, creating their own
perhaps even non-alignment, might build solidarity at a time of crisis- through a confrontation with
material, based on Christopher Balme’s 1999 interpretation of Yuri Lotman’s definition of cultural
the challenges of collaboration, disagreement, and community-led conflict resolution, the difficulties
texts - elements that carry integral meaning and can only be fully understood within the culture that
of acting professionally and the desire to keep working together despite it all. The performance-pa-
generates them ritual/liminality, orality, language, the body, spaces/spectators. Balme acknowledg-
per follows a curated event at Royal Holloway, University of London bringing together researchers,
es the difficulties of taking a syncretic play outside of its original context i.e. on an international tour,
artists and thinkers to consider the strategies that art, science, politics and theory might offer each
whilst calling for more of them to be produced to allow this process to continue. My proposal in
other for navigating- and possibly circumventing- the demise of relationships. If the working rela-
response to this call and challenge is to use devised theatre as a means to take that next step which
tionship breaks down, could the end of the group be considered a constitutive aspect of that group?
might help a syncretic play to reach further audiences, a bid more in line with Jan Assman’s 1996
These are questions about institutions as much as they are about interdependence on personal
view of syncretism as a tool to communicate culture when language is not enough. This paper will
and planetary scales. In dialogue with this year’s conference topic, Theatre & Migration, Break-Up
discuss some of the findings after three staggered weeks of laboratory work with a group of profes-
Variations explores collective knowledge production that both occupies and exits the academy. As
sional actors from diverse cultural backgrounds. The purpose of the laboratory is to try out a hybrid
a collective of five practice-based researchers with a diverse range of backgrounds and institutional
methodology, aiming at generating and testing new ways to approach the characteristics of theatri-
relationships, Generative Constraints considers the dialogue between methodology and collectivity,
cal syncretism identified by Balme, thus promoting knowledge exchange by sharing the theory with
the communicative axes of transdiciplinary research and the questions of sustainability and mobility
the collaborators.
at a time of geopolitical crisis. As such, Break-Up Variations stages ideas about romantic break-ups,
political dissolutions and ecological collapse, via the work of Timothy Morton, Simone Forti, Chantal
Key Words
Mouffe and Anna Lowenhaupt.
syncretism, hybridity, cultural fusion, theatres of migration, cultural texts, devised theatre
Key Words
performance ecology practice based research migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

508 509
 WG WG

Lucy Fielding Manola Gayatri

University of Hull Univeristy of Pretoria/ Scribe Rites

Final year PhD Student at the University of Hull. Specialising in Meyerholds Biomechanics in a 21 C actor train- Manola K Gayatri is a performance poet, praxis-based researcher and teacher born in Bangalore. She com-
ing setting. pleted her doctoral studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi India,
2014. Project partner UGC-UKIERI, Gendered Citizenship:manifestations and performance Warwick University
The Migration of Biomechanics from 20th Century Russia to 21st and JNU2014-2016. She accepted a postdoctoral fellowship with the Drama Dept, University of Pretoria 2016-
2018.Visiting Faculty, Centre for Development Practice, Ambedkar University Delhi.  Convenor, Performance as
Century United Kingdom Research Working Group IFTR. Founder, Scribe Rites India & RSA. Board of Directors & Director of Research-
The Institute of Leadership and Transformation RSA. GSDR Resident 2009. UGC-SRF Fellow 2009-2014. Honor-
This workshop presents a new method, developed through my own PhD Practice Research, in which ary Member, Jung Centre India. Interests - embodied creative practice, feminist philosophy, gender and queer
to learn an aspect of the renowned Russian actor training system, biomechanics. Vsevolod Mey- relations, collaborative practice, working with the unconscious and activating social transformation through
erhold 1874-1940 created the system to train the actor in rhythm, spatial awareness, balance and the arts. She facilitates Thinking Systems, Writing Workshops and mentors creative practitioners and scholars.
reflex excitability a term specific to biomechanics amongst many other principles. This workshop will
specifically address the étude movement sequence, ‘Throwing the Stone’, where participants will Migrating Intimacies: Deconstructing the Global South through
recreate the shapes, movements and impetus necessary to invoke the principles which are central
Relational Aesthetics
to the études. ‘Throwing the Stone’ demands the actor to consider the context of their movements,
through a consistently developing use of their imagination, to establish a conscious awareness of
Reflecting on a cross-cultural performance laboratory involving four artists across various art forms
their physicality in relation to the stage space and the spectator.   Biomechanics in the UK, is not an
and three nationalities India, Serbia and South Africa, this paper re-orients the discourse of the Glob-
accessible actor training system. This is due to the hierarchical legacies of embodied transmission
al South into migrating conversations of negotiating fluid intimacies. In doing so a model of thinking
dominating the “preferred” transmission of biomechanics which are difficult to receive and to im-
and creating work is birthed that gestures away from the grand narrative of the Global South and
plement. This specifically relates to the two prevalent biomechanical training models, Vertical and
moves towards the political potential of relational aesthetics. While looking at a video piece, poetry
Horizontal. The Vertical model in this instance is the transmission of biomechanics through practical
performance festival and live performance piece created by the four artists,  this paper examines how
pedagogy passed down from teacher to student through the generations. The Horizontal model is
cultural complexes, personal and historical contexts, artistic predilections and traditions can and do
anything which challenges the Vertical model.  Using Practice Research, I have blended the Vertical
interact with each other on and off stage and how these interactions can serve as a mirror to a great-
and Horizontal model using the wealth of Horizontal material written by Meyerhold, and by his peers,
er social context. One of the What does this collision and collusion of diverse cultures serve to mirror
which teach readers about the system and blending it with my own experience of being taught the
or birth? Is this a new monstrosity Derrida: 1967 and if so what does the discipline of writing do to it?
Vertical pedagogy. This collaborative workshop offers an opportunity to further blend or reconstruct
Is there a way that the experiments between verse and spoken word and the evolving strategies of
those aspects of Meyerhold’s theatre, which still have currency in a contemporary actor training set-
Performance as Research may interact to offer a modality of knowing that holds a creative fidelity to
ting, with other artistic practices and continue to develop the system. Practice Research has afforded
the experience of the Global South. What interestingly emerges is also an evolving language around
me the opportunity to tackle the hierarchical methodological legacies which have been born out of
birthing as an organic process, the ‘womb as a fertile system’  Sekgaphane: 2018 that enables an en-
a migrating theatre practice and are evident in the UK. Biomechanics is intrinsically tied to the social,
counter with the horror or beauty of creating but is able to hold the process in it’s apparently constant-
political and economic context of its origin, and was vastly altered by its migration to the UK. Prac-
ly shifting ambivalence. Do the migrating intimacies emerging from the cultural experiments from
tice Research allows a dialogue, of embodied theatre practices, to continue to challenge, debate,
such an artistic collective offer us an experience of what a Global South relational aesthetic can be?
refine and reshape allowing for an integration of foreign theatre practice such as Biomechanics.
Key Words
Key Words
spoken word, somatics and writing, performance poetry, South Africa, India, Global South, Serbia,
Practice Research. Migration. Vsevolod Meyerhold. Biomechanics. Theatre. Actor training. Em-
relational aesthetics, queer intimacies
bodied practice. Physicality. Etude. Movement sequence. Rhythm. Balance. Reflex excitability
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

510 511
 WG WG

Christina Kapadocha Orestes Pérez Estanquero

East 15 Acting School-University of Essex Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

Christina Kapadocha (Ph.D.) is a Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Related Fields at East 15 Acting School. She Orestes Pérez Estanquero b. 1962, Habana, Cuba is an artist and a PhD candidate UniversitatAutònoma de
is a London-based actress-researcher/educator-researcher, a Registered Somatic Movement Educator (RSME) Barcelona, UAB. He earned a degree in Dramatic Art 1985 and a Master degree in Arts 2002 at the Universidad
and founder of Somatic Acting Process®. Her current practice research concentrates on the application, mod- de las Artes de Cuba ISA. As an actor he has played, among others characters, Prospero in OtraTempestad by
ification and impact of somatically-inspired practices into theatre/performing environments and beyond. She Teatro Buendía at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Fidel in the Argentinean movie Hasta la Victoria Siempre.
particularly introduces new praxical discussions on somatics and theatre as well as somatics and voice studies. He worked as theatre director, among other companies, with SemaverKumpanya: in Chamaco 2006 at Istan-
Christina has studied acting at Greek National Theatre Drama School (Diploma-Distinction) and East 15 Acting bul. In Cuba he taught from pre-grade as teacher of drama at International School of Havana to graduate and
School (MA-Distinction). Her Practice-as-Research Ph.D. on the critical development of a somatically-informed post graduate university courses as Senior Adjunct Professor of Acting at ISA. He has participated in several
actor-training pedagogy was awarded by Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has worked as an festivals: Perth, Cadiz, Caracas, Edinburgh, etc. His research focuses on the areas of theory and practice of
actress, director and movement director in Greece and the UK. Prior to her appointment at East 15, Christina acting. He has published in theatre journals such as Assaig de Teatre, Conjunto, Gestos, etc. He has presented
has also taught at other major London-based drama schools such as RCSSD, Mountview and Rose Bruford. his research in the Annual Conferences of the IFRT Barcelona, 2013 and Warwick, 2014 and in different scien-
Contact: [email protected] tific conferences Malta, 2016 Brno, 2017. He is a member of the National Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba
UNEAC.
Waiting For…: Somata In-between Migration and Stasis
Mapping the Routes and Migratory Processes within an
This piece of Performance-as-Research emanates from the original immersive performance Mono- Investigation about Performing Of Real People in Theatrical
time as part of EU Immigrants EU Citizens project by Performing Architectures (Ugly Duck, London, Frames
18-19.6.2016). Using as starting point autobiographically-initiated invitations to the spectators in-
spired by my life in London as a Greek-born performer-researcher, in Monotime I began to interro- The paper will be focuses in some of the routes and migration processes produced in a research
gate somatic dynamics in-between actor-witnesses and spectator-witnesses. Immigration and/or about performances of the real people Garde and Mumford: 2015 within determined theatrical
migration in the specific piece was explored in the potential third space that emerged in-between frames. The researcher will be mapping, among others, the routes and migratory processes  … of the
multiple individuals during a meeting-stasis in a nineteenth-century warehouse in London. formal essences” –that is: the nature of biographical materials published on the stage the specific
Waiting for… suggests a further investigation of how multiple somata (the plural for soma) can exist mode of representation of these materials, the technological tools employed, etc.- from a group
in-between migration and stasis, within the broader process of shaping Somatic Theatre. The project of radical scenic creations produced in Barcelona between 2006-2012 to another group of radical
is dramaturgically inspired by the way the two themes can be identified in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting scenic creations produced, as part of the research, by the researcher as performer or as director
for Godot. I enact the practical process by inviting a co-exploration with the American-originated art- of performers from the first artistic events studied -the originals- to the events derivates of them,
ist-researcher Sally Dean. We meet to interrogate how somatic methodologies can facilitate the un- personalized but equivalents, and created as research   …of the “not acting” mode -according the
derstanding of migrating stasis and static migration while simultaneously supporting the perception continuum proposed by Michael Kirby-, in the group of events derivates derivates from the origi-
of transdisciplinary components in PaR. The premise of the exploration is that we acknowledge the nals ones mentioned above: events ordered by the following criteria: from those that stand up as
differences of diverse individuals, environments and processes as a starting point that can facilitate performative conferences to the other events that stand up as performative assemblies from those
the emergence of shared third possibilities. In my current work, this stance is theoretically informed scenic events where the “official performer” become spectator to those where the “official specta-
by Jessica Benjamin’s concept of thirdness in the field of intersubjective psychoanalysis (2018). tor” become performer.  …in an artistic event between real people assembled that dont have refer-
The actual performance-presentation will be a dynamic interrelation between myself as presenter ence in the first set of scenic creations researched. The “formal essences” of this event are new, are
(performer-researcher), Dean’s recorded contribution and the active spectator-witnesses. fruit properly of the research last event experimented and integrated to the sample on study  The
mapping of routes and processes of migration will invite us to think about new methodologies, tasks
Key Words and theatrical notions, but, above all, in a possible radical and liminal paradigm of theater acting, its
somata, actor-witnesses, spectator-witnesses, migration/stasis, somatic methodologies, PaR, third- variations and borders. The mapping will also invite us to think about the empowerment, specifically
ness in the last event, of the participants both as interpreters and real people.

Key Words
real people empowered on stage, performances as research theories and practices involved, “not
acting” mode: continuum and variations, liminality and frontiers
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

512 513
 WG WG

Laurelann Porter Walmeri Ribeiro

Benedictine University Mesa Federal Fluminense University

Laurelann Porter is currently an Assistant Professor of Communication Arts at Benedictine University.  She Walmeri Ribeiro is artist, professor and researcher. She is visiting artist-researcher at Department of Fine Arts,
received her PhD in Theatre and Performance of the Americas from Arizona State University.  She earned her Concordia University Montreal|Canadá, associate professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense | Rio de Ja-
BFA in Independent Theatre Studies from Boston University and her MFA in Playwriting from Arizona State Uni- neiro| Brazil. Having background in performance Art and media studies, her interest as artist and researcher
versity. Her current research project is a collaboration with Brazilian dancer and choreographer Mestre Monza is on the relationship between Performance, Media Art and, environmental issues. She developed her PhDʼs
Calabar.  Their work together seeks to explore the possibilities of teaching Afro-Brazilian histories and episte- research at the PontifíciaUniversidadeCatólica de São Paulo PUC/SP and her Master in Arts at UniversidadeEs-
mologies through dance, movement, crafts, and culinary arts.    Porter is also a playwright and solo performer.  tadual de Campinas UNICAMP/SP. Based in Rio de Janeiro|Brazil, she is also professor of the Graduated Pro-
“Sympathy for Exú” is the newest product of her creative practice.   The solo piece incorporates elements of gram in Arts of the Universidade Federal Fluminense| UFF, where she coordinates the BrisaLAB – Laboratory
Afro-Brazilian mythologies, in particular stories of the trickster figure, Exú.   Her current playwriting project is of Performance, Media Art and Environmental issues. She is a member of Anthropocene Campus – HKW|Ber-
a collaboration with a nursing scholar and fellow ethnographer, Dr. Amy Funk.  The project, “27 listeners” is lin|Alemanha and Co-coordinator of the project “Cities Can Fly”  DFG|Germany.  Author of the book “Poéticas
based on Funk’s dissertation research on sibling grief. do Ator no Cinema Contemporâneo” Intermeios, 2014, and co-author of the books “Arte e seusterritóriosSen-
siveis” Intermeios, 2014 and “Arte e seuspercursosSensiveis” Intermeios, 2016, she has written papers that are
Jack Colby, Cowboy Anthropologist as Trickster-Artist-Scholar: published in academic journals and collections in Brazil and abroad. She has participated in congress, seminars
and Art exhibitions in Brazil and abroad.
Narrating Intercultural Encounters
IFTR Presentation Proposal – PaR 2018 Belgrade, Serbia Laurelann Porter   “Jack Colby, Cowboy An- The Power of to Be In-Act
thropologist as Trickster-Artist-Scholar”: Narrating Intercultural Encounters  For many years, decades
Thomas Hirschhorn presents this year in Saskatoon, Canada, the work “What I can learn from you.
even, I resisted adopting any form of identity relating to my upbringing.  I believed that the “cowboy”
What you can learn from me”. This artistic work will be not an exhibition, but a series of workshops with
persona that my father often espoused and performed around the campfire was not meant for me. 
“teachers” from Saskatoon’s city. To create this proposition the artist has visited the city multiple times
In the beginning I rejected it as a representation of a conservative life I wanted no part of.  Our family
conducting fieldwork and reaching out to potential teachers and learners. The philosophical proposi-
were not actual cowboys anyway, just suburbanites who dreamed of a life on the ranch.   In my early
tion in it is “to share the particular and by sharing it making it universal, because everybody can learn
20s I participated in a theatre summer intensive workshop with an experimental theatre company in
something from the other, and because everybody can teach the other something specific … “Shar-
Massachussetts where we were all encouraged to delve into our upbringing to find our own unique
ing something with the other is an act of generosity” Hirschhorn.  In São Paulo, Brazil, the performer
identities.  Once again I rejected anything that came from Arizona, cowboy culture, and especially
ShambuyiWetu from Congo, who has living in São Paulo since 2014 as a refugee, presents the perfor-
Mormon religious dogma.   Fast forward to life as an artist-scholar pursuing my doctoral degree in
mance “Baggage”.  Also, he is teaching about performance and activism in different art spaces in the
theatre and performance of the Americas.  My interests were in Afro-Brazilian culture, something as
city. Both actions are developed from the phrase “the country receives the body, but not the head”.
far removed from my upbringing as anything could get.  And we were tasked with conducting research
This phrase is a Wetu’s affirmation about of generosity and hospitality in his new city and new country. 
and creating performance projects that recognized the ethical quandaries of transcultural and inter-
In front of these two works, my proposal to PaR group is to discuss and investigate the power of to be
cultural artistic forms. Finally, I reached into the dark corners of my psyche to cultivate a new narra-
in-act and the potential of processual acts, based on Whitehead philosophy about process 1933 and
tor persona: Jack Colby, Cowboy Anthropologist.  Jack Colby is both a trickster and a Jungian shadow. 
the concepts of experience proposed by Brian Massumi and Erin Manning. The base of this discussion
This narrator persona is deployed to critically question my own position as a descendant of colonizers.
will be the power of micro-political actions about learning, teaching, knowledge and performance.
By openly facing this shadow/trickster persona, I call attention to the inherent assumptions of the
dominant class and place them in dialogue with understandings gained from research in Afro-Brazil-
Key Words
ian communities of Bahia, Brazil.      This presentation will not need audio/visual technology.  Howev-
Performance Experience Process Learn and Power
er, a space flexible enough to create a fake “campfire” will be ideal.  No pyrotechnics will be involved.

Key Words
Trickster, Brazil, Transcultural
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

514 515
 WG WG

Ildiko Rippel Johnmichael Rossi

University of Worcester University of Northampton, UK

Ildiko Rippel is a senior lecturer of Drama and Performance at the University of Worcester. She recently com- Johnmichael Rossi, PhD, is a theatre-maker, educator and practice-led research. He is currently Senior Lec-
pleted a practice as research PhD at Lancaster University, examining familial performance practices. Ildiko’s re- turer in Drama & Acting at University of Northampton where is programme leader for the BA in Drama. He is
cent article ‘Maternal Ruptures/Raptures’ in the Performance Research edition ‘On The Maternal’ November also a co-convenor for the Performance-as-Research Working Group for IFTR. As founding Artistic Director of
2017 presents some of the findings of this research project. Ildiko is also co-founding member of Zoo Indigo, newFangled theatReR 2004-2014, JM has written, directed and produced several new experimental works. His
an Anglo-German performance company based in Nottingham, UK. The company produces autobiographical two plays, a TACK and trip, tik were published as a ‘pair of playz, in Play’N Amerika. JM is the former Educa-
performance with a focus on the innovative integration of new technologies, examining themes of cultural tion Director for Womens Projects education program and a co-founder of Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School
identity and home and displacement, alongside autobiographical experience of motherhood. where he served as Resident Teaching Artist for Vital Theatre. He occasionally performs as ‘Dottore JoMiRo’ in
The S’kool of Edumacation, an on-going site-specific interactive performance piece that explores and parodies
Therapy, Integration, Art. Theatre Companies of People with Down pedagogical histories and institutional norms.
Syndrome in Hungary
Traces of Pedagogical Practice: Standing On the Shoulders of Our
This project examines the act of walking as a method of collecting personal and cultural memories to Own Personal ‘Pedagods’
generate performance. In 2015 Zoo Indigo performers Ildikó and Rosie walked 220 miles across Po-
land and Germany, with flat-pack versions of their real-life children and a filmmaker. They re-traced This workshop responds, in part, to the Working Group’s ‘areas of inquiry,’ specifically #2, concerning
the footsteps of Ildikó’s grandmother Lucia, who was violently expelled from her home in lower Sile- legacies of practice and #3, on writing on, with and through practice and more broadly the confer-
sia, previously Germany, after it had been declared Polish territory at the Potsdam Agreement 1945. ence theme of Theatre, Nation and Identity: Between Migration and Stasis by exploring the mi-
Lucia walked three months through the fractured post-war landscape of Europe of shifting borders, gration of one’s own practice informed by the traces of training and education. Considering Isaac
dragging her two small children and all her belongings in a cart. In 2015 Ildikó and Rosie retraced Newton’s claim, in 1675, that “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” the
Lucia’s footsteps. Crossing borders, climbing fences, bleeding, crying, blistering. We walked through workshop will draw from my own pool of ‘pedagods,’ at the onset of the workshop, using anecdotes
the united and borderless Europe, witnessing a post-national utopia, particularly at the borders of surrounding core values impressed upon my own practice, which informs my pedagogical approach.
Poland and Germany. Once separated by barbed wire, armed border police and animosity between Respectively, this initial activity will stand on the shoulders of John Bell ‘must know the history of
the two countries, this area now runs joint cultural projects, has opened German-Polish Kindergar- your medium’, Rhea Gaisner on ‘tasting the words’ of a playtext, Charles McNulty on ‘carving time’
tens, as well as setting up a floating bar on the river Neisse which had formed an insurmountable to foster collaboration and Stanley Richardson ‘you must deal with your history’ through your play-
border for many decades. Whilst we were walking the refugee crises escalated, and elsewhere bor- writing. Jacques Derrida discusses ‘traces’ in writing: “It is not absence instead of presence, but a
ders and fences were erected. The escalation of the crisis placed survival, identity and migration at trace which replaces a presence which has never been present, an origin by means of which nothing
the forefront of the project. The project’s historical and current context of migrant mothers, borders has begun” 1967: 372. The activity will ask participants to collaborate around these four traces of my
and displacement raises interesting questions with regards to the traditionally gendered assump- training, reflected in personal anecdotes, to imagine a curriculum, lesson plan or classroom activity.
tions of heroic walking. In No Woman’s Land the performers stumble on a treadmill, immersed in a The workshop will then lead into a practical sharing of exercises that reflect how these virtues of my
media environment of archival and original videos and voice-overs. No Woman’s Land is a humorous practice form a pedagogical spine through teaching practice, across various modules, programmes,
and moving stagger through landscapes of past and present landscapes. Visual, physical and visceral, classrooms, institutions and geographical borders. The workshop asks participants to conjure their
the performance explores the post-war apocalypse, migration, home and displacement. own ‘pedagods,’ to identify traces that inform their own work, culminating in a sharing and specula-
tive brainstorming session.
Key Words
expulsion migration motherhood walking technology autobiography Key Words
Practice-led Research, Pedagogy, Traces, Writing, Migration, Practice
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

516 517
 WG WG

Christina Schmutz Myer Taub

University Autònoma Barcelona, Institut del Teatre
Formally senior lecturer in the drama department at the university of pretoria, now an independent academic
Christina Schmutz Studied Economy and Philology in Freiburg (Germany). Phd in Theatre Studies University whose research, teaching and practice includes areas performance as research, theatre-making, writing for
Autònoma Barcelona and Institut del Teatre Barcelona. In 1998 moved to Barcelona with a scholarship on con- stage, identity, performance as intervention, and environmental humanities.
temporary dramaturgy. In Barcelona puts on stage contemporary plays of German writers such as Falk Richter,
Igor Bauersima, Sybille Berg, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Anja Hilling, and Elfriede Jelinek (for the Festival de Shifting Contours: Mapping, Memory and the Metaphor of the
Sitges, Nau Ivanow, Espai Escènic Joan Brossa, GREC Festival, Videoarte loop Festival, Teatre Tantarantana).
Since the beginning of 2006 in conjunction with theatre director and theorist Frithwin Wagner-Lippok inici-
Counter-Performance Practice: To Arrive At Questions around
ates research and stage projects on postdramatic and performative theatre. Since then also persues teoreti- Cartographic Modes in Making De-Colonial Performance
cal-practical investigation of new theatre forms through various free projects. Lectures on new theatre forms
at congresses and universities. Works furthermore as profesor at Institut del Teatre and Eòlia in Barcelona and Mapping is the process delineating expression and reflection from which maps are made. Maps are
translator. both hypothesis and outcome delineating expression. They are the yearnings and documents of per-
Publications in: Punctum Institut del Teatre/Paris Sorbonne (2016), Colección Teatro Siglo XXI 2015, Actes III formance alternative texts produced through mapping. In searching for alternate performance based
i IV Simposi Internacional d´Arts Escèniques, Universitat d´Alacant (2016, 2013), Punctum&GRAE Universitat texts I have worked with maps and mapping as an audit to my own itinerancy. Part of this trajectory
Autònoma (2015), Barcelona (2012), Estudis Escenics, Barcelona (2014; 2011; 2009), Theater der Zeit, Berlín is the interrogation with ‘epistemic disobedience’ iterated in last year’s Sao Paulo performance as
(2010), Pausa, Barcelona (2015; 2012, 2010), International Symposion on Contemporary Catalan Theatre 05, research PaR workshop paper, “The Misbehavior of Nothing” Taub, PaR working group, 2017 where-
Barcelona (2005), www.lecturas2go-performaticas.eu (2012).
by the allegory of resistance led to embodiment of allegory and an ongoing process of de-linking in
which nothing and everything happened. From this static-schism, a crisis, I have returned to med-
Workshop On Encounter and (In)Dividuality itative practice of which I consider mapping practice as ways to consider or even reconsider what
my practice is. In this case I would like to return to examples of several maps from sourced and self
Encounter implies the transgression of borders. By definition, something unsurpassable, sacrosanct
made projects, more so to reconsider memory as part of the meditative function of practice, with
is attached to borders: the ban on touching, the noli me tangere. Today, (Foucault’s) dispositives
the integration in the PaR working groups of performed mapping practices as once led and instigated
substitute the gods and the role of the sacred’s border guard. How can we become emancipated
in particular by Dr. Jonathan Heron’s examples of maps in exercises PaR working group 2014 & 2015
from them? Certeau says, by playing with the dispositives: by a creative and canny usage of texte,
Barcelona and Warwickshire, and how these methods later traveled into projects based around
pictures, and objects. He retells how the inhabitants of a Brazilian village rebel against the powerful
Shakespeare and de-colonial practice University of Pretoria 2014 &2017. Fusing these ideas of map-
and the established order with its and deren ostensible fatefulness, by help of miracle stories about
ping and items like distance, separation, integration, rupture, post-rupture, assemblage as transver-
Brother Damião. Therefore they continue the religious frame of reference in which their lives had
sal mechanics to delink colonial texts In reflection of these projects and these moments I would like
been clamped by the christianmissionars. They make a resistive use of the very system of the prodi-
to offer re-investigations into previous PaR mapping exercises, re-orientated as migrant, function-
gious that had been imposed upon them by others – exposing theatrically this reuse in the form of
ary if not revolutionary, ways to trans-disciplinarise knowledges from into de-colonised practice.
an exaggerated superstition, that is, by an excess of marvel, something that always and with all right
has been suspected by secular and religious authorities to question the raison d’être of the hierar-
Key Words
chies of power and knowledge. They use it in order to gain leeway for themselves.
maps, mapping, PaR performance as research, decolonial, Shakespeare
How can we, as participants of a society, in the most simple case of a dual relation, make creative
and canny use of a imposed order that introduces a difference between me and the other?
The workshop plays on this “disdain for the border” by experimenting on breaking and widening
boundaries, and on ways how thing divided by boundaries may merge together and draw benefit
from the common limitations in a new, canny way. In this double sense the workshop is about diver-
sity. Theatre is the place where the confrontation of human beings can be tried out (relatively) dan-
gerless. The encounter of the single person and the world clinging densely to it, spawn experiences
that shall be tried and described in the workshop.

Key Words
border, encounter, individuality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

518 519
 Working PERFORMANCE
IN PUBLIC SPACES
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

520 521
 WG WG

Jia-iuan Chin Lesley Delmenico

National Cheng-Kung University Grinnell College

Jia-iuan CHIN is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chinese Literature, National Cheng Kung Univer- Lesley Delmenico is an associate professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Grinnell College, Grin-
sity Taiwan. She has published papers in leading journals on topics such as participatory theatre, mobile spec- nell, Iowa.  Her teaching, directing, and research focus on theatre’s political roles in contemporary society,
tatorship, theatrical spaces and contemporary Taiwanese Opera. Chin received her PhD from Royal Holloway, particularly the intersections of performance with urban spaces, the natural environment, post-coloniali-
University of London. [email protected] ty, immigration, gender, and culture.  She concentrates on the ways marginalized women improvise spac-
es from which to speak.  Geographically, her work began at the northern edge of Australia with indigenous
and immigrant women, and lately has concentrated on the former colonizing center, London. An ethnog-
Being Together in the Night-time: A Study of Time in Public Spaces rapher, writer, deviser, and director, Lesley is currently working with American and British women’s NGOs
to stage community issues that concern tradition, law, the body and sexuality, and changing identities in
With the rapid development of new technologies, and while artists and scholars have not been slow the metropolis.  She has previously created professional and community-based performances in London,
to operationalize new works in a complex merge of material and immaterial public spaces, this re- Mumbai and Grinnell, and has studied community/intercultural performance in many parts of the world.
search alternatively looks back to the existence of traditional outdoor-staged activities and attempts Her methodologies are interdisciplinary.  She has published in theatre/performance and sociology jour-
to investigate the relationship between the nature of time and the crowds. By addressing various nals and given thirty-six conference presentations. Key questions in her research and practice concern the
night-time activities, from ritual dances, Taiwanese Opera kua-á-hì to participatory mobile perfor- ways in which we craft and perform complex identities in a post-colonial, globalized, and increasingly urban-
mances, it explores how the rhythms of the body have been impacted on by theatrical gatherings ized world. Lesley’s M.A. and Ph.D. are in Theatre and Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
and how the sense of collective mobility has been built and reinforced by the darkness under the
sky. I will also compare this research with the recent work on the night-time activities to suggest a Contesting Traditions in Public Performance: Embodying
way towards a more lived framework for social-social theory in a contemporary city. Given the sig- Experience, Speaking Aloud
nificant sensuous examples of those collectively open-air activities at night, I hope such research will
remind us the importance of the dark and provide an integrated reflection on the methodological Public zones, defined as any spaces beyond the confines of the home, become politicized when
potential of time as a concept within public performances research, and proposed to elevate the normally private women perform acts of self-definition under the community’s gaze to improvise
idea of time to a level on par with spatial terms as employed in theatre analysis respectively. new geographies of influence within their communities and participate in the urban and nation-
al spheres. In the UK, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa form strong national and sub-national
Key Words communities that share tensions between gendered, traditional African and British definitions of
Outdoor-staged Performances, Theatre and Time, Night-time Activities, Night Time Economy, Partic- virtue and success.  In negotiating new, hybridized transnational identities, a group of women re-
ipatory Performance cently transgressed decorum by publicly questioning the experiences that are traditionally kept si-
lent.  The stakes were higher for these performers because that public speech came in the form
of embodied performance of their own words. In working with the first-time actors of the Lon-
don NGO, FORWARD, I discovered that such public speech against the customs of child/forced mar-
riage and FGM, in the presence of men and strangers, was a bold and unorthodox performative
act, and realized the courage that it took to participate.    This presentation analyzes the effects
on first-time actors of participating in a play that was aptly titled Uncomfortable Conversations
by the actors.  Devising in workshops with the award-winning London/African NGO, FORWARD, I
scripted and directed Conversations for community-center performances in March 2017.  In seek-
ing to understand the effects of the workshop/devising/performance process on actors and audi-
ence, I am guided by Joanne Tompkins’ analysis, in Theatre’s Heterotopias, of the ways in which
performance can alter the meanings of public spaces. Such heterotopic performances can supple-
ment the past histories of public spaces and create the possibility of changed future perceptions.
I explore the way in which a transgressive public speech act about an “unspeakable” subject may
help contribute to interrupting traditions and, perhaps, to the invention of positive alternatives.

Key Words
immigration, identity formation, gendered performance, public spaces, contested performance, het-
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

erotopia

522 523
 WG WG

Tara Fatehi Irani Elena Gordienko

University of Roehampton The School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, RANEPA, Moscow

Multidisciplinary artist, performer, writer and researcher www.tarafatehi.com Half of performance duo /gori- Elena Gordienko is a researcher from Moscow. In 2014, she obtained her Ph.D. candidate degree at Lomonoss-
zazmarkaz/  Member of DARC Documentation Action Research Collective  Associate Fellow of the Higher Edu- ov Moscow State University in the theory of language for a thesis «Linguosemiotic principles of transforming a
cation Academy UK   Education  2015–present: Practice-as-research PhD in Drama, Theatre and Performance, narrative text into a stage drama: on the material of Russian and French theatre adaptations». She holds also
University of Roehampton, London 2012– 2013: MA in Performance and Creative Research, University of Roe- Master Degrees in Comparative literature from the Paris IV Sorbonne and in Visual culture from the Higher
hampton, London  2005–2010: BA in Drama, University of Tehran  2002–2005: Diploma in Theatre, Sooreh School of Economics, Moscow. Since 2014, she is a senior lecturer in the Russian Presidential Academy of
School of Art, Tehran Publications 2017: LADA’s Study Room: A case study in five parts co-author, Performance National Economy and Public Administration RANEPA. Her research focuses on a site-specific theatre, partici-
Research 2016: No pressure, but find me a bed out there., Performance Research  2011: weekly column on pative practices as well as on a representation of History by theatre means.
Roozegar Daily, Iran 2010–present: freelance review writer Underline Art Magazine and This is Tomorrow 
Performances  2013–present: studio-based and site-responsive performances/installations around the UK as
performer or performance-maker at Royal Academy of Arts, Tate Liverpool, Live Art Development Agency,
Teatr.Doc Implicit Impacts: Passers-By Reactions as an Image of
Chelsea Theatre, SPILL Festival, Artsadmin, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Cambridge Junction, Camden People’s Social Environment and Frontiers
Theatre, H.F.W.A.S, Tyneside Irish Centre, RichMix and non-theatre/gallery spaces, Amsterdam, Istanbul and
Tehran    2003–2012: around thirty performances in Iran at Molavi Theatre, Teatr-e Shahr, Entezami Hall, East This presentation will be based on a Teatr.doc production «Implicit impacts». A director Vsevolod
Art Gallery, Untimely Festival of Contemporary Dance and several non-theatre and underground venues and Lisovsky defined the genre as an intervention-performance. Together with the audience the actors
at festivals in Amsterdam, Warsaw and Yerevan. walk around the city, passing through central streets, subway, stores, railroad tracks, courtyards, mu-
seum stairs, garages… the venue changes every time and is not discussed in advance. While moving,
Mishandled Archive: Transposing Histories, Imageries and the artists recite in random order different text fragments from documentary verbatim monologues
Movements across Geographical and Temporal Borders to the theological articles and poetry. The theatre intervenes the urban space, and thus explores the
degree of social openness, the how the citizens perceive unconventional actions, what is forbidden
How can transposing documents from one place, time, language and culture to another relate to or allowed. It seemed that a representation of a group sex in the streets or at bus stops should cause
and narrate the experience of bodies crossing borders and their histories?  Mishandled Archive is a a huge reaction, but that, as a rule, is simply watched with curiosity or passed by. At the same time,
practice-as-research project comprised of a series of 365 micro-actions in public space that explores for a simple crossing of the yard by an unknown group, the tenants react nervously, staring incred-
the inter-animation of family archives, history-telling and performance. Every day, throughout 2017, ulously and demanding an explanation. It turns out that wandering without a goal, and especially
I installed and left behind one item copied from my family archive from Iran at a public site streets, in a crowd is perceived as suspicious. The common questions are «what is going on here» and even
hospitals, theatres, trains, … in different countries. Each day’s installation was accompanied by a «are you on wheels». At one of the shows a saleswoman commented on our group that this was
short improvised site-responsive dance that I performed on the site of the installation. One pho- a gay parade. As there is no official paper, spectators are anxious: will they call the police, can we
to, the descriptions and location of the dance were posted on Instagram on a daily basis: https:// be here? From time to time the police is actually called. Nevertheless, most of the time the guards
www.instagram.com/tarafteh/ The archive in use is a domestic collection of documents from1900 to do not stop the performance, and getting that this is a theatre play they watch how those strange
1984 including photographs, letters to family members, letters from prison, envelopes signed by jail people do perform. All this is an evidence of time. https://garagemca.org/en/event/implicit-impacts
keepers, amateur photography from the streets of Tehran during the 1979 revolution, final wills and - information about a show and some photos A resident threatening to call the police : https://www.
memorials in Iranian newspapers.  Pieces of Mishandled Archive have been left behind on the daily facebook.com/transformatordoc/videos/475126709521246/ A policeman as a spectator: https://
paths of publics around the UK, Iran, Switzerland, Germany and Italy and across borders on airplanes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ys_UiiKVxchttps://transformatordoc.timepad.ru/event/537969/ -
These transposed documents and the dances sparked several conversations and engagements in video extracts
public spaces on site or online. I would like to present a performative presentation of the project
that brings together documentation of the project, parts of the histories from people in the archive Key Words
as well as discursive writing on the act of ‘mishandling’ as a way of disseminating histories of people, Teatr.doc, participative theatre, site-specific, intervention
places and their movements.    See a map of where all the pieces of the archive were placed: https://
goo.gl/oE8DyP   See photos of a durational performance-installation of the project in Tehran:https://
tarafatehi.tumblr.com/post/169958849751/mishandled-archive-durational-performance

Key Words
family archive, documentation, site-sensitivity, public space, gift exchange, story telling, alternative
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

history, Iran

524 525
 WG WG

Holly Maples Ciara Murphy

Brunel University NUI Galway, Ireland

Holly Maples is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Brunel University. Both a theatre practitioner and scholar, she is Ciara L. Murphy is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance at NUI Galway, Ireland.
particularly interested in performative publics, examining manifestations of identity through popular enter- Ciara’s research is an interrogation of contemporary Anglophone participatory and site-responsive perfor-
tainment. Her current research includes a heritage performance research project in Norfolk and a monograph mance practice. This research is supported by the Galway Doctoral Scholarship Scheme. Ciara has recently
exploring the female gaze in American theatre 1830-1930. concluded work on a collaborative research project for #WakingtheFeminists, ‘Gender Counts: An Analysis of
gender in Irish theatre 2006-2015’, that examines how key roles in Irish theatre have been gendered over the
A Public Sense: Immersive Performance and Sensorial Experience in last ten years. Ciara has also published on contemporary Irish theatre in New Hibernian Review/Iris Éireannach
Nua and in Masculinity in Crisis: Depictions of Modern Male Trauma in Ireland 2016.
Site Specific Heritage Performance
Paston Footprints600, a multi-arts cultural heritage project encouraging immersive, experiential, Contested Sites and Troubled Bodies: Interrogating Everyday
and interactive responses to local heritage focuses on bringing to life the stories of a powerful Nor- Experience through Participatory Performance in Public Space in
folk family from 1380-1750. The Pastons played a pivotal role in dramatic local, regional, and na- the North of Ireland
tional events and their legacy remains imprinted on the landscape in a number of important historic
sites across Norfolk. As the performance lead on this project, I have been commissioned to design This paper analyses a selection of performances which took place in the north of Ireland since 1972
a series of heritage performance at sites throughout Norfolk over the next two years. My first per- in order to examine how performance interventions acted across spatial and political borders to rep-
formances are scheduled for May and June 2018, and include a pop-up theatre event launching resent the effect of violence on the everyday experiences of citizens, space, and society. This chapter
a heritage walking tour in Norwich, and a large scale promenade performance on the grounds of identifies and analyses selected performance paradigms which illustrates how artists intervened
a heritage site. The pop up theatre event targets an urban environment where many of the me- in public spaces recently dominated by violence to investigate how violence informs the bodies of
dieval buildings are interspersed with a contemporary landscape, while the event at Oxnead al- those who utilise that space in an everyday context. These case studies do not necessarily speak
lows for a more immersive heritage experience, removed from the distractions of daily life.  The to the most devastating events or the associated victims or perpetrators of a single crime. Instead,
heritage industry’s current interest in immersive techniques allies with the flowering of a ‘sensu- these performances focus on the everyday social experience of life in the north of Ireland in this time
al turn’ engendering the study of social movements through embodied knowledge. Howes and frame, a social experience which suffered greatly from the events of the Troubles. This paper will
Classen contend that concerns of nationalism, identity, gender, and multiculturalism are shaped also analyse performances which took place during the Peace Process and after the Belfast/Good
through sensory experience, while ‘Sensory History’ research investigates society’s relationship to Friday Agreement in 1998. One of the common features of the case studies outlined in this paper
sounds, tastes, and textures offer key insights into our critical engagement with history. By focus- is that they encourage audiences to migrate across cultural and physical borders, such as the 1999
ing on sensorial, embodied relationships to site, my heritage performances examine the embodied production of The Wedding Play which transports audience members across Belfast’s ‘peace walls’
experience of public space may be in itself a collective memory, identity, and/or community build- in order to experience the ritualised performance of a mixed-marriage wedding, or the 2000 pro-
ing devise. My paper will combine traditional lecture with some of the immersive and sensorial duction Convictions which asks audiences to step across the threshold of a former prison which held
tools used in these events to investigate how audiences as well as artists fuse historic sites and political prisoners during the Troubles. This paper will engage frameworks of performance studies,
sounds with the contemporary landscape to empathically and physically embody a localised past. social geography, and performance analysis in its interrogation of key performances.

Key Words Key Words

Site Specific, Immersive Theatre, Heritage Performance Irish Theatre, Northern Irish Theatre, Performance, Public Space, Troubles, Performance Art
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

526 527
 WG WG

Rebecca Savory Fuller Fraser Stevens

University of Exeter University of Maryland, College Park

Rebecca Savory Fuller is Lecturer in Acting at the Arts University Bournemouth, and is completing a PhD in Fraser Stevens is a PhD student at the University of Maryland, whose project is focused on the relationship
Drama at the University of Exeter, on the UKIERI-funded split-site programme between Exeter and the National between theatre and espionage. Fraser obtained his BA in Theatre from York University in Toronto in 2010, and
School of Advanced Studies NIAS in Bangalore. She holds a degree in Social Anthropology, performer training continued on to complete his MA in Theatre and Performance at Aberystwyth University in 2012. Aside from
in Lecoq-based devised theatre practice, and over ten years’ professional experience in immersive and inter- his academic pursuits he a co-founder and co-director of the experimental theatre company Almost Human.
active performance for non-theatre spaces. Her doctoral research examines Flash Mob performance practices The companys work seeks to challenge traditional ways of producing and executing live performance. Over the
in India, tracing a history of the genre through online archives and ethnographic research in Bangalore, Delhi past six years Almost Humans work has been produced internationally to much acclaim.
and Mumbai. Her broader research interests centre on performance, power, participation, and spectacle in
live and digital public space. The Libraries and Babel: Site-Specific Theatre for Institutions of
Knowledge
Together, Alone? Performing Digital Proximities in India’s Blank
Noise & Why Loiter Feminist Campaigns What are the challenges facing theatre companies today when touring work internationally for
site-specific productions? In an increasingly global world, yet one in which the act of crossing borders
In India’s contemporary feminist movement, a series of recent projects have invited women to ex- is becoming more and more difficult, theatre, and the arts in general, face unique hurdles in remain-
plore and question social restrictions imposed on female embodiment in public urban spaces. #Wal- ing both relevant and accessible. How is it that theatre, particularly site-specific productions, might
kAlone, #WhyLoiter, and #MeettoSleep have invited women to occupy local spaces in ways that aid in moving beyond such border issues and progress the exchange of knowledge, arts, and cultures? 
challenge conservative social norms of female safety and propriety, through the acts of walking, This paper is intended to analyse an upcoming European tour produced by Almost Human, which
loitering, and sleeping in public. Each of these projects encourage women to interrogate their own employs students from the University of Maryland, College Park. The production entitled Babel is a
relationship to public space, deploying performative migration and stasis within the urban land- site-specific performance which will be situated in public and academic libraries, one of the more an-
scape, as a tool for enquiry and self-reflection. At the same time, they seek to sow the seeds of a cient institutions found globally. The performance, based on Jorge Borges’ text The Library of Babel,
culture shift in societal attitudes towards women in India, by producing female visibility through intends to interrogate the concept of libraries, where they have come from, where they are now, and
micro-occupations of public space in ways usually restricted to men. This paper asks how the activist where they are heading.   Broaching questions posed by site-specific practitioners and the academics
groups Blank Noise and Why Loiter establish digital proximities as a means of transforming private, who study their work, interrogating issues surrounding the fraught concept of ‘universality’, and inter-
personal experiences into concerted, public acts. Through WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and blogs, secting these ideas with timely questions around ephemerality, archives and public access, this paper
these groups narratavise individual actions online, transforming them into what Judith Butler 2015 seeks to show how global institutions such as libraries might help reinvigorate theatrical work, and at
has termed a form of ‘plural performativity’. Drawing on my participation in #WalkAlone from the the same time benefit from a relationship with live art. Can these cultural entities of live performance
remote position of the UK alongside online documentation of the campaigns, I explore how digital and knowledge repositories help challenge nationalistic thinking and encourage cultural exchange?
tools were utilised to forge digital proximities. They create relationships of proximity between dis-
persed participants, but also intersect between city spaces and an online public sphere. The result Key Words
is that these fleeting public acts live on in a ‘digital afterlife’, speaking back to both national global Site-Specific, Touring, Archives, Libraries, Public Space, Experimental Theatre
and discourses.

Key Words
feminist activism, embodiment, public space, digital proximity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

528 529
 Working PERFORMANCE
RELIGION AND
Groups SPIRITUALITY
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

530 531
 WG WG

Silvia Battista Josh Edelman

Liverpool Hope University Manchester Metropolitan University

Silvia Battista is a visual and performance artist/scholar, who has engaged, over the last twenty years, with a mul- Joshua Edelman is senior lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Arts, Manchester Metropolitan Uni-
tidisciplinary set of artistic languages including performance, drawing, photography and video. She is interested versity. His work explores the intersections between performance, religion and politics in the contemporary
in the intersection between visual art, performance and theatre, particularly in the use of meditative, contem- world. He is one of the founding editors of Performance, Religion and Spirituality prs-journal.org and found-
plative and ecstatic practices as creative and epistemological processes. Her practice is presented regularly in ing co-convenor of the Performance, Religion and Spirituality Working Group of the International Federation
international contexts and her scholarly outcomes have been published with Intellect, Routledge and Palgrave. for Theatre Research.
Her first monograph Posthuman Spiritualities in Contemporary Performance: Politics, Ecologies and Percep-
tions is due to publication this year. She works as lecturer at Liverpool Hope University. www.silviabattista.com Global Rap, Hip-Hop and the Performance of Minority Religious
Identity
When the Spirits are Socially Engaged: “Journey to the Lower
What I will offer today is a state-of-the-field survey of the ways in which rap and hip-hop have been
World” by Marcus Coates
used as performative tools to promote and develop religious life around the world. Rap and hip-hop
are migratory musical forms. They emerged in the African American community thorough the mix
This paper is part of the monograph Posthuman Spiritualities in Contemporary Performance: Pol- of technological and cultural influences of an American metropolis. Since then, they have migrated
itics, Ecologies and Perceptions 2018. It looks at the work Journey to the Lower World 2004 by around the world. Digital audio and video sharing platforms have made this music a particularly
Marcus Coates, consisting in the artist performing a Shamanic journey for an audience of residents global phenomenon and have made it an attractive commodity for companies who deal in cultural
living in a tower block in Liverpool. The tower block was listed for demolition and the residents were products. And yet, the notion of a performer testifying to the authentic experience of life in their
facing the prospect of begin relocated to unfamiliar places away from their community.   The perfor- often extremely specific neighbourhood and cultural milieu. The tension between particular identity
mance/ritual was performed in the living room of the flat of one of the residents with the objective and globalist openness to digital capitalism structures the social location of the genre, and also helps
of empowering members of this community in the face of this challenging phase of their life. The to explain why it is so useful for those working with religious identity. Based on a forum section cur-
often, humorous performance involved the artist talking to and obtaining information from animal rently under preparation for the journal Performance, Religion and Spirituality, I will report on the
spirit guides to suggest a possible community strategy for the soon to be relocated tenants.   By work of scholars from around the world – from Africa to Central Asia – who are investigating the way
engaging with studies on shamanism in contemporary, western societies, new materialist studies in which the performative authority rap and hip-hop have both revitalised and challenged religious
and the acknowledgement of the political aspects of the fool in theatre, this chapter investigates identity, especially for a younger generation. I will discuss the relationship between individuality,
the performer’s ability to embody both the figure of the trickster and of spiritual guide. This entails cultural particularity, and spiritual universalism implied by this work. I will also briefly discuss what
studying Coates as a liminal figure which constantly moves between the comical and the spiritual the this research suggests about our comfort with the contingency of location, culture and identity for a
possible and the impossible imagination and reality confusing them into one another for transforma- world in which migration, dispossession, and exile are quotidian facts of life.
tive purposes. Indeed, the hypothesis proposed is that his performance brought together the sacred
and the profane into a space where faith, humor, hope, imagination and suspicion were employed to Key Words
empower collective cohesion. A separate perspective is suggested when looking at the aftermath of Religion, Performance, Hip-hop, rap
the journey and at the politics used by Coates to achieve his artistic/social objective.   The proposal
includes also a workshop to be delivered on the Sunday before the start of the conference.

Key Words
Imagination, social empowerment, western shamanism, new materialism, performance art, healing
processes
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

532 533
 WG WG

Marija Krnić David Mason

University of Warwick Rhodes College

Marija Krnić is a PhD student at the Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick and she David Mason is Chair of Theatre and Director of Asian Studies at Rhodes College in the USA. He is Editor-In-Chief
works on the doctoral thesis entitled ‘Performing Martyrdom: Theatre and Community in the eastern Adriatic of the journal Ecumenica. He is the author of the books Theatre and Religion on Krishnas Stage and Brigham
Saints’ Plays’. She is interested medieval religious theatre and its contemporary re-actualizations. Specifically, Young: Sovereign in America. Routledge will publish his book The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre
her research explores saints’ plays in eastern Adriatic urban communities, focusing on the cultural and social later in 2018.
history of such performances, and the revival of saints’ plays in the context of the late-twentieth-century
state-building project in Croatia. Before coming to Warwick she gained an MA degree in Medieval studies at Performing Community Identity Crisis
the Central European University in Budapest, an MA in Croatian philology and Comparative literature from the
University of Zagreb, and she was a visiting student at the University of Trieste. She also worked as a dance
teacher and choreographer. Community identity, like personal identity, might be an illusion. Just as the indivisible quanta of
personal identity may only be a sensation that coalesces from a body’s storm of perception and
Saints Plays and the Performance of the Croatian National interaction with the stuff of reality, what seems to be the identity of a group may rest on its cloud of
perceptions as a group, and its interactions with the world. No wonder that a sense of community
Identity identity can be mortally threatened by the acute trauma that violence inflicts on groups as groups—
mass destitution, dislocation, suspension, suspicion, renewed rejection, and renewed violence. But
Croatian religious theatre played an important role in the recent political and cultural history of
performative acts often sustain cohesive people-hood. Performative acts can even reconstitute and
the country. In this paper I examine the nexus between theatre and nationalism by focusing on
refashion a community identity that has been catastrophically dissolved. Performative acts can be
the re-enactments of the medieval genre of the saints’ plays during the two waves of Croatian na-
particularly important to displaced communities, since, unlike landmarks and buildings, acts travel
tionalism—the Croatian Spring in 1970 in the context of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, fol-
in the very bodies that can form a community. On the other hand, performative acts can be much
lowed by the achievement of national sovereignty in 1991—and their role in the state-building proj-
less stable than buildings and landmarks, and their metamorphoses can entail substantive changes
ect.  I will reflect on how performances of the saints’ plays came to be understood as ‘national’
to the identity that a community recognizes as its own.
through the complex interplay of factors characteristic for each phase of their re-appearance. I will
be looking into how the performances in national theatres were reshaped to fulfil the goal of re-
Key Words
flecting the national identity in different contexts—I will compare the context of the 1970s when
performance, community, refugee, identity, religion
they were used as a subversive ideological tool which undermined the broader Yugoslav identity,
against the setting of the 1990s when they corresponded with the official nationalist rhetoric of
the regime. A double symbolic stake of religious and catholic heritage, pointed against atheism and
secularity of the communist regime, as well as against Serbian Orthodox tradition, will be iden-
tified as crucial for the ideological embracement of saints’ plays. Furthermore, the affective ex-
periance of the performances will be also addressed. Through the analyses of the records video
and photo records, media coverage, and in-depth interviews with participants directors, perform-
ers, and members of the audience I will scrutinize the impact of the emotional labour, in order
to answer the question of how those performances weaved shared emotional repertoires Hurley.

Key Words
saints plays, religion based nationalism, emotional repertoires
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

534 535
 WG WG

Hannah McClure Iliana Muñoz

The University of Surrey Mexico City 1980

Hannah McClure holds a PhD in Dance: Practice as Research from The University of East London, a Masters Graduated from the Master in International Performance Research (MAIPR 2012-2013) (University of Amster-
Degree in Dance Anthropology from Roehampton University London, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from dam, University of Warwick and University of Arts of Belgrade).She holds a BA in Drama and Theatre by the
The State University of New York at Brockport and is a Registered Practitioner and Educator of Relaxation Ther- National Autonomous University of Mexico and a BA in Cultural Management by the University of Guadalajara.
apies through Neutral-Space UK and The UK Polarity Therapy Association. Her work with The Mevlevi Order
of Sufism led to a practice based investigation through the performing arts where she investigated the healing She is a theatre practitioner, researcher and critic. She has devised the performances: Tripping(2015-2018),
capacities of Sufi practice, its context and histories especially in relation to the initiatory journeys of women. The digging senses experience(immersive guided experience with dinner included, 2015), both of them with
She lectures in Dance and Theatre at The University of Surrey and her film ‘The Woman Who Whirls’ was re- Darya Siargeichyk; ‘Blue and Gold genome’ (commissioned performance, 2014), ‘My body is a cage’(2014),
cently screened at The Barcelona International Short Film Festival. ‘In-fidelity’ (video-essay 2014), ‘The man who wanted to’ (a performance-installation inspired byThe seagull,
by A. Chéhkov, 2013).She has collaborated for the pieces: ‘PLM’, Thinking of music,(dueto concert by Aimeé
Tasawuuf as Embodied Thought and Philosophy Theriot 2017), and ‘Telepressence’, (wearable installation, 2016).

It is commonly taught and accepted in the analytic and continental traditions that philosophy began She has taught workshops in Mexico, Serbia, Belarus and India. She has won several prizes on theatre critic and
collaborates for the media ‘FalsoRaccord’, ‘El rodar de la canica’ and ‘Nexos’.
and extended from a Greco-Roman heritage. Aristotle, Plato and Socrates are lauded as philoso-
pher-scientists who birthed the reign of rational thought. Prior to the Greco-Roman emergence of ra-
tionalism however extensive philosophical, scientific and artistic bodies of knowledge were cultivat- Spiritual Journeying Through Performance
ed in Africa The Maxims of Ptohhotep Egypt 25th Century BCE, Asia Taoism 5th Century BCE and The
My presentation will display the process and results of a documentary staged performance that my
Vedic Period 2nd Millennium BCE and the Middle East Sufi oral tradition undated. HazratInyat Khan
Belarusian colleague Darya Siargeichyk and I devised while we were traveling in India in 2015. During
writes to us from the 19th century,  ‘The germ of Sufism is said to have existed from the beginning of
the trip we decided to stop in Palolem, Goa, and produce an intensive 24h laboratory in order to
the human creation, for wisdom is the heritage of all therefore no one person can be said to be its
design a performance dispositifthat was able to contain several narrative lines concerning our expe-
propounder. It has been revealed more clearly and spread more widely from time to time as the world
riencesas two western female foreigners traveling for the first time in India. One of the main axis for
has evolved’ 2002 and this view is corroborated by contemporary scholars Burkhardt, 2008 Blann,
the trip and the performance was spirituality. That is why we wanted to create a structure that fos-
2005. A foundational aspect of both early and later Sufi thought and philosophy is the concept of ta-
tered in the spectators an actual spiritual experience more than an entertainment one. We focused
sawuuf, or purity. The brothers and sisters of purity were known in pre-Islamic times as the hannifya,
in conviviality between performers and spectators enhancing the performativity of the present mo-
EkuanulSafa and later the Sahabi Safa. Their practices included fasting, prayer, breathwork, chanting,
ment. The performance, intitled ‘Tripping’ was premiered in India in December 2015 and reenacted
whirling, music, fine art and other forms of dance and movement. These sets of practices grew out
in Mexico in 2017 and 2018. I will address the creative process, the final structure, the changes that
of the oral and early traditions which grouped philosophy, science, art and spirituality together into
were made in each reenactment and the response of the audience.
complete lifeways. For the purposes of this paper, we will be looking at tasawuuf as an example of both
ancient and later Sufi philosophy and embodied thought. Key facets of tasawwuf relate to themes of
Key Words
migration, exchange and the enactment/performance of purity to oneself and to a larger community.
Devised performance, meditation, spirituality, travel and performance
Key Words
Sufism, Tasawwuf, Arts, Philosophy, Embodied Thought, Purity, Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

536 537
 WG WG

Julija Pesić Dagmar Schwitzgebel

University of Toronto, Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies
I am a performance artist. Working with a range of performance strategies as sites of political resistance, my
Julija Pesić [email protected] is a University of Toronto researcher focused on performance art, work challenges expectations of political activism. My pieces aim to encourage urban dialogue, heal the rift
cultural anthropology, and cultural studies. Her doctoral dissertation investigates the forms and functions of of detrimental otherness, whilst mischievously ignoring capitalist induced virtues of fear and greed. For me,
the Balkans cultural tradition in the work of Marina Abramović, the Belgrade-born, New York City-based per- activism and performance both seek to mobilize its participants hence, my work often utilizes mobile modes,
formance artist, now best-known for her record-breaking 2010 MoMA retrospective. In 2017, Julija received and therewith seeks to enable the re-positioning ones attitude to communal and global issues. At the moment
the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for her research project about cultural specificity and global dynamics in the I work as part of a collaboration, the Church of Performance. Natalie: I am a PhD candidate in the Department
performance art of Abramović. Before immigrated to Canada, Julija had completed BA honours in South Slavic of Dance, Theatre and Performance at the University of Plymouth .My practice research examines the relation-
Literature and MA in Dramatic Literature at the University of Belgrade with expertise in subversive humour in ship between body and matter in performance and visual art. My work is a response to my own personal polit-
contemporary European theatre. Her interests also include interaction of literature, theatre, and film. Julija ical and lived experiences, in addition to my research interests in live art Feminism feminist theology Semiotics
has been publishing articles on performance art and aesthetic subversion in professional journals in Serbia influence religious iconography Gender, gender and identity Representations of the body in performance and
and Canada. make contemporary performance. I am a founding member of Church of Performance, a Plymouth-based art
collective created in collaboration with Dagmar Schwitzgebel.
The Balkans Cultural Identity and Personal Narrative in the
Biographical Opera “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” Church of Performance Fucks the Patriarchy
(2011), Directed by Robert Wilson Our joint paper offers an insight of our company’s practical and theoretical investigation of Christian
constructs through live art performance. With our work we question the visual representation of
My paper explores the interaction between the Balkans cultural tradition and the personal narra-
female experience supposed by the Christian faith and playfully draw upon the rich symbolism and
tive in the biographical opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramović 2011, directed by Robert
iconography of religious art which is reconfigured and reinscribed, revealing plural and non-fixed
Wilson, an American stage director. I am interested in how the theatrical techniques construct the
identities which slowly emerge and evolve fluidly in time and through space. Images are re-staged,
cultural, artistic, and personal identity of contemporary performance artist Marina Abramović. An
re-configured and re-lived in an attempt to show the realities of female experience, as opposed to
internationally recognized artist with a four-decade long career, she was born, grew up, and was
the stagnant death of the static art object. Our pieces are visual duets between two bodies, two
educated in the former Yugoslavia. Her Balkan cultural background has had biographical, intellectu-
sexed bodies of varying gender and national identity. Church of Performance overarching feminist
al, and artistic consequences for the aesthetics and the practice of her work. In the current period,
aims are to forge progressive societal shifts, to eradicate what separates and regulates, to reject pa-
after 2005, Abramović’s image has shifted to a New York City-based pop-icon. Seen as a post-MoMA
triarchal systems and social orders, seeking strategies for emancipation. The paper will focus on the
celebrity, collaborating with movie stars and acting as the subject of the Wilson’s opera, Abramović
subject of ‘taking space’ as humans, as females, as artists. Self-indulgence opposes Christian morals
has become not only by far one of the most acclaimed living performance artists, but also a glob-
of modesty and humbleness, in the art world it is frowned upon and criticized as lack of talent or
al socio-cultural phenomenon. My research examines which of Wilson’s creative strategies decon-
taste. As this, it acts as another means of control that seeks to regulate and discriminate. We will un-
struction, reinterpretation, actualization, or subversion, to list just a few takes precedence in putting
earth where this form of social censorship appears and how to navigate through it. Church of Perfor-
Abramović’s personal and cultural identity, and the global art form in a conversation. In this research,
mance Dagmar Schwitzgebel & Natalie Raven is an artist led project based in Plymouth UK, exploring
the Balkans culture is considered as a complex ethno-national, heterogeneous, and fluid entity. It
some of the rites and rituals of performance in its broadest sense. The artists engage in direct-action
has been shaped by different, often intertwined, but also conflicting, historical and socio-political
live performance. Previous work: EXORCISE at Happy Dystopia, Ravensburg, Germany, Buckfast Bible
narratives for example, by the complex interactions of the imperial grand narratives of the Byzan-
Drinking at Buzzcut Festival, Glasgow UK, la sainte trinité at SPILL Festival of Performance, Ipswich
tine, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires on the one hand, and the emancipatory ethno-na-
UK , la mort vivant at LAMES, Open Space Days, St. Pölten, Austria, Sackcloth and Ashes at Tempting
tional narratives on the other. Therefore, this project consequently studies the positionality of an
Failure, London UK Website: http://churchofperformance.blogspot.co.uk/
artist who hybridizes local traditions in a global market. My project will be informed by performance
studies theories, performance art history, feminism, and political and social theories of globalization.
Key Words
It will also rely on the perspectives developed by cultural anthropology and ethnography.
christian, gender, symbolism, ritual, patriarchy, taking space, overstepping borders, power
Key Words
Performance Art, Identity, Cultural Specificity, The Balkan Tradition, and Global Context
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

538 539
 WG WG

Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen Maysa Utairat

Stockholm University Royal Holloway University of London

Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen. MA in theatre studies from University of Copenhagen. PhD candidate in theatre stud- I am a PhD. student at the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London. I am fo-
ies, Stockholm University. With IFTR elected ExComm member and founding co-convener of the working group cusing my practice-based research on creating a theatrical piece that enhances the spirituality of the audience
Performance, Spirituality and Religion. Founding co-editor of the e-journal PRS – Performance, Religion and in Buddhist storytelling ritual. Since finishing my Masters degree in Advanced Theatre Practice at Royal Central
Spirituality. Member of the PSi working group Performance and Science and a participant in the Performance School of Speech and Drama London, UK. in 2006, I have been a lecturer at the Department of Performing Arts
Studies Space Programme PSSP. Research interests: performative aesthetics spirituality science and theatre and a founder of Drama Major at Mahasarakham University, Thailand, for six years. I have continuously con-
contemporary staged events. ducted experiments in theatre, community and Buddhist rituals with the Ohpoh Theatre Company, a theatre
company I founded in 2008. I have been creating theatre with young theatre practitioners inside and outside
Foundling-Bird. The Prophetic Voice of a Hartmanian Churchplay educational institutes, including deaf and autistic students.
Concerning the Rights of Refugee Children
The “Reinvention” of the Mahachat Sung Sermon as a Theatre Play
In the 1950s the concept of medieval liturgical drama had migrated to the modern context of sec- For New Generations of Thai Buddhist Audience in the Context of
ular Sweden. This reinvention happened through the work of theologian and dramatist Olov Hart- Urban Migration
man and director Tuve Nyström at the Sigtuna Foundation, north of Stockholm. In 1960 the staging
of what had become known in Swedish as kyrkospel literally “churchplay” had spread to the Lund The Mahachat Sung Sermon is a ‘Jataka’ which has migrated from India and Sri Lanka to Theravada
Cathedral in Southern Sweden. Ever since a churchplay has been given each summer following the Buddhist monks in Thailand. The story is about the life of the Bodhisattva, Prince Vessantara, who
Hartmanian tradition of integrating the theatrical playing into the structure of the Mass. In 2011 the performed a great act of giving in order to be reborn as Gautama Buddha. The monks sang the
play was Foundling-Bird based mainly on the famous fairytale of the Brothers Grimm. The fairytale thirteen chapters of the poem with adapted dialogues and ritual additions. The performance has
was interwoven with the contemporary story of the refugee orphan Nadja and her Swedish friend, become widespread across communities in the northeast and was included into the annual tradition
who help her hide from the authorities wanting to deport her. I will discuss how Foundling-Bird of the region when the economy was predominantly rural. The Northeast region has been mod-
uses ‘ghosting’ Carlson 2004 as dramaturgical devise to, first, weave Nadja’s story and the fairytale ernized to have multiple hub cities containing educational institutions that impart modern concepts
into the liturgy’s transcendent spatiotemporal structure of myth and ‘cosmic region’ Rappaport 1999 and professional skills alongside the old Buddhist temples that continue to teach Buddhism and
and, second, relate it to the political context of the precarious situation of refugee children in Swe- literacy to community members. The Mahachat sung sermon has been expanded to be performed
den. I will also show how this kind of political commentary is integral to the Hartmanian poetics of in governmental institutions and universities for new comers who grew up in different communities
churchplay Hartman 1956 1959 1968, which calls for the raising of a ‘prophetic voice’ in society – an and have migrated to become members of these institutions. I was responsible for adding a theatre
aspect of contemporary Swedish cultural theology Svenungsson 2008. play to the monks’ sung sermon, aiming to involve members of a younger generation in the tradition
despite tensions produced by the religious content of the story and its associated rituals. The renew-
Key Words al of a spiritual tradition raises the question: how can the play deal with the disconnection of the
Liturgical drama churchplay Sigtuna Lund Cathedral refugee children ghosting Olov Hartman pro- audience and the changed meanings of the Vessantara Jataka in a materialistic society. I am going to
phetic voice cultural theology base my discussion on Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s, The invention of Tradition, published
in 1983. Hobsbawm and Ranger argued that an ‘invented tradition’ is used to transfer ‘values and
norms of behaviour by repetition’, in order to connect them to the past. The adaptation of tradition
is the borrowing of ‘old models for new purposes’.

Key Words
Mahachat Sung Sermon, Buddhist Sung Sermon, Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist storytelling, Bud-
dhist Play, Buddhist Theatre, Vessantara Jataka
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

540 541
 WG WG

Enzo Vasquez Toral Alessandra Zanobi

Princeton University
Alessandra Zanobi has completed her Ph.D. in Classics at the University of Durham UK with a thesis on the
Enzo Vasquez Toral is a director, performer and PhD candidate at Princeton University where he studies South influence of ancient pantomime on Senecas Tragedies Senecas Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime,
American Theater and Performance. He holds a MA in Spanish and Portuguese from Princeton University, Bloomsbury Publishing 2014. She took her first degree in Classics at the University of Florence with a dis-
and an Honors BA in History and Literature of Latin America from Harvard University, where he was an Artis- sertation on Senecas Medea La Medea di Seneca tra filologia e teatro. Her chapter on Seneca and ancient
tic Development Fellow and president of Harvard Teatro. At Princeton, he is the founder and director of the pantomime appears in Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles eds., New Directions in Ancient Pantomime OUP 2008.
university’s Spanish Theater group. Enzo has written on political theater in Brazil and most recently on queer Parallel to her academic studies, she has trained in ballet with Massimo Andaloro, former dancer of the
performance as it interacts with traditional and religious practices in the Andes. Enzo has presented his work ensemble of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, dance theatre with Mark Alan Wilson, Julie Ann
in various literary and theater conferences in South America and the United States, where he has also devel- Stanzak, and Stephan Brinkman, dancers of the Pina Bauschs Wuppertaler Dance Theatre, and Butoh with
oped his performance and theater practice. His work has been featured in recent works such as Keywords for Mitsuru Sasaki. She is also a certified Pilates instructor and yoga teacher. Her chapter on the reception of an-
Further Consideration and Relevant to Academic Life Princeton University Press, 2018, SaberesSubalternosen cient myth in modern dance appears in Fiona Macintosh ed., The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World OUP
America Latina Editorial UTF, forthcoming, among others. Enzo is currently an Exchange Scholar in the Depart- 2010. As a member of the “Performance and Religion” working group, she has participated to the annual
ment of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. meetings of the IFTR in Santiago de Chile 2012: The Uncanny Body of the Graeco-roman Pantomimic Dancer
and in Barcelona 2013: Articulating the Inarticulate through Dance.
Post-Folkloric Transvestism: Transvestite Interventions and the
Performance of Identity in the Peruvian Andes Tarantism: a Ritual Form Migrating Through the Centuries
La Fiesta de la TunantadaTunantada Fiesta is a catholic patron-saint fiesta in honor of Saint Sebastian Tarantism, a spider bite possession rite involving the use of music and dance, was typically found in
and Saint Fabian that occurs annually in Jauja, Peru. The Tunantada is both the name of the fiesta and Salento, an area in the Southern region of Apulia in Italy. This ritual has been performed over many
the only danza folkloric dance-drama, which consists of several masked characters, both male and fe- centuries as a cure for those who had been bitten by the tarantula spider during their work in the
male, that tell the history of the colonial past and the mestizo identity of the town. Since the start of fields. In order to expel the poison of the spider, a group of musicians would play the pizzica music
this “invented tradition” Hobsbawn, cross-dressing has been prevalent as women were not allowed and the person bitten would dance to it until cured. Ernesto De Martino 1908-1965, a famous Italian
to dance however, in recent decades, cis women, trans women and transvestite performers regard- anthropologist who studied the phenomenon of Tarantism in 1959, claimed that the ritual had long
ed as “travestis” in Peru have gained presence since the 1970s. Since the inclusion of trans and trans- historical roots and traced them back to the Dionysian cults in which a similar healing use of music
vestite performers, they have modified the costumes and dance steps of the female characters of this and dance was made. De Martinos claim on the origin of Tarantism from ancient Greek rites was also
dance, and although these transformations have been normalized through the years, they are not re- supported by the fact that a Greek minority still lived in an area of Salento called Grecia Salentina. In
garded as contributions by these communities. Additionally, most of these performers are not Jauja the middle ages, the Catholic Church transformed this ritual, basically a possession cult, into a cath-
natives and travel to dance from other cities, which has created a sense of kinship and collaboration olic cult of a saint, more specifically Saint Paul. On Saint Pauls day 29th of June, the tarantate would
among them. How can we understand these interventions by communities that are still marginalized gather in the main church of the city of Galatina where the exorcism would be performed. The ritual
in the Andes? What are these bodies writing through the performance of their own queer identity in was already in decline when De Martino studied it but a revival of the rite took place from the 1970s
relation to the larger religious and mestizo identities in Jauja? This paper seeks to answer these ques- onwards giving birth to the phenomenon which is now called neo-tarantism. In this paper, I wish to
tions by exploring the concept of post-folkloric transvestism, which I am defining as the transvestism investigate how the ritual of tarantism migrated through times, cultures, and meanings. To do so, I
embodied, appropriated and re-signified by trans and transvestite performers in the Andes. By ana- will examine three moments in the history of this ritual: the pagan rite the transformation of the pa-
lyzing the performative and aesthetic interventions by these performers, I argue that they destabi- gan cult into a catholic one the resurgence of Tarantism in contemporary times and its significance.
lize and represent a critique to the syncretic religious practices of this town and the performance of
mestizo identity that these danzas represent, which are both engrained in normative gender roles. Key Words
Tarantism, ritual
Key Words
Andean Performance, Queer Performance, Religious Tradition, Kinship, Transvestism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

542 543
 Working POLITICAL
PERFORMANCES
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

544 545
 WG WG

Vicky Angelaki
University of Reading Sarah Bartley
Queen Mary University of London
Dr Vicky Angelaki is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Reading, UK. Her latest monograph,
Social and Political Theatre in 21st Century Britain: Staging Crisis Bloomsbury was published in 2017. Her Sarah Bartley is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London. Her project explores artistic represen-
research specialisms include modern and contemporary British and European theatre mainly Austrian tations of the welfare state, with a particular focus on participatory practices engaging unemployed people.
and German, cultural sociology, the crossovers between theatre and science especially the environment She is also a community arts practitioner and co-founded Shifting Point, a drama project for ex-offenders run
and climate change, translation and adaptation. She has published extensively in these areas, major pub- in collaboration with prison resettlement services. Sarah’s work has been published in Research in Drama Ed-
lications including The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, Con- ucation and has been presented at a number of national and international conferences.
temporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 and the special issue of Con-
temporary Theatre Review titled ‘Dealing with Martin Crimp’ 24.3. She is currently writing Theatre & “Stealing Our Jobs”: Immigration, Representational Labour, and
Environment for Palgrave Macmillan and co-editing The Cambridge Companion to British Playwriting since
1945 with Dan Rebellato. Angelaki also co-edits the series Adaptation in Theatre and Performance Pal- Moving Performance
grave Macmillan. Since 2018, she is a member of the new, international Migrant Dramaturgies network.
Expanding on Thomas Nail’s conceptualisation of the migrant as ‘the political figure of our time’ 2015,
this paper considers the acute potency of the figure of the immigrant labourer. I examine how this
Empathy beyond Pity:  The Migrant Experience in Contemporary figure is mobilised in political and media discourse against a backdrop of high unemployment in the
Austrian Theatre United Kingdom UK by considering the persistence of two concurrent contradictory narratives: im-
migrants take employment opportunities from national citizens and immigrants refuse employment
Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen is one of the most powerful representations of the refu- in order to leverage state welfare benefits.    Within this context I explore The Empathy Museum’s
gee and asylum seeker experience in the recent and contemporary period. First staged in Ham- immersive installation A Mile in My Shoes 2014- in order to interrogate the implications of delegat-
burg’s Thalia Theater in the Autumn of 2014 director Nicolas Stemann and premiering in Vienna’s ing representational labour across boarders in participatory performance addressing immigration.
Burgtheater soon afterwards, in the Spring of 2015 director Michael Thalheimer, Jelinek’s play is not Drawing on Alice O’Grady’s 2017 work on delegated performance, I examine Empathy Museum’s po-
only astute, but also prescient. Even though the context in which Jelinek’s play was conceived and tential to disrupt preconceived notions of fixity and citizenship. Reflecting on the representational la-
premiered had already provided its author with ample material as regards the refugee experience, bour required when participants perform their stories, I consider how this is amplified when people
including the pivotal questions of survival, protest and integration, when examined retrospective- are associated with a hyper-mediatised figure such as the immigrant labourer. Representations of im-
ly through the lens of the most recent refugee crisis in Europe Summer 2015 – onwards, the text migrants, I argue, are co-constructed by both the storyteller and listener in a way that constitutes an
is strikingly timely and urgent. With a nod to The Suppliants by Aeschylus, which provides Jelinek inversion of global labour market practices. Further, I examine how participants may be moved phys-
with the opportunity for wordplay Greek: Ἱκέτιδες German: Die Schutzflehenden and for further ically, politically, and emotionally, during A Mile in My Shoes, in order to ask whether this practice of
diachronic contextualization, Die Schutzbefohlenen weaves the primal histories of flux and survival movement operates to destabilise the image of the immigrant as non-productive/hyper-productive.
combining Jelinek’s distinctive textual style with the classical canon, and concentrating on the vul-
nerable displaced populations that we are encountering today. In this paper I will discuss the Vienna Key Words
production of Jelinek’s piece and I will concentrate on the immediate context to which the play immigration, labour, delegated performance, participation
provided a response: the 2012 refugee camp protest in Vienna’s Votivkirche and the Sigmund-Freud-
Park, which led to wide debate and relevant platforms, activities and initiatives in the months that
followed. I will probe Austria’s response to the refugee crisis following the most recent social and
political developments and I will, finally, conclude as to the role of local and international civic and
spectatorial communities proceeding from the artistic and social paradigm of this play. The ultimate
question is where we stand, as theatre audiences and members of our societies, in the context of the
definitive statement in Jelinek’s play, representing the plight of the refugees: ‘Wir sind gekommen,
doch wir sind gar nicht da’ / ‘We have come, and yet we are not here’. I will locate this discussion
within a broader consideration of significant new work that directly engages with the refugee and
migration experience, primarily in Vienna’s Volkstheater and Festwochen.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Migration, Activism, Intervention, Austria, Jelinek, Wiener Volkstheater, Wiener Festwochen, Die
Schutzbefohlenen

546 547
 WG WG

Dwaipayan Chowdhury Tom Cornford

Jawaharlal Nehru University The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Dwaipayan Chowdhury completed his Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication at St. Xavier’s College, Univer- Tom Cornford is Lecturer in Theatre & Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Uni-
sity of Calcutta, Kolkata. He went on to complete his Master of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from Ja- versity of London and also works as a director and dramaturg. He is the author of articles about the histories
davpur University, Kolkata. Simultaneously, he was involved with the non-institutional amateur theatre move- and practices of acting and directing for journals including New Theatre Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin,
ment in Kolkata from 2005 to 2011, which led him to pursue a Research Masters in Theatre and Performance Shakespeare Studies, and Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, as well as contributions to edited col-
Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He joined the school as lections. Forthcoming projects include a long essay co-authored with Roberta Barker on the director Tyrone
a PhD candidate and worked as a teaching assistant for the World Theatre course. He obtained the UGC Re- Guthrie for Bloomsbury’s Great European Theatre Directors series a special issue of the journal Contem-
search Fellowship and qualified the National Eligibility Test for lectureship. He was also awarded the Erasmus porary Theatre Review, co-edited with Caridad Svich, on the director Katie Mitchell, as well as two book
Mundus India to Europe Scholarship for doctoral research in Theatre and Performance Studies from the Uni- projects, a monograph: Theatre Studios: Historicizing Ensemble Theatre-Making Routledge, 2018 and an
versity of Amsterdam for the 2014-15 academic year and was a doctoral fellow at the “International Research edited collection: Michael Chekhov in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways, with Cass Fleming Blooms-
Centre, Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Free University of Berlin in the 2015-16 session. bury, 2018. Tom was the winner, in 2017, of the David Bradby Award for Early Career Research in European
Theatre and serves on the editorial board of the journal Studies in Theatre and Performance.
Embodying Anonymity: Aesthetics of “Migration” In IPTA 1948-51
Migrant Dramaturgies
This paper proposes a historiography of the cultural movement affiliated to the undivided Commu-
nist Party of India CPI, “Indian Peoples’ Theater Association” IPTA, during the periodical transition Since 2016, we have seen the biggest wave of mass migration since the second world war. This paper
towards the experiences of the construction of national sovereignity in the aftermath of the ‘official’ will examine some representations of migrants and migration in Anglophone theatre since the start
declaration of Indian ‘independence’ in 1947 and its resulting affects in cultural/theatrical mani- of this crisis. Drawing on anthropologist Tim Ingold’s critique of discourses of ‘containment’, and
festaions. The critical aspect of defining the transitions are what I perceive to be the experiences geographer Doreen Massey’s of ‘aspatial globalisation’, it will argue that, in many cases, represen-
of embodied ‘migration’ in the aesthetics of the performances of IPTA within the backdrop of an tations of migrants and migration have been hamstrung by theatre-makers’ apparently unconscious
emerging ‘Indian nationhood’ [1948-51] in the trails of a national recuperation after partition 1947. preference for dramaturgical structures that depict migration from a position of white, settled priv-
By aesthetics of ‘migration’, I refer to the recognition of the IPTA performances during the period ilege. It will go on to argue, however, that some representations of migration, such as Ai WeiWei’s
in the context of an important debate within the Communist Party of India second congress, 1948 Human Flow, have begun, implicitly, to articulate ‘migrant dramaturgies’. These structures of action
which was pivotal in dealing with questions regarding representations of the ‘other’ in popular cul- have begun to give form to the experience of migration, not as the exception that paradoxically re-
ture within the topography of an Indian national sovereignity a sovereignity construed through a inforces the cultural normality of settled containment, but as a normality in its own right. Foremost
stasis of ‘friend-enemy’ divide in the ‘inside’ of the “post-independent” territory. The recognition of among such migrant dramaturgies in the theatre, I will argue, has been Alistair McDowall’s play X,
the cultural-aesthetic emodiments of ‘migration’ is therefore two-fold. Firstly, embodiments in the depicting life on a research station in Pluto. In the context of mass migration, this play might be prof-
performances become ‘social facts’ that mediates the heterogeneous radical ‘other’ as an integral itably seen as a challenge to the dominance of linear sequence in our settled narratives. McDowall’s
part of ‘border’ experiences pertaining to the appearance of the ‘foreign’ within the demarcated looping, jumping, and parallel time signatures, by contrast, expose the basis of linearity in the privi-
‘private territory’ of a postcolonial nationalist proprietorial topography. Secondly, the embodiments lege of containment and offer the possibility of an alternative dramaturgy for the representation of
of the ‘migration’ experiences is revealed in the context of the strategic shift in IPTA’s programme migration as a lived experience.
in 1948 to make possible an integration of the experiences and representations of the anonymous,
embodied in the performances, as the ‘surplus’ to the configuration of a national terrain which was Key Words
enunciated by the ‘state security bill’. My aim here is to qualify the idea of the ‘anonymous’ as the Migration Dramaturgy
embodied expressions of the popular in the aesthetics of IPTA performances, as exemplified in IPTA’s
adoption of traditional performance idioms in contradistinction to the national cultural policy, that
enables the affect of ‘migration’ as the appearance of a popular radical ‘alterity’ which became an
‘excess’ to the Indian imagination of national sovereignity.

Key Words
anonymous, embodiment, aesthetics, migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

548 549
 WG WG

Clara de Andrade Komita Dhanda

Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro UNIRIO Jawaharlal Nehru University

Clara de Andrade is an actress, singer, teacher and theatre researcher. Master and Doctor of Performing Arts, Komita Dhanda is currently pursuing her research in Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts &
obtained from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro UNIRIO, with a grant from Brazilian agency Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her research interests are in political theatre, cultural activ-
CAPES. Her thesis, supervised by Prof. Dr. Maria Helena Werneck, analyses the local transformations and the ism, performance, organisational practices of theatre groups and the archives. Worked as a research assistant
transnational expansion of the Theatre of the Oppressed, by Augusto Boal, with focus on the development with Dia Da Costa Associate Professor at University of Alberta on her project on “The Work of Theatre in an
of the method using France as a starting point. In 2014 she was granted an internship at Sorbonne Nouvelle Age of Precarious Labour”. Worked with Bread & Puppet Theatre Co. Vermont, USA as an apprentice in the
University, Paris 3. She is the author of the book “O exílio de Augusto Boal: reflexões sobre um teatro sem summer of 2011. She has been working as an actor, director, writer and organiser with Delhi based political
fronteiras” and organizer of the book “Augusto Boal: arte, pedagogia e política.” Currently a visiting scholar in theatre group Jana Natya Manch since 2004. She has served as Secretary of the group between 2012 and 2017.
the area of Gestalt at the graduate school of the University of Santa Ursula, Rio de Janeiro. Active in the Rio de She completed her M.A. in Mass Communication and taught courses on journalism and mass media at various
Janeiro scene for about 20 years, recently co-created and acted in the play “Crônicas de Nuestra América”, a colleges of Delhi University. She taught, as an Assistant Professor, for 7 years in the Department of Develop-
stage adaptation of the stories written by Boal during exile. ment Communication & Extension at Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi and taught papers on Mass Media
and Development Journalism. She has co-authored chapters on Culture and Communication for a textbook
series, Dynamics of Human Communication, published by Orient Black Swan in 2016.
Theatre of the Oppressed In France: A Multicultural Experience as
a Parameter for the Transnational Expansion Disputed Memories of Displacement, Migration and Closed
This paper seeks to reflect on how the aspect of multicultural experience in the Theatre of the Op- Borders: Performing Collaborative Resistance
pressed, in its first application in social centers of 1980s France, may have been fundamental to the
process of internationalization of the method. The first core group of the Theatre of the Oppressed, Since 1948, Palestinian displacement and mass migration has been one of the major points of trauma
founded in Paris during the exile of Augusto Boal, enacted a series of method interventions in com- and loss, but in today’s perspective the experience of what the Palestinian describe as a metaphor of
munity equipment spread all over France. This presentation will focus on the reports of experience al-Nakba or a day of catastrophe are in the realm of history particularly for the new generation. The
contained in the Bulletins du Théâtre de l’Opprimé, published by this pioneer core group of the The- younger generation now continuing with the struggle to reclaim their original ancestral land without
atre of the Oppressed in Europe. The Latin-American method arrived on French territory precisely having a temporal and spatial experience of what it was like before the exodus. They have become
at the moment in which the recognition of local communities and the culture of ethnic minorities aware of the trauma through repetitive commemoration of Palestinian histories that are revoked to
was affirming itself as a tendency in the field of cultural policies in France. Culture started acting construct cultural landscapes, even though the physical sites are raised to the ground or occupied.
as a mediator in political and social problems that emerged from uprooting and the cohabitation This has become a priority of a wide range of Palestinian cultural manifestation of which theatre is
hardships of immigrating groups, facing the state’s difficulty in solving this type of conflict. It is in this an integral aspect. For the Palestinian theatre activist it has become critical to commemorate the
context of reclaiming of local cultural pluralism that is inserted the debate on the question of immi- site-memory narrative, which not only symbolizes the pain of loss of land and identity, trauma and
gration in socio-cultural projects of the Theatre of the Oppressed in France. By being practiced as a anxieties but also a will to continue to resist and survive. The presentation reflects on a collabora-
mediator methodology, the Theatre of the Oppressed quickly irradiated from Paris to the provinces, tive project between the Palestinian theatre institution The Freedom Theatre, from Jenin Refugee
acting in social centers spread all over the French territory. The multicultural experience enabled Camp and the political activist theatre group Jana Natya Manch Janam, Delhi over a period of two
by the meeting of different social groups had already established a modus operandi specific to the years 2015-16, where each of the groups visited the other’s space and collaborated on strategies to
expansion movement of the Theatre of the Oppressed. The dialogue with multiple cultural identities create new bi-lingual performances. The unraveling of the process of the collaboration reflects on
in France served as a parameter for the subsequent globalization of the Theatre of the Oppressed, the Palestine theatre artistes’ need to construct historical spaces and capture the imagination of the
which would be completed by its diffusion to other countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. space as part of collective memories but also strengthening the notion of belonging to certain lost
space and time. These artistes have used their collaborative work to evoke effectively the character
Key Words of Palestine, its people and events of al-Nakba and Intifiada. These works have also facilitated the
Theatre of the Oppressed Augusto Boal multiculturalism transnationality process of inter-generational collective remembrance.

Key Words
Displacement, Migration, Political Theatre, Collective Memory, Resistance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

550 551
 WG WG

Emine Fişek, Tony Fisher

Bogazici University Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

Emine Fisek holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California-Berkeley and is currently Tony Fisher is a theatre academic and researcher, based at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. His
Assistant Professor in the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Boğaziçi University in Istan- monograph, Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500-1900: Democracy, Disorder and the State’ was published
bul. Her book, Aesthetic Citizenship: Immigration and Theater in Twenty-First-Century Paris was published by in 2017 by Cambridge University Press and examines, in the form of a ‘critical history’ or genealogy, the long
Northwestern University Press in 2017 and she has published articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Research and profound influence that government has had over the development of the modern British stage. He is also
International and Text and Performance Quarterly. Before joining the faculty at Boğaziçi, she was a Mellon co-editor with Eve Katsouraki of an edited collection, Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance and Rad-
Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. ical Democracy Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 that looks at problems of political performance both within theatre
and street protest by drawing on the insights of post-Marxist political philosophy and the theory of agonistic
Representing Migration in Contemporary Turkey: Genco Erkal’s democracy. He is currently editing a volume, Theatre, Performance, Foucault! with Kelina Gotman Kings for
Manchester University Press.
“Göçmenleeeer”
Since the eruption of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the influx of Syrian refugees in to Turkey has
“My Country – your England” – Problems of Stasis in the National
been unprecedented in the country’s history: scholars approximate that Turkey has emerged as the Theatre’s “Brexit” Play
largest destination of Syria’s migratory flows, with around 2.7 million registered refugees currently
existing in a state of legal, political and economic limbo. And whereas the Turkish government has In December 2016, Michael Gove proclaimed the ‘Brexit vote was like “the civil war without mus-
generally maintained an “open-door” policy towards Syrian migration, political developments like kets”’. While hyperbolic, Goves recourse to the motif of civil war illustrates how the internecine con-
the Turkey-EU deal of 2016 have placed the question of Syrian migration at the center of Turkey’s flict of 1642-51 continues to exert an influence over English national identity. Use of this motif also
lengthy and fraught relationship with Europe. How have theatre artists been responding to these offers insight into the ‘polarisation of the political terrain’, described by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
developments? How have they “managed,” so to speak, the question of migration? In this paper, Mouffe, that dominates post-Referendum Britain. This paper explores the contemporary invocation
I think through these questions by focusing on veteran Turkish theatre actor and director Genco of the Civil War and political polarisation in order to contextualise the UK National Theatre’s produc-
Erkal’s 2017 production of Romanian-French playwright Matei Visniec’s play “Migraaaants”, trans- tion of Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris’s ‘verbatim’ play My Country, and its representation of Brex-
lated in to Turkish as “Göçmenleeeer”. Developed in the context of Europe’s own refugee “crisis,” it, with its use of ‘Britannia’ as its central image. I problematize the production first through the con-
“Migraaaants” is composed of a series of vignettes that critique European refugee policy and the cept of ‘stasis’ as developed by Giorgio Agamben: originating in Greek political thought to describe
deadly economies that it has prompted in the continent’s borderlands. My goal is to ask: What forms of civil strife, stasis ‘functions as a reactant’ that reveals both the ‘threshold of politicisation’
might it mean to produce this play in a national context where the binary of European “hosts” and and the undecidability of distinctions demarcating ‘brother and enemy, inside and outside, house-
non-European “refugees” gives way to another set of political identities? Put simply, how does one hold and city.’ I show that in My Country, the play seeks to contain the political impasse revealed by
use the aesthetic expression of one migratory situation to address the complexity of another? And Brexit and the problem of stasis that it describes by invoking the unifying though historically loaded
what might Genco Erkal’s choice tell us about the representation of Syrian migration in contempo- figure of Britannia. This analysis leads to a second line of critique: that in seeking to transcend the
rary Turkey? impasse of the stasis it stages, the National Theatre casts itself in the role of the State, as envisaged
by Hobbes: the arbiter of peace in the face of the ‘perpetual war’ that would otherwise exist in its
Key Words absence. I argue that the National Theatre can play no such role, insofar as it is implicated in the
Matei Visniec, Migraaaants, Genco Erkal, Turkish Theatre, Migration crisis of institutional legitimacy and authority provoked by the stasis induced by Brexit.

Key Words
stasis, national theatre, brexit, nationalism, Hobbes, civil war
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

552 553
 WG WG

Niklas Füllner Marco Galea

Ruhr University Bochum University of Malta

Niklas Füllner studied Theatre Studies and English Literature and Culture in Bochum, Bayreuth and Helsinki Marco Galea is senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Malta. His main area of specialization is
and holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from Ruhr University Bochum. He currently works as a research assistant at theatre in Malta in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and he is particularly interested in issues of lan-
the Institute for Theatre Studies at Ruhr University Bochum in a research project called “Strategies of Political guage, identity, and representation. He has published articles and book chapters in this area and has edited a
Theatre in Eastern Europe” which is financed by the DFG, the German Research Foundation. He also teaches number of books, including a two-volume anthology of nineteenth-century play-texts in the Maltese language,
theatre theory and acting at Ruhr University Bochum and occasionally works as a puppeteer for the artist duo a book on the representation of the other in Maltese culture and more recently, a book of theatre reviews
half past selber schuld. from the second half of the twentieth century. In recent years he has been co-ordinating, on behalf of the
School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta, the efforts to create a digital archive for the performing
Oliver Frljić’s “Klątwa” [Eng. The Curse] Questions the Polish arts in Malta.
Right-Wing Government’s Plans for National Theatre and Culture
What is the Price Of Passport? Antoine Cassar’s Theatrical
Oliver Frljić’s production of Klątwa Engl.: “The Curse”, which premiered in the Teatr Powszechny in Intervention on the Issue of Welcoming the Other in Malta
Warsaw on 18 February 2017, created the biggest theatre scandal in the younger theatre history
in Poland. The production that among other things questions the hostile attitude against refugees Until a few years ago thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean were making their way or
and the sanctity of the Catholic Church in Poland evoked heavy protest from the political right-wing ending up in Malta. The small country adopted a rigid detention policy for all asylum-seekers, a situ-
in and outside the current Polish government. In my presentation I want to show that Klątwa was ation that brought a lot of criticism from local and international humanitarian organisations but ap-
attacked so heavily not only because it criticises right-wing attitudes in the Polish society but also peased the many among the local population who were uncomfortable with the presence on the is-
because it questions the current Polish government’s idea of both national theatre and society as it land of so many, mostly sub-Saharan African, foreigners. Attempts at integrating these migrants have
actively addresses an ‘emancipated spectator’. The political philosopher Jacques Rancière states in been very limited, both under a conservative government and under a more left-leaning government.
The Emancipated Spectator that theatre spectators should be regarded by theatre makers as eman- The prevailing political argument has been that Malta cannot accommodate or integrate the number
cipated as they are always “active interpreters, who render their own translation, who appropriate of asylum seekers that were reaching its shores because of its size and density of population. Howev-
the story for themselves, and who ultimately make their own story of it”. For him “emancipation er this did not stop the same country from offering citizenship to rich third-country nationals against
starts from the principle of equality”, which is fundamental for a democracy. A critical theatre can payment officially called ‘investment’ of hundreds of thousands of euro. My presentation will briefly
only be built upon emancipated spectators as a democratic society can only be built upon eman- discuss the theatrical performances that have taken place in Malta as interventions on this migrant
cipated citizens. In my presentation I want to illustrate how Klątwa addresses the ‘emancipated issue, and it will try to explain why so few of these performances have actually taken place. The core
spectator’ and in this way questions the unemancipated idea of both society and national theatre of the presentation will focus on the work of Antoine Cassar, a performance poet and activist who
advocated by the current Polish government. published a long poem entitled Passaport Passport in Maltese and a number of other languages
and performed it successfully. Several artists, both in Malta and elsewhere, took up the poem and
Key Words built performances around it. However, my main interest is in a short impromptu performance that
Political Theatre, Eastern European Theatre, Migration, National Theatre, Jacques Rancière took place at the time when Malta was hosting a summit of EU and African leaders on migration
and where it is the passport as physical object rather than the poem that becomes the fulcrum.

Key Words
passport, detention, Malta
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

554 555
 WG WG

Cyrielle Garson Alison Jeffers

University of Avignon University of Manchester
Dr Cyrielle Garson is a temporary lecturer ATER in the Anglophone Studies Department and a member of the Alison Jeffers lectures in applied theatre and contemporary performance at the University of Manchester, UK.
team “Cultural Identity, Texts and Theatricality” ÉA 4277 at the University of Avignon in France, where she Her research interests are focused on theatre, migration and explorations of belonging and she has published
conducts research in contemporary British theatre, specialising in documentary, experimental and political extensively on theatre and performance practices that have been created on the subject of refugees and
practices. Besides a 2015 article and interview published in Coup de Théâtre, her latest publications include a asylum seekers in particular. She is interested in practice as research and has also worked extensively with
chapter on documentary plays in Aesthetics and Ideology in Contemporary Literature and Drama Cambridge refugee groups, mainly in Manchester, where she has explored theatre and performance practices in collabo-
Scholars, 2015 as well as three related journal articles in the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English JCDE ration with individuals who have similar interests. Recent work has opened up questions about sanctuary and
and Études Britanniques Contemporaines. She is also the secretary of RADAC The Society for Research in questions about civic responses to the presence of refugees, small-scale and local actions are at the heart of
Contemporary Anglophone Drama in France and is currently preparing a monograph charting the aesthetic her research and practice.
development of contemporary verbatim theatre in Britain.
The Politics of the Empty Gesture: Asylum, Sanctuary, Theatre and
Fleeing Homophobia: Activism and LGBT Asylum in British Verbatim the City
Theatre
The paper will examine how we might act under the conditions whereby fundamental ideas about
If verbatim theatre has enjoyed a much-vaunted renaissance in Britain since the mid-1990s, research protection and asylum cannot keep pace with contemporary realities. I will argue that one pos-
in the field has tended to focus mainly on its interaction with the mainstream sector of practice, sible path through this complex and shifting territory might be to pay attention to initiatives that
overlooking its profound and complex engagement with what is known today as “applied theatre”. work outside of, and even challenge, the statist politics of asylum by enacting models of sanctuary
Indeed, despite the fact that the range of critical frames within which verbatim performances have ‘beyond the limits of its current international institution and national implementation’ Squire and
been couched include ethics Luckhurst 2008, intersectionality Lemoine 2013, oral history Friedman Darling 2013: 60. In initiating the City of Sanctuary movement, its organizers and supporters stick to
2006, trauma studies Little 2015, human rights Derbyshire and Hodson 2008 and refugee studies the letter of the UN Convention by accepting the challenges of offering sanctuary and the hospitality
Jeffers 2011, it would seem that “activist arts” Paget 2010 have not benefited from the same resur- that it introduces, in effect ‘calling the bluff’ of their governments and enacting the terms of the
gence in interest. Worse perhaps, some commentators even consider verbatim theatre as a brand 1951 Refugee Convention when the state refuses to do so. The analysis will be carried out by discuss-
new contemporary practice, inadvertently and conveniently contributing to a problematic main- ing the Theatre of Sanctuary movement that has emerged from City of Sanctuary and discussing the
stream narrative of the strand one that ruthlessly harnesses the energies and radical gestures of production of the play Queens of Syria which toured the UK in 2016. Through examining the poten-
past oppositional practices in order to refresh itself and neutralise any subversive potential. From tial power of what Žižek 2008: 30 calls ‘the empty gesture’, that is the gesture which is not supposed
its origins onwards, however, British verbatim theatre has served as a potential site for subversive to be accepted, in the context of ideas about sanctuary I will show the ways in which both the City
interventions and is characterised by a desire to redress injustice, to broadcast marginalised, less and Theatre of Sanctuary movements redefine a sense of what is possible in terms of a response to
articulate, and anti-establishment voices that do not repeat the status quo in a public arena. To ad- refugees in this historical moment.
dress this gap, this paper will therefore focus on three recent verbatim case studies from the applied
theatre sector concerning the often-unheard voices of LGBT asylum seekers in the UK: Sam Rowe’s Key Words
Hearts Unspoken 2011, Ice & Fire’s Asylum Monologues 2016 as well as Clare Summerskill’s Rights theatre refugees sanctuary civic responsibility
of Passage 2016. It is hoped that this paper will shed light on some little-documented approaches
to both migrant and verbatim theatre and contribute to current discussions surrounding political
performances in the 21st century.

Key Words
verbatim theatre, migrant theatre, applied practice, LGBT asylum, Britain, political performances
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

556 557
 WG WG

Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn Bryce Lease

Thammasat University Royal Holloway, University of London

Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre, Thammasat University, Bryce Lease is Senior Lecturer in Drama & Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. Overarching
THAILND.  She earned her PhD in Theatre at the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Hawai’i at themes that frame his research interests are the interconnections between politics, nascent democracies, na-
Manoa. From 1999-2012, as a researcher and writer on theatre history and criticism in Thailand, she has par- tionalism, counterpublics, gender, sexuality and cultural geography. He is Subject Editor for European Theatre/
ticipated in a national research project, “Criticism as an Intellectual Power in the Contemporary Thai Society”. Performance for the Routledge Performance Archive, Assistant Editor for Contemporary Theatre Review, and
Her publications include 3 co-authored books, and 2 books on Thai Contemporary Theatre & Criticism, and a is currently co-editing Contemporary European Playwrights Routledge with Maria Delgado and Dan Rebellato
number of articles for journals such as ATJ, SPAFA, and for newspapers. She has also directed a number of the- and A History of Polish Theatre Cambridge University Press with Katarzyna Fazan and Michal Kobialka.
atre productions with the most recent production, The Voyage, performed at Bangkok Arts and Culture Center,
in 2017, which received high acclaims for its originality and creativity in presenting a documentary theatre History Migrates: The Demands of Postnationalism
relating to migration and the histories of nation building.
History Migrates: The Demands of Postnationalism In this paper, I would like to consider the no-
“The Voyage”: A Transgressive Documentary Theatre of Migration tion of migration in relation to historical narratives reemerging in the present. Attending to Judith
to Siam Butler’s argument that ‘[o]ne time breaks into another precisely when that former time is a history
of oppression at risk of falling into oblivion’ 2014: 129, I will analyse contemporary productions in
The recurring pattern of how the successful coups détat  in Thailand since 1930s to the latest one Poland by Dorota Masłowska Między nami dobrze jest and Paweł Demirski and Monika Strzępka Bit-
abrogate existing constitutions,  then  via  State Apparatus create the systems of beliefs, values, wa warszawska 1920 Triumf woli in order to explore the modes in which painful histories have been
and attitudes in civil society  to believe in the value of  “Thainess” as homogeneous cultural  enti- rechanneled away from nationalist frameworks that allow us to consider the obligations of a post-
ty, has created a fully hegemonic ruling. Many scholars have pointed out that such creation was a nationalist public sphere. Reflecting on the limits of what has been and what can be remembered,
product of systematic suppression of other ethnic and cultural identities by the mainstream Bang- my case studies offer points of intersection between trauma history as always present and amnesia
kok or Central Siam rulers.  The construction of   “Thai race” has “Thai-ified” people with different history that ‘never was’. Rather than situating these as a binary, I will argue that theatre makers are
ethnicities and cultures resulting in the negation of their  histories and cultures in the tapestry of offering new forms of remembrance that are not only instrumentalised towards a progressive poli-
national history.  Consequently, the ethnic reading of the official history of Thailand, aside from the tics of postnationalist identity, but also lay a foundation for a politics of remembrance that resituates
great contributions of different monarchies,    reveals very little about the contributions of other what we consider to be political.
ethnic groups despite the fact that the Siamese kingdom has had complex histories of migration of
different ethnicities for the past seven hundred years.         Setting against this socio-political back- Key Words
drop, The Voyage,   an original documentary theatre production, directed by Parichat Jungwiwat- history, postnationalism, remembrance, narrative, public sphere
tanaporn,   performed at Bangkok Arts and Culture center  during September 1-3 , 2017, divulged
actors’ authentic family histories relating to the ancestral migrations and how they had overcome
different adversities ranging from warfares, economic hardships,  sociopolitical turmoils, to cultural
struggles, before they  fully belong to the “Thai” citizenship today.  The production reveals not only
the suppressed histories of the marginalized, it also offers an original mode of theatrical presen-
tation with unique aesthetics that hybridized the hyper-real of the four actors telling of their own
personal and family-related stories with devised theatricality.  I argue that The Voyage took domi-
nance a transgressive space for the long forgotten histories that were considered inferior or subor-
dinate to the Thai culture,  giving new paradigm to the notion of historiography and nation-building.

Key Words
Documentaty Theatre, Devised Performance, History of Migrants, Migration, Historiography
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

558 559
 WG WG

Charlotte McIvor Benjamin Poore

National University of Ireland, Galway University of York

Charlotte McIvor is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She Benjamin Poore is Senior Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York. His books include Heritage, Nostalgia
is the author of “Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland: Towards A New Interculturalism” Pal- and Modern British Theatre: Staging the Victorians Palgrave, 2011, Theatre & Empire Macmillan, 2016, and
grave Macmillan, 2016 and the co-editor of “Staging Intercultural Ireland: Plays and Practitioner Perspectives” Sherlock Holmes from Screen to Stage: Post-Millennial Adaptations in British Theatre Palgrave, 2017. He is also
with Matthew Spangler, Cork University Press, 2014 and “Devised Performance in Irish Theatre: Histories and the editor of Neo-Victorian Villains Brill, 2017 and co-editor with Kelly Jones and Robert Dean of Contemporary
Contemporary Practice” with Siobhan O’Gorman, Carysfort Press, 2015. She has published in journals includ- Gothic Drama Palgrave, 2018, forthcoming.
ing “Theatre Topics,” “Modern Drama,“ “Irish University Review,” “Irish Studies Review” and multiple edited
volumes on contemporary theatre and performance. Until We Belong To Ourselves Again: Nativism and Migration in
Contemporary English History Plays
Migration, Performance and Intercultural Dialogue in the
European Union: When Social Policy Meets Performance Practice The constitutional, economic and cultural crises into which the UK has been plunged in the wake
of the 2016 vote to leave the European Union have led several commentators to invoke the phrase
This paper examines the relationship between migration, performance and intercultural dialogue ‘national nervous breakdown’. In such a context, every history play staged at a national flagship ven-
as social policy in the European Union since the late 2000s. It is currently enjoying a second wave ue in 2017 was likely to be seen through the lens of Brexit, and interpreted as a state-of-the-nation
of prominence with several recently published reports by the European Union explicitly highlighting play. Two productions in the Autumn of that year, however, made such readings inevitable: Boudica
the relationship between intercultural dialogue’s transformational possibilities and the role of the by Tristan Bernays at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Saint George and the Dragon by Rory Mullarkey on
arts. Crucially, in both European social policy and performance theory today, interculturalism is the National’s Olivier stage. These productions revisited the legends of Boudica, Queen of the Iceni,
increasingly used to mean an embodied practice and site of encounter that strategically multiplies symbol of British resistance to imperial Rome, and of England’s patron saint. The issue of migration
rather than binarizing or reifying cultural differences between individuals and within groups. For played a key role in the EU referendum campaign. In this paper, I compare the treatment of migra-
social interculturalism, the end game is a democratically and mutually negotiated “social cohesion” tion in both plays. Bernays’ Boudica presents a ‘nativist’ rebellion which has serious consequences
which would allow ethnic majority and minority ethnic residents of European Union member states for the Roman migrants who have made their lives in Britain. Mullarkey’s Saint George, meanwhile,
including recent migrants from a range of backgrounds and statuses including that of refugees to presents English history as myth, where the only person who emigrates and immigrates is George
“live together as equals in dignity” on scales ranging from the local to the supranational. This broad himself. When the society that the play depicts makes material progress but seems to become rotten
aim for EU practices of intercultural dialogue appear to extend and concretise Ric Knowles’ critical from the inside, Mullarkey’s framework means that migrants cannot be blamed in the production’s
hope for a new theatrical interculturalism that might capture “processual, performative reconstruc- rhetoric, they both do not exist, but have also always lived there. In the second part of the paper, I
tions of subjectivities”2017, 4 by individuals, particularly those from minority ethnic communities, draw attention to other plays in the same season at these theatres, that seem to offer useful side-
as he outlines through his Toronto-based case studies in “Performing the Intercultural City.” But how lights on the migration. D.C Moore’s Common at the National, and Tanika Gupta’s Lions and Tigers at
does the imagined operation of this practice at the scale of the European Union within the “perfor- the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse point to the history of the English ruling class as inflictors of
mance ecologies” 5 of diverse locations complicate these utopian imaginings and instead reveal the forced migration, rather than plucky defenders of their native soil.
inequalities that this performative conception of intercultural dialogue might not only conceal but
sustain? To answer this question, I will briefly profile the work of three European theatre compa- Key Words
nies who describe their work as theatrical interculturalism and use it as a means of practicing and migration national history new writing playwriting Brexit
furthering intercultural dialogue: Kloppend Hert Belgium, Terra Nova Productions Northern Ireland,
and Outlandish Theatre Platform Republic of Ireland.

Key Words
Interculturalism, Intercultural Dialogue, Social Policy, European Union
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

560 561
 WG WG

David Rodriguez-Solas Avra Sidiropoulou

University of Massachusetts Amherst Open University of Cyprus

David Rodríguez-Solás is an assistant professor of the literatures and cultures of Spain at the University of Mas- Avra Sidiropoulou is Assistant Professor at the M.A. in Theatre Studies Programme at the Open University
sachusetts Amherst. His research interests are modern and contemporary Spanish theatre, cultural memory of Cyprus, and artistic director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company. She has contributed articles and
and visual and performance studies. He is the author of Teatros nacionales republicanos: La Segunda República chapters to several international peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and her monograph Authoring
y el teatro clásico español 2014. Currently, he is working on a book on political theatre and performance during Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre was published by Palgrave Macmillan 2011. She has also
the Spanish transition to democracy. conducted practical workshops and delivered invited lectures in Cyprus, Greece, the USA, Turkey, Iran, Latvia,
Spain, Italy, Estonia, the UK, Japan, and Israel. Avra was a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of
“Where Would You Be Better Than Here”: “Castañuela 70” and Technology and at the City University of New York Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, as well as at the Universities
of Surrey, Leeds and Tokyo in the last case, as a Japan Foundation Fellow. As a director, she has staged per-
European Tours For Spanish Emigrants formances both independently and with Athens-based Persona Theatre Company internationally. Her mono-
graph on the methodology of directing, Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method, will be published by
In 1970, a small production of independent theater premiered in Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid. Routledge Fall 2018.
Castañuela 70 was a successfull musical theater piece that played to a full house for two and a
half months. However, the play suffered censorship while it was running. Castañuela 70 dealt with Modern Tragedies: European Theatre and the Contemporary
emigration, a reality that affected three million Spaniards and Franco’s dictatorship tried to hide.
Refugee Crisis
The troupe took risks making visible the suppressions and introduced back some of the banned
elements, to the point that there was a daily police report that registered the discrepancies of
Partly as a result of the inflammable situation in Syria and Iraq, in 2018 the world is facing an unprec-
the performance compared to the play. For instance, banned lyrics were not sang, but hummed,
edented number of refugees, a fact that has precipitated a climate of profound social and cultural
and disapproved props were simply crossed out. Ultimately Castañuela 70 was shut down and the
instability and trauma. For many European theatre artists, direct engagement seems a one-way road
troupe embarked on a European tour for Spanish immigrants that showcased the play as it was
for addressing what may very well be the material of modern tragedy. The various immigration and
suppresed by censorship. My paper propose a re-assesment of this play with my findings from ar-
asylum-seeking controversies have problematized the issue of representing individual stories within
chival research and interviews with troupe members that helped me to reconstruct the elements
a crisis of collective calamity for the most part due to failed neoliberal politics. Today, the political
that were introduced in this tour and the reception by an audience of Spanish immigrants in Eu-
becomes an experience within the theatre, an event and a participatory cry for change against the
rope. I argue that this theatrical event is clear example of people’s agency in conquering liberties.
dynamics of power in our globalized world. This paper interrogates European theatre’s response to
Furthermore, they challenge the idea of a transition to democracy that followed after Francisco
the refugee issue, examining instances of practice that invite spectators to reflect on the notion of
Franco’s demise in 1975. As exemplified in the tours of Castañuela, the transition was not nego-
“crisis” as a state of liminality and displacement quite opposed to the Aristotelian sense of catharsis
tiated, normalized and non-confrontational process, rather there was a constant negotiation of
and resolution. The work of Berlin-based Rimini Protokoll is exemplary in exploring crisis through
meaning that ultimately connected individuals with democratic aspirations in Spain and abroad.
intermedial forms. British pop-up Good Chance Theatre, which was originally set up in a Calais ref-
ugee camp, supports vibrant theatre communities where artists work alongside refugees. Equally
Key Words
committed to exploring the human rights stories through performance is London-based Ice and Fire
tours immigrant audiences Spain dictatorship political performance
company See Asylum Monologues and Dialogues in 2007 and My Skype Family in 2015. Many the-
atres –with Germany being at the forefront—have introduced policies and cultural programming to
actively support the refugee communities and raise awareness and tolerance. In the afflicted pe-
riphery of the European South, and most notably in Greece, emergent forms of practice not least as
documentary and verbatim theatre and broader educational activities have also been responding to
what the country considers a devastating destabilization of every kind of identity border.

Key Words
immigration crisis, political performance, modern tragedy, crisis theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

562 563
 WG WG

Lena Šimić Luis C. Sotelo Castro

Edge Hill University Concordia University

Lena Šimić is Reader in Drama at Edge Hill University. Originally from Dubrovnik, Croatia, Lena identifies herself Luis C. Sotelo Castro is Canada Research Chair in Oral History Performance and Associate Professor in the De-
as a mother of four boys, transnational performance practitioner, pedagogue and scholar. A co-organizer of the partment of Theatre at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In his current creation-research, he
Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, an art activist initiative in her family home in Liverpool, investigates modes of listening in the context of oral history performance and, more broadly, in the context of
UK. Lena has performed her work in various international venues and festivals such as the Bluecoat, Contact, performances of memory. Since 2002, he has conducted work with and for internally displaced people, Indig-
Arnolfini, Artsadmin, Tate Modern. She has published five artist books Maternal Matters and Other Sisters enous communities, migrants, and elderly people both in Latin America and in the United Kingdom, and more
2009, Blood & Soil: we were always meant to meet... 2011, The Mums and Babies Ensemble: A Manual 2015, recently in Canada. With support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, he is establishing a Performing
Five 2008 – 2012 2014 and 4 Boys for Beuys 2015. Lena has published her research in a variety of academic Listening Lab at Concordia Universitys Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. The aim of the Lab is
journals Performance Research, Contemporary Theatre Review, n.paradoxa, RiDE, Feminist Review, Studies in to support the production, standardized collection, storage, classification, and analysis of data on listening in
the Maternal. She is currently engaged in ‘Performance and the Maternal’ research project in collaboration the context of participatory Oral History Performance events. The aim of the research project is to position
with Dr Emily Underwood-Lee. listening in the context of the transformative power of Oral History Performance as a subject of study. It will
pay particular attention to listening in the context of projects addressing oral histories in post-conflict contexts
Performing the Unforeseeable: A Conversation across the Americas, and in the context of migration.

If it is now a matter of responding and of taking responsibilities, then we do so necessarily, as always, in Being Heard Might Prove Fatal: Performing Memory-Listening in a
situations we neither choose nor control, by responding to unforeseeable appeals, that is, to appeals Host Country
from/of the other that are addressed to us even before we decide on them. p. 595  In his article ‘Like
the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War’ 1988, Jacques Derrida responds to Paul Being Heard Might Prove Fatal is a sound installation and creation-research project that I am cur-
da Man’s anti-semitic writing which surfaced following de Man’s death. This contribution takes on the rently undertaking at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada in collaboration with a
call for proposals issued by IFTR 18th Congress and Political Performances WG as ‘a matter of respond- refugee family of Colombian origin and sound artist Barry Prophet. During an oral history inter-
ing and of taking responsibilities’ to a crisis and a call. Often the migrant crisis feels far away from our view at a recording studio, members of the family shared with us memories of their violent past
own privileged everyday life and home – but its effects and demands filter through to us all, and ask of in rural Colombia. The memories relate to the events in 2002 that led directly to Canadas deci-
us an increased attention to multiple intersecting matters of ethics, politics, art and action.   Zoë and sion to grant them refugee status in 2004. They were hiding in a room just next to the guerrilla
Lena met in Helsinki at IFTR in 2006 through their participation in the practice-as-research working that was looking for them to kill them. The mother a widow-survivor, her five children, and two
group. They have been friends and interlocutors ever since eliding professional and personal political more people a total of nine had to keep absolutely still and quiet for an entire night, for being
practices. They propose to address the notion of what it might mean to take the responsibility of re- heard might have proven fatal.    In small groups of nine people, the listener-participants will be
sponding to the current migrant crisis in Europe, in the form of a 20-minute-long performed conver- invited to be still and in silence for a few minutes inside a small booth that echoes the original
sation. This conversation will be the product of their ongoing letter correspondence, a practice they hiding place, and to listen to a 15-20-minute treated version of selected fragments of their testi-
have engaged in since 2006. The conversation will draw on Svendsen’s forthcoming practice-as-re- mony while in the booth. Surface transducer speakers and microphones inside the booth will place
search performance project, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE Barbican Centre, London in Septem- listener-participants in an aural and acoustic situation that highlights the struggle for a group in
ber 2018 which treats climate change and migration as symbiotic as well as Šimić’s migrant status as such a circumstance for not making any sound and not being heard. Tests with a range of listeners/
a foreign scholar/artist in the UK, including her current writing on the topic of sea and performance. participants including other Colombian refugees in Canada, refugees from other countries, Cana-
dian citizens, immigration officers, and members of charities addressing refugees issues, amongst
Key Words others, will be conducted between April and June 2018. What ethical considerations are raised by
performance, conversation, letter correspondence, migration, ethics such practice and, more broadly, by post-conflict performances of memory? What does listening
to refugee stories do when it takes place in a host country? What content to choose? How can
we build a safe space for listener-participants of this kind of experience so as to enable them to
then share their own memories of a violent past if they wish to do so?  The proposed paper will
report on the findings of this experiment, through notions of listening and post-conflict memory.

Key Words
Listening Research, theatre, migration refugees and spectatorship, post-conflict performances of
memory
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

564 565
 WG WG

Amanda Stuart Fisher Zoë Svendsen

Royal Central School of Speech and Drama University of Cambridge

Dr Amanda Stuart Fisher is a Reader in Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Royal Central School of Zoë Svendsen  is Lecturer in Drama and Performance in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge.  As
Speech and Drama. Her research focuses on testimonial and verbatim theatre and most recently on the per- director of METIS, Zoë creates research-driven interdisciplinary performance-as-research projects exploring
formance of care. She has had articles published in journals such as Performance Research, Studies in Theatre contemporary political subjects, including forthcoming the Artsadmin Green Commission, WE KNOW NOT
and Performance and Research in Drama Education and is currently working on a co-edited book on care and WHAT WE MAY BE Barbican Centre 2018, an installation imagining living under alternative economic con-
performance with James Thompson University Manchester. ditions World Factory, exploring consumer capitalism through the lens of the global textile industry UK tour
shortlisted for the Berlin Theatertreffen Stückemarkt 2016 3rd Ring Out, an emergency-planning-style ‘re-
Care, Resistance and Solidarity in Phosphorous Theatre’s Dear hearsal’ for climate crisis TippingPoint Commission Award UK tour. As dramaturg Zoë collaboratively rethinks
classic texts, at the Young Vic, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Zoë is artistic asso-
Home Office ciate at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, where she is leading a programme exploring the representation
of women in plays and an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Theatre. In 2014-
Care, Resistance and Solidarity in Phosphorous Theatre’s Dear Home Office Amanda Stuart Fisher 15 Zoë was artist-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and in 2016-17
[email protected] As a result of recent conflicts across the world, large numbers of was selected to participate in the Future Scenarios ‘networked residency’ of the Culture and Climate Change
migrants have had to leave their homes to seek refuge in European countries. In 2015, over a million project, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the Open University, and Sheffield University.
refugees arrived in the European Union, of which ‘90 000 were considered unaccompanied minors
seeking asylum’ Sedmark, Sauer, Gomik 2017:1. As governments struggled to find the resources Performing the Unforeseeable: A Conversation
and political will to accommodate these refugees, so a rise in xenophobic and nationalistic politics
has led to a hardening of public’s attitudes towards migration. Here, the unaccompanied minor oc- If it is now a matter of responding and of taking responsibilities, then we do so necessarily, as always, in
cupies an uneasy position. While, on the one hand, child refugees elicit sympathy from the public, situations we neither choose nor control, by responding to unforeseeable appeals, that is, to appeals
unaccompanied minor migrants, typically young men aged 14 – 17, are often viewed with suspi- from/of the other that are addressed to us even before we decide on them. p. 595  In his article ‘Like
cion, regarded as being potentially duplicitous, even dangerous. Theatre that addresses itself to the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War’ 1988, Jacques Derrida responds to Paul
unaccompanied migrant minors is it itself inevitably ‘implicated with, and troubled by, [the] power da Man’s anti-semitic writing which surfaced following de Man’s death. This contribution takes on the
relations’ Cox 2014:27 of state asylum processes and the societal attitudes these produce. It can call for proposals issued by IFTR 18th Congress and Political Performances WG as ‘a matter of respond-
also potentially humanise our encounters with migrants and reveal new and more complex migrant ing and of taking responsibilities’ to a crisis and a call. Often the migrant crisis feels far away from our
subjectivities. More than this, by performing solidarity and care for the other, theatre can resist own privileged everyday life and home – but its effects and demands filter through to us all, and ask of
the politics of suspicion that frame debates about unaccompanied migrant minors, inviting a new us an increased attention to multiple intersecting matters of ethics, politics, art and action.   Zoë and
‘poetics’ of hospitality Derrida 2000 and allowing new structures of ethico-political responsibility to Lena met in Helsinki at IFTR in 2006 through their participation in the practice-as-research working
emerge. In Dear Home Office by the recently formed UK based Phosphorous Theatre, unaccompa- group. They have been friends and interlocutors ever since eliding professional and personal political
nied minors share the stage with the company’s director and their key worker, performing what Joan practices. They propose to address the notion of what it might mean to take the responsibility of re-
Tronto might describe as a mode of ‘caring with’ unaccompanied minors. Tronto posits ‘caring with’ sponding to the current migrant crisis in Europe, in the form of a 20-minute-long performed conver-
as a new ‘democratic ideal’ 2015 and in Dear Home Office, I argue, performed care invites us to re- sation. This conversation will be the product of their ongoing letter correspondence, a practice they
think ourselves in relation to unaccompanied migrant minors, re-imaging new models of citizenship have engaged in since 2006. The conversation will draw on Svendsen’s forthcoming practice-as-re-
and communal responsibility. search performance project, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE Barbican Centre, London in Septem-
ber 2018 which treats climate change and migration as symbiotic as well as Šimić’s migrant status as
Key Words a foreign scholar/artist in the UK, including her current writing on the topic of sea and performance.
Care, Unaccompanied Minor Migrants, testimony
Key Words
Performance, conversation, letter correspondence, migration, ethics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

566 567
 WG WG

Caroline Wake Clare Wallace

University of New South Wales Charles University, Prague
I am a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at UNSW Sydney and have been publishing on refugees and per- Clare Wallace is an associate professor at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles
formance since 2008. Relevant Publications include: Book - Performing Witness: Refugees and Theatres of University in Prague. Her teaching is mainly focused on Irish Studies and Theatre Studies. She is author of The
the Real in Millennial Australia under contract with Northwestern University Press  Edited Journal Issue - with Theatre of David Greig 2013 and Suspect Cultures: Narrative, Identity and Citation in 1990s New Drama 2007
Emma Cox, guest editors of special issue on “Envisioning Asylum / Engendering Crisis” Research in Drama and is editor of Monologues: Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity and Stewart Parker Television Plays 2008.
Education 23.2 in press forthcoming April 2018.  Relevant Articles on Refugees and Migration - “The Politics Co-edited books include, Cosmotopia: Transnational Identities in David Greig’s Theatre 2011 with Anja Müller,
and Poetics of Listening: Attending Headphone Verbatim Theatre in Post-Cronulla Australia.” Theatre Research Stewart Parker Dramatis Personae and Other Writings 2008 with Gerald Dawe and Maria Johnston, Global
International 39.2 2014: 82-100.   “Between Repetition and Oblivion: Performance, Testimony, and Ontolo- Ireland: Irish Literatures for the New Millennium with Ondřej Pilný 2006 and Giacomo Joyce: Envoys of the
gy in the Refugee Determination Process.” Text & Performance Quarterly 33.4 2013: 326-343.   “To Witness Other with Louis Armand 2002. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Drama
Mimesis: The Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Testimonial Theatre in Through the Wire.” Modern Drama 56. in English.
2013: 102-125.   “Caveat Spectator: Juridical, Political, and Ontological False Witnessing in CMI A Certain Mar-
itime Incident.” Law Text Culture 14: 160-187.   “Through the Invisible Witness in Through the Wire.” Research
in Drama Education 13.2 2013: 187-192.  Relevant Book Chapters  “Detaining Asylum Seekers in Australia.”
Performing the Threshold: Community, Hospitality and the
Applied Theatre: International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice. 2nd edition. Ed. Monica Prendergast Future
and Juliana Saxton. Bristol: Intellect, 2016.  “Performing Authenticity in the Refugee Determination Process.”
Staging Asylum: Contemporary Australian Plays about Refugees. e-book. Ed. Emma Cox. Sydney: Currency This paper will take a lateral approach to the conference theme. Intrinsic to thinking about migrants/
Press, 2015. migration is a response to movement, and that response takes shape in conjunction with ideas of
belonging, duty and futurity. Conceptually, I want probe the challenges of Jean-Luc Nancy’s under-
Performance, Protest and the Second Pacific Solution, Australia standing of community as Being-with, contingent, relational and unfinished, Jacques Derrida’s Of
2012— Hospitality 2000 and Brian Massumi’s The Politics of Affect 2015. Both Derrida and Massumi elab-
orate on the threshold, but in very different ways. For Derrida, the threshold becomes, as Mireia
Since October 2012, Australia has implemented a suite of policies that could collectively be called Aragay puts it, “a figure or site for the bestowing on hospitality its utopian potential” Of Precarious-
the Second Pacific Solution. Like the first Pacific Solution, which ran from 2001 to 2007, these poli- ness 21 Whereas for Massumi, thresholds are also markers of potential but are conceived in terms
cies involve interdiction boat turnbacks, mandatory detention the immediate and indefinite deten- of “a body’s ability to affect or be affected – its charge of affect – [which] isn’t something fixed” The
tion of asylum seekers who arrive by boat, and offshore processing asylum seekers are transferred Politics of Affect 4. I would like to analyse the theatrical potential of such notions of boundary work
to Papua New Guinea and Nauru while their refugee claims are being processed. Once again, as with through the affective textures of three recent plays: David Greig’s The Suppliant Women 2015, an
the first Pacific Solution, the artistic and activist response has been vociferous and I have now iden- adaptation of Aeschylus’s The Suppliants 463BC in which the Danaids are represented as asylum
tified more than 70 plays, performances and installations produced over the past five years. Unlike seekers Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children 2017 in which a group of retired scientists decide to sacrifice
the first Pacific Solution, however, there is little scholarship on this work. Whereas the performances themselves for the well-being of future generations and James Fritz’s Parliament Square 2017, a play
early in the 21st century were documented and analysed by Emma Cox, Helen Gilbert, Rand Hazou, about the motivating force of anger, an extreme act of protest and its consequences. I will attend
Alison Jeffers and many others, the work from 2012 onwards has gone relatively unremarked. This to the ways in which these plays invite reflection upon the nature of community and the individual,
paper offers an overview of this work, and the six major trends that define it: 1 the reanimation of and upon stasis/apathy versus movement/engagement/attachment through images of corporeality
earlier genres, especially documentary, without revision 2 the reanimation and revision of fourth and vulnerability.
wave genres, including performed oral history 3 the waning of previously major genres, such as
performance art 4 the strengthening of previously minor genres, such as comedy 5 the strengthen- Key Words
ing of inter-generational responses, including those who were detained at the turn of the millenni- Threshold, Community, Hospitality, Futurity, British Theatre
um and 6 the appearance of new genres, including mobile performances, live art and web series.

Key Words
refugees, detention, protest, Australia, Pacific Solution
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

568 569
 WG WG

Zheyu Wei
Guangxi Arts University

As a Trinity Long Room Hub Fellow 2013-2017, Zheyu Wei received his Ph.D. at Trinity College Dublin in 2017,
with his doctorate thesis entitled, “Post-Cold War Experimental Theatre of China: Staging Globalization and Its
Resistance”. Besides conducting research on theatre and cosmopolitanism, multi-media performances, and
comedy, Wei also translates plays, including Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga’s Himmelweg Way to Heaven.
Wei now teaches dramatic literature at Guangxi Arts University, China.

How to Play Ourselves: Devising Cosmopolitanism in “The Good

House of Happiness”
Pan Pan Theatre’s The Good House of Happiness, an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person
of Szechwan, premiered in the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2017. With an almost full amateur Asian
cast, the play attempts to address immigration, racism, cultural differences, sexism and other serious
issues in contemporary Irish society. This paper studies the creative process of the production, in
which cast members were invited to discuss the themes of the original play and their own current
lives in the increasingly cosmopolitan city of Dublin. The conversations were recorded and then
turned into an organic part of the dramatic adaptation. However, its way in editing the text, creating
characters and adopting cultural signifiers revealed some political problems while giving voice to
the characters/cast members themselves in the play. The paradoxical devising method, which mixed
verbatim theatre and conventional playwriting, is analysed, in order to identify the situation of criti-
cal cosmopolitanism in Gerald Delanty’s sense. By reflecting on how the “normative transformation
from the encounter with the Other” is enabled, I argue that the play may shed light upon how the-
atre could play an important role in dealing ethical problems in migration, as theatre can rehearse
for the revolution Augusto Boal.

Key Words
Cosmopolitanism, migration, devised theatre, Brecht, Pan Pan Theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

570 571
 Working POPULAR
ENTERTAINMENTS
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

572 573
 WG WG

Gilian Arrighi Jonathan Bollen

University of Newcastle, Australia University of New South Wales

Dr Gillian Arrighi is Senior Lecturer in Creative and Performing Arts in the School of Creative Industries, at Jonathan Bollen is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of New South Wales.
the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her primary research focus concerns popular entertainments of the He teaches courses in Australian drama, popular entertainment, and theatre history. His research interests
late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has published over twenty-five refereed journal articles and include the repertoire of Australian plays in theatre production, and the history of entertainers touring be-
book chapters in scholarly publications including Theatre Journal, Australasian Drama Studies, New Theatre tween Australia and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. He also has experience in the digital humanities, developing
Quarterly, Early Visual Popular Culture, Theatre Research International, Theatre Dance and Performance Train- collaborative methodologies for theatre research and analytical techniques for visualising tours and networks.
ing, and in edited collections on topics such as early-20th century amusement parks, the social construction He was coordinator of research for AusStage, the online resource for researching Australian 2006–13, and
of archives, performing animals, and the rediscovery of masks in the twentieth century. She is associate editor contributed to the development of IbsenStage. He is the co-author of two books: Men at Play: Masculinities in
of the scholarly e-journal, Popular Entertainment Studies, co-editor of the books Entertaining Children: The Australian Theatre since the 1950s Rodopi, 2008 and A Global Doll’s House: Ibsen and Distant Visions Palgrave,
Participation of Youth in the Entertainment Industry Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, and A World of Popular En- 2016.
tertainments Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars: 2012, and author of the monograph The FitzGerald
Brothers’ Circus: spectacle, identity and nationhood at the Australian circus Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Visualising the Entrepreneurial Networks of International
Publishing, 2015. Her current book project concerns child actors performing on trans-national popular stages,
1880-1910. Entertainment: The Dalrays – Touring Beyond the Tivoli, 1956-66

Bijou Fernandez: Child-actor and Celebrity in the Age of Mass The Dalrays were Ray Pritchard and Trevor Fowler, an acrobatic comedy duo from Adelaide, who
first appeared at Melbourne’s Tivoli Theatre in the pantomime, Goody Two Shoes, in 1956. That
Production engagement marks the beginning of an ongoing association, recorded in correspondence over the
Tivoli’s last decade. The Dalrays returned to the Tivoli to perform with Shirley Bassey 1957, in a re-
In 1887 ten-year-old Bijou Fernandez was contracted for seven years by prominent New York man- vival pantomime 1957 and in Funfiesta 1958. They toured with Max Reddy’s revue 1957, appeared
ager/director Augustin Daly. She was the daughter of actress Emily Fernandez who had appeared in at Brisbane’s Theatre Royal 1958 and returned twice in the 1960s to appear at the Tivoli. Their corre-
many Daly productions and eventually became ‘perhaps the best-known woman theatrical broker spondence is most notable, however, as a record of extensive international touring to engagements
in [the United States]’. Bijou was in the public eye from at least 1884, starring in May Blossom by in East Asia, Western Europe, the Middle East and the United States from December 1958 to June
Belasco at Manhattan’s Madison Square Theatre and Niblo’s Garden 1884-85. Her fame during the 1966. The Dalrays’ correspondence in the Tivoli collection at the State Library of Victoria offers a
1880s would appear to flow from her mother’s position in the increasingly networked entertain- detailed record of two jet-setting entertainers, juggling opportunities on the hop with the logistics
ment industry, but her status as a child celebrity was boosted by portrait photographer Napoleon of international travel, booking agents, contracts and costs. The correspondence also reveals the
Sarony who photographed the little girl every week for a year. As cultural artifacts in high circulation, success of a new breed of entrepreneurs in weaving regional agents and touring entertainers into
Sarony’s theatrical postcards of Bijou Fernandez commodified her as perhaps the first child celeb- business networks spanning Asia and the Pacific. Regionally prominent among these was the Hun-
rity in the age of mass production and rendered a photographic record of the child star unmatched garian-born Tibor Rudas, whose enterprise at exporting Australian entertainers into East Asian mar-
by the turn of the century. Bijou Fernandez’s roles in commercial productions of ‘A Midsummer kets eclipsed the Tivoli circuit and enabled him to shift operations from Sydney to Las Vegas in the
Night’s Dream’ Daly’s, 1888 and ‘The Comedy of Errors’ Star Theatre Broadway, 1885 position her mid-1960s. This presentation applies methods of data visualisation to analyse the entrepreneurial
in the historical line of precocious Infant Phenomena since the early 19th-century. But Fernandez’s networks that propelled The Dalrays into global circulation and integrated entertainment from Aus-
consistent employment in New York’s commercial theatres, her repertoire that traversed high-brow tralia into the Asia-Pacific region.
Shakespeare and popular favorites, and her status as a celebrity within popular mediatized culture,
denote changes in the business of commercial entertainments and attitudes to child entertainers. Key Words
This paper examines the childhood career of Bijou Fernandez through the lenses of repertoire, biog- acrobatic comedy, international touring, entrepreneurial networks, data visualisation
raphy, and the popular visual record. Arguing that Fernandez was different from earlier 19th-century
child prodigies such as Master Betty, William Grossmith, and Bateman sisters, this paper proposes
Fernandez’s childhood career contributed to the extraordinary increase in child actors seeking to
enter New York City’s entertainment industry by the end of the century.

Key Words
chid actors, New York theatres, 19th century, celebrity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

574 575
 WG WG

Maria De Simone Larraine Nicholas

Northwestern University University of Roehampton

EDUCATION: PhD: Northwestern University, expected: June 2020, Theatre and Drama. MA: Northwestern Larraine Nicholas is an Emeritus Fellow in the Dance Department of the University of Roehampton, London.
University, December 2017, Theatre and Drama. MA: Univerisità Ca’ Foscari Venice, Italy, October 2010, Amer- She is author of Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and its Dancers Dance Books,2007 and of Walking and
ican Literature. BA: Univerisità Ca’ Foscari Venice, Italy, October 2008, English and Spanish. FELLOWSHIPS Dancing: Three Years of Dance in London, 1951 – 1953 Noverre Press, 2013 and she is co-editor of Rethinking
& GRANTS: 2017: Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship Program, $ Dance History: Issues and Methodologies, 2nd edition Routledge,2018.
5,000 towards preliminary dissertation research and a summer-long interdisciplinary training to help graduate
students formulate dissertation research proposals. 2015: Gender and Sexuality Interdisciplinary Mellon Clus- “Unskilled Theatre Workers”?: Showgirls at the Windmill Theatre
ter Fellowship, $ 2,500 to support students in interdisciplinary training and research in gender and sexuality
studies. HONORS, DISTINCTIONS: 2009: Best Research Paper Award, Harvard University Summer School in
The Windmill Theatre in London produced 341 editions of its ‘Revudeville’ between 1932 and 1964,
Venice. 2008: Distinction in Senior Thesis, Università Ca’ Foscari. PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS:
2017, Association for Theatre in Higher Education ATHE. TEACHING: January 2018—March 2018: THEATRE entertaining a mainly male audience with comic sketches and musical items, including static nude
140-2: Dancing Race Primary Instructor, Northwestern University, 33 contact hours. September 2016—De- tableaux and skimpily clad female dancers. Recent academic interest has set the Windmill within
cember 2016: THEATRE 140-1: Theatre in Context — Introduction to Theatre Studies Teaching Assistant, North- its social and historical context as a Soho institution implicated in censorship and contemporary
western University, 11 contact hours. CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS: “Reshaping the Stereotype: Uncle Tom’s representations of female sexuality but it pays scant attention to the voice of the female performer.
Cabin’s Topsy and the ‘pickaninny’ stereotype on Stage and Screen in Early-Twentieth-Century United States,” ‘Windmill Girls’ had ‘rudimentary skills’ according to Judith Walcowitz without defining criteria or
Association for Theatre in Higher Education Annual Conference, oral presentation, 2017. evidence. The Windmill has large archival resources, including at the Theatre Collection of the Vic-
toria and Albert Museum. My current oral history project — The Professional Lives of Dancers at the
Embodying Race, Defining Culture: Racial/Ethnic Impersonation Windmill Theatre — archives the voices of surviving dancers. Press releases from 1947 – 1962 in the
and Immigrant Identity in American Vaudeville V&A Collections profiling new ‘Windmill Girls’ have given me mini-biographies of another 230 per-
formers. These combined resources offer a new perspective on the notion of the ‘unskilled theatre
Between the 1880s and the 1920s, American vaudeville evolved from a more “refined” version of worker’ which I will examine in this paper. I have been able to look at ages, previous training and
variety into the first national entertainment industry. In the rhetoric of vaudeville impresarios, the previous work both on and off stage. While many had no previous theatre experience, and may have
mission was achieved by advertising their touring acts as free from lewdness, centrally supervised, picked up dance skills opportunistically at dance halls, others had already been touring professional-
and consistently replicated across theatre circuits. Such a national “homogenizing” project, howev- ly in their mid-teens. The evidence points at a crucial ‘ecology’ operating at local and provincial level,
er, was not reflected in the performances on stage. In fact, vaudeville acts were left to the artists to networking dancing schools with amateur and professional performance opportunities. The typical-
design, and they took liberties especially when adjusting to the tastes of the diverse audiences they ly uninspiring jobs for girls leaving school are highlighted in many cases, offering adequate motives
met on tour. This agency on the performers’ part was especially evident in their subversions of ste- for a young woman with the right personality and looks to aspire to the Windmill stage. Reference
reotypical racial/ethnic representations, and even more so when the artists were immigrants faced Walcowitz, Judith 2012 ‘Windmill Theatre’, in Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London, New Haven
with immigrant audiences. American vaudeville thrived as immigration from Europe and China peak- and London: Yale University Press Kindle edition, loc. 6004
ed 1884-1924: immigrants became assiduous spectators, and the bulk of the work force in vaudeville
until Ellis Island’s gates closed in 1924. The histories of American immigration, racial/ethnic repre- Key Words
sentation, and the vaudeville industry run parallel and are deeply related. My paper builds upon showgirls, archives, biography, training
these often overlooked connections to prove vaudeville’s role as the immigrants’ open platform
– and racial/ethnic performance as their preferred stage device – used to embody their hyphenat-
ed identities. More effectively than racial/ethnic impersonations by white American-born artists,
immigrant performers highlight a tension between the validation of ethnic origins – interpolating
between authentic and stereotypical depictions – and the blurring of racial/ethnic boundaries. By
foregrounding this tension, I anticipate that my paper will reveal how “Americanization” cannot be
reduced to assimilation, but involves a continuous redrafting of racial borders and representations.

Key Words
American vaudeville immigrant performers racial impersonation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

576 577
 WG WG

Jason Price Mikael Strömberg

University of Sussex University of Gothenburg

Jason Price is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Theatre and Performance and the Head of Drama at the Uni- Mikael Strömberg is a researcher in performance studies at the University of Gothenburg. He works in the field
versity of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom. He is a trained performer, director and dramaturge. His research of research on popular entertainment, entertainment as communication, and Swedish outdoor theatre during
is concerned with the relationships and intersections between visual art, performance, politics and popular the twentieth century.
culture. In his recent book, Modern Popular Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), he traces the evolution of
the concept of the popular in theatre and performance since the Industrial Revolution, drawing on a range of Rural Popular Culture or Popular Rural Culture?
international theatre and performance makers. He has also published on site-specific theatres, public art and
painting.
Rural aspects has been a dominant feature in popular culture for a long time. Ideas about the rural
can be found in a vast range of popular genres, from TV shows, commercials, Hollywood blockbust-
Popular Performance and the Ominvore: The Shifting Cultural ers, to theatre and entertainment. The paper looks at some ideas associate with the rural, from
Terrain within the last hundred years. The aim is to track changes and developments in how the rural has
been depicted and used. What can, for example, popular culture tell us about different views on
Writing in 1965, Susan Sontag identified an important change taking place in modern culture. Root- rural aspects? Has the idea of the rural and how the rural has been depicted changed, and in that
ed in the experiences of mid-twentieth century life and assisted by the development of new tech- case, how can that change be discussed and interpreted? The paper will argue that the rural within
nologies, this change – a ‘new sensibility’, she called it – was increasingly rendering the ‘Matthew popular culture has gone from being a symbol of a nostalgic past to an important factor in the accel-
Arnold idea of culture’ obsolete and weakening the very idea of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art categories (p. erating world. The paper looks at processes of globalization and medialization in order to be able to
302). By the 1990s, this shift and capitalism’s global expansion had re-formed social habits of cultural problematize the intersection between the rural as something geographical, and the rural as some-
consumption, as well as attitudes and prejudices regarding social class that had been traditionally thing sociocultural. The paper will adopt a tentative approach to rural popular culture and popular
associated with the consumption of high and low forms of art. In an important study published in rural culture in order to track, describe and question different views on the rural within popular cul-
1992, the American sociologist Richard Peterson showed that one’s social status could no longer ture. The primary empirical material will be Swedish theatre performances that comments on rural
be so easily determined by the type of culture an individual consumed, but instead by how much aspects or uphold ideas about the rural, from the beginning of the twentieth century until today.
culture – high and low – they consumed. Cultural ‘omnivores’, as Peterson termed them, participate
in and know many forms of culture, from popular music to opera, and as a consequence typically Key Words
enjoy higher social standing. By contrast, the cultural ‘univore’, those who participate in fewer cul- popular culture, rural theory
tural activities, possess lower cultural capital and consequently have a lower social status. As well
as re-defining the terms of the low/high culture/class debate, the cultural shift that has been taking
place over the last half century, and Peterson’s assessment of it, has important aesthetic conse-
quences. While it was once unheard of for artists working in elite aesthetic modes to draw upon
popular sources, in the current cultural environment, this has become commonplace. Popular forms
of culture are no longer considered ignorant, taboo or vulgar: they are widely consumed, appreciat-
ed and appropriated into other cultural forms. In this paper, I explore this cultural shift in relation to
contemporary theatre and performance. In particular, I will consider how the popular has been and
is being drawn upon, and into, Western stage practices, as well as the aesthetic consequences of an
omnivoric audience for art more generally.

Key Words
Popular performance, popular culture, capitalism, contemporary theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

578 579
 WG WG

Maria Emília Tortorella Ian Walsh

UNICAMP/SP/Brasil National University of Ireland

Maria Emília Tortorella is an actress, aerealist and researcher. Develops doctoral research on the work of Bra- Dr. Ian R. Walsh is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at National University of Ireland, Galway. He has
zilian playwright and director Carlos Alberto Soffredini 1939 -2001, with funding from the São Paulo Research published widely on Irish theatre and performance  in peer-revieweed journals and edited collections. His
Foundation FAPESP in the Post-Graduate Program of Scenic Arts in Campinas State University – UNICAMP. books include Experimental Irish Theatre Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 The Theatre of Enda Walsh Carysfort, 2015
Since September 2017 until July 2018 she is developing a Research Internship at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle co-edited with Mary P. Caulfield and  Contemporay Irish Theatre and Performance Palgrave Macmillan, forth-
- Paris 3, France. She is a researcher from Letra&Ato: drama study group, of the Department of Performing coming 2018 co-written with Charlotte McIvor.
Arts at UNICAMP, coordinated by Professor Ph.D. Larissa de Oliveira Neves Catalão UNICAMP-SP and Professor
Ph.DElen de Medeiros UFMG-MG. Her main focus of research is the contributions of popular culture to the Irish Language Pantomimes at the Abbey: How Popular
Brazilian modern theater. Foundin member of the Cia Beira Serra de Circo e Teatro, a theater company that
investigates the scenic creation from popular culture and circus techniques. Entertainments Led to a Renaissance in Irish Theatre
This paper will argue that the Irish language pantomimes staged at the Abbey, the National Theatre
Dialogues Between Popular Entertainment an Modern Theater in of Ireland throughout the 1940s and 50s led to a revolution in staging methods in Ireland. These pan-
the Staging Of The Play “Vem Buscar-Me Que Ainda Sou Teu”, From tomimes intended to aid the State’s revival of the Irish language took the form of popular Christmas
Carlos Alberto Soffredini, By The Mambembe Theater Group Brazil entertainments that presented ancient Irish myths in the Irish language via a performance style that
mixed the conventions of the British pantomime and the Broadway musical. They were popular with
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the material collected by the author PhD student in Perform- patrons but despised by critics and denounced by subsequent scholarship as a low point in the his-
ing Arts about the staging of the play VemBuscar-me que AindaSouTeu, written by the playwriter tory of Irish theatre. However, the primary writer and director tasked to stage these entertainments
Carlos Alberto Soffredini, and presented by “Grupo de Teatro Mambembe” Mambembe Theater was Tomás Mac Anna, who would go on to become the first artistic director of the Abbey, win a tony
Group in 1979. Throughout the observation of photographs, reviews, and artist’s interviews, it in- award and is credited as bringing a new international experimentalism to the theatre contributing
tendeds to demonstrate how this show was built by using Brazilian popular theater procedures and to what has been termed a ‘Second Renaissance’ Murray in Irish theatre. Mac Anna always claimed
techniques. These procedures were recreated by the theater group, originating a groundbreaking that it was his work on the pantomimes that taught him everything about directing and design. The
theater language. Carlos Alberto Soffredini 1939-2001 was a Brazilian playwright and stage direc- demands of theses entertainments meant that he had to learn how to stage scenes with large casts
tor who worked in the São Paulo theater scene from the end of the 1960s to the year of his death. and become expert at transitions to several locations whilst also incorporating choreography and
Author of a very expressive work within the context of the modern national theater, his aesthetic song into his productions. The pantomimes schooled Mac Anna in a type of staging that was in direct
project was consciously elaborated from the research of the traditional popular artistic manifes- contrast to the naturalistic style employed in the production of the Abbey’s signature realist dramas
tations. The play VemBuscar-me que AindaSouTeu was written between 1978 and 1979 and can of peasant life. This paper will re-examine the wealth of materials prompt scripts, letters, images, de-
be considered the poetic synthesis of the years of Soffredini’s research about the forms of Bra- signs now available on these pantomimes through the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive at NUI Galway to
zilian popular theater. The plot is based on the day-to-day life of a itinerant circus-theater com- support the argument that these popular entertainments helped to usher in a new era in Irish theatre.
pany, which presents melodramas, revues and music hall. This paper aims to investigate the im-
portance of those popular theater shows as basis of the construction of a modern playwriting. Key Words
Pantomime, Irish theatre, Abbey theatre, popular entertainment
Key Words
VemBuscar-me que AindaSouTeu Dialogues between popular entertainment and modern theater
Carlos Alberto Soffredini, Brazilian modern theater
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

580 581
 Working PROCÉSSUS
DE CRÉATION
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

582 583
 WG WG

Maria João Brilhante Giovanni Covelli

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa Universidad Pedagógica Nacional de Colombia

With a PhD in French Literature by the FLUL School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, she is Giovanni Covelli Meek, is a Colombian Italian practitioner, researcher, and assistant lecturer in Performing Arts
Associate Professor and teaches, since 1979 at FLUL, both in the Performance Studies graduation and Theatre at the Fine Arts faculty of the National Pedagogical University of Colombia UPN. He holds a PhD in Theatre and
Studies post-graduation courses, that she also directs. . She was responsible for the coordination in Portugal Film Studies from Bologna University, Italy 2014 with a thesis entitled “Sarah Kane’s theatre: Between biogra-
of the project Texto e imagem: perspectivas críticas para investigação em Artes Cénicas Theatre and imag- phy, performance and text”, and a BA in Performing Arts from the UPN 2009. He has led projects, conferences,
es: critical perspectives for the research in Theatre and performance which gathered a group of researchers workshops and classes in Colombia, Italy, France, Germany, England, Turkey, Switzerland and Brazil, in the
from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Unirio, the São Paulo University USPand the Lisbon University fields of education, artistic creation, direction, and of research in cultural and academic settings. Since 2015,
2008-2010.She organised several Conferences, the most recent one was the Internacional Conference Lançar he teaches Artistic Creation and Contemporary Theatre at the UPN, and coordinates the research seedbed
diálogos: critica de Artes do Espectáculo e esfera pública/Creating Dialogues: Performing Arts Criticism and the called “Research – Creation / Education = Phi”.
Public Sphere FLUL 8-9/06 e Teatro Rivoli at Oporto/FITEI 10 e 11/06 de 2016. She was, from 2008 until 2011,
the President of the Administration of the National Theatre D. Maria II and is a member of the jury of Premio “Research – Creation / Education” Processes focused towards
Europa per il Teatro. She has published essays, organized books on literature, theatre translation, theatre ico-
nography, Portuguese theatre history and drama
Social and Community Projects
This talk is the result of the different findings in educational research from my work at the BA in
Repérage du training dans le processus de création de “O Inferno” Performing Arts at the National Pedagogical University in Bogotá, Colombia, in the seminar “Process
(2017) par O Bando Portugal : vers “une conscience de l’acteur” and Methodologies of Creation”. In the seminar, using the methodologies of Research – Creation /
Education, which is itself a newly developed category for the class that links scenic arts, pedagogy,
Bien que les études de génétique théâtrale aient déjà fait leurs preuves à l’étranger et aient ouvert academic research and community-based projects, students learn to generate their own creative
de nouvelles voies de collaboration entre chercheurs et artistes, des études avec un tel impact sont processes. In accordance, by using the languages of performing arts, the students create and de-
pratiquement inexistantes au Portugal. Conscientes de cette émergence, nous avons entamé une velop projects that seek to make social changes and transformations with communities that have
collaboration avec l’un des groupes de théâtre les plus anciens du pays, le théâtre O Bando, fondé very specific needs. In that way, the creative process can be attached to the betterment of the afore-
et dirigé par le metteur en scène João Brites. À la suite de cette première expérimentation, notre mentioned communities. The seminar, which applies learning methodologies of problem-based and
objectif dans cette intervention, c’est d’interroger le processus de création du spectacle O Inferno, significant learning, becomes then a laboratory where the students can construct their own projects
adapté de la Divine Comédie de Dante que nous avons suivi entre novembre 2016 et mai 2017 dans with the guide of the facilitator, allowing a horizontal space of learning where all the participants
une coproduction avec le théâtre National D. Maria II, dirigé par Tiago Rodrigues. Nous tâcherons de are able to research about the problems and needs in the communities of their own choosing. All
repérer et d’illuminer les différentes étapes de la genèse et du processus au niveau de la direction the results of these developed projects and learning processes are then collected in a ‘Modellbuch’:
d’acteurs et des phases du training auquel ils ont été soumis et qui découlent, on le verra, d’une a research method that allows the participant to reflect upon a piece whilst shaping it. In that way,
méthode instaurée par le metteur en scène depuis quelques années et qu’il dénomme « la con- this talk explains and exposes how the creative process can be articulated within the context of the
science de l’acteur ». communities’ problems, and the different kinds of methodologies that can be applied, pointing to
the results of the artistic research project called “Voices and bodies of the community and its re-
Key Words searchers” of which I take part of.
Processus de création, Training, Conscience de lacteur
Key Words
Applied Theatre Artistic Research Creation Processes Performing Arts Learning Methodologies “Re-
search – Creation / Education” Social and Community Projects
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

584 585
 WG WG

Marcilene De Moura Natalija Jakubova

University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna
Artiste et chercheuse. Docteur en théâtre à l’université Paris3 Sorbonne Nouvelle en cotutelle avec l’Université
Fédérale de l’état de Rio de Janeiro – Brésil UNIRIO – RJ. Master en théâtre et License en théorie du théâtre Natalia Jakubova holds PhD in Theatre Studies. Since 1994 was been a research fellow of State Institute of Art
à l’Université UNIRIO - RJ. License en Ingénierie de systèmes informatiques – Université Federale de l’état de Studies, Moscow. In 2013-2015 she was affiliated, as a Marie Curie Fellow, at the Institute of Literary Studies,
Goiás - UFGo. Formation pratique d’acteur à l’École technique de Goiás. Expériences pratiques au Brésil com- Polish Academy of Sciences, carrying out the research project on the gender-sensitive biography of the Polish
me metteure en scène, actrice et éducatrice. S’intéresse au théâtre performatif et aux nouvelles technologies. actress Irena Solska. She is also active as a theatre critic, writing for periodicals in Russia and abroad. Books: O
Witkacym About Witkacy, Warsaw, IBL, 2010 and Teatr epohi peremen v Polshe, Vengrii i Rossii. 1990-e-2010-e
Le système de création d’Enrique Diaz: le spectacle “OTRO” et ses Theatre of the transformation epoch in Poland, Hungary and Russia, the 1990-2010-s, Moscow, NLO, 2014. In
2015-2016 she conducted the research project Rituals of Memory in Polish and Russian Theatre supported
frontières floues by the Centre of Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding. Since January 2018 she is Lise Meitner research
fellow at the Institute for Cultural Management and Gender Studies, University of Music and Performing Arts,
Cette communication propose d’étudier le processus de création du spectacle « OTRO », du met- Vienna, making research on the female performers of Hugo von Hofmannsthals work.
teur en scène brésilien Enrique Diaz, suivant une approche systémique. Ainsi nous présenterons
les collectes initiales des données, les choix des artistes pour la mise en scène et la présentation du Elektra in the Lower Depths? Looking for Hofmannsthals
spectacle au public. Le théâtre performatif dEnrique Diaz combine des éléments de métathéâtralité
et dautofiction. Il met en scène son processus de création, brouillant les frontières entre processus
Inspirations in the Theatre of his Time
et résultat. Pour la création du spectacle « OTRO », Enrique Diaz a réalisé des performances dans les
It is well known that the ultimate motivation for Hugo von Hofmannsthal to write his Elektra 1903
rues de Rio de Janeiro, en interaction avec les passants au hasard. Il a filmé puis projeté en scène ces
was the guest performance of Kleines Theater in Vienna of The Lower Depths and the subsequent
performances mêlant fiction et réalité.
meeting with Max Reinhardt and Gertrud Eysoldt. However, to suggest anything more than that
Hofmannsthal got to know an excellent company, a new style of directing and an outstanding actress
Key Words
seems to be too excentric. What can the realistic Lower Depths and mythologizing Elektra have in
processus de creation enrique diaz systémique
common? In my paper I try to read Elektra in the terms of the traces of Eysoldts creative individual-
ity in the Hofmannsthals work, and her Nastja in The Lower Depths is crucial in understanding what
the writer could see before writing his own heroine. The task is even more intriguing because of the
fact that, due to the ensemble character of the performance, the Eysoldts role in The Lower Depths
was not often described in detail either in the reviews or in theatre historiography... This material
will contextualize what Hofmannsthal, Eysoldt, Reinhardt and others wrote on the creative process
which resulted in one of the crucial productions of the early 20th century. In this sense, the interac-
tions between Hofmannsthal and Reinhardt seem to have been already studied sufficiently I see my
aim in voicing also Eysoldt in this dialogue which may crucially change the picture.

Key Words
gendering theatre history, actress, Gertrud Eysoldt
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

586 587
 WG WG

Proshot Kalami Eleni Papalexiou

Bunker Hill Community College University of the Peloponnese

Proshot Kalami, PhD, Associate Professor at Bunker Hill Community College. Formerly, worked at UC Berkeley, Dr Eleni Papalexiou is an assistant professor at the Department of Theatre Studies, School of Fine Arts, Uni-
UC Santa Cruz & UC Davis in the US, and Loughborough University in the UK. Shes been a fellow at the Inter- versity of the Peloponnese Nafplion, Greece. Her field of expertise is contemporary theatre, theatre theo-
weaving Performance Cultures, FU Berlin and at JNIAS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her publications are ry and performance analysis. She is also an affiliated lecturer at the Greek Open University in the field of
in theatre and performance cinema. For four years she was a Radio Playwright and Radio Drama Director at history and theory of art. She holds a Ph.D. from the Université Sorbonne-Paris IV. She was the main re-
IRIB. She has translations published in Farsi in Visual Arts and Philosophy. Her creative works are Documentary searcher of the research project “Archivio” 2012-2013 and of the research project “Arch: Archival Re-
Filmmaking, Multi-media Installation, Visual Arts and Creative Writing. Her works have been featured inter- search and Cultural Heritage-Aristeia II” 2014-2015, both concerning the theatre archive of Romeo Cas-
nationally across the US, UK, Europe, and India. In 2009, her dramaturgy of Death of Yazdgerd was featured in tellucci and the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. Today she is the main scholarly advisor and curator of the
the BBC Persian. As a videographer she has worked with the Asia Society NY, Brooklyn Academy of Music NY, archive. Thanks to the above research, the archive was declared of major historical interest and impor-
Cal Performances UC Berkeley, Mondavi Center UC Davis, Chorus Repertory Theatre India, and the Barbican tance by the Italian Ministry of Culture 2015. As a Fulbright visiting scholar she conducted research at Stan-
London. She has published 2 poetry books. Her poems have been featured in poetry anthologies in Serbia and ford University Department of Classics & Department of Theater and Performance Studies, 2014-2015.
Iran. Proshot speaks, writes, and conducts her research as well as creative works in 5 languages. She currently
has an installation “The Invisible Women”, based on #MeToo, and “The Impossible”, a performance. Visualizer le processus de création: considérations et
perspectives
Collective Creation of “The Impossible”, the Site of Telling, Healing
and Transformation in Performing the Voices of the Community The digital visualization of the creative process in the performing arts has become necessary, given
the extremely rapid progress of digital humanities and the need for wide dissemination of knowl-
This essay aims to be a reflective report on the creation processes of “The Impossible”, a perfor- edge, beyond geographical, temporal and material limitations. The achievements in the growing
mance with emphasis on the collective actor-creation. “The Impossible” has been inspired by a long domain of digital humanities greatly facilitate the documentation and processing of archival ma-
lineage of theatre traditions, as practiced by Jacques Lecoq for example, exploring questions of iden- terial, through the elaboration, inter alia,  of models for databases and search tools, which sup-
tity, gender, race, and belonging in predominantly immigrant communities. Theoretically, “The Im- port post-analysis. Due to the great variety of creative processes involved in the performing arts,
possible” plays with Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of “entre nous” and his ideas on freedom, community genetic research must possess the necessary means for the documentation, collection and man-
and the “I”, and their correlation with “being-with” as established in his exploration of “être singulier agement of an enormous amount of information, produced during all the stages of creation.   In
pluriel”. Delving into unspoken memories of performers, each of “The Impossible” actors enacts the the proposed paper we will investigate possible combinations of theatre genetics with new tech-
impossibility of telling, embarking on a journey towards healing and transformation. The text of the nologies, leading to the widening of knowledge, addressed to the international academic commu-
performance is informed through a collaborative process of telling and co-writing. A process that nity, as well as to artists and the general public. The quest for an implemented methodology of
troubles the notion of the “other” by allowing performers to be the “other” and thus defying it at digital visualization will be examined. Additionally, the difficulties and conflicts with which the re-
the same time. By performing everyday life realities, the play triggers both individual and collective searcher is confronted will be further discussed. Finally, we will attempt to raise questions such as
to emerge. The “uprooted” then begins to live in the liminal space of tensions between the familiar the possible ways in which a holistic and integrated model of genetic analysis of performance may
and the unknown, the native and the foreign, us and them. The promenade scenography of this be created and implemented, starting from the documentation of creative material, the record-
multimedia performance allows the liminality of the memories of the “displaced”, the “uprooted”, ing of training and rehearsals, and, as a final stage, the digital visualization of the creative process.
the “other” to invite the spectator to become a part of the process of transformation. This essay thus
aims to offer other ways of thinking about the process of creating Theatre by looking at how “The Key Words
Impossible” became a possibility for telling, healing, and transforming, at once within the space of creative process digital visualization  performing arts theatre genetics documentation
the performance, the body of the performer, and the interaction with the spectator.

Key Words
processus de creation, multimedia performance, gender and identity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

588 589
 WG WG

Ana Clara Santos Lucet Sophie

University of Algarve, University of Lisbon Centro de Estudos de Teatro Université Rennes 2 France

With a PhD in French Literature by the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle- Paris 3 1996, in Racine’s and Corneille’s Sophie Lucet est professeure des universités à Rennes 2 Bretagne, France. Elle dirige le laboratoire Théâtre, au
tragedy, she is now Professor Auxiliar at University of Algarve and member of the Centro de Estudos de Teatro sein de l’Equipe Arts : pratiques et poétique, de l’Université Rennes 2, depuis 2012. Ses domaines de spécia-
CET-FLUL since 2000. She co-founded the Portuguese Association of French Studies Association Portugaise lité sont : les écritures théâtrales contemporaines, les dramaturgies contemporaines de la mémoire, le geste
d’Études Françaises, prix Hervé Deluen 2014/ Académie Française of which she was president from 2010 to créateur, la captation des processus de création, les archives de la création contemporaine. Elle a notamment
2015 she is now vice-president. She is director of the theatre collection “Entr’acte, études de théâtre et per- publié Mémoires, traces et archives en création dans les arts de la scène, sous la dir. de Sophie Lucet, Sophie
formance” at Le Manuscrit editor Paris, Rédactrice en chef of Synergies Portugal, a GERFLINT’s review and Proust, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017 310 pages, avec un avant-propos de Sophie Lucet : « Les ins-
co-director of Carnets, revue électronique d’études françaises. She co-organized the two symposia on theat- truments de refiguration du temps dans les arts du spectacle », 23 pages. Processus de création et archives du
rical genetics at the University of Lisbon 2009, 2015 and she is co-editor of the book Parcours de génétique spectacle vivant : du manque de traces au risque d’inflation mémorielle, sous la dir. de Sophie Lucet, Bénédicte
théâtrale : de l’atelier d’écriture à la scène Le Manuscrit, 2017. This academic year 2017-2018, she taught at Boisson, Marion Denizot,, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 400 pages à paraître en 2018. Elle a créé un portail
the Theatre Genetics Seminar of the PHD in Theatre Studies at the FLUL School of Arts and Humanities of the numérique open source, La Fabrique du Spectacle, dédié aux processus de création de metteurs en scène con-
University of Lisbon. She has published essays and organized books on literature and theatre especially on temporains et a dirigé 3 ateliers scientifiques à Lisbonne, Anvers et Rennes pour l’émergence du projet ARGOS,
French and Portuguese studies and theatre repertoires, translation and reception studies. déposé auprès d’Europe Créative en janvier 2018.

Repérage du training dans le processus de création de “O Inferno” Quand regarder, cest créer
(2017) par O BandoPortugal : vers “une conscience de l’acteur”
La génétique du spectacle a jusqu’à lors très peu pris en compte la question du spectateur alors que
Bien que les études de génétique théâtrale aient déjà fait leurs preuves à l’étranger et aient ouvert se développe un art relationnel qui l’inclut de façon diverse dans le processus de création. Comme le
de nouvelles voies de collaboration entre chercheurs et artistes, des études avec un tel impact sont dit Josette Féral, « ces formes expérientielles, qui relèvent parfois de cet art relationnel dont parlait
pratiquement inexistantes au Portugal. Conscientes de cette émergence, nous avons entamé une Nicolas Bourriaud, nous obligent à envisager autrement la génétique ou, tout du moins, posent des
collaboration avec l’un des groupes de théâtre les plus anciens du pays, le théâtre O Bando, fondé questions intéressantes à la génétique puisqu’elle déplace la création du côté du spectateur. Aucune
et dirigé par le metteur en scène João Brites. À la suite de cette première expérimentation, notre recherche génétique, à ma connaissance, n’a été envisagée en ce sens. » Il s’agira donc, dans le cad-
objectif dans cette intervention, c’est d’interroger le processus de création du spectacle O Inferno, re de cette communication, d’exposer les hypothèses de recherche qui seront développées dans le
adapté de la Divine Comédie de Dante que nous avons suivi entre novembre 2016 et mai 2017 dans cadre du projet européen ARGOS, qui réunit des chercheurs, des étudiants, des médiateurs culturels
une coproduction avec le théâtre National D. Maria II, dirigé par Tiago Rodrigues. Nous tâcherons de et des artistes dans le cadre d’une nouvelle communauté de regardeurs réunis par l’observation de
repérer et d’illuminer les différentes étapes de la genèse et du processus au niveau de la direction processus de création européens Portugal, Grèce, Belgique, Italie, France. L’espace de la répétition,
d’acteurs et des phases du training auquel ils ont été soumis et qui découlent, on le verra, d’une défini comme protégé et intime, hors de l’espace public, peut-il être investi par des personnes « exté-
méthode instaurée par le metteur en scène depuis quelques années et qu’il dénomme « la con- rieures » ? Et si oui, quelle place « active » pour un « spectateur » dans le processus ? Comment alors
science de l’acteur ». appréhender les savoirs de chacune de ces catégories de regardeurs ? Comment établir des disposi-
tifs dynamiques permettant le partage des savoirs ?  Après avoir défini des modalités diversifiées de
Key Words l’observation, nous nous demanderons quelle fonction a alors le « regardeur » au sein du processus
processus de creation, training, conscience de lacteur de création : quels échanges entre les regardeurs et l’équipe artistique ?  Qu’apportent-ils ? Quelles
traces du processus sont-elles créées par les regardeurs ? Comment construire la mémoire commune
d’une expérience affective, émotionnelle et culturelle ? En d’autres termes, observer est-il créer ?

Key Words
Génétique du spectacle, observation, spectateur
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

590 591
 WG WG

Ines Stranger Luk Van den Dries

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile University of Antwerp

Inés Stranger est auteur et scénariste. Docteur en Etudes Théâtrales à Paris 3, en 2016. Professeur à l’Escuela Luk Van den Dries is Full Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Antwerp Belgium. His research deals
de Teatro de Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile depuis 1992, où elle est chargée des cours de théories et with contemporary theatre, with a focus on postdramatic theatre . He wrote extensively on Jan Fabre, one of
pratiques d’écritures théâtrales. Au niveau de magister, elle dirige des Projet de création. Auteur, ses pièces the main examples of postdramatic theatre in Flanders. He wrote also on the representation of the body in
ont été jouées, publiées et traduites en différentes langues. Carino Malo, Malinche, Talamo, Valdivia, La Monja contemporary theatre and co-edited three books on this topic. Other important research topic is the creative
Alférez, Ursula Suarez, sont les noms des pièces les plus connues. process: the dynamics between the director’s notebook and the rehearsal process. The Didascalic Imagination
is the main research project he has been working on for the last couple of years, focusing on the notebooks
La réinvention de la forme scénique dans le théâtre de la of Jan Fabre, Jan Lauwers, Ivo Van Hove, Luk Perceval, Guy Cassiers, Romeo Castellucci and Heiner Goebbels.
His latest bookpublications are Marianne Beauviche, Luk Van den Dries ed. Jan Fabre Esthétique du paradoxe
transition politique chilienne Harmattan, 2013 Thomas Crombez, Luk Van den Dries ed. Mass Theatre in Interwar Europe Kadoc, 2014,
Luk Van den Dries : Het geopende lichaam. Verzamelde opstellen over Jan Fabre De Bezige Bij, 2014, Thomas
La présentation vise à montrer comment l’analyse des processus de création des spectacles s’est Crombez, Jelle Koopmans, Frank Peeters, Luk Van den Dries, Karel Van Haesebrouck : Theater. Een Westerse
avérée l’outil principal permettant de comprendre la portée du renouveau théâtral dans le Chili de geschiedenis. Lannoo Campus, 2015.
la transition politique 1990 -1994. Cette analyse nous a permis d’examiner le phénomène théâtral
de l’intérieur, en se rapprochant de ce que voulaient faire les artistes, de leurs propres poétiques et From Act to Acting. The Use of Training Techniques in the Creative
de leurs méthodes. C’est une perspective qui permet de dégager les éléments communs à tous les Process of Jan Fabre
spectacles qui ont été importants durant cette période. L‘analyse des processus de création révèle
les enjeux et la nature du phénomène théâtral dans son ensemble, ce qui aurait été impossible avec In this paper I argue that a genuine understanding of creative processes in theatre and dance can
une approche thématique ou idéologique, par exemple. only be acquired by examining at least five constitutive stages: conception, audition, training, re-
hearsal, and performance. Furthermore, genetic research on these stages needs to be buttressed
Key Words by two central axes: while documentation both tangible and intangible is the micro-axe enabling
Processus de création, théâtre chilien, transition politique genetic studies by providing primary resources, also the macro-axe of context needs to be accounted
for, as for example institutional conditions determine to a large extent the development of creative
processes. More specifically I will look into the use of specific training methods and their relation to
the creative process. The stage of trainings this paper will focus on does not concern the education
offered in conservatoires, drama schools, etc., but those training methodologies that artists have
developed throughout their career in order to prepare their performers for rehearsals. In the history
of theatre and dance, various artists such as Konstantin Stanislavski, Jerzy Grotowski, Rudolf von
Laban, or Steve Paxton have developed specific training techniques in accordance with their artistic
poetics. Contemporary artists such as Jan Fabre or Meg Stuart continue this tradition by developing
exercises that ought to adapt the performer’s body and mind-set to the specific requirements of an
artist’s oeuvre. We will look into the training method of the Belgian theatre director Jan Fabre which
he developed throughout his whole career. The method consists of 25 exercises that are meant to
prepare the performer. What are the basic principles of Fabre’s guiding-lines, and how do they relate
to his artistic oeuvre?

Key Words
creative process / training method / Jan Fabre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

592 593
 WG WG

Sofia Vilasboas Slomp

University of São Paulo-USP/ECA

Actress and researcher in Performing Arts. Currently, PhD student in Performing Arts at the University of São
Paulo and had completed her masters degree in Études Théâtrales at the Université Paris VIII, with mobility at
the Université Libre de Bruxelles and at the Université Nice Sophia-Antipolis as part of the programme Master
Erasmus Mundus in Performing Arts studies, where she had a scholarship. Member of the editorial board of
Aspas Journal Eca/USP and, also, works as an artist in collaboration with theatres’ groups. Completed two
bachelors degree in Theatre and Psychology in southern Brazil. The field of study is contemporary scenic cre-
ation and its aesthetic features.

Object-Bicho / Object-Body: Aesthetic Procedures between

Performance, Visual Arts and Audience
This paper aims to study the aesthetic procedures in a contemporary scene of dance creations that
problematize the frontiers between the performing arts and shifts fixed places from both the artists
and the public. To this reflection, I bring the performance “La Bête” 2005 from the brazilian dancer
Wagner Schwartz, presented in 2017, on the exhibition 35º Panorama da arte brasileira, in the Mu-
seum of Modern Art of São Paulo MAM. This performance was targeted of public demonstrations
that point out discursive polarities in the Brazilian socio-political landscape and question the legit-
imacy of the country’s artistic institutions. The performance has as an aesthetic procedure a direct
relationship with the work “Bichos” 1960 from the brazilian artist Lygia Clark. Schwartz, naked, ma-
nipulates a replica of Clark’s object-bicho repeating the same gesture that the artist proposed in the
60s and subsequently invites the public to manipulate his object-body throughout the performance.
Both propositions approaches a relational aesthetic Bourriaud, 2001 and point to a shift in the usual
commonplace, that may assume other positions inside the performative action. Nonetheless, cer-
tain displacements of theatrical conventions still generates the feeling of strangeness between the
real-fiction in the scene Fischer-Lichte, 2007. Thus, the same work represented may turn visible
aesthetic-political conflicts in the community that receives it. This experience invites us to think how
the artistic gesture reflects the socio-historical moment of one community, transfiguring a daily body
into a political act.

Key Words
performing arts aesthetic procedures audience
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

594 595
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

596
Groups
Working
QUEER FUTURES

597

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

FawziaAfzal-Khan Ben Buratta

MontclairStateUniversity Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Emglish as well as outgoign Director of Gender, Ben Buratta is Artistic Director of Outbox Theatre and Lecturer in Applied Theatre Practices at The Royal Cen-
Sexuality, and Womens Studies at Montclair State Unievrsity in NJ USA. She is author and editor of 5 books tral School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Ben’s background is in actor training, theatre-making
and numerous articles on Pakistani culture and feminist performance as well as a published playwright, poet, and applied practice. Ben has directed and made work for many of the UK’s leading theatres including Birming-
memoirist and an actor and singer tranied in the North Indo Pakistani classical tradition. Her short doc film ham REP, Arcola, Contact, Southwark Playhouse and Shoreditch Town Hall. He has directed extensively within
on Pakistani women singers has wom numerous awards at various international docukemtary film festivals UK drama schools and has worked across a range of arts, education, and community settings as a practitioner.
around the world includign most recently, the Silver Award for newcomers at the Bali International Film festi- His practice-based PhD project is exploring ways to create new rehearsal strategies and dramaturgies in order
val. Her film was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and she is currently on the roster of to make theatre queerly.
the Fulbright Specialist Program.
Disrupting the Scene: Re-Imagining the Theatrical Transition for a
The Queer side of Pakistan
Queer Dramaturgy
We are collaborating on an exciting new project that aims to construct a genealogy of Queer theatre
Disrupting the scene: Re-imagining the theatrical transition for a queer dramaturgy When you’re
and performance in Pakistan 1947-present. Taking as a point of departure Sedgwick’s exhortation to
acting in a play, and the director says “can you try that transition again?” and you say, “Again?” And
deconstruct binary categories of sexuality, we aim to move beyond straight/homo sexual categories
The Rest Of Me Floats, Outbox Theatre. 2017 In a normative theatre-making process, the transition
of analysis to build an archive of the performative in Pakistan and its diaspora attentive to sex and
acts as the connective tissue between developed scenes. Traditionally transitions taking place in
gender expressiveness in multiple registers, genres and levels of complexity.Some questions we aim
darkness, as the set changes and props are removed and reconfigured- indicating time passing or
to explore are:Some questions we aim to explore are:1. how queerness is evolving as an analytic
being re-arranged. Working as the director on Outbox Theatre’s And The Rest Of Me Floats, I began
category of understanding, naming and living in a Muslim state that is becoming increasingly hostile
to re-imagine the place and time of the transition. This interdisciplinary, devised play was based
towards all “minorities” whose very existence challenges the religious status quo and 2. to what
around the autobiographies of seven gender diverse performers. The gender identity and expression
degree the internet has become a migratory performative of survival and solidarity, allowing us to
of the performers were in flux, most identifying as trans or as having transitioned and, therefore,
trace a genealogy of queer theatre produced not only in Pakistan, but also in its diaspora
the dramaturgy followed suit. What happens when the transition become central to the making
process and the scenes interrupt the transition? This paper shares video, imagery and insights from
Key Words
the making and performance process that riff around the multitude of meanings stemming from
queer, political, performance, history, genealogy, Pakistan
transition. Devising a choreography that embodies, re-creates, and subverts Judith Butler’s theory
of the heteronormative matrix 1990, created a framework in which a queer dramaturgy Farrier and
Campbell, 2015 was composed. Swerving causal, linear narratives that see trans bodies victimised,
in trauma and in danger, the company look to queer utopias Muñoz 2010 to reject realism and em-
brace shifting identities and forms.

Key Words
Queer, Dramaturgy, Transition, Directing, Temporaity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

598 599
 WG WG

Alyson Campbell Stephen Farrier

Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

Alyson Campbell is an Associate Professor in Theatre at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Dr Stephen Farrier is a Reader in Theatre and Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama,
Melbourne, and is a theatre director. She was co-founder and co-convenor of IFTR’s Queer Futures working University of London.  He recently co-edited with Alyson Campbell, Queer Dramaturgies: International
group 2011-14. Her research, practice and teaching share a focus on gender and queer theories and perfor- Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer, Palgrave, 2015.  The book was shortlisted for the TaPRA
mance practices, affect in theatre, dramaturgy, and HIV and AIDS in performance. She has published work on Editing Prize 2017. He has written and published on Research Methodology in Drag Performance with
gay male subjectivities and HIV and AIDS in contemporary performance Theatre Research International and Mark Edward HIV and AIDS Theatre lip-syncing in drag performance queer utopias and queer temporalities
Australasian Drama Studies and co-edited with Fintan Walsh a special section on the Queer Futures Working queer readings of Sarah Kane’s work, with Selina Busby the training of drag performers Joe Orton and
Group in Theatre Research International 2015. She is co-editor with Stephen Farrier of Queer Dramaturgies: queer history intergenerational queer work and queer temporalities queer practice as research, with
International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer Palgrave, 2015 and co-editor with Dirk Gindt Alyson Campbell and co-edited a themed edition of RIDE, The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
of Viral Dramaturgies: HIV and AIDS in Performance in the Twenty-First Century Alyson collaborates regularly named the ‘Gender and Sexuality Issue’.  He is a member of the advisory board of Contemporary Theatre
with long-time creative partner, playwright Lachlan Philpott, through their queer performance assemblage Review journal and sits on the editorial board of Studies in Theatre and Performance journal. Along with
wreckedallProds. From 2008-11 she was founding director of the Queer at Queen’s research and performance being an academic at his institution he is also a performance maker and director – his recent work Hetty
programme at Queens University Belfast, which still forms part of the annual Outburst Queer Arts Festival. the King And Other Women I Have Loved was shortlisted at the Brighton Fringe for the LGBT award.

Going Feral: Queerly De-Domesticating the Institution and Speaking Across Borders. Connecting International Queer
Running Wild Performance
Going Feral: queerly de-domesticating the institution and running wild. This paper is written from Given the position that queer performance is intimately related to the context and community in
the position of the queer-identifying theatre practitioner-scholar and interrogates their relationship which is occurs, a question begs how, then, might we begin to describe the ways in which local queer
to the institutions of theatre, funding bodies, festivals and the academy. The queer-identified artist, performance is connected to other queernesses outside of its direct vision?  Starting from a desire
like the queer-identified researcher, is always functioning in a deeply ambivalent position. What does to find a way of connecting queer work internationally without colonising or hegemonising it, this
it mean, when one of the fundamental principles of queer is that it sets itself up against what is nor- paper tentatively describes the structures and discourses that we might develop to connect diverse
mative, for this queer-identified person to exist within, be paid or salaried within, or seek approval queer performance practices.    Through thinking about the practices of drag, this paper begins the
from, one or more of these institutions? What happens to their queerness? The parallels between discussion with the description of the ways in which queer performance practice is connected to the
theatre and the academy are close and multiple I suggest this is particularly so around the field of local.  This connection with the local conditions of its production holds specific resonances to the
queer Practice as Research PaR. The chapter examines a recent example of the author’s PaR work on communities in which the work is presented.  However, in an ever increasingly fluid context, those
HIV and AIDS in performance, GL RY/WHoLE Belfast, 2016, to argue that the uncomfortably-placed localnesses are not as clearly delineated as they might seem.  Indeed, queer performance is often
queer artist-scholar might appropriate a feral modus operandi in order to radically de-domesticate international in flavour, migrates across geographical and genre boundaries and is plurally resistive
the domesticating strictures and privileges of these institutions. In other words, to take the money to fixity. This is the central problem of the paper.   Once setting up the issue at hand, the discussion
and knowledge and run wild. It places this in relationship to ‘queer superstar’ Taylor Mac’s recent 24 explores some potential ways of connecting work without disregarding the deep connections it has
hours of performance at the Melbourne International Arts Festival 2017. with the local. The paper describes the beginnings of the exploration of these discourses and set-
tles on two initial ideas: queer performance’s transnationality as offering a strategy to articulate
Key Words queer performance as both/and – in the local and simultaneously relating to elsewhere and ideas of
feral pedagogies feral dramaturgies queer and the mainstream queer kinship as a way of articulating the cognate relationship local queer performance might have
with internationality/transnationality/the global.    The paper finishes by looking to other aspects
of the problem that further complicates the issues at hand, particularly the relationship to queer
performance history that in itself circulates in the work of queer performance around the world.

Key Words
Queer Theatre, Drag Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

600 601
 WG WG

Stephen Greer Ankush Gupta

University of Glasgow Jawaharlal Nehru University

Steve Greer is Lecturer in Theatre Practices at the University of Glasgow where his teaching and research Ankush is an artist who is interested in the ‘process’ which spans beyond the ‘events’ of curation and perfor-
focuses on the intersection of contemporary performance, queer studies and cultural politics. While preoc- mance. Through conversations between various mediums including music, literature, theatre, cinema and
cupied with the forms and contexts of live theatre, his work includes topics as varied as mass-market videog- photography, they explore themes of identity and survival which brings their ouevre face to face with the po-
ames, the BBC’s Sherlock and the glamrock wrestler Adrian Street. He is the author of Contemporary British litical struggles of their times. A founding member of Dhanak: A Queer group from Delhi, they have presented
Queer Performance 2012 and currently completing a book on solo performance in neoliberal times, tentatively in various international conferences all around the world, taken masterclasses and participated as an activist.
titled Queer Exceptions. Their performances like ‘entshuldigung Sie Madam, aber ich bin shwulz’ Berlin, 2016, ‘Kya Haseen Sitam…’New
Delhi, 2014, ‘We…Women’ New Delhi, 2015 and ‘Chand Roz Aur Meri Jaan’ Lahore, 2013 interweave complex
“From Egypt to Scotland, Across Borders and Genders” – National personal narratives with a constantly changing world where identities become matrices. They are currently
pursuing their PhD with music and gender as their focus.
Theatre Scotland’s Adam and the Figure of the Trans Migrant
This paper explores the figure of the trans migrant in Frances Poet’s play Adam 2017 through Jasbir
Migrant Sexuality: The Curious Affair of Performing Identities in
Puar’s notion of homonationalism and Thibaut Raboin’s more recent work on the promise of ‘hap- Urban Paces in India
py queer futures’ in the UK. Originally staged by National Theatre Scotland alongside Jo Clifford’s
heavily autobiographical monologue Eve 2017, Adam narrates a story of progress ‘from Egypt to This paper aims at investigating the complex relationship between migration and sexuality. The au-
Scotland, across borders and genders’. Told through two characters – ‘Egyptian Adam’ and ‘Glasgow thor uses migrant in its broadest root sense which implies any movement and shifting of location
Adam’, the latter performed by the Egyptian trans actor Adam Kashmiry on whose life the work is and any experience of new conditions and forms. These movements criss- cross between different
loosely based – the play invokes the UK as a space of tolerance and possibility for trans lives even as kinds of urban living arrangements, as people dwell in formations as dissimilar to each other as nu-
it recognises the stringent and contradictory terms of the asylum and immigration process. Framed clear families, college hostels, pavement communities, individual flats and slums. To be enclosed in
by director Cora Bissett with contributions from the Adam World Choir, a global digital community of one‘s own space or to have an entire ownership over the discretionary use of that space is not a gen-
transgender and non-binary people, the play’s dramaturgy suggests an intersection of narratives for eral urban experience people have a differential access to privacy, and moreover, they do not share
gender identity and migration in which the status of ‘trans’ as a prefix meaning ‘across’ or ‘beyond’ the terms of what is counted or valued as privacy. Home as a site of permanence and of realization
describes complex attachments to whatever is notionally left ‘behind’. When juxtaposed with Clif- of personal dreams of intimacy is not available or desirable to everyone, every time. This urban
ford’s narrative in which Jo extends compassion to a former self, ‘dear John’, it also calls attention to web of movements is necessarily plotted onto another web whichis the one of countless physical
the ways in which homonationalist discourses require trans and queer migrants to both embody and encounters. The migrant has an odd relation with the governing State and is also embedded within
resolve what Senthorun Raj describes as ‘asylum anxieties’ – that is, the question of what ‘counts’ as the media networks of the city. There is an ongoing clash between what can be called the pirate
a true account of either gender or persecution. version of the modern and the official civic liberal version –both effects of a now heavily mediatized
world – and this clash in primarily of ways of thinking about the city and functioning in it. A clash
Key Words in which each imagines and inhabits the urban In terms of the different idioms of same-sex desire,
trans, queer, asylum, homonationalism, National Theatre Scotland some of the most crucial meeting points where the unlike concepts begin to merge, or let‘s say, the
meeting points between the ‘laundebaaz‘ of vernacular humour and of liberal ‘decriminalization‘
and ‘LGBT’ rights of an English media program are the almost twenty year old anti-AIDS NGOs that
have dotted the Indian cities and small towns. They become some of the most interesting points of
experiment between social idioms and classes – important not only in their work hours but also for
the after-work sense of community that forms among its members and volunteers. Here individu-
als from the lower-middle classes, including Hijra communities, have come to add to and own the
language of ‘rights‘, ‘sexuality‘ and ‘transsexuality‘ in the vernacular and, sometimes, in a slightly
bureaucratized English. The author is interested in looking at these ‘in-between’ political identities
and their interrelationship and performance, with Delhi as the case study.

Key Words
migration, sexuality, urban spaces
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

602 603
 WG WG

Meggie Inchley Fatima Maan

Queen Mary University of London New York University Abu Dhabi

Maggie Inchley is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen Mary University of London. Her research uses the voice Drama Coach, LGS Defence, Lahore August – current • led and organized the activities of one of the most
as a focus of critical enquiry. She is author of Voice and New Writing: Articulating the Demos, 1997-2007, and best Dramatics Society in the Lahore Drama Circuit in the lead up to dramatics competitions • Trained students
an AHRC grant holder for her collaborative project The Verbatim Formula, which uses verbatim theatre prac- in acting, playwriting, directing and scene and music design Humera – Capstone Project, NYU Abu Dhabi
tices to support the voices of care experienced young people and as a means of participatory action research Theater Department, Abu Dhabi & Karachi September 2016 – May 2017 • Wrote a full-length play addressing
and evaluation. issues of religion, sexuality and class differences in Pakistan to cap my college education • Directed workshops
with actors throughout the year aimed at exploring and improving the text • Organized readings and led
Transvocalism in Jo Cliffords Swan Song, Eve 2017 discussions of the text with audiences from different backgrounds to get feedback tailored to my goals • Con-
ducted extensive research and interviews before and during the process to inform my writing process Artistic
and Administrative Intern, The Civilians, New York City May 2016 – August 2016 • Assisted Artistic Director,
Finding a way to speak with a woman’s voice for some transwomen has been described as an act of
Steve Cosson and Literary Associates in transcribing, audio-video work and management for projects in devel-
‘identity migration’. As part of their ‘journey’, some transwomen go to great lengths to perform or opment in the office in NYC and for script development work during the Orchard Project in Saratoga, Upstate
‘pass’ vocally as a woman. Some take extensive vocal training to support them in arriving at a place NY • Organized auditions, mailing lists, files, recordings, databases, contacts and budget sheets to assist the
where they feel congruent with themselves (Mills and Stoneham 2017). But in performing a femi- workflow in the office.
nine sounding voice, into what wider cultural and psychic territories associated with ‘women’s voic-
es’ do transwomen venture? How do gendered aesthetic choices express identity in performance The Queer Side of Pakistan
spaces? And how can feminist, queer and cultural studies scholarship converge to explore this pro-
cess? Feminist scholars have called attention to the exclusion of the sonorous qualities of women’s Pakistani-American Senior Scholar/playwright/poet/performer Fawzia Afzal-Khan, and budding
voices from the rational and logocentric male public sphere (Dunn and Jones 1994, Love 2002, Cava- playwright and drama coach from Pakistan Fatima Maan, are collaborating on an exciting new proj-
rero 2005). Queer scholarship theorises nonchronormative orchestrations of time that subvert the ect that aims to construct a genealogy of Queer theatre and performance in Pakistan 1947-present.
normalisation of hegemonic ideologies and narratives (Freeman 2010). In Jo Clifford’s autographical Taking as a point of departure Sedgwick’s exhortation to deconstruct binary categories of sexuality,
‘swan song’ piece Eve (2017) for the Traverse in Edinburgh, her gender ambiguous speaking voice we aim to move beyond straight/homo sexual categories of analysis to build an archive of the perfor-
narrates and stakes a claim for queer experience, while a recurring sound effect of a woman’s voice mative in Pakistan and its diaspora attentive to sex and gender expressiveness in multiple registers,
haunts and calls from a place beyond. This paper will explore the aesthetic vocal and sonic features genres and levels of complexity. Some questions we aim to explore are: how queerness is evolving
of Eve, arguing that its use of an acousmatic sonorous female voice suggests ‘gaps’ and ambivalences as an analytic category of understanding, naming and living in a Muslim state that is becoming in-
in Clifford’s ‘transjourney’, while opening a shared space where affective, spiritualised and uncanny creasingly hostile towards all “minorities” whose very existence challenges the religious status quo.
dimensions disturb and inflect public space (Connor 2000). to what degree the internet has become a performative of survival and solidarity, allowing us to
trace a genealogy of queer theatre produced not only in Pakistan, but also in the diaspora, from the
Key Words early works of Pakistani-British playwright Hanif Kureshi performed on British stage and screen, to
voice transwoman queer feminism song ‘Mushk’, a play about two queer women performed in major theaters in Pakistan in 2017. Examin-
ing blogs and Facebook posts, as well as newspaper and magazine articles and reviews, we will ask
how the politics of location affects these performances? Does migrating to a different political space
change the work that is produced and the way in which audiences receive it? How do Pakistani audi-
ences respond to these performances within and outside of the Pakistani nation-state? Has the ex-
change of ideas and ideologies facilitated by the internet helped create a more vibrant and tolerant
space for exploding binaries and adopting queer challenges? Or has fear of surveillance, trolling and
public shaming driven queer culture and queer thinking further underground? What negotiations/
border crossings are being enabled or shut down in our electronic age?

Key Words
queer, pakistan, religion, politics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

604 605
 WG WG

Ferdinando Martins Sarah Mullan

University of Sao Paulo University of Northampton

Ferdinando Martins. PhD Professor at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of Sao Dr Sarah Mullan is a Lecturer in Acting and Drama at the University of Northampton. Her research focuses on
Paulo, Brazil, in the fields of Contemporary Art History, Theater History and Theater and Performance the interplay between contemporary lesbian performance, cultural politics, and queer theory. Sarahs work has
Theory. Dean of the Theater of USP TUSP and general coordinator of the International USP Theater Biennial. published in Theatre Research International, edited collections on queer performance and has been presented
Curator of queer theater and performance festivals. Since 2007, I have developed researches about theater at conferences nationally and internationally. She is the co-convener of the IFTR Queer Futures working group.
production and sexuality in Latin America Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Middle East Turkey
and Iran, including topics such as censorship, abjection, body modification and post-colonial identities. And there’s No Way to Know What Might Happen: Migrating Power
in Split Britches’ “Unexploded Ordnances UXO”
Performing Queer Bodies in Persian Culture: Censorship and
Dissimulation In a makeshift War Room, a selected Council of Elders are invited to discuss the situation background-
ed by 59-minute countdown.   Part performance, part debate, Split Britches Unexploded Ordnances
This piece shows partial results of the research “Interdiction and Cultural Production: censorship UXO was conceived as a daring new protocol for public discussion Split Britches, 2018. Re-appropri-
on cinema and theater at Islamic Republic of Iran”, conducted with the financial aid of Fundação ating Dr Strangeloves 1964 Kubrick aesthetic and imminent nuclear attack, Madame President Lois
de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo São Paulo Research Aid Foundation, FAPESP and Weaver and a bombastic General Peggy Shaw invite the oldest members of the audience to discuss
University of São Paulo, Brazil. At the beginning, it was supposed to investigate the censorship current global issues within the allotted timeframe.   This paper considers how queer performance
processes in Iran. Methodologically, the option was to concentrate in cinema and theater inter- engages with political, social and global power. Drawing on the work of Jose Munoz and Jill Dolan,
dictions and analyze established cultural patterns, ways of resistance and institutional relations I consider how the situation room performance model engages with and applies concepts of the
among artists and the official censorship. The main source of information was a set of interviews utopic. In particular, how shifting responsibility from the performer to the audience -- the official
with Iranian artists as well as government authorities and, furthermore, it included documen- figurehead to the public - has the potential to destabilise normative structures of power, even if only
tal, iconographic and AV researches. It was not supposed to investigate queer bodies because, momentarily. By examining the critical stakes of Weaver and Shaws performance of heightened hy-
for a western researcher that has never been to Iran, it was unthinkable to have the opportuni- per-masculine roles as lesbian performers, this paper considers how the migration of power can be
ty to find a queer culture under the theocratic government. In fact, it was a big surprise to meet understood as a feminist performance strategy.
a theater director that took me to a not-so-hidden scene of queer parties with specific places of
sociability. This presentation is about queer bodies in Teheran, considering from Richard Schech- Key Words
ner’s broad and inclusive concept of performance up to theater and performance art experienc- Queer
es. Besides, it analyses the governmental censorship related to these bodies in performative arts.
On the other hand, it leads to a reflection on the cultural aspects of sexuality and interdiction in
contemporary Iran theater and performance art. It highlights dissimulation as a constitutive fea-
ture of Iranian culture that enables the emergence of queer bodies under a repressive state.

Key Words
Performance Queer Iran Persian Culture Iranian Theater
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

606 607
 WG WG

Joe Parslow Lazlo Ilya Pearlman

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Northumbria University

Joe Parslow is a PhD Candidate at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and a lecturer teaching across Lazlo Pearlman is a creator, performer, director, and teacher whose work is often but not always generated
the fields of drama, theatre and performance. Their research focuses around drag performance, and the po- by his Jewish FTM transgendered experience. He has been making performances since he was a ten 10 year
tential ways in which queer communities can and do emerge in contemporary London, particularly around old girl and works in many forms including physical theatre, performance art, installations, cabaret, film and
performance. Alongside their research, Joe is the co-Director of queer bar, performance and cabaret space Her video. Most recent projects include Dance Me to the End of Love, a work exploring the trans body and intimate
Upstairs and queer club space Them Downstairs in Camden, London, which house performance events from performance, the feature length documentary on his work Fake Orgasm, and The Not My President’s Day/No
across the drag, queer and cabaret scene in London and beyond. BrExit Cabaret. He has also published internationally on Trans* and Queer performance in both academic and
popular settings. He is a Senior Lecturer in Performance at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne
Stop Relying on [Those Bodies]: Local Drag Performance & and is finishing up his doctorate in performance practice and philosophy at London Universitys Royal Central
School of Speech and Drama. www.lazlopearlman.com.
Migrating Drag Practices
What You See is What You Get: Visuality, Erotics and the Disruptive
In the wake of the ever-growing popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race Logo TV, 2009, an American tele-
vision series in which drag performers compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar, drag Trans- Body
is increasingly considered in homogenised forms across international boundaries. Furthermore, it is
often argued by established drag performers in the UK that younger performers only learn their drag Resisting the continuing cultural swing in which assimilation into the privatized and conservative
via Drag Race, not through local drag traditions or more individuated exchanges between perform- mainstream has become the goal of LGBT activism, this presentation argues for the radical erotics
ers. This paper considers how these drag practices are considered to have migrated from the US to of the un-assimilatable Trans* Body in performance. I suggest constituting transsexuals not as a
other countries in a unilateral flow. Paying attention to the ways in which these drag practices might class or problematic third gender, but rather as a genre—a set of embodied texts whose poten-
move, and be moved, across international boundaries, this paper explores what diversities in form, tial for productive disruption of structured sexualities and spectra of desire has yet to be explored.
content, style, practice, bodies, and so on get ironed out in the popularisation of drag performance -Sandy Stone The Empire Strikes Back, A Post-Transsexual Manifesto 1991 In this paper I offer a
in a post-Drag Race world. This exploration is tempered by a focus on what local practices and resis- potential “erotics of trans- bodies in performance. This has elements of a manifesto. It is an exhor-
tances remain in the wake of these more global forces, whilst engaging with critiques of the local/ tation for LBGTQ+ performance makers and audiences to resist the pull toward homo-and-trans-nor-
global binary in the wake of contemporary work surrounding queer international relations Weber, mative identity politics and instead, while continuing to fight against violent discriminatory systems,
2016. Starting from the particular US phenomenon of audiences “tipping” drag performers by hand- to nurture radical and pleasurable practices that dismantle normative notions and experiences of
ing them dollar bills during their acts, this paper explores one performance that plays with, critiques, genders and sexualities. I define my tools and terms and the current ways I am thinking about
and potentially gets folded into this US practice. This paper returns to the body of the performer and Trans-, performance, pleasure and desire, haptic visuality and a potential erotics of trans-* bodies in
insists on an understanding of what emerges on stage as a fertile ground for understanding what performance. I offer some examples of these erotic performances looking at my own work and that
hybrid practices can and do emerge when quotidian forms such as drag are illuminated by the bright of the self proclaimed “Transgender Terrorist” Rose Wood and I conclude by posing some questions
lights of popular culture. on how about how we might disseminate these erotics, in the hopes of creating a widening network
of pleasurable performance activism.
Key Words
queer performance, drag, global/local Key Words
body, dance, queer, transgender, trans, transsexual, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, performance,
erotics, Laura U Marks, Susan Stryker, Sandy Stone
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

608 609
 WG WG

Fintan Walsh
Birkbeck, University of London

Reader in Theatre in Performance at Birkbeck, University of London Associate Editor, Theatre Research Inter-
national

Ghostly Migrations, Memory and Kinship in Dickie Beau’s

“Re-Member Me”
A chorus of overlapping voices announce the opening of Dickie Beau’s Re-Member Me - ‘I remember
... I cant remember ... If he remembers ... Ive forgotten ... one of the many things Ive forgotten ...
probably provoked by memory ... Must I remember?’ Resounding like a ghostly incantation at the
Almeida Theatre in 2017, from no obvious source, the words evoke a séance, in which the voices
of deceased or long-standing players in UK theatre are conjured in the present, channeled through
Beau’s distinctive lip-synched performance, to query the compulsory invocation of the past, includ-
ing that inferred by the production’s own title. These figures’ comments have been cut from record-
ed interviews, some conducted by Beau himself, as they reflect on their careers, in particular the
experience of playing Hamlet or watching the play performed. This paper examines how memory
constructs queer history and theatrical kinship in Beau’s production directed by Jan-Willem Van Den
Bosch, such that remembrance is as much about narrating the past, and letting past voices filter
through the present, as it is about assembling absent bodies, while preparing for the departure of
those present. In Beau’s production, migration might be approached as the movement of voices,
memories, gossip, anecdotes and souls within theatre traditions, passing among the bodies of actors
living and dead, and the roles they have and have not performed.

Key Words
queer - migration - memory - kinship
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

610 611
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

612
Groups
Working
SAMUEL BECKETT

613

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Jonathan Bignell Nicholas Johnson

University of Reading Trinity College Dublin

Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the Uni- Nicholas Johnson is Assistant Professor in Drama at TCD, as well as a performer, director, and writer. In 2017
versity of Reading. His work on Beckett includes his book Beckett on Screen: The Television Plays and articles he focused on interdisciplinary collaboration, translating/directing the English- language premiere of Bertolt
in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui and the Journal of Beckett Studies. Jonathan has published chapters on Brecht’s David and developing the Intermedial Play/Virtual Play project with V-SENSE. Recent Beckett practice
Beckett’s screen drama in the collections Writing and Cinema which he also edited, Beckett and Nothing ed. includes Beckett’s First Play with Dead Centre ATRL, 2017, Cascando with Pan Pan Beckett Theatre, 2016, No’s
Daniela Caselli and Drawing on Beckett ed. Linda Ben-Zvi. Currently he is working on a collaborative project Knife with Lisa Dwan Lincoln Center, 2015, and the Ill Seen Ill Said project with Scott Hamilton and Matthew
documenting and analysing Harold Pinter’s work for the stage, screen and broadcast. Jonathan is a Trustee Causey. He co-conceived and performed in Abstract Machines: The Televisual Beckett ATRL, 2010 and Three
of the Beckett International Foundation and a member of the Centre for Beckett Studies at the University of Dialogues ATRL, 2011. In 2012 he directed Ethica: Four Shorts by Samuel Beckett, presenting Play, Come and
Reading. Go, Catastrophe, and What Where in Bulgaria, Dublin, the Enniskillen Festival 2013, and Áras an Uachtairáin.
He co-edited the Journal of Beckett Studies special issue on performance 23.1, 2014 with Jonathan Heron. He
is a founding co- director of the Beckett Summer School and co-convenor of the Beckett Working Group for
When “Beckett on Film” Migrated to Television IFTR. In 2016 he held a visiting research fellowship at Yale University.

The UK television channel, Channel 4, invested in the production of ‘Beckett on Film’ 2001, a proj- Samuel Beckett and “Border Thinking”
ect to produce screen versions of all Beckett’s theatre plays. The films were shown in cinemas
internationally, in London and New York, but had always been intended to migrate to the television A suspicion of unities marked the intellectual development of Samuel Beckett, and his biography
medium. In 2001 Channel 4 scheduled the ‘Beckett on Film’ adaptations one or two at a time in and working practices bear out the boundary-crossing nature of his achievement: both novelist and
the early or late evening, for a general family audience, but their timing bore no obvious relation to playwright in both French and English, his legacy increasingly crosses the global landscape without
the channel’s normal programming pattern. The uncertain relationship between the plays and the much regard for political borders. Instead, in geographic, linguistic, and philosophical terms, Samuel
rest of the channel’s output, and the unconventional pattern of scheduling, contributed to small Beckett’s oeuvre reveals the persistent and the porous nature of the boundary itself, initiating a form
audience numbers and confusion about which viewers the plays were aimed at. Then ‘Beckett on of dialectic “border thinking” that marks his artistic approach. Looking at histories of performance
Film’ migrated again, and in 2004 the plays were scheduled as educational broadcasts for schools practices across different cultures, this research examines the resulting tension in the work of Samu-
television, on weekday mornings. They were aimed at secondary school children studying Beckett’s el Beckett, especially his work for the theatre, between strict or mathematically precise delineations
plays in the English or Drama syllabus. Published listings noted the age group for which each dra- — strips, striations, boxes, and containers — and the rhizomatic profusion of possible meanings or
ma was intended, to help teachers or parents. ‘Beckett on Film’ had become a resource for study. methodologies as actors, directors, designers, and dramaturgs read “between the lines.” The phil-
This paper analyses how this process of migration between media and between types of audience osophical dimension of Beckett’s affection for playing along the boundaries of concepts and ideas
happened, and why it is significant. The paper will argue that these migrations destabilise ‘Beckett — whether through parodies of Pythagoras and Descartes, extensions of Dante and Schopenhauer,
on Film’ as an object of analysis, but the paper will also evaluate the extent to which Beckett’s work or through an ongoing fascination with paradox itself — are also brought to bear on whether a form
had the capacity to address multiple audiences and fulfil different cultural roles in the processes of of “border thinking” marks modernism itself. Finally, drawing on the practice-as-research work of
its migrations. the Samuel Beckett Laboratory in “Mapping Beckett,” a workshop conducted at the 2018 between.
pomiedczy Festival in Gdansk, Poland, this paper also initiates a discussion of whether “border think-
Key Words ing” marks the development of a newly “interwoven” intercultural dimension that may inform the
Beckett television film adaptation audience schedule next stage of international Beckett Studies and the future activities/publications of the Samuel Beck-
ett Working Group of IFTR.

Key Words
Samuel Beckett, Borders, Interdisciplinary, Intercultural, Practice-as-Research
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

614 615
 WG WG

Anita Rakoczy Teresa Rosell Nicolás

Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church Lecturer University of Barcelona

Dr. Anita Rákóczy 1980 is a Lecturer at Károli Gáspár University of The Reformed Church in Hungary. As a dra- Teresa Rosell is an Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Bar-
maturg and theatre critic, she has reviewed several international theatre festivals. She has conducted research celona. Her lines of research centre on Hermeneutics, Dramatic Theory, Aesthetic Representation in the Post-
on Samuel Beckett’s Fin de partie at CUNY Graduate Centre New York as a Fulbright Scholar, and also in the War Period and Comparative Literature in the European Intellectual Space. She has published articles on these
University of Reading’s Samuel Beckett Collection. She has worked for the Hungarian Theatre Museum and In- topics and authors like Samuel Beckett, Claude Simon, Herta Müller or Jorge Semprún. She has co-edited Joan
stitute and the International Theatre Institute ITI Hungarian Centre. Her paper Godots That Arrived – The First Fuster: a Figure of Time 2012 and Comparatists witout Comparatism 2018, with Antoni Martí Monterde.
Budapest Productions Before and After 1989 was published in Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourdhui 29 2017. Her
theatre reviews appear in the Journal of Beckett Studies from time to time. She was co-organizer of the 2017 Extraterritorial Beckett
Budapest IFTR Samuel Beckett Working Group Meeting.
George Steiner coined a concept that has been widely used in Literary Studies: the extraterritorial
Restlessness, Wanderlust and Migration in Endgame condition. The critic and philosopher developed it in Extraterritorial. Papers on Literature and the
Language Revolution 1971, a work in which he reflects on notions such as criticism, language and
Restlessness, Wanderlust and Migration in Endgame The idea of the raft is already present in the estrangement. The “Language Revolution” in the subtitle refers to the profound crisis of language
first two-act preliminary version of Fin de partie, an undated, unpublished manuscript held in the which occurred in Central Europe in the first third of the 20th century and that was experienced
Beckett Manuscript Collection of the University of Reading under the reference number MS 1660. in the arts as the “failure of words”. According to Steiner, the emergence of a linguistic pluralism
The raft, mentioned multiple times in the play, satisfies A’s longing to be elsewhere, the thought of B and the “lack of a homeland” in some writers, such as Beckett, Nabokov or Borges, was part of
following his orders and making a raft for him. Likewise, B welcomes the opportunity of such a job: this language revolution. Beyond the strictly linguistic field, today the extraterritorial category sug-
in Act I, he even promises to start it at once in the hope that A would sail out by himself and be miles gests global migratory movements and the constant displacement of the modern subject, in Steiners
away next day. A’s departure would save B the trouble of having to go away himself. In Fin de partie, words, as “a strategy of permanent exile”. In 1937 Samuel Beckett wrote his famous letter to Axel
however, the presence of the raft is greatly reduced, but Clov’s desire to leave the shelter and its live Kaun and also during this decade he was impressed by Fritz Mauthner. In this sense, through these
and dead inhabitants remains a key issue throughout. My paper also explores counter-movements two threads, one can follow Becketts tendency towards the “literatur des unworts” [sic], which will
in the play, namely the arrival of the man on a Christmas Eve in Hamm’s unfinished story, a stranger, affect not only his works, but also his self-translation and bilingualism. Precisely in this period Beck-
the only survivor of an unspecified cataclysm who approaches Hamm to ask for some bread for his ett began to write in French to guarantee the effect of estrangement and radical insecurity provided
child, crawling on his belly – definitely outside his comfort zone, fully in Hamm’s power, far away by a language that is not one’s own. His writing in French is austere and attenuated, thus assuming a
from his home to which there is no return. This will lead us to the arcane topic of Clov’s origin – his voluntary linguistic exile for, as Beckett himself said, “le besoin dêtre mal armé”.
arrival in Hamm’s shelter to become an exploited household slave.
Key Words
Key Words estrangement, exile, homelessness, linguistics, bilinguism
Fin de partie, restlessness, migration, raft, away, stranger
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

616 617
 WG WG

Yoshiko Takebe Predrag Todorović

Shujitsu University The Institute of Literature and Arts, Belgrade

Yoshiko Takebe is an Associate Professor in Translation and Interpreting Course at Department of Practical Predrag Todorović is a Senior research associate in the Belgrade Institute of Literature and Arts. He has written
English, Shujitsu University in Japan. Her research focuses on the correlation between nonverbal and verbal essays on variety of topics: bilingualism, theories of literature, Samuel Beckett, Julien Gracq, Robert Marteau,
forms of expressions with respect to drama and theatre. She was born in New York, and studied Drama and Serbian poetry and fiction, Dadaism, musicology, comparative literature, literary genres, pulp fiction, horror
Theatre in Research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her recent paper “Translating the Physicality of fiction, the avant-garde, world literature, etc. He has published in issues of literary magazines dedicated to
Western Texts into Japanese Theatre is to be published in The Body in Translation, the Body and Translation. Samuel Beckett and his work: Treći program Radio Beograda, Delo Samjuela Beketa The Work of Samuel Beck-
Eds. Adriana Serban, Soloange Hibbs-Lissorgues, and Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud, Limoges: Lambert-Lucas Pub- ett, No. 67, IV, 1985, Belgrade Vidici, Beket i tradicija, Beckett and Tradition, No. 242/243, 1986, Belgrade. He
lishing, 2018. is editor of Beket, Službeni glasnik, Belgrade, 2010. He has published the books Antologija srpskog dadaizma
The Anthology of Serbian Dadaism, 2014, Planeta Dada Planet Dada, 2016 and Dadaistički časopisi The Dadaist
Translating Beckett in Different Cultures Reviews, 2016. He is the member of the Editorial Board of the journal Philological Studies.

This paper aims to examine what it means to translate Beckett’s drama in the context of different Performing Beckett in Different Medias in Serbia
cultures. According to Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, “‘cultural translation’ is coun-
terposed to a ‘linguistic’ or ‘grammatical’ translation that is limited in scope to the sentences on the In a very rich „love story“ between Beckett’s work and Serbian audience, there are some inevita-
page. It raises complex technical issues: how to deal with features like dialect and heteroglossia, ble cornerstones. Since the first translation of Waiting for Godot in 1953, until nowadays, Beckett
literary allusions, culturally specific items such as food or architecture, or further-reaching differenc- has been performed not only on stage the famous clandestine performance of Godot in Belgrade
es in the assumed contextual knowledge that surrounds the text and gives it meaning” (Sturge 67). in 1954, among many others, but also on Radio Belgrade All That Fall in 1961 and Television. With
Translating Beckett’s drama in a different language and different culture requires and enables trans- his radio drama Words and Music there started a broadcasting of the Third Programme of Radio
lators, directors, actors, and audiences to leave the original text and migrate into a new theatrical en- Belgrade in 1965. Unfortunately, there are no traces left of the emitted television programme in
vironment. As suggested by Bandia, the “context of migration, by its very nature, evokes translation the sixties, so the first reliable proofs of Beckett’s presence in this media are from the seventies.
and bilingualism as a fundamental condition of being. Translation therefore partakes of the cultural Together with his books translated into Serbian novels, stories, plays, poems, essays, we can say
representation of otherness as a primordial instrument” (Bandia 283). This paper clarifies the defini- that Beckett’s mostly spiritual „migrations“ into other cultures mostly since he was our host in 1958,
tion of ‘Beckett’s theatre between migration and stasis’ that transcends cultural boundaries. when he spent a few weeks of his holidays during summer were very successful in the case of the
Serbian one. Since he himself was a voluntary migrant from one culture to another, and from one
Works Cited language to another, and from an outsider became a worldly famous writer, Beckett was familiar
with the migrant experience of being poor and anonymous. Those feelings are giving to his work a
Bandia, Paul F. (2011). ‘Translation, Migration, and Relocation of Cultures’. Bermann, Sandra and
universal message that could be understood worldwide much easier than one might think. So, in our
Catherine Porter, eds.
paper we will try to trace Beckett’s metamorphosis in different medias in Serbia, and his rise in our
A Companion to Translation Studies. (pp. 273-284). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. culture, during all those decades.
Sturge, Kate. (2011). ‘Cultural translation’. Baker, Mona, and Gabriela Saldanha, eds. Routledge Ency- Key Words
clopedia of Translation Studies. Second Edition (pp. 67-70). London: Routledge. Beckett, Serbia, medias, radio, television, spiritual migration

Key Words
foreignization, domestication, cultural translation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

618 619
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

620
Groups
Working
SCENOGRAPHY

621

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Adam Alston Petra Dotlacilova

University of Surrey Stockholm University

Dr. Adam Alston is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies and Programme Leader for the BA Theatre Petra Dotlacilova holds a BA degree in Italian Philology Charles University as well as a Master’s degree and
and Performance programme at the GSA, University of Surrey UK. His research traverses politics and aesthet- PhD 2016 in Dance Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Between 2015 and 2017, she
ics, with particular focus on the engagement of audiences in immersive and participatory theatre, and the collaborated in the project “Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage 1650–1760” at Leipzig University. Currently she
phenomenon of darkness. He is the author of Beyond Immersive Theatre: Aesthetics, Politics and Productive is pursuing doctoral research at Stockholm University, focusing on the costume designs by Louis-René Boquet
Participation Palgrave Macmillan 2016, and co-editor with Dr. Martin Welton QMUL of Theatre in the Dark: in Eighteenth-century France. In addition, she participates in the research project “Performing Premodernity.”
Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre Bloomsbury 2017. Adam is also co-convenor of the
Theatre and Performance Research Association’s Performance, Identity and Community Working Group. Costuming the Other: Aesthetic and Moral Interplays of the
Exotic Costume in the Late Eighteenth century
The radical witch: Decadence and the scenographic body in
Lauren Barri Holstein’s “Notorious” The second half of the eighteenth century saw a rather turbulent development of the theatre cos-
tumes, influenced by the ‘Enlightened’ aesthetic debate about art and theatre as well as by the
Shortly after the closure of IFTR 2017, an effigy of Judith Butler was burned in São Paulo by protes- changing social climate. The rococo fashion met the growing demands for historical and geograph-
tors shouting ‘burn the witch’. They were responding to her participation in a conference she co-con- ical authenticity, which started to be slowly applied on the costume on stage. In my presentation I
vened, falsely assuming that she would be addressing her ‘gender ideology’ as a feminist lesbian. would like to focus on the construction of the exotic characters that appeared on the stage of the
Whilst at the IFTR conference, myself and colleagues found a statue of Robert Baden-Powell – the French opera and ballet, designed mainly by the prolific dessinateur Louis-René Boquet 1717-1814.
founder of the Boy Scout movement – in São Paulo’s Praca Republica. This seemed anachronistic Turks, Indians, Chinese, but also Norwegians, Polish or Provençales were considered as the exotic
save for the ongoing presence of Boy Scouts in Brazil, but in hindsight his statue foreshadowed the other for the French court society and stylised in a specific manner. Especially in the case of the silent
effigy burning. As John R. Reed notes, ‘Baden-Powell organized his Boy Scout movement expressly ballets, the costume was the most functional element when it came to defining the provenience of
to counter the decadence he perceived in English Society’ Reed 1985: 3. Reed is referring to an the character function called by costume historian Anna Verdier the ‘dramaturgical efficiency’, in the
understanding of decadence as a ‘falling away’ from normative stasis, particularly a moral failing. same time it worked as an eye-catching decoration of the stage and as a sexually provoking image. I
This understanding is what resonates with calls to ‘burn the witch’, as Butler’s presence in São Paulo will explore the models that served or might have served to Boquet when creating these polyvalent
was understood by the protestors to be symbolic of declining moral integrity. Troubled by these costumes, combining traditional stereotyping strategies with more “authentic” elements. Which
events, but also inspired by recent theatre practice, this paper considers the witch as a harbinger images and objects where taken as models for the designer? How were they adapted for stage
of decadence. However, I will be arguing that decadence can be reclaimed as a means of resisting and why? Through analysis and comparison of the sources and Boquet’s designs, I will consider the
deeply embedded sexist and misogynistic normativity by exploring a recent performance by Lauren specific aesthetic and moral implication of these various medias, connecting them to the growing
Barri Holstein called Notorious 2017, which opened in the UK the same day as the Butler protests. European interest for the exotic goods, and finally focus on the exotic dance costume as such.
The scenographic body plays an essential role in Notorious, presenting the witch as an agent of
decadence. Focusing on the uses of props and costume that clothe or penetrate Holstein’s body, Key Words
and framing two core features of the decadent body – decay and excess – as movements away from exotic costume eighteenth-century France ballet opera
normative stasis, this paper addresses Notorious as an uncompromising reflection of the global pres-
sures faced by feminism today.

Key Words
Decadence, stasis, scenographic body, feminism, Lauren Barri Holstein
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

622 623
 WG WG

Geneva Foster Gluck Maria Celina Gil

Arizona State University University of São Paolo

EDUCATION Arizona State University: PhD student - Theatre and Performance of the Americas. Anticipated Graduated in Film School and Communication with professional experience in production design and costume.
graduation 2019. University of Arts London: MA Scenography, London, UK. 2003 University of Arizona: BFA Have worked on more than ten short and feature films, for cinema and television. Nowadays, working as cos-
Studio Art, performance and sculpture, Tucson, AZ. 2000 AWARDS / GRANTS / RESIDENCIES Arizona State tume designer of the Coletivo Inominável, a Theater Company based on Sao Paulo Brazil. Frequently, teach
University. Graduate College Fellowship. 2018 Arizona State University. Special Talent Award, AZ. 2015 / 2016 workshops and courses about embroidery, artisanal work and its social relations. Owner of an experimen-
Proyecto ÁCE. Artist Residency, Buenos Aires, AR. 2015 Arizona Commission on the Arts. Research and Devel- tal embroidery brand that produces decor pieces and outfits. Currently attending Masters in Drama School
opment Award, AZ. 2014 Tucson Pima Arts Council. New Work Grant, AZ. 2013 Circus Space. Lab:time Award, focused on Scenography and Costume Design, researching the possible narratives that emerge while using
UK. 2013 Circus Futures Award. Artist Residency at The Great Yarmouth Hippodrome, UK. 2012 Blast Theory. embroidery on costumes and also drawing a historical background of the technique. The research also investi-
Artist Residency with Interactive media designers, UK. 2011 Arts Council England. New work Grant, UK. 2010 gates the manual labor and artisanal creative processes.
La Breche, Cherbourg. Contemporary circus Artist development award, FR. 2009 Roundhouse, London. Artist
Residency, UK. 2007 Arts Council England and National Fairground Archive, Research Residency, UK. 2006 Textile Poetry and Experimental Costumes
TEACHING Arizona State University - Graduate Teaching Assistant - Design for Theatre and Film. 2015 - Pres-
ent. PIMA Community College - Adjunct Faculty - Design for Theatre. Tucson, AZ. 2013 - 2015 Literacy Connects
This paper aims to discuss how embroidery and the poetic manipulation of textiles can create differ-
- Stories That Soar - Devising performance in K-8 classrooms. Tucson, AZ. 2012-13 The Roundhouse Summer
Youth Program - Performance with interactive media. London, UK. 2009-2011. ent narratives and new results when used as basis to the creation of costumes. In this presentation,
we will report on the process and final results of the workshops which were carried out with the un-
dergrad students in Textiles and Fashion - mainly of the 2nd and 3rd year - during the Costume and
Where the Future Takes Place: Vibrant Matter, Power Geometry
Scenography class, taught by Prof. Dr. Fausto Viana, at USP. Students had to create a costume based
and Artist Event Making on Matéi Visniec’s play The body of a woman as a battlefield in the Bosnian war. This costume had a
peculiarity: it should be both part of the set panels of 2,00m x 1,40m and act independently on the
What drives this presentation is my desire to encounter and identify the ways that artists use spaces body of the actors. The creation of the costume should involve embroidery as a ritualistic tool for
and materials to perform with social, political and environmental implications. This research merges the actor to be in contact with the costume. We chose this play because it opens wide discussion on
the study of scenography and site specific performance to identify a new poetic modality of perfor- gender roles, not only discussing the situation of women in war contexts, but also in daily life, raising
mance production. In applying what Doreen Massey calls power geometry 2005 and what Jane Ben- topics such as gender violence and the position of women in society.
nett calls vibrant matter 2010 to performance making and artistic events that arise out of ecological
concerns, cultural critique and a postcolonial impulses, I hope to articulate what I see as an emer- Key Words
gent form of performance and event making poetics. By viewing vibrant matter and power geometry costume, costume design, embroidery, textile poetry
through an expanded definition of scenography, one that accounts for landscape, site specificity and
live locations of place, I consider the ways artistic works which take place in these environments
activate transformative spatial ontologies to form poetic, post-progress and decolonizing spatial en-
counters. Scenography, as one way to think through human-environment relations, provides a rich
discourse in which the spatial and ontological are linked. The themes of nation, identity and migra-
tion as they relate to land-based performance and ecology are inherent within Massey and Bennett’s
propositions as they both include notions of place and space through time and material. I identify
three case studies where artist-led projects demonstrate this theoretical and poetic proposition.
These sites of inquiry consist of: Alana Bartol’s work with oil fields in Alberta Canada, titled Orphan
Well Adoption Agency 2017, the indigenous artist collective Postcommodity, whose work Repellent
Fence 2015 activates indigenous aesthetics, politics and technologies along the Mexican-American
border wall, and the work of Ivan Puig and Andrés Padilla Domene titled, SEFT -1 2014, a nomadic
project that works historiographically with disused train systems across Mexico. I will explore how
these works use event making, spatiality and material attunement to shift ontological, epistemolog-
ical and historical narratives by activating notions of power geometry and vibrant matter.

Key Words
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

scenography, interdisciplinary performance, post-progress

624 625
 WG WG

Nick Hunt Ewa Kara

Rose Bruford College Columbia University

After a career as a professional lighting technician and designer, Nick started teaching at Rose Bruford Col- Ewa Kara received her PhD in Theatre from Columbia University in New York. Her research investigates contemporary
lege, where he is now Head of the School of Design, Management and Technical Arts. His research inter- scenography, in particular the emergence of new visual paradigms and their challenge to earlier staging conven-
ests include: the performative potential of light photography, light and performance digital scenography tions. Previously she studied theatre and art history at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and taught at
and digital performance the history of theatre lighting and the roles and status of the various personnel in- the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Her interests focus on scenography and the visual culture,
volved in theatre-making. Nick is a past co-convenor of the TaPRA Scenography working group in the UK, modern and contemporary theatre, as well as the history of the theatrical avant-garde and Polish drama and theatre.
and is currently a convenor of the Scenography working group of the International Federation for Theatre
Research. He is also an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. The Scenography of Refugee Migration in Ariane Mnouchkine’s “Le
Dernier Caravansérail” (2005) and Rimini Protokoll’s “Evros Walk
Cuddington: An Ongoing Photography Project
Water 1&2” (2017)
The public park is a paradigmatic element of suburbia: a meeting point of the rural and the urban, a
This paper discusses different modes of presenting the geopolitical humanitarian crisis of conflict mi-
constructed landscape that provides a civil amenity to the local residents. Cuddington is my ongoing
gration, with particular focus on spatial experimentation. It focuses on two productions: “Le dernier
project to photograph Cuddington Park, in the outer suburbs of south-west London, an attempt to
Caravansérail” 2005 by the Théâtre du Soleil and “Evros Walk Water 1&2” 2017 by Rimini Protokoll.
investigate the complex layers and interconnections, unfolding over time, that the public park rep-
Both of these pieces are collective works created by important European avant-garde directors, Ar-
resents. The surrounding housing was built in the 1920s and 1930s during the inter-war expansion of
iane Mnouchkine and Daniel Wetzel respectively. They respond to the post-2000 refugee crisis in
London. These suburbs were built commercially but promoted utopian ideals, offering a new middle
distinctly dramatic and scenographic terms. The transformations of performative spaces were creat-
class of railway commuters the opportunity to live in a ‘natural’ environment of tree-lined roads,
ed in the first work by Guy-Claude François, in spectacularly theatrical and epic style, and in second
grass verges, private gardens and public parks, away from the pollution and cramped conditions of
example by Adrianos Zacharias and Magda Plevraki, who combine a highly intimate approach with
the 19th Century inner suburbs and city centre. The new housing was built on farmland, and the
an immersive and interactive form of theatre. Both productions allow audiences to reflect on and
public park is both a relic of the previous, rural, landscape and a newly constructed and regulated
contextualize individual and collective experiences of forced displacement and of increasing multi-
space for leisure activities. Today, the park is used for walking dogs, informal sports and children’s
culturalism within European societies. In analyzing these these works, I emphasize how scenography
play, as well as serving as a habitat for wildlife. In my photography project, I am investigating the
becomes a vehicle of communication for highly visceral and emotional experiences, intended to
park’s multiple natures, at once a rural-agricultural landscape, a constructed, idealised landscape in
appeal to highly heterogeneous audiences. I show how diverse spatial solutions and recent per-
the fashion of the 18th Century landscape architects, and an extension of the domestic suburban
formative practices negotiate socio-cultural issue, ultimately looking to affect social and political
garden: a shifting landscape reflecting societal changes. I want to approach the park by referencing
understanding. However, I also suggest that spectacular scenography constantly threatens to un-
representations of landscape in the visual arts, but also by considering it scenographically: as a place
dermine these socio-political aspects of contemporary theatre. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates
of habitation. Residents enact their leisure activities, but the park’s boundary also connects the
how contemporary scenography responds to the processes of dehumanization and helps to shape
public realm with the private ‘backstage’ space of the rear gardens that back onto the park. Fences,
the theatre as a social force and inter-subjective space.
shrubs and trees ensure a carefully calibrated level of visibility, with houses overlooking the neatly
constructed public park, and park-goers able to glimpse the more-or-less orderly domestic zone in
Key Words
turn. http://www.photoscenography.org.uk/cuddington
scenography, Ariane Mnouchkine, Théâtre du Soleil, Daniel Wetzel, Rimini Protokoll
Key Words
scenography, photography, parkland, boundaries, suburbia
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

626 627
 WG WG

Gabriella Kiss Dominika Łarionow

Hungarian University of Fine Arts University of Lodz

Gabriella Kiss is stage- and costume designer. She usually works with independent companies like Kava Cultural PhD, lecturer at the Department of Art History, University of Łódź Poland also she is a Head of the Depart-
Group, Kompania Theatre Association or Balthazar Theatre. She graduated at the Scenography Department ment of Theater, Polish Institute of World Art Studies in Warsaw. She was a convener of Scenography Working
of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2007. She has been an Assistant Lecturer there since 2013. She fin- Group FIRT/IFTR 2006-2013. She was a member of: Editorial Board of the Journal “Theater and Performance
ished her Doctoral School at the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design in 2013. Currently she is working Design”, Routledge and she is a member of Editorial Committee “Theater Art Journal”, Tel Aviv University. She
on her DLA dissertation and masterwork. Her research is focusing on site-specific performances. publish two books: Przestrzenie obrazów Leszka Mądzika [Spaces of images by Leszek Mądzik], Lublin 2008
and „Wystarczy tylko otworzyć drzwi… Przedmioty w twórczości Tadeusza Kantora [„You only need to open the
Out of the Comfort Zone-Facing with the Others door…” Items in the works of Tadeusz Kantor], Łódź 2015.

I would like to introduce an experimental project from the scenographic perspective, that uses the The Image of a Hassid in the Works of Tadeusz Kantor as an
participatory theatre form. Being the scenographer, this was both an aesthetic and conceptual chal- Example of the Migration of the Sign from the Drawing, Through
lenge. Scenography design traditionally doesn’t take place in participatory theatre because of its the Theater to the Living Monument
site-specific and participatory character. Regarding its scenic minimalism in the aesthetic sense, this
kind of theatre doesn’t belong to traditional theatre. The aim of design, performance space and at- Tadeusz Kantor Polish director, painter, scenographer in the world known for his performances with
mosphere are to involve audiences to express their opinions in the offered topic. The main focus of the Crioct 2 Theater Dead class, Wielopole, Wielopole, died in Krakow on December 8, 1990. Since
the performance is the question of migration conceptually, this is a phenomenon forcefully dividing then, every year the actors Cricot 2 commemorate the death of Kantors standing as living monu-
modern European society. After consulting with several experts and having group workshops - exam- ments at the former seat Archive Cricot 2 in Kanonicza street in Cracow. With their gesture, the ac-
ining our personal motives of this topic -, we decided that we wanted to deal with fear. Fear to leave tors refer to the old paratheatrical form called tableau vivant. The presented layout is based on the
our comfort zone and fear of meeting with unknown Others. Hence, we searched for situations drawings of Tadeusz Kantor, who often depicted two Hasidim carrying the board as a metaphor for
where we could examine otherness from several sides. Our starting point was: I’m strange for you the gesture of the last salvation. Hasidim appeared also in the performances of the Cricot 2, their at-
and you’re strange for me: we are feeling the same. The Comfort zone –our performance’s title - af- tribute was also a board. I am interested in the migration and deformation of the plastic sign, which
ter a long search, became a story of two young couples. One couple lives in Syria, Aleppo the other has become something else in the drawing, something else in the theater and something else on the
in Hungary, not far from the Southern border, in a small village. Time has come for each to quit their street in Cracow after the death of Kantor.
comfort zone unexpectedly, they have to take a look in the others’ life, and make a decision. Our
aim was to open a temporary border crossing for those spectators who are willing to think about this Key Words
topic. We and we didn’t want to force the spectators to choose either side, we just wanted to have Tadeusz Kantor, Hassid, Polish art
a discussion together about the topic. Lastly, I would like to show videos about the productions and
summarise some feedback from spectators from different venues.

Key Words
features of participatory theatre, participatory theatre project presentation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

628 629
 WG WG

Maiju Loukola Jerome Maeckelbergh

Aalto University International Organisation of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians
Dr Maiju Loukola is a scenographer and spatial artist, Doctor of Arts and a University Researcher at Aalto ARTS, Born on 1 February 1945 in Blankenberge, Belgium. Studied Fine Arts painting and sculpture, and started his
Department of Film, Tv and Scenography. She is a board member of the online journal for artistic research scenographer’s career in 1974, designing since then more than 50 productions. He designed for drama and
RUUKKU and the Chair of the Finnish Oistat Center.She is a member of The Floating Peripheries - mediating the musicals as free-lancer, combining this with designing and making special props, masks and sculptures for
sense of place artistic research project 2017-2021, funded by the Academy of Finland. In her current research, countless other productions. Half of his design work was by order of the famous KJT Royal Youth Theatre in
she examines the politics of space as well as the spatial, temporal and narrative layers of sites defined as Antwerp, where he finally became Head of Design in 1993. Resigned from the KJT in 2000 and “retired” in
peripheral/marginal/excluded. In her artistic projects she often weighs the sensuous effects of mixing familiarity 2010. In the seventies, KJT performed in the Bourla theatre in Antwerp that opened in 1834. But also the KNS
with rancièrean radical strangeness, and draws inspiration from Lefebvres thematisations of the citizens right National Flemish Theatre had this building as their home location. The KNS had their performances in the eve-
to the city. One of Loukolas current projects is a series of urban space installations/interventions in which ning, the KJT was allowed to perform during 3 afternoons, with the restriction that nothing that was hanging
she mixes fiction-driven means with spatial and temporal narratives related to physical and imaginary sites. in for the adult performances may be touched. This was a severe restriction to scenographic possibilities. Can
you imagine to do a family musical with around 20 scene changes with only 2 or 3 bars left? This was my start
Scenographic Practices for Reclaiming Subjectivity through to discover the possibilities of this still present but forgotten heritage technology that can be used in contem-
Performing Space – case “People’s Architecture” porary scenography.

My paper approaches migration as a political, humanitarian and cultural issue - and more specifical- Migration of Heritage Theatre Technology to Contemporary
ly, in terms of the spatio-scenographic practices of inclusion related to the subjectification of the po- Performance Spaces
litical migrant figure within the public sphere. I will look at inclusive vs exclusive interventional sce-
nographic strategies through an exemplary case called Peoples Architecture, as well as through my This presentation intends to inspire scenographers, theatre architects and engineers by heritage
own perspective as an artist-activist-researcher in the frame of the Right To Live peaceful standing theatre technology: historic theatre machinery as afflatus for reintroducing this in essence basic
demonstration, run by a community of asylum seekers since Febryary 2017 in the heart of the capitol and relatively cheap technology into contemporary scenography and theatrical accommodation. An
of Finland, Helsinki.  Peoples Architecture Helsinki was a project for building a temporary dwelling overview of different historic techniques leads to proposals how to use and adapt this versatile tech-
in Helsinki city center. In autumn 2017 the Taiwanese architect HSIEH Ying-Chun launched an open nology for present-day performance. Existing theatres as well as “multifunctional spaces” can take
invitation to the citizens to participate and take responsibility of building a transitory shelter. The profit of the migration of this long time underestimated technology into contemporary use.
architects invitation was responded by over thirty asylum seekers, who have an ongoing project of
their own going on elsewhere in the city center - namely, the Right To Live standing demonstration Key Words
that has since its commencement gathered a large community of supporting citizens and peaceful Scenography, heritage, theatre technology
pro-open-border activists together. The already one-year-long collective human rights stage, what
the Right To Live is, has been operated by the asylum seekers themselves, and is thus an excellent
example of rancièrean equality at-work at the very core of Jacque Rancières elaboration of the con-
cept of equality lies the question concerning subjectification, which, in everyday terms means taking
things at ones own hands and refusing to submit to being categorised as excluded or other. The
underlying yet powerful spatial connotations and dimensions play a significant role in the process
of politization. I am looking at the case of Peoples Architecture Helsinki through addressing the
performativity of space through this particular case in terms of scenographic practices of reclaiming
space. In a rancièrean frame, in terms of equality, what is at stake is a process of reclaiming political
subjectivity through space, spatial acts and spatialisation. Following the rancièrean line of thought,
I will argue that it is the migrants, the stateless, or the sans-papier, who can truly challenge the bor-
ders of the community and its political consensus, through constituting as political actors. In Peoples
Architecture the porousness of the borderline between us and others was performed as dissolved, in
a space that we can call a dissensual space - a shared space of disagreement in which very different
cultural normalcies and contradictory mindsets can come to an encountering.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key Words
migration, inclusive vs exclusive scenographiuc practices, public space, performative act,
politics of space

630 631
 WG WG

Nevena Mrđenović Scott Palmer

University of Technology, Sydney University of Leeds

Nevena Mrđenović PhD is a theorist and designer with expertise in scenography and spatial design. Her cre- Dr Scott Palmer is a University of Leeds Excellence & Innovation Fellow, and lectures in scenography in the School
ative work is primarily concerned with performative and poetic capacities of space - and is inspired by the of Performance & Cultural Industries. His teaching and research focus on new ways of thinking about light as
concepts of memory, personal and collective identity, and entwined relationships between people and space. a creative performance practice, immersive theatrical environments and the interaction between technology
In her recently completed practice-based doctoral research, Nevena dealt with domestic spaces charged with and performance. Publications include the monograph Light: Readings in Theatre Practice Palgrave Macmillan,
mental experiences and destroyed homes as physical manifestations of interrupted identities. Situated within 2013 and Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design co-edited with Dr
the field of design, her research practice was established on theoretical framing, historical contexts, field trips Joslin McKinney Bloomsbury Methuen 2017. He is associate editor of the Routledge Theatre and Performance
and an artistic component. The artistic component was a physical and conceptual investigation of the after- Design journal, co-editor of the Bloomsbury Performance + Design book series and was co-convenor of the IFTR 
math of ethnic conflicts, and it aimed to represent live actions and direct experiences. In her creative work, Scenography Working Group 2013-16. Digital projects have included AHRC Projecting Performance Project
Nevena frames scenography as a discipline that holds the capacity to be utilised in different areas of spatial 2006-08 with Prof. Sita Popat & KMA , contributions to the digital scenography for DV8 Physical Theatres To Be
practices - focusing on those inscribed with fundamentals of narrativity and performativity. Nevena has previ- Straight With You 2007-9, and the realisation of Phoenix Dance & NVA’s Ghost Peloton Yorkshire Festival 2014.
ously worked across theatre, film, installation art, pedagogy - in Australia and Europe.
Designing Audience Experience for Mobile Performance: 
Scenographic Strategies in Tracing Post-War Domestic Atmospheres, Environment and Technological Agency
Mise-En-Scene in the Former SFR Yugoslavia
This paper emerges from work undertaken in collaboration with academics at University of Miami
Scenography is increasingly perceived as an open-ended structure, continually extending into diverse and as part of the Leeds Institute of Teaching Excellence’s LITE Creativity and the Mobile Phone
yet entwined fields of spatial and cultural practice and discourse. These interlaced fields mainly refer Fellowship with Dr Maria Kapsali. It focuses on issues arising from the creation of two public perfor-
to three-dimensional forms of artistic and expressive spatial practice, that variously inscribe the core mance projects staged in historic houses and their grounds in April 2017 and May 2018 in which a
notions of theatricality, mise-en-scene, narrative, transformation, action, and performativity. This scenographic sensibility was central to the creation of both live and digital performances. The digital
paper explores scenography as both a discipline that is concerned with visual and spatial investigation, performances were both experienced via mobile phone screens which Dorita Hannah suggests re-
and as a transformative conceptual force. It presents a setting in which a scenographic method is cast spectators as participants and creates scenarios which can facilitate a new reflexive or critical
applied as an inversion of common scenographic frameworks, and is established from a forensic engagement with performance material 2017. Through the mobile phone screen, the realm of sce-
standpoint. Such scenographic perspective positions war-torn domestic interiors as starting points – nography is expanded beyond the frame of the stage and these ubiquitous devices consequently
interpreting them as abandoned mise-en-scenes inscribed with layers of spatial narratives, traces of offer the potential for new interactions and exchanges to emerge: “the screen has become an exten-
time, and tactile remnants of past violence and trauma. In this inverted context, found war- ravaged sion of the body and lived space as well as a contemporary site for re-iterating or challenging world-
domestic interiors are seen as scenographic afterimages of violent acts, and emerge as principal views.” 2017: 40What might this mean for making contemporary performance? Arnold Aronson also
physical remnants of a collective traumatic narrative. The presented investigation is accompanied notes the tensions between the live performance and the screen and wonders if scenographic con-
by a series of photographic artefacts, which remain from a physical and conceptual investigation cepts need rethinking: “Can virtual space or non-dimensional space have power?’ 2008: 29Through
of the aftermath of ethnic conflicts in the former SFR Yugoslavia ‘TRAVEL’ 2011-2014. Through the examples from two site-specific performances in heritage contexts in which the audience were cen-
presentation of these artefacts, the paper aims to demonstrate that scenographic strategies hold tral to the design and experience of the work, this paper will attempt to address these emerging
the capacity to redefine the abandoned mise-en-scenes as critical tools for comprehending history. concerns for scenographic and wider performance practices. Estate 360° 2018 an experimental film
Insignia of violence and trauma is inscribed in all of the captured dwellings. Through the acts of delivered via the smartphone screen and VR headset. Temple Newsam House Leeds, UK provides
scenographic ‘decoding’ in terms of spatial and visual exploration and interpretation, the material the location for an environmental performance on the site of the First World War Auxiliary Hospital.
and immaterial testimony of discovered sites becomes the prime witness to a collectively lived The durational performance will be augmented through a digital artefact, accessed via smartphone
traumatic past. and triggered through GPS location.

Key Words Key Words

scenography, performance, war, trauma, space, domestic, home, interior, forensic, mie-en-scene, Scenography, Digital Performance, Audience, Mobile Phone, Augmented Reality
artefact, aftermath, performance, violence, narrative, remnants, monuments
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

632 633
 WG WG

Sofia Pantouvaki Dalmir Rogerio Pereira

Aalto University University of São Paulo

Dr. Sofia Pantouvaki is a scenographer PhD and Professor of Costume Design at Aalto University, Finland. Her PhD in Performing Arts by the Communications and Arts Department of the University of São Paulo, full pro-
background includes over 80 designs for theatre, film, opera and dance productions in Europe, as well as nu- fessor of the Aesthetics of theperformance Scenography and Costume at the Theater Course of the Anhembi
merous curatorial and exhibition design projects. Co-author, History of Dress - The Western World and Greece Morumbi University. He is a set designer, costume designer, performance designer, and acts as creator and re-
2010 editor, Yannis Metsis - Athens Experimental Ballet 2011 co-editor, Presence and Absence: The Performing searcher on the relations between object, space and body in the contemporary theatrical scene. Coordinator
Body 2014, Dress and Politics 2015 and Tribes – A Walking Exhibition 2017. She is Editor of the academic jour- of the “Research Laboratory for Performance, Object and Space Design”. Member of the “Space, Visual and
nal Studies in Costume and Performance Vice-Head for Research, OISTAT/Costume Sub-commission Co-Chair, Sound Poetics WG” and the “Forum of Editors” of the Brazilian Association of Research and Post-graduation in
Critical Costume and Co-Convener, IFTR Scenography WG. She was Project Leader of Performance: Visual As- Performing Arts. Member of the Research Center for “Costume and Technology of the University São Paulo”.
pects of Performance Practice ID.Net. 2010-2015 Costume Design Curator for World Stage Design 2013 Asso- Member of the scientific committee of the “Brazilian Congress of Scientific Initiation in Design” and “Fashion
ciate Curator, Costume in Action WSD 2013 and Co-Curator of the Finnish Student exhibit, winner of the Gold and the International Congress of Design”. Member debater in “ Scene Costume WG” Fashion Colloquium.
Medal at PQ’15. Sofia founded Costume in Focus, the first research group on performance costume, currently Member of the IFTR Scenography WG since 2017. And author of Costume and Set Design for Beginners Com-
based at Aalto University, and leads a research project on Costume Methodologies funded by the Academy of pany of Letters and Colors, 2015.
Finland. She lectures, supervises PhDs and publishes internationally.
Exhaustion and Creation: The Object as a Power Device in the
Through Figaro’s Dream: Scenography as Migration to Children’s Image- Uprising
Creative Minds and Social Worlds
This study proposes to extend the discussion beyond the relation object, body and space in the
By exploring scenography, children achieve a more extensive understanding of theatre as an aesthet- theater adopting theatricality as scenic practice CABALLERO, 2010 in the expression of the set of
ic, collaborative, and ‘designed’ adventure. This paper analyses the structure, the implementation scenic modalities - including those not systematized by the theatrical taxonomy - as performances
and the results of a scenography-led activity within the large-scale EU-funded educational and artis- and the uprising in which the object - inanimate materials - acts in relation to the body and space
tic research project “Interactive Opera at Primary Schools” led by Greek National Opera GNO, during as  enhancing device for imagination in the composition of images of confrontation in events of the
which GNO toured to over 150 public schools 2012-2015. The project included a new professional social sphere beyond specifically artistic. The analysis is based on the photographic records and es-
staging of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville as a stimulus for schoolchildren to interact actively and cre- says organized by the art historian Didi-Huberman in  Uprisings 2017 in which the author weaves a
atively with an opera performance, becoming co-creators of the final outcome presented on stage. diachronic narrative of the theme from examples organized in thematic groups that intercalate from
Here, the term ‘interactive’ does not refer to technological means but to the children’s active partic- artistic works to events of popular resistance. Such displacement of the gaze is, however, due to the
ipation in the making of the opera in direct interaction/collaboration with the artists-professionals adoption of theoretical practice as an imaginative exercise of uprising as opposed to the weakening
who migrated from their conventional work environment. The children’s contribution affected the of global democracy. Thus, transposing the denomination scenic practices to another context and
design of the performance sets, props and costumes and made each individual performance differ- discipline suggests the use of the notion of immigration from an aesthetic perspective of displace-
ent from the next. Enthused by the narrative and the characters of the Barber of Seville and Rossini’s ment from the concept of theatricality to the event in the social sphere emerged from the willpower
life, the schoolchildren were involved in the design and making of a side drop, which complemented of subjugated bodies. Adopting as a reading operator the deleuzian concept of exhaustion DELEUZE,
the scenographic synthesis on stage. This paper focuses on this specific element, assigned to an 2010, in which the author refers to the visual and sound image as a way of exhausting the possible
interlude scene entitled “Figaro’s Dream”. Invited to imagine what Figaro might be dreaming, inter- due to its dissipative condition in which the exhausted is in the condition of subject and space dilut-
preted and often filtered through their own dreams, the schoolchildren drew it on a calico surface. ed, incapable of action. According to Didi-Huberman it is in this condition of death instinct that the
This paper provides an evaluation of the produced artworks from a content analysis perspective, desire power is established in the unleashing of elements, materialized in surfaces and architectures
discussing the themes that emerged from a compositional analysis perspective, discussing patterns, that potentiate the imagination through the transitive state of the object. That is, given the real
colours, materials and techniques used and from a sociological perspective, focusing particularly condition of the impediment of acting establishes the desire for imagination and the triggering of
on the evidence of the children’s collaboration working as a team with a common goal. Through possibilities.
scenographic thinking, the visualisation of Figaro’s Dream enhanced children’s creative expression,
cultural interaction and social integration. Key Words
object, exhaustion, image- uprising
Key Words
scenography, children, opera, creative expression, cultural interaction, social integration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

634 635
 WG WG

Monika Ponjavić Lucy Thornett

University of Novi Sad University of the Arts London

Monika Ponjavić 1982 is and architect, scenographer, theater researcher and film critic. Holds MA in Archi- Lucy Thornett is a scenographer and Lecturer in Spatial Design at University of the Arts, London. She is
tecture from University of Banja Luka BiH, MA in Theater Studies from University of Amsterdam and MA in currently co-convenor of the TaPRA Theatre and Performance Research Association Scenography Working
International Performance Research from University of Arts in Belgrade. She exhibited her work at Prague Group, and an associate editor for Blue Pages, the journal for the Society of British Theatre Designers.
Quadrennial, Alternativa: Materiality, October Salon, Mixer, BITEF, Sterijino pozorje etc. Most notable work- She is also a founding member of London College of Communication’s Space and Place Research Hub.
shop she attended was Open Space Lab PQ11 and Double Mirror WSD13, which she led. She is the author of
the book Film curation: From the Black Box to the Black Box of the White Cube 2014, representative for BiH Aesthetic Shifts: Online Image Tools, Filter Bubbles and
at the Eurimages film fund and a member of OISTAT Serbia. Her PaR project Body Never Lies was published
in Performance Research: On Scenography 2013. She is the co-author of ten scenographies for theatre and in Contemporary Performance Design
public space, which she did in Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pittsburgh. Currently works for the Ministry
of Education and Culture of Republic of Srpska as a senior associate for strategic planning of culture and EU As digital technologies increasingly extend into our lives, there is a need to understand how the tech-
funds, as well as a film critic for Serbian Café and Nezavisne. She is a PhD candidate in Scene Design at the nically-mediated subjectivities of theatre practitioners impact on theatre-making practices, even in
University of Novi Sad. performances that do not explicitly engage with the digital. Taking the theme of migration in its
broadest sense as a shift in practice, I will explore how digital tools used as part of the creative
Scenographic Body In Shifting Scenography: Who Would Be God In process in scenography create a shift in theatre aesthetics.  Specifically, this paper will focus on the
Bosnia? use of online image tools for visual research in performance design: how has this created a shift not
only in scenographic practice but in the aesthetics of contemporary performance design?   Online
Using the artistic concept of Who would be God in Bosnia?, a work by Monika Ponjavić, as its prem- platforms for searching for and sharing images such as Google image search and Pinterest mean that
ise, this paper will attempt, aside from introducing and describing the term scene design in the algorithmic processes are intervening into scenographic practices. Google image search personalis-
context of the theatre, performance and exhibition discourse, to reevaluate the role and position es its results according to the location, previous searches and browser history of the user. Similarly,
of scenography in contemporary theater art, as well as in art in general. The idea behind this work image sharing platform Pinterest uses a visual search function to show users images that are visually
emerged from the question - is it possible for theatrical, but also other art works to be presented in similar to the ones they have already looked at. The term ‘filter bubble’ has emerged to describe the
an exhibition space, even when they are not necessarily intended for such presentation, and is there impact of such algorithms on politics. In this paper I build on existing scholarship on the impact of
a point in striving to such a concept, questioning further what actual use does art itself have of it? these filter bubbles on visual culture, discussing this specifically in relation to scenography.   Through
The concept in question is an open artistic concept, based on the theory which has its final product a series of case studies and interviews with practicing performance designers, this provocation will
- a play, video, performance, exhibition, artistic documentation or scenography - positioned in an explore how algorithmic image tools intervene into the creative process of scenography, on the one
equal relation to the methodology it uses. That means that the product of the work itself, although hand providing designers with instant access to a vast array of images, and on the other hand per-
important, is not crucial for the achievement of the set goal. The methodology mentioned here con- petuating aesthetic preferences through filter bubbles.  I will trace the impact of these technologies
stitutes of such process in which the production of a play, performance, staging an exhibition, and on outcomes in performance design, investigating how the circulation of particular kinds of photo-
all the accompanying elements of which it will be consisted, would actually happen simultaneously graphic, cinematic and digital images affect the aesthetics of live performance.
and with a clear intent. The work strives to explore questions dealing with multiple aspects of per-
formance art, history, culture, religion and other areas of human activity and existence, whilst being Key Words
treated through a production that transcends the traditional perception of space in the context of scenography, digital, online, image, aesthetic
performing arts, considering that it is predefined as a work that has the capacity of being staged in a
theater, as well as in found, public space or a museum, using body and scenography as its principal
tools.

Key Words
body, performance as research, scenography,  space, text
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

636 637
 WG WG

Vera Velemanova Fausto Viana

Arts and Theatre Institute Prague University of Sao Paolo

Věra Velemanová [email protected], [email protected] Researcher and employee of the Set and costume design teacher at the University of Sao Paulo.
Department of Czech Theatre Studies, Arts and Theatre Institute. Her research focuses on the 19th and 20th
century Czech set design and theatre history of Russian immigrants in Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1938. Antonio Jose, the Poet and the Inquisition: A Costume Design Project
She is an author of texts elaborating on the issues of legionary theatre in Russia between 1914 and 1920. She
also works as a curator of the exhibitions with theatrical themes. Since 2013: postgraduate studies at the De- This paper aims to discuss how an 18th century costume can be used as the basis of work for
partment of Theatre Studies of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague. very experimental approaches to the same theatrical text. Based on the play Antonio Jose, the
poet and the inquisition a play written in the 19th century about the Jewish-Brazilian dramaturg
Russian Stage Design in Inter-war Czechoslovakia: A beautiful Antonio Jose, students were challenged to create and draw six costumes and produce one based
Invasion of the East on their conceptions of the play, some very radical, contemporary and imaginative. The project was
developed with students from the University of Sao Paulo, involving fashion and drama students.
After 1918, President T. Masaryk invited thousands of refugees from the Russian Empire beaten by
civil war to the newly-established Czechoslovak Republic. They were able to study and develop their Key Words
profession in Czechoslovakia on the basis of a document called the Russian Assistance Event. In par- costume, costume design, embroidery, textile poetry
ticular, a significant intellectual center of Russian emigration, including scientists, physicians, writ-
ers, artists, was formed in Prague. One of the fields in which Russian emigrants particularly applied
was theater, scenography. The text of the contribution follows this line, which includes both artists
whose base was outside Czechoslovakia, but for Czechoslovak theaters they worked abundantly Ivan
Bilibine, Nikolai Benois, Xenia Bogouslavskaya, as well as artists who permanently Nikolai Zarecki,
Mikhail Romberg in Czechoslovakia.

Key Words
russian emigration-Czech theatre-scenography-Czechoslovakia-civil war-1920s, 1930s
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

638 639
 WG WG

Nick Wood
The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

After Oxford University, Nick first worked as Playground Leader with Ed Berman in North Kensington, and
as Assistant Director with Lindsay Anderson at the Royal Court. Writing credits include Hampstead Theatre,
Orange Tree, Kings Head, BAC and radio and television. He was a Founder Member of the Equality Group ICA.
Directing credits include a UK tour with the improvisation group ‘Theatre Machine’. Appointed Lecturer in
Dramaturgy at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1994, he was a Convenor of Dramaturgy: A User’s
Guide Conference 1999, Edward Gordon Craig Colloquium 2002 and founder of the Dramaturgy Forum 2000.
Papers and workshops include: Scenography and Performance Symposium Loughborough University, 2004
How to Act Conference Central School of Speech and Drama, 2007 Improvisation Continuums University of
Glamorgan, 2007 Writing Continuums York St.John University, 2008, Theatre Applications Central School of
Speech and Drama, 2010, and IFTR Conferences Barcelona, 2013 and Stockholm 2016. In recent years he has
led a number of walks, culminating in A Short Walk in the National Gallery - considering how space and our
understanding of perspective might lead to the generation of a new performance work -  including his latest
project Flatness and Depth – the Play.

Draft C Flatness and Depth - the Play

For this new work I propose an event with a particular demographic: ‘Goodness only knows why or
how many elderly actors have been gathered together, on the platform, and in the auditorium, or
what system of attraction or coercion has been used.  Perhaps a rumour went round the pubs and
retirement homes. Perhaps a lifelong habit of saying yes has brought them together or the very last
time.’ Congregating hopefully in the foyer, this ill-disciplined crew carrying various disabilities work
their way through the spaces of a conventional theatre, resisting attempts of the management to
impose order and of the youthful director to impose meaning on their impulsive ramblings. Drawing
on my contribution Flatness and Depth: Reflections in The Potentials of Spaces ed. Alison Oddey
and Christine White,  and reflecting in part the progress of my own work from carefully scripted
plays to less predictable perambulatory events, this imagined disruptive journey may share certain
properties with the shadowy procession of William Kentridge’s ‘The Refusal of Time’ - though in this
case the shadowy figures will be three-dimensional and their voices will be loud and clear. By placing
images of Walks undertaken in recent years,  beside drawings of the old Masters,  and showing pho-
tos and architectural plans of the Hampstead Theatre alongside sound extracts from the proposed
play,  I aim to provide a kind of visual and aural map for the new work, useful in itself for provoking
discussion and criticism around it,  and also offering a model for how such events, in which the acti-
vation of the audience plays an increasingly  important role, could be imagined and communicated
to prospective participants and stakeholders in the future.

Key Words
Flatness and Depth
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

640 641
 Working THEATRE
ARCHITECTURE
Groups
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

642 643
 WG WG

Attila Antal Katalin Bagosi

University of Theatre and Film, Budapest Technical University of Cluj Napoca
Theatre and film director, composer, author. Doctoral student at the University of Theatre and Film, Buda- Katalin BAGOSI, Architect  Work experience  2015 Set-designer for the play Nina, by MateiVisniec, directed by
pest, Hungary. SELECTED WORKS director, composer, author: Someone’s Angel, Atelje 212, Belgrade. Mary and Sardar Tagirovsky in Gheorgheni, Romania
2014 Collaboration with architectural office Lundi et Demi’, partic-
the Sea, Napsugár Theatre, Békéscsaba.  The White Whale’s Song, National Theatre, Zrenjanin. Garden Sale, ipation to national architectural contest of designing Romanian Pavilion for Expo Milan’15
2012 Collaboration
Napsugár Theatre, Békéscsaba. Invisible Monuments, Bitef Theatre, Belgrade. Babett Lies, Újvidéki Theatre, with architectural office ‘PLANWERK’, Urban studies for Masterplan of the city Oradea
2010 - 2013 Teaching
Novi Sad. Together, Summer Cinema/KDT, Subotica. Christmas Eve of the Ivanovs, Hungarian State Theatre, assistant and co-responsible for Design Studio, Interior design at Faculty of Architecture and Construction, Ora-
Cluj-Napoca. The Seven-Headed Fairy, Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre, Timisoara. Monologue, Cultural dea. Curator of exhibitions including students projects.  Education  2014 - 2015 PhD exchange student at KU
Centre, Novi Sad. The City of Demons, KDT, Subotica/MASZK, Szeged. Political in Post-Drama Theatre, book Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Brussels, Belgium
from 2012 PhD researcher in Architecture - theme ’Experi-
Fokus, Subotica. Garden of the Selfish Giant, Mini Teater, Ljubljana. SELECTED AWARDS: Best Music, Festival of mental theatre in contemporary age at Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
Referres: Adriana MATEI, Architect,
Professional Puppet Theatres of Serbia: Song of the White Whale. Best Music, May Games Festival, StariBečej, Professor, PhD / Daniela Gologan pen name MirunaRuncan, Professor, PhD, Theatre critic 2004-2010 Bachelor
Invisible monuments. Best Director, Drama Writer’s Competition, Hungary. Garden Sale. Best Director, Drama / Master in Architecture BA+MA Technical University of Cluj NapocaPublications  Appearance of articles ‘The
Writer’s Competition, Serbia 23-Year Dream. Best Music, Best Total Design, Trema Art Festival, Serbia, Mono- performance of transformation’ and ‘Theatre. Fiction? Reality. The metamorphosis of sensations’ , both in
logue. Best Music, Festival of Theatres of Voivodina, Serbia Neoplanta. architecture magazine ARHITEXT issue no.4, 2015 Appearance of Graduation Project Experimental theatre’ in
architecture magazine ARHITEXT issue no.4, 2011, and on the professional architectural blog INDRAZNESTE ,
Grasping the Moment: The Ephemeral Nature of Non-Theatre being part of the 20 best graduation projects selection of 2011.
Performance Spaces
Theatrical Space as Extension of the Scenography of a
This paper addresses the issues of instability and a fragile state of non-theatre performance spac- Performance
es. In a context of the overall flow of architecture within the turbulent social, cultural and political
circumstances that surround it, we want to address the importance of grasping the moment in the Theatrical space as extension of the scenography of a performance  This paper will question and
idea of exploiting potentials of creative engagement with non-theatre spaces – especially when the analyse the importance and relevance of the theatrical space as crucial part of the performative act.
goals of such endeavours surpass the sole production of an artwork, and become an inevitable step As an architect, my main interest is how to use a given theatrical space, and through a specific case
in a chain of events, aiming towards establishment of a specific cultural identity, in which both archi- study I will emphasise the connection between the built environment, the theater itself, and the
tecture and theatre play an important role.       Through the case study of The Hempt House in Novi ephemeral theatrical performance. The theater, as neutral it can be, if intertwined with the perfor-
Sad, Serbia, the paper deals with the process of detecting its co-performative potentials, through the mances, could generate a whole new understanding of what a construction’s characteristics can of-
stages leading towards a participatory initiative that would result in the opening of the Hempt Muse- fer. Spectator’s senses and perception are triggered through the way of usage of the existent space.
um in 2021. Following the changes in the perception of the location, through a series of site-specific, My ongoing research is focused on the extended spatial understanding of the built environment, the
ephemeral spatial interventions, in a three-year span of actions, the fundaments were set for devel- theatre. Specific researchers are already mentioning scenography as a ‘prostheses’ of a spectacle,
oping a site-based theatre performance, as the final station towards reaching the initiative’s goals. but seeking the importance of the spatial characteristics of the theatrical space, could form a greater
In the end, we will discuss the events that followed, contributing to the fate of its implementation. use of the given, existing theaters. My case study, where I am a creator set-designer and audience in
In such a process, there is an inevitable and vibrant fluctuation between the architectural space and the same time is ‘Nina, or the fragility of stuffed seagulls’ by MateiVisniec, directed by Sardar Tagi-
the performative actions, which constantly shapes and re-shapes the relationships between space, rovsky at Figura Studio Theatre, held in a multifunctional theatrical venue in Gheorgheni, Romania.
narrative and time.       How can we generate a new cultural requisite that results in a joint profes- This experiment exemplifies our struggle of a spatial transmission of the screenplay, the affect on
sional and public action, through spatial agency? How can theatre act as an agent, shaping public audience and how scenography and space can operate with them, and not only.
opinion, broadening and deepening the awareness of a specific site with a significant relevance in
the history of a city? Through what kind of performative actions, interdisciplinary methods and pro- Key Words
cesses can theatre bring to life an architectural space? What is the potential of the physical space in theatrical space way of usage perception spatial understanding scenography
devising a performance?

Key Words
site-specific performance, ephemeral, non-theatre space, spatial agency, participatory initiative,
Hempt house, social environment
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

644 645
 WG WG

Stephen Bain Sarah Blissett

University of Tasmania University of Roehampton
Stephen Bain is an Aotearoa: New Zealand theatre maker, trained in Architecture (Victoria University of Wel- Sarah Blissett is an artist and PhD researcher in Performance Studies at the University of Roehampton. She
lington, NZ), Theatre (Toi Whakaari, NZ) and Scenography (a.pass, BE), he has directed and designed many holds a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MA Distinction from the Royal Central School of Speech
original plays and performances since the early 1990s. For the past 10 years he has been specifically engaged and Drama. Her research investigates Food and Ecology in Performance, exploring new materialist philosophy
in public-space performances including audio interventions, theatrical shows and interactive installations pre- in relation to the role played by algae ecosystems in earth’s planetary ecology. Her work explores ecological is-
sented in Western European countries and throughout New Zealand. In 2016 Stephen began Phd studies at the sues of multispecies entanglement and trans-corporeal relations. In 2016 Sarah was awarded the ASTR Thom-
University of Tasmania (AU) researching public space performance and the strategic role of fiction to unsettle as Marshall Student Award for her paper Biomimincry in Performance: Trans/forming Environments and was
the political dynamics of space. selected to participate in the 2016 COST Action New Materialism Training School at TATE. She has presented
at several conferences in the UK and internationally, including: PSi 2016 ‘Performance Climates’ in Melbourne,
Performing Fiction and Unsettling Reality with a paper titled Petro-performance: Fuelling Art Activism, a performance presentation at TAPRA 2016 titled
Plates, PSi 2017 ‘Fluid States’ conference in Hamburg, with a paper titled Plankton Performers: Trans-corporeal
Trophics, a performance presentation of Sargassum Stew at Work Processing postgraduate forum at Chisen-
The city is a place of ever-increasing privatisation, where participation and the ‘rights to the city’ as en- hale Dance Space in Nov 2017.  Her work has been published in Feast journal and she is a peer reviewer for
visaged by philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, are mediated by a neoliberal agenda within the the postgraduate journal Platform.
dominance of capitalism. While city dwellers seek out public space for some sense of democratically rep-
resented reality, it is often socio-politically constructed fiction that adds complexity to the public realm.
This paper suggests that deliberately theatricalised acts of fiction slip between the cracks Performative Architecture: Fluid Structures & Migrant Ecologies
of so-called reality and suggest an alternative symbolic order that unsettles authority, cre-
ating sites for public mobility amidst rising homelessness and migrating economic classes. This paper will explore expanded notions of architecture in performance in relation to new mate-
Theatre is founded on shared fiction to form empathic bonds. Many of these techniques are now ad- rialist theories of entangled and intra-active bodies and spaces. A central concern is how examples
opted by political representatives, institutions and individuals, embracing ‘fictional facts’ in pursuit of of design, and interdisciplinary forms of practice, respond to shifting materialities, environments
empathy. Critics of a ‘post-truth’ era claim that fictional narratives obscure truth, however I suggest and conditions, as a result of climate change. This eco-critical perspective aims to engage with the
it may also provide strategic examples of how fiction can resist power and enact alternative realities. material effects of climate change, and how this impacts displaced humans and nonhumans around
Referring contemporary sociologist Saskia Sassen’s suggestion that ‘cities help us hack for- the globe, drawing on RosiBraidotti’s Nomadic Philosophy and Serpil Opperman’s theorisation of
mal power systems’  (2017, p.3), I will reflect on two urban performance works I have ‘Migrant Ecologies’, to consider how different forms of architecture and spatial practices are emerg-
presented: interventions that transplant fictional structures into the public space. ing in response to environmental change. Another key consideration is how performance theory
The durational performance Baby, where are the fine things you promised me? mobilis- and applied concepts of architecture, reveal how different methodologies are also embedded in
es the symbol of home as a miniature Victorian (colonial) cottage, inhabited on the footpath these processes, for example cartography, which Braidotti describes as, “a theoretically based and
and public places of the city. Amidst a ballooning population of those who can no longer af- politically informed reading of the process of relation” Braidotti 2011: 4. Questions around cartog-
ford to live in a home, miniaturisation of the socialist dream is theatrical fiction as resistance. raphy are crucial for investigating the relationship between methodology and potential approaches
The Floating Theatre treats theatre architecture as mobilised dream space. Floating on water, the to reconfiguring boundaries regarding practice, research and sites of performance encounter. This
imaginative world is cut adrift from the financialized city centre yet still accessible via gangplank. approach to performance and architecture is embedded in an investigation into materiality and vital-
Theatre survives exclusion in a playful game of hide-and-seek with the city, migrating from the priv- ity that extends beyond and through the human, beginning with modes of relationality. Peg Rawes
ileged centre. proposes a theory of ‘poetic biopolitics’ for considering how, “Material and poetic languages of life,
generated by performative and spatial art practices, are brought into proximity with feminist and
Key Words        post-structuralist philosophy and are deliberately used to suggest transversal modes of expression
Fiction, public space, post-truth between disciplines, people, places and environment” Rawes 2016: 3. Rawes highlights a feminist
method that builds on a ‘politics of location’, which is crucial for how this paper will investigate the
relationship between bodies, site and practice, in a range of examples that reveal the complex en-
tanglement between geopolitics and migrant ecologies.

Key Words
migrant ecologies, architecture, feminist philosophy, biopolitics, geopolitics, nomadic theory
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

646 647
 WG WG

Romana Bošković Živanović Adela Bravo Sauras

University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical sciences, Department for Architecture and Design Universitaet Der Kuenste, Berlin

Romana Bošković Živanović is a graduated engineer of Architecture and she received her PhD in Scene Design Adela Bravo Sauras (1981) has an architect degree from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Ma-
from the University of Arts in Belgrade. She is an associate professor at the Department for Art and Design, drid and studied theater direction in the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Madrid and currently
Faculty of Technical Sciences FTS, University of Novi Sad UNS and was a lecturer at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts is doing a MA in applied Theatre sciences at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft (Justus-Liebig
in Belgrade and a chair of Undergraduate Academic Studies Scenic Architecture, Technique and Design at FTS, Universität, Giessen, Germany). Thanks to a postgraduate scholarship, she is making a Doctoral research study
UNS and chair of OISTAT Technology Commission. In the centre of her field of interests are technology of the- in the Universität der Künste Berlin among Architecture and Theatre. In june 2009 she founded in Berlin the
atre and architecture, stage management and technical production. She was involved in technical production performance installation group NoFourthWall (www.nofourthwall.com [4]). She has worked as an architect
of many performances, events and art projects on both national and international level. and has done theater and film direction, installation and dramaturgy in NoFourthWall or in collaboration with
others (XXI Esposizione Internazionale della Triennale di Milano, Milano Game festival; Thomas Bo Nilsson at
Home of Culture in RavnoSelo: Architecture, Technology and Schaubühne Berlin and Schauspielhaus Viena; The Agency at Volksbuehne and Muenchner Kammerspiele,
Circle Line with Enzo Cucchi; Italian Embassy in Berlin; Gustavo Tambascio Teatro de la Zarzuela Madrid; La
Management Fura dels Baus, “XXX”; Nieto & Sobejano Berlin; Dellbrügge & de Moll; Berlin TAK Theater; European Architec-
ture and Urbanism congress EURAU; Critic-all I International Conference on Architectural Design & Criticism;
Homes of Culture[1] are specific cultural institutions, which were established in accordance with Lasede COAM; HONG Architekten Projekt-Management GmbH, Sanja Ristic; PopUp Theatrics New York; Santa
political, ideological and moral aspiration at the space of Ex-Yugoslavia, in urban as well as in rural Ragione, Aescht & Berthold Architekten…). Some of her projects have been shown in spaces such as Insti-
context. These kind of cultural centres had multiple and different functions, primarily related to arts, tuto Cervantes, Ballhaus Ost, MicaMoca, FIT, Acudkunsthaus, HAU (100 Grad), Gallery WortWedding or the
sports, education and entertainment programs. They all shared the fact that they meet the cultur- Prinzessinnengärten in Berlin as well as in Edinburgh (Fringe Festival, Summerhall), Buenos Aires (Bienal Arte
al needs of a local community. Programs of such architectural objects supported decentralisation Joven), Bucharest (The Future is Feminine,Arcub Center, Teatru Bucuresti), Basel (Schlachthaus Theater), Seni-
strategies of culture and art, as well as their own production, while today they infrequently feature galia (Italy) (Rotonda sul Mare, kuratiert Marcello Smarrelli ), Madrid (Tabacalera, Sala Triengulo/ Teatro del
unusual and atypical contents for this typology group.[2] Barrio) Frankfurt Oder (Tag der offenen Tür, Messe und Veranstaltungs GmbH) , Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt
Through the case study of the Home of Culture in RavnoSelo, the paper deals with the functions of Festival Nachtlichter Tagträumer). They got prices in competitions or grants such as the Competition “Per-
formance Architecture competition European Capital of Culture 2012” (Guimaraes, Portugal),Festival Scena
such objects in the present time, namely the challenges related to architectural programming and
Simulacro 2012, Sala Triángulo (Madrid), “Mobile Schwimmende Architektur”, Großräschen-Lausitz: “floating
design challenges in creating new cultural institutions above all in rural environments. Home of Cul- space” (Berlin), 5ª Competition’s edition “Design Beyond East and West“, Hanssem Co. Ltd (Architecture Ko-
ture in RavnoSelo has burned down in March 2016 and since then it is out of function. It is in very rean Style category),Berlin Förderung (Fachbereich Kunst und Kultur), Kulturamt in hessen, “Neubau Bühnen
bad construction state and it requires serious and comprehensive engineering interventions that Köln am Offenbachplatz” or Participar.de, Goethe Institut + Instituto Cervantes (Berlin-Madrid).
would imply reconstructing and upgrading an existing building, equipping it with new stage technol-
ogy, as well as creating a new polyvalent institution. The “Architectonic Turn” In Theatre or the “Architectonic Theatre”
Key words: homes of cultures, scene design, scenic architecture, stage technology Is there an “Architectonic Turn” happening in some contemporary theatre praxis?, What is
the role architecture plays in some theatre projects?, why there are always more architects
collaborating with theatre makers or directly making theatrical projects?, why is the term
immersive or projects with some of its characteristics so popular these days both in the-
atre, art and architecture? There is a rise of projects in different disciplines (architecture,
theatre and art) that share very similar characteristics?, are we perhaps witnessing the birth
of a new interdiscipline in which building elements are at the core?. There is no doubt that ex-
ists an increasing presence of built elements at the core and not as secondary elements in
contemporary theatre. Are built elements enough for us to speak of the influence from archi-
tecture in theatre?, or on the contrary there is finally the obligation for architects to admit that
theatre has unappealable influenced their discipline in a way that makes it difficult to distin-
guish what they create from what theatre makers produce? In many from the analysed exam-
ples there is a common use of the space from both the creators and the participants who also
co-participate in their creation, and both groups shape a temporary community with their
own rules. These rules are slightly different as the ones operating at reality, and therefore these
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

shared spaces might serve as the perfect place to test different ways of being together, a com-
munity of different singularities who do not melt their perspectives. Could these models for

648 649
 WG WG
life in community utopically not be governed by the capitalistic logic? Some of these theaters at-
tempt to transform the way people participate and to acknowledge the single spectator through in- Nadine Civilotti
dividual encounters. These are experiences structured by taking individuals into account and putting University of Mainz
into praxis strategies for communication and manipulation that are direct and personalized, so their
audiences are not addressed as collections of people. At the same time the tendency to customize Nadine Civilotti is research assistant and Ph.D. student at the Institute of film-, theatre and empirical cultural
the experience at participatory events is sometimes inheriting the worst defects from the neolib- studies at the University of Mainz, Germany. She studied theatre studies, art history, pedagogy and psychology.
eral market’s strategies. Is the non static, free walkable, explorative, and spatial character of these Her research focuses on installative spaces and the efficacy of their performative materiality on the recipient
created surroundings maybe preventing the public body or group of visitors to share an experience as an embodied mind. Her publications include the monograph Gebrochen in Raum und Zeit. Performanzen
des Lichts im Dazwischen Marburg 2011.
they can together reflect on?, Can these intensive individual experiences, create that allow reflexion
and critical distance articulating collective experiences?, Or is the breaking of the fourth wall and
proscenium stage a situation in which the participant is unable to take a critical distance and there- Migrating Space-related Performative Practices of Perception and
fore experience theatre intellectually and not only through affects?, How can a group of individuals Subjectivation: Louvre Abu Dhabi
absorbed in a performance reach the mutual accord needed to form a community? Architecture
transforms abstract knowledge into concretions that can be experienced by the senses. As such, In November 2017 Louvre Abu Dhabi opened its doors with the claim of “bringing different cultures
architectural projects produce concrete models in which aesthetics, politics, and economics can be together”. Not only is this a conceptual idea representing the close collaboration with Louvre Paris
read in specific constructs and spatial situations. What happens to the liminal projects between ar- concerning name, exhibitions, training and education but it also materialized in the museum build-
chitecture and theatre? ing, designed by the French star-architect Jean Nouvel and inspired by the architecture and tradi-
tions of the Arab world. Similarly, in a totally different context, Gordon Matta-Clark’s work Conical
Key words Intersect 1975, as a ‘western’ example of installation-based architectural performance art, calls on
community, architecture, participation, immersive, politics comparable and intensified challenging conceptions of space. In the course of the so called material
as well as practice turns, architecture has become a performative object of research. It has ceased to
be regarded as a static and self-contained entity, but rather its materiality is conceived to depend on
relational practices of performative space- and situation-building arrangements. At the same time
the materiality of architectural artifacts gains a status—beyond a mere object of perception—as an
interactive partner with agency: architecture and the body emerge co-constitutively in an aisthetic
process. Considering the up-to-date relevance of aesthetic space phenomena, I would like to face
the question, how the sensual experience of materiality in the spatial situations of Louvre Abu Dhabi
and Conical Intersect have a direct corporeal impact on subject constitution beyond the realm of
cognitive ascription or discourse. I would like to suggest an ANT-led approach to the experiencing of
the performative materiality of spaces and its impact on the materiality of the body of the recipient
in order to explain how and why subjectivity can be understood as a non-discursive culturally diver-
gent and intersubjective effect of space. Obviously, the performance of migrating space conceptions
is of special interest here.

Key Words
materiality of space, spatial performativity, Actor-Network-Theory, subject constitution, embodied
mind
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

650 651
 WG WG

David DeGrow Andrew Filmer

University of Toronto Aberystwyth University

David is a lighting designer, academic, manager and teacher living in Toronto, who has been part of over 300 Andrew Filmer is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Aberystwyth University. His research focuses
theatrical productions. He is in the 4th year of his PhD at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Stud- on space, place and location in contemporary theatre and performance, sites of encounter between archi-
ies at the University of Toronto, where his research focusses on the impact of theatre architecture and design tecture and performance, and the performance of endurance running. Andrew is the co-editor of Performing
on the creation and experience of theatre. Architectures: Projects, Practices, Pedagogies Bloomsbury 2018 has published in Performance Research, New
Theatre Quarterly and Theatre Research International, and has co-convened the International Federation for
Section 37 and Theatre Architecture in Toronto Theatre Researchs Theatre Architecture Working Group since 2012.

This paper will examine the two most recently-built theatre spaces in the city of Toronto: the The- A Clear Cut: Dance, Architecture and Ecological Aesthetics
atre Centre’s Arts Hub 2014, and Crow’s Theatre’s Crowsnest 2017, in order to discuss how their
construction is the product of the current housing price boom, and what impact these interactions This paper will outline the rationale and context for an artistic research project I am developing
with the real-estate market have had on these companies’ practice. These two facilities are the most with dancer Simon Whitehead for a forest location near the border between the counties of Pem-
recent in a spate of new theatre builds made possible by the confluence of rising housing prices, and brokeshire and Ceredigion in South West Wales. Titled A Clear Cut, the project will explore how the
Section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act. This section allows municipalities to grant zoning concessions process of designing, building and using an architectural structure - a space for dance - can generate
that allow developers to build taller and higher-density condominium buildings, in exchange for the cultural dialogues around experiences of ecological change. A Clear Cut is intended as a response, in
payment of monetary sums or the dedication of physical space to community infrastructure. This has part, to the clear felling of the large industrial softwood plantation forests that are a feature of the
resulted in partnerships between real-estate developers and theatre companies to build theatres uplands of Wales. These forests, planted between the two world wars to provide strategic reserves
into, or around, their real-estate projects. These new theatres have significantly increased the ca- of timber, were imposed on local farmers and communities with little or no consultation, radical-
pacity and profile of both companies, and have provided Toronto with four new performance spaces. ly changing landscapes into monotonous rows of conifers. When clear felled the forest vanishes,
However, these spaces have been shaped as much by the needs of the developments they are part profoundly impacting natural and social ecosystems.  The idea of a space for dance, designed and
of, as by the theatrical needs of their parent companies. At the same time, these partnerships have built from available materials and energy self-sufficient, serves as an extension of Whiteheads eco-
tied the Theatre Centre and Crow’s Theatre to the logic of the real-estate market, to the develop- logically attuned performance practice which has involved the corporeal exploration of landscape
ment strategies of Toronto’s municipal wards, and to the fortunes of their developer partners. This through walking, an engagement with animals and their habitats and, more recently, an examination
paper will ask how has this changed the theatres being built in Toronto, and will question what the of the interwoven ecologies of his village, Abercych see Lavery and Whitehead 2012. In Abercych,
implications are for theatre practice in Toronto. Whitehead, with partner Stirling Steward, has established a programme of artistic residencies, with
visiting artists showing the work they generate to village residents, often in the context of a Twm-
Key Words path, a form of Welsh barn dance.  It is at a location close to Abercych that we propose locating this
Architecture, Real-Estate, Section 37, Toronto, Theatre Centre, Crows Theatre project in a patch of forest currently being clear felled. Here, inspired by Lawrence Halprins Dance
Deck 1954, London Fieldworks treehouse studio Outlandia 2010 and Owen Griffiths TŷUnnos 2017
we will respond to the clearing of the forest with a performative process of orienting, spacing and
building to creating a structure for dance that operates as a central focus of activity and dialogue
within a forest in transition.

Key Words
dance, architecture, ecology
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

652 653
 WG WG

Evelyn Lima Magdalena Golaczynska

The Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro Uniwersytet Wrocławski University of Wroclaw

EVELYN FURQUIM WERNECK LIMA holds a BA UFRJ, a MA UFRJ, a PhD UFRJ/EHESS and is currently a Full Pro- Born in 1971 in Wrocław. She graduated Polish Philology at Wrocław University in 1994, where she has worked
fessor at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro/PostGraduateProgramme in Performing Arts. since 1995.2000-2004 she was a lecturer in State Drama School in Cracow, Actors’ Department. She holds a
She is a researcher for the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development CNPq, and has pub- doctorate 2000 in theatre from Wrocław University. Then she works as a professor teaching European theatre,
lished many articles on History of Architecture, Theatre Architecture and Cultural History. She is the leader of 20th century theatre, theory of culture, anthropology of theatre.She published: Mosaic of Contemporaneity.
the Theatrical Spaces Studies Research Group and of the Memory and Space Research Group and author of The Alternative Theatre in Poland Since 1989 2002, The Independent Theatre in Wrocław 2007, Site and Iden-
Architectures and Set Designs. Lina Bo Bardi and the Theatre 2012, with Monteiro Architecture and Theatre: tity. The Local Theatre in Lower Silesia 2013. She coedited anthology Theatre-Space-Body-Dialogue. Explora-
From Palladio to Portzamparc 2010 with Cardoso, From the Avant-Gardes to Tradition 2006, Architecture for tions in Contemporary Theatre 2007. The anthology was also published in Russian. She writes many articles
the Performing Arts 2000/ Brazilian Institute of Architects Award, President Vargas Avenue: a drastic surgery on contemporary theatre, focusing on site-specific performances in Central Europe, alternative culture and on
1990/Architect Olga Verjovski Award. She edited Architecture, Theatre and Culture: Revisiting Spaces, Cities experimental theatre. She has been a contributor to “Dialog”, “Notatnik Teatralny”, “Teatr” and “Slavic and
and Playwrights of the Seventeenth Century 2012, Space and Theatre 2008, Space and City 2007, among East European Performance”.
others. She is the head of the Laboratory of Theatrical Spaces and Urban Memory Studies at UNIRIO and
was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Collège de France 2011 and at the UniversitàdegliStudi di Padova 2016. Post-war forced migrations in Central Europe. Site-specific
performances
City, Migration and Impermanent Spaces of Performance in
Brazilian Theatre Polish contemporary performances presenting the past in the border region of Lower Silesia often
focus on the issues of forced migrations after World War II. The map of Poland was drawn by the pol-
This paper aims to discuss examples of migration and re-adaptation of texts for Brazilian reality, as iticians’ decisions taken during the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences. Poles “recovered” the western
well as to emphasize the city itself as a theatrical space, both as a representation and as a space for territories severely destroyed during the war. The result was a displacement of about 3 million peo-
performance. An example of migration would be the play In the Jungle of Cities, written by Berthold ple - the forbidden subject of public discussion during the communist regime. The discussed per-
Brecht about Chicago in 1912. His text deals with the struggle between two men witnessing the formances: “Transfer!” 2006 and “Lemko” 2007 present the architecture of two different sites, such
decay of a family which had moved from the countryside to the ‘jungle’ of the big city. In 1969, the as Wroclaw Contemporary Theatre and a place in Zakaczawie – neglected district of Legnica. The
director of Teatro Oficina, Zé Celso, moved and adapted the text to the city of São Paulo during the second site had been a former German varieté in thirties, abandoned after the war. In “Transfer!”
military dictatorship, a semi-destroyed city due to the construction of many high roads. Teatro Ofi- a joint Polish - German production directed by Jan Klata, the main element of set design is a high
cina, with a set by Lina Bo Bardi containing a garbage-covered backdrop and a stage-in-the-round, metal construction resembling a bridge which is used by professionals who portray the protagonists
became a stimulus for avant-garde practice, establishing a perspective that reaffirmed the spirit of of the Yalta: Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. These scenes are based on caricatures. The politicians’
the arts in the second half of the twentieth century. In Aderbal Freire’s productions, after the ‘polit- elaborate statements are interwoven with the Witnesses’ simple testimony. “Witnesses of history”
ical opening’ of 1985, historical architecture and the city became stages, due to the cultural policies are nine elderly amateurs, Poles and Germans who experienced first-hand events of 1945-47 and
of the time that stimulated the interface between the theatre and works for the conservation of cul- their selected statements were compiled into a script. They use simple plastic chairs and create
tural heritage. At a third moment, already entering the 21st century, Teatro da Vertigem worked with imaginative world of transport: destroyed stations, trains, cattle wagons. The stage floor is covered
places full of collective memories and history, places that overflow meaning. Real spaces, not only with a thick layer of soil, symbolizing the old and new homelands. Performance „Lemko” concerns
specific to the scenarios, with vestiges of present and past, that test the limit between reality and forced migration of Lemko ethnic group ordered by Polish communist government in 1947. The
fiction, city and theatre. The analysis of the production BR3, conceived by Antônio Araújo, director transferees lost their property and cultural identity. Some of them moved to the village near Legnica.
of Grupo da Vertigem, shows that the city is neither scenery nor theme, the city itself is the theatre Performance of Jacek Głomb is shown in two-levels stage: the upper one is the ancestors’ seat the
of an unequal society and the lack of care caused by poverty and savage capitalism. lower one – the house and the village.

Key Words Key Words

Impermanent Theatrical Spaces Migration of texts Brazilian Theatre Performing history, Site-specific theatre, forced migration, Central Europe, Lower Silesia
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

654 655
 WG WG

Sidsel Graffer Alexandra Halligey

Norwegian Theatre Academy University of Cape Town

Sidsel Graffer, Mag. Art, studied architecture at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and perfor- Alex Halligey is awaiting examination on her PhD thesis in Drama and Urban Studies through the University of
mance studies at University of Oslo. I have worked as an independent scholar for twenty years, splitting my Cape Town’s Drama Department and the African Centre for Cities. Her research is concerned with how theatre
time between positions as researcher, editor, educator, curator, facilitator, advisor and bureaucrat. My teach- and performance as participatory public art might help to explore the everyday place-making Johannesburg’s
ing experience as is from University of Bergen, University of Oslo, University of Agder, Oslo National Academy inner city. She use her own artistic practice as her primary research method framed by a phronetic method-
of the Arts and Norwegian Theatre Academy in Fredrikstad, NTA, which is my current affiliation. I edit NTA´s ology – allowing knowledge, meaning and ways of working to emerge through the process of playmaking and
forthcoming anthology Norwegian Theatre Academy Fredrikstad. My research interests are theatre architec- experimentation with theatre and performance games. As well as her PhD research, she teaches on an ad hoc
ture, scenography, the function of curation within the performing arts. Parallel to teaching theatre architecture basis at the University of Witwatersrand Drama Division, the Market Theatre Laboratory theatre training pro-
and scenography I have acted as advisor to among others The Norwegian Ministry of Culture, Norwegian Di- gramme and the University of Johannesburg’s postgraduate architecture course.
rectorate of Public Construction and Property and AgderTeater on matters related to preservation, projection
and construction of  theatre architecture. An ongoing research project Theatre Machines and production Axes Playing In Space: Working With Patterns of Mobility and Stasis
is to be completed in 2018. Publications: Spatial Curation in the Performing Arts field 2015, Performing Arts
and the Young 2014, Norwegian Theatre Architecture 1802-2002 2006. through Architectural Design and Theatrical Improvisation
This paper discusses an experiment with participatory architectural design processes and improvisa-
The National Theatre, Oslo, Norway - Rehabilitation and Discourse
tory theatre processes to explore the impact of stasis and mobility on spatial construction and daily
life. I draw on a workshop series run by myself that combines University of Cape Town landscape
The National Theatre, Oslo, architect Henrik Bull, opened 1899, home of Henrik Ibsen´s plays,  is
architect, Julian Raxworthy’s model for emergent design with exercises from the United Kingdom’s
a monumental baroque theatre venue containing three stages the main stage, the amphitheatre
Frantic Assembly. Raxworthy’s model uses the embodied interaction of participants in a gridded
and the painter´s workshop. As art institutions merge into larger units and relocate to the new har-
space to propose spatial designs, where the Frantic Assembly exercises facilitate the proposal of ac-
bour area, the National Theatre, centrally located between the Royal Palace, the University and the
tions and movement through which story and meaning emerge. In the workshop series I ask partici-
Parliament and served by the National Theatre Station and the National Theatre metro stations,  is
pants to draw on the patterns of mobility and stasis in their own lives as the material to inform their
one of few remaining art institutions within the original representational inner city. In 2012, the
movements in Raxworthy’s participatory design exercise and their movement proposals in the Fran-
Norwegian Government decided to  rehabilitate and modernise with a fifty year perspective.  So
tic Assembly prompts. All the work takes place in the same gridded space allowing for an emergent
far: rich and uplifting feasibility studies Report on the possibilities of the redevelopment of the exist-
spatial design and narrative construction, correlating the two. The improvisation of daily life and
ing theatre and the new development of a complementary building BlueNode Theatre Consultants
the improvisation of theatre become pronounced as distinctly spatial practices. Drama is articulated
&Enginers, 2014, The Concept Report Terramar AS, Oslo Economics AS and Snøhetta AS, 2014,  and 
through spatial relationships and the dramas of daily life shape the use of daily space. The paper
Evaluation of the Concept Report  Metier AS and Møreforskning AS, 2015 - and very disappointing
propose that theatre improvisation might inform and detail Raxworthy’s participatory design model.
decision-making: Spring 2017, the Government supported a downscaled rehabilitation that supports
Conversely, I suggest that Raxworthy’s improvisations around daily use to find functional daily de-
technical upgrade of the main stage only, and no audience facility upgrade. Opposed to the prevail-
sign inform and detail physical theatre improvisatory process like that of Frantic Assembly’s. Finally
ing understanding of rehabilitation as a primarily technical and neutral concept, and taking a critical
I argue that the combination of participatory design and Frantic Assembly’s improvisatory theatre
discourse analysis of preservation, rehabilitation and restoration ideology as a point of departure, I
form become allusive tools for working with the impact of migration of mobility and stasis on daily
propose to explore and outline rehabilitation of theatre architecture as a re-situating in public space.
life and on spatial construction. Ideally I would like to propose I deliver the paper in a conventional
The concept thinks together institutional mandate, architecture and a complex notion of publicness.
presentation format within the Theatre Architecture Working Group, but that I also run a practical
Further, it pursues a rehabilitation concept closer to architectural re-interpretation and innovation.
session through the Performance-As-Research working group.
Lastly, it shifts focus from the inside to the context through notions as distribution, porousness,
transparency, perforation. My argument is that this way of thinking makes possible an architectural
Key Words
and urban presence in line with the National Theatres´s institutional mandate.
Theatre, space, participatory design, improvisation, narrative, the everyday
Key Words
The Norwegian National Theatre, Achitectural rehabilitation, Rehabilitation ideology
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

656 657
 WG WG

Dorita Hannah Panayiota Konstantinakou

University of Tasmania, Australia Aaalto Finalnd Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Dorita Hannah is Adjunct Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Tasmania Australia and Adjunct Pro- Panayiota Konstantinakou holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2013)
fessor of Stage & Space with Aalto University Finland. Specializing in Performance Design, her practice-led as a bursar of the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. She also holds a BA in Theatre Studies (Aristotle Uni-
research focuses on designing and curating live events, installations and exhibitions, as well as expertise in versity of Thessaloniki, 2000), a Diploma in Drama from the University of Kent at Canterbury (1999), an MPhil
theatre architecture. She co-chairs the Performance+Design Working Group for PSi Performance Studies inter- (Research) from the University of Glasgow (2002) as a Bakala Foundation bursar. Additionally, she holds an
national, sits on several editorial boards, and has created exhibitions and events for the Prague Quadrennial MA in “Information and Communication Technologies in Education” (National and Kapodistrian University of
as design director, architectural commissioner and theory curator. Concentrating on performance space and Athens, 2017). Currently, she teaches οn an academic level History and Theory of Scenography and Production
spatial performativity, Dr. Hannah co-edited Performance Design 2008 and authored Event-Space: Theatre Dramaturgy (Drama Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki). She has worked extensively as a Dra-
Architecture & the Historical Avant-Garde, 2018. maturg as well as a theatre educator. She has presented papers in meetings and conferences in Greece and
abroad (Prague Quadrennial 2007 & 2011 & 2015 – IFTR Munich, 2010) and articles published in journals and
PHONEHOME: An Installation Staging Architecture A/Part conference proceedings. Her research interests include the theory and practice of dramaturgy, the history and
theory of scenography and theatre architecture as well as the aesthetics and ideology of space.
Constructs a communication mechanism from electronic components found around its hosts’ house.
Exemplifying a stranger in a strange land - exiled from its own home - the detained alien hailing from The Square and the Other: “Urban Dig_Omonoia” by Ohi Pezoume
beyond the known world is yearning to make connection and return to a familiar realm. 35 years (Athens, Greece, 2016-2017)
later we inhabit an age where countless humans are forced to leave their homelands and seek asy-
lum elsewhere: finding themselves defined as ‘aliens’ and confined in unhomely refugee camps and The paper will present and assess a 12 monthprogramme of research, artistic and place-making
detention centres environments that epitomise alienating and spatially reductive experiences: bare- activities in the main square of Athens, Greece by OhiPezoume Theatre Company under the general
ly containers for a bare-life. This paper presents and discusses PhoneHome an exhibition designed title UrbanDig_Omonia (2016-2017) [https://www.urbandigproject.org/omonoia]. The programme
and curated by Dorita Hannah with Shauna Janssen and Joanne Kinniburgh, which was created for focused on the diminishing public space of Omonoia Square, which is occupied mainly by immigrant
Chile’s 2017 Architecture & Urbanism Biennial. Responding to the call for Unpostponable Dialogues, population, in an attempt to adress questions such as “What makes Omonia a square?” “What could
the project contemplates the contemporary condition of being alien and architecture’s complicity make Omonia a better square for the people who use it and the market around it?” “What is the
in detaining bodies via the smartphone as an object that, for many, stands in for home: forming an importance of its public space?”
innate body extension, which situates, documents, transcends and resists a life lived in exile. The The paper will focus on the site-specific performance given on and around Omonia square, in a
installation replicates a ubiquitous refugee cabin in miniature, within which mobile phones are em- mobile space of performance par excellence. The performance (included in the Athens and Epidau-
bedded their screens playing videos that engage with the pervasive geo-cultural, geo-mythical and rus Festival, June 2017) was inspired by the needs of Omonia people and adresses issues of exclu-
geo-political issues of our time and architecture’s problematic role in housing those without home sion, containment and Otherness.The analysis will explore the encounter of mobile, moving bodies
and homeland. Lined up in a shallow mirror-backed niche, these cookie-cutter structures are reflect- and urban architecture, the construction of community and identity through the UrbanDig_Omonia
ed ad infinitum and their screening interiors can only be apprehended by bending low or kneeling. project as well as the way such activities leave traces on the public space. Rather than viewing the
Through such intimate and embodied engagement, viewers find themselves to be both part of Im- UrbanDig_Omonia as an isolated moment of the current aristic practice in Greece, it will attempt
mersed and apart from distanced in order to critically reflect on our own complicity in the spatial to place it in the wider context of exploring the urban and public space through artistic means in a
histories and architectural realities that belong to some of the most precarious political subjects of country in crisis.
our time the refugee, detainee, asylum seeker and perceived ‘alien’. By withholding a clear view of
the videos, the smartphone becomes more apparent as a spatial, social and politicized element: Key words
streaming what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney call ‘fantasy in the hold’. mobility, Otherness,community, identity, urban space, site-specific performance

Key Words
detention, migration, architecture, design, installation, exhibition
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

658 659
 WG WG

Magdalena Kozień-Woźniak Rafaël Magrou

Cracow University of Technology Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Nantes, Paris malaquais ACS research laboratory
Architect, Ph.D. and Dr. Sc. in the discipline of Architecture and Urbanism (2016). She is an academic teacher Rafaël Magrou is architect and associate professor at the Ecole d’Architecture de Paris Malaquais. He’s mem-
and scholar at the Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology since 2001. she is the authoress of ber of the ACS Laboratory and he’s actually working as a scholar on a research dealing with the fourth wall,
the monograph  Współczesna architektura theatrealna a nieformalna przestrzeń theatreu (2015) [Theatres of from Denis Diderot to Joël Pommerat, at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne CLARE.
interference. Contemporary theatrical architecture and informal space of a theatre], which is a key phase of
her scholarly research on the public use architecture, esp. on theatrical one.  she works in a design team with
Dr Eng. Arch.  Marek Kozień and M. Arch. Eng. Katarzyna Kozień-Kornecka. Their creative activities were award- Boundaries Between Actor And Spectator: The Space at
ed with dozens of prizes and mentions. The National Museum of the Przemyśl Region was nominated to the  Stake / Pommerat & Soyer’s ‘Ca Ira. Fin De Louis 1: The Fourth Wall
European  Mies Van Der Rohe Award 2008 and mentioned in the SARP Award of the Year Competition in 2008. Questioned
Capitol Theatre in Wrocław won the Grand Prix in the    Piękny Wrocław competition 2013 and was mentioned
in the SARP Award of the Year Competition 2013.  Contemporary Art Gallery BWA in  Nowy Sącz became the Created in 2015, director Joël Pommerats show Ca ira Fin de Louis 1 has been a big success in France
best building of Nowy Sącz  in the 1st decade of the 21st century. The oeuvre of the Kozień Architekci team
and worldwide. This contemporary political fiction is inspired by the constitution of the National As-
was published and presented at the architectural exhibitions both in Poland and abroad  (Budapest, Praga,
Bratislava, Lubliana, Oslo, Bruksela) and published many times. sembly during the 1789 French Revolution, founding history of French society but also participating
to universal ideas. The show is not a book adaptation but a text written while the rehearsal, sup-
ported by historical documentation. Then, success is not only about writing and playing, it might be
Theatre Architecture for Non-Exclusive Community
due to how to incorporate the audience into this adventure. Participatory show? Immersive show?
Architecture shapes space, builds the boundaries between what is public and what is private, what is Subversive show ? Political show ! The present study proposes to approach the theme Theater
ours and what is foreign. The way architecture builds the relationship between viewers and between Nation Identity: between migration and stasis by this show, in trying to decipher the scenographic
viewer and actor, the theater space and the public space, expresses ideas common to a specific com- and spatial devices in order to bring out the tensions and the situations of distensions. The lighting
munity. Theater venues can become a variable and open field of discussion and participation, joint designer Eric Soyer, who collaborates in all the shows of Joël Pommerat - Compagnie Louis Brouil-
search, creation of values. Open to differences, the non-exclusive public community can be support- lard, sculpts space with light and plays with contrasts and dazzling situations. In the scenographies
ed by the way of shaping the theater space, the building, its relation with the neighborhood, or the he developed for the previous shows, the boundary between the seats and the stage was clearly
way of usage. Theaters can be divided into three groups. There are theaters that isolate the theater affirmed: the audience was plunged into absolute darkness for the changes of scene, the luminous
space from the public space, giving the first of them a character of a certain intimacy. There are focus was carried on a defined area of the plateau. In Ca ira Fin de Louis 1, the spectators seemed to
theaters of emanation, that is buildings dominating in cities, symbols of social order. There are also be included in the scenographic device, an option that might suggest the bursting of the fourth wall
theatres of interference, which give the opportunity to penetrate the public space with the theater between the stage and the audience, this invisible screen often located at the stage level. Did it really
space, in an unexpected and unique way, special for a given place. For each of these types of theatre ? How is it combined in different theatre halls ? We will try to grasp if this border between actor and
buildings, examples of the desire to create theater architecture that builds a community without spectator is indeed broken or if it has other locations, and can exist at different degrees, extending
exclusions can be found. The article will present three examples of Brazilian theater architecture that this notion to wider configurations.
illustrate this idea. The first one is Teatro Oficina in Sao Paulo designed by Lina Bo Bardi. In this, hid-
den from the ooutside world theatre of isolation, an exceptional, informal theater space emerged. Key Words
The spacial organization s not based on the traditional archetype. Actors and spectators are not fourth wall, Pommerat, Soyer, assembly, participative, distance
closed in their roles and places. They all participate in a joint search for the answers. It is different in
Oscar Niemeyer’s Teatro Popular de Niteroi. Here the big red door is opening towards an open public
space, manifesting the mission of an open, gratuitous, accessible theater for all. Teatro Municipal do
Rio de Janeiro, based on the model of the Opéra Garnier in Paris testifies the importance of theatre
architecture in the city. On the 108th anniversary of its uprising, the queue of people willing to see
the building for free stretched along the whole four fasades. Everyone wanted to take part in this
event, a day of creation common values. In this way, architecture does not set boundaries, it does
not define the community anymore. It is the people who recognize differences, engage, participate
and create principles.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key words
Theatre architecture, Teatro Oficina in Sao Paulo, Teatro Popular de Niteroi

660 661
 WG WG

Sampreeti Malladi Hari Marini

University of Hyderabad Queen Mary University of London

Sampreeti is an architect and a dancer by profession. Her passion for arts is the center of her life. With an Hari Marini is a researcher, performance maker and founder member of PartSuspended performance
understanding that these are interdependent she has had a chequered career where she successfully balances group www.partsuspended.com. Her work focuses on the spatial and urban contexts and conditions of perfor-
her research in dance working towards a PhD, a career in architecture and exploring allied fields of content mance and architecture and their social and political implications. She is teaching at the Department of Drama
writing, graphic design and product design. She also regularly conducts workshops in interdisciplinary fields of at Queen Mary University of London QMUL and has also taught at Theater of Changes Athens and the Drama
arts- i.e design and dance in various schools and forums. A recipient of the JRF awarded by the HRD ministry, School of the Municipal Regional Theatre of Patras Greece. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance from QMUL and
India for pursuing her doctoral research, she has presented papers at International conferences. She is also a an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice CSSD. She also has a diploma in Acting and a degree in Civil Engineering.
recipient of the JRF awarded by the Ministry of Culture for her research work on ‘Desi dance traditions and She has published in Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Research and Journal of Greek Media & Cul-
the Iconography of the Yogini Cult’. Sampreeti has participated in several national festivals both as a solo per- ture. Her performance work has been shown in the United Kingdom, Greece and Prague: Prague Quadrennial
former and in ballets with her guru. As a part of experimental research for her guru’s doctoral degree she has of Performance Design and Space, Camden People’s Theatre, Arcola Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Emergen-
also undergone intensive training in Yoga. cy 2013 Z Arts, Manchester, Siobhan Davies Dance Studio, ]performance space[, ZealousXBargehouse, Oxo
Tower Wharf, OPEN 2013, BIOS Tesla, The Train at Rouf, Invention Theatre Festival, NoGrayInMyDay Gallery,
Indian Dance and Theatrical Spaces: A Complex Migratory You & Your Work Cube Microplex, Bristol.
Dialogue
Urban Ruins: An Impermanent Shelter for Graffiti
This paper is an attempt to foreground the connect between the different theatrical performance
spaces built and natural and the numerous typologies of dance presentations in India. Beginning In this paper, I analyse my experience visiting the abandoned building of Renault showroom situated
with the earliest references to dance in treatises to the modern day it seeks to highlight the pos- in Athens. After 35 years, the 14,000 sq.m. showroom was shut down and since 2008 it has been left
sibilities that these myriad dance traditions have resulted as a consequence of the migration of to crumble. In this paper I seek to create a narrative through my performative fieldwork – in which I
not just content but a physical transportation of the art form from one spatial setting to another. experienced the graffiti imprinted on the building’s fabric – in an attempt to unravel the complexity
Classicism’ as seen in the early 20th century was when the traditions migrated to different spatial and multiplicity of contemporary Athens city-spaces. The proliferation of graffiti in the centre of
scenarios, a move away from the precincts of the temples to the proscenium stages. Eventually an Athens is evident since 2010 and its connection with the financial and social crisis can be affirmed
ideological move away from this ‘classicism’ , constituted the heterogeneous movement of contem- in at least two ways: the political messages graffiti adopts and the many available surfaces of aban-
porary dance languages. As we move into a new era of vision –perspective, the visual viz screen / doned businesses for graffiti artists. There are areas that have been proven very popular for graffiti
T.V the idea of visualization of movement and execution has ominously changed Indian dance. With in the centre of Athens, such as in Exarcheia, Gazi, Plaka and Peiraios. Many public buildings, historic
newer forms such as site specific dances emerging, the idea of space is taking on a wholly different edifices and statues have been ‘attacked’ by graffiti, and this has been denounced by the majority
meaning. The changing performing spaces inform the artistic choices and dance idioms of artists of the press and media. However, in this paper, I focus on Renault’s ruined building and I argue that
today. Thus at every principal juncture in the history of Indian dance traditions, a radical change in the abandoned building acts as a stage where graffiti artists found shelter and where the visitor or
the nature of presentations and the world view towards them was intertwined with the change of ‘urban explorer’ as Tim Edensor would put it is invited to experience ruination and art otherwise.
presentations spaces. Among crumbling walls and debris, colourful graffiti invite the viewer to alter his view on the mean-
ing of ruined spaces. For my discussion, I employ a combination of a materialist and a performative
Key Words analysis in a materialist approach, I identify restrictions and preconceptions placed upon ruined
Natya mandapas, classicalism ,migration, site specific, theatre spaces, whereas in a performative approach, I focus on how ruined spaces attract alternative artistic
spatial practices such as graffiti contributing to the production of a performative space.

Key Words
Disconnecting Urban Spaces in Contemporary Athens: Ruination, Spatial Performativity and the
Practice of Graffiti
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

662 663
 WG WG

Sven Mehzoud Charlotte Østergaard

Massey University The Danish National School of Performing Arts

Sven  Mehzoud is a designer and full-time academic at the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Charlotte Østergaard is an independent Danish visual artist in space between costume, object and textile who
Wellington, New Zealand. His creative work lies at the intersection of exhibition, scenography, and interior over the last 20 years has worked with the body as a cultural and artistic expression.   Charlotte has designed
architectural design and centres on curatorial practices for experiences of the everyday. It explores how costumes more than 50 contemporary dance performances for numerous contemporary dance companies and
interpretive design strategies can extend an institution’s agendas into an urban and other spatial context to independent choreographers in Denmark and abroad, several of which has received theater awards.   Char-
achieve broader participation, inclusion and agency. Projects include design in the fields of Interior Architecture, lotte has received several grants from the Danish Art Foundation and has exhibited at juried national and inter-
Exhibition, Curatorial and Performance Design, and include collaborations with theatre companies, art and national exhibitions - recently “World of Threads festival” in Canada and “From Lausanne To Beijing - the 9th
design collectives and research centres. International Fiber Art Biennale” in China.  Charlotte is an experienced teacher in costume, fashion and textile
formfixation techniques. In 2015 she was employed at the Danish National School of Performing Arts DDSKS.
Presencing Collections: A Migration Exhibition Project for a At DDSKS Charlotte has developed an artistic research project “Textile Techniques as a Potential for Costu-
medesign”. She recently received funding from The Danish Cultural Ministry to continue the artistic research
Regional Australian Museum on costume design at DDSKS   In the periode 2013-15 she in collaboration with the colleague Barbara Wilson
developed an other artistic research project “Stedsspecifikke Iscenesættelser” site specifik staging.
The museum has traditionally been a place that contributes to the construction and communication
of narratives about cultural heritage, identity, community and place. Disconnect – Reconnect
Migration narratives, in particular, have been critiqued for constructing hegemonic narrative repre-
sentations within a multicultural context. The staging of such narratives through exhibitions often “Disconnect - reconnect” examines the relationship between body and costume. “Disconnect - Re-
produce all-encompassing, harmonised narratives and so conceal difference and the reality of con- connect” introduces an idea of a multi-person performative costume as a possibility for relating to
flict and dissent. Alternatively, conditions are being considered that offer counter-hegemonic narra- the Other form a perspective of being in between an individual and a collective body. Identifying
tives as expressions of difference and plurality, and to also provide an opportunity for reflection. This the Other as a conceptual base of intersubjectivity, of the relations among people in a ethical and
paper discusses scenographic exhibition strategies for the critical engagement with hegemonic and social-political perspective. In this frame, the multi-person costume becomes a performative site
counter-hegemonic narratives and presents a migration exhibition project for a regional Australian to investigate power dynamics of a collective moving body. This presentation invites participants to
museum. The premise for the project lies in an understanding that migration is a natural manifesta- wear (or to watch others wear) and explore a multi-person costume and to reflect on the effect on
tion of humanity – the flow of people, things and ideas which have occurred in the past as well as their bodies. The multi-person costumes attaches several bodies in different body areas to each oth-
today, and that traces of this manifestation can be recognized in our contemporary environment, er in a landscape of crocheted lycra material on and in between the bodies. In wearing the wearer’s
in artefacts, sites of significance, everyday practices. The museum’s collections serve as a starting perception is forces not only to focus on the individual body but also on the collective body expe-
point to generate and present multiple historical and contemporary migration narratives as a way riences of the spatial dimension of the costume. The experience of wearing the costume is affect-
to connect to the community’s everyday context. Engagement processes are suggested that identify ed by and dependent upon the relationship to the Other(s). In the wearing does the multi-person
the community’s intangible heritage through craft, performing arts, and other cultural practices in costume trigger a disconnection to the individual body, does the costume trigger tension between
order to expand the collection’s relevance for the museum visitors and to be complemented with the individuals, and/or is the individual body re-connected through or even transformed by the
multiple, plural narratives and voices. Spatial scenographic strategies explore how normative view- experience of the collective body? The presentation “Disconnect - Reconnect” is a part of Charlotte
ing experiences in the museum can be shifted to become experiences of encounter. They also probe Østergaard’s current artistic research project “In Dialogue with Material”. The project examines how
an engagement with the urban context as a site-specific environment for their potential to gener- bodily experiments and experiences can part of the costume designers tool box with an aim to de-
ate narrative constructions as part of the everyday. The research intersects the fields of exhibition velop methods that equates aesthetic expression and sensory qualities/ experiences of costume in
design, theatre and performance studies and current museum practice in relation to migration. It the design process.
draws on case studies from postdramatic theatre production, the performed repertoire and devising
processes to generate relevant scenographic strategies for exhibitions in museums. Key words
performative costume design
Key Words
Scenography, Exhibition Design, Site-Specific, Museum Studies
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

664 665
 WG WG

Efrat Shalom Helen Stratford

Technion IIT University of Sheffield

Ms. Efrat Shalom, B.A., M.F.A with distinction Stage Design, Tel-Aviv University, is a scenographer and costume Helen Stratford is an architect, artist and part time practice-led PhD Candidate at Sheffield University, research-
designer. Currently a doctorate candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, I.I.T. Re- ing Performative Architectures. Located between live art, visual art, architecture and writing, Helen’s work is
search interests: Fiction-reality, Theatre-city interactions Tel-Aviv urban-scape Theatre semiotics Performance collaborative - working with architects, artists, curators, diverse communities and publics to develop site-spe-
studies Image of the city Scenography. cific interventions, including live events, video-works, speculative writing and artists’ books. While exploring
everyday processes of place-making, these interventions search for modalities that work between and expand
architectural conventions. A former studio and residency artist at Wysing Arts Centre Cambridge, Helen’s work
Patterns of Experience: Theatre and Urban Life and research has most recently been presented at KTH Stockholm AHRA Architecture and Feminisms Confer-
ence, AHRA Festival and The City Conference, Birmingham alongside Yorkshire Sculpture Park, g39 and Oriel
A city, more than bricks and mortar, is life that takes place in it. The fabric of everyday lives within Davies Gallery: Wales, RIBA, Tate Modern and ICA: London, Akademie Solitude: Stuttgart, Center for Contem-
their space/time frameworks and carrying their socio-cultural meanings, were referred to by Chris- porary Arts: Celje, Škuc Gallery and P74: Ljubljana. Helen has recently finished a 2-year residency supported by
topher Alexander as patterns. Patterns are archetypes: similar physical configurations that foster Arts Council England with UK national arts organisation METAL, developing a new app with artist Idit Elia Na-
alike life situations and are likely to be found in different cultures and times. Still, in any specific than that playfully critiques approaches to the urban environment and landscape – further developed through
context a pattern bears its singular realization, providing for a unique urban experience. But what is commissions for Cambridge Junction, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and walks for The National Theatre, London.
this specific urban life experience for a given city at a given time? This paper offers the theatre as a Helen is the 2013 recipient of the RIBA LKE Ozolins Studentship in Architecture.
medium to unfold the unique experience of a selected urban space/time. It will focus on a case study
in Tel-Aviv, a city of migrants and migration. Characterized by ‘patterns’ of local physical and climatic Performative Architectures - Between Theory and Practice
conditions, Tel Aviv has accommodated a diversity of people, who live within a structured tension
between here and there and between the city’s aspiration to grow into an anonymous, global hub Architecture requires movement and interaction with the body to be understood. In this inter-rela-
versus the intensive, localized neighborhood life. In the 1970s, city of balconies was a Tel-Aviv major tionship, buildings and public space are better understood as ‘performative conditions’ – “acting on
patterns, a concise expression of a unique, quotidian urban experience. This is clearly expressed in us and activated by us.” (Petrescu 2007) Bringing together concepts of performativity from visual/
the theater of Hanoch Levin - the renown Israeli playwright and director. His play ‘Krum’ follows the live-art, feminist theories and performance studies, this paper aims to foreground spatial knowledge
protagonist, returning to his neighborhood after a failed attempt to realize his dreams overseas. accumulated through embodied/tacit forms, asking what can such ‘performative research’ bring to
‘Krum’ performed three times in Israel 1974, 2000, 2017, and eight times throughout Europe, in the understanding and production of architecture and urban politics? In visual, live-art and theatre
2000 - 2013. Reading urban life of Tel Aviv through different ‘Krum’ performances in different time practices, many people/groups are working between concepts of art, architecture and performance;
segments, reveals the radical change in the urban experience over the span of forty years. The paper where ‘performative research’ is well known (Haseman 2006; Harvie 2009; Nelson 2013; Rufford
suggests that similar reading of different productions of a selected play, might illuminate the meta- 2016/18, Hannah 2015/18) Simultaneously, within architectural practice and theory, the idea of the
morphosing urban experiences of any city. performative has become prevalent, however, the term is still readily conflated with performance or
material technologies rather than a ‘site of group co-ordination in space over time’ (Jackson 2011).
Key Words I am a practice led researcher working with live art in public space; researching how performative
Urban Life, Fiction-Reality, Image of the City, Scenography, Patterns of events methodologies differ from conventional architecture practice and what kind of spaces they produce.
Focusing on concepts from performance studies, alongside interventions from my practice within
a non-functioning market building in Celje Slovenia, and informed by the ‘situated knowledges’ of
Braidotti, Barad and Haraway, this paper will explore what is at stake when substantiating perfor-
mative approaches in the context of ‘quantifiable’ forms of spatial knowledge production. Focusing
on performative methodologies as dramatizations of shared concerns around regeneration process-
es affecting migrational/generational exclusion and sedimentation of public space, this paper will
explore critiques around iterative productions of spatial subjectivities in relation to ‘intra-action’
(Barad 2003). Ultimately, this paper will ask to what degree different groups who inhabit cities/
public spaces through performative actions produce new ways of knowing and further, what poten-
tial these performative practices, situated in everyday politics, have for alternate models of prac-
tice-based knowledge production in architecture.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key Words
performativity architecture public space feminism

666 667
 WG WG

Cathy Turner Višnja Žugić

University of Exeter University of Novi Sad

Cathy is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of Exeter. Her primary research Višnja Žugić is an Architect, a Teaching Assistant and a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Uni-
focuses on the relationship between performance and public spaces. She is currently leading an AHRC funded versity of Novi Sad, Serbia. She is a co-founder of Ephemera Collective EC, a non-profit organization of architects
interdisciplinary research network with researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, specialized in creative practices, interdisciplinary research and education in the field of Spatial Design. As a mem-
looking at the politics of performance in relation to urban expansion in South India. She is also working on a ber of EC, she works with a vast and diverse pallet of methods and strategies borrowed from the other artistic disci-
monograph on performance and garden spaces. Her book, Dramaturgy and Architecture: Theatre, Utopia and plines, aiming towards the profound understanding and the production of space. As an author and a mentor, she is
the Built Environment was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. Previous publications include Drama- actively engaged in numerous site-specific projects, as well as creative research dealing with relations between
turgy and Performance, co-written with Synne Behrndt 2nd edition Palgrave 2016. She is a founder member body and space, ephemeral architecture, and performativity of architecture, which refer to her main interests.
of artists collective, Wrights & Sites, whose work concerns place and space. Their work includes The Archi-
tect-Walker: A Mis-Guide in press A Mis-Guide to Anywhere 2006 and An Exeter Mis-Guide 2003, as well as GRASPING THE MOMENT: The Ephemeral Nature of Non-theatre
performances, curation/mentoring and more recently, public art works.
Performance Spaces
Performance, Environmental Activism and the Struggle for This paper addresses the issues of instability and a fragile state of non-theatre performance spac-
Chennai’s Beaches es. In a context of the overall flow of architecture within the turbulent social, cultural and political
circumstances that surround it, we want to address the importance of grasping the moment in the
Urur-Olcott Kuppam is a fishing village on the outskirts of Chennai, neighbouring the bustling, newer idea of exploiting potentials of creative engagement with non-theatre spaces – especially when the
area of Besant Nagar. Less well known, and less well visited, it is a place under pressure. Fisher- goals of such endeavours surpass the sole production of an artwork, and become an inevitable step
folk along Chennai’s coast have repeatedly had to fight government authorities to resist damaging in a chain of events, aiming towards establishment of a specific cultural identity, in which both ar-
transport developments or ‘beautification’ projects, and the land is always subject to housing de- chitecture and theatre play an important role. Through the case study of The Hempt House in Novi
velopments for newer, richer residents. Meanwhile, the area is under-served in terms of garbage Sad, Serbia, the paper deals with the process of detecting its co-performative potentials, through the
collection, sanitation or community spaces and affected by industrial plants along the coast. The stages that lead towards a participatory initiative that would result in the opening of the Hempt Mu-
Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha is an annual festival that is about ‘equalising spaces using arts and vice seum in 2021. Following the changes in the perception of the location, through a series of site-spe-
versa’, as environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman puts it. Set up in 2015, the festival presents cific, ephemeral spatial interventions, in a three-year span of actions, the fundaments were set for
not only the classical forms of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam dance, but also folk forms: Koothu, developing a site-based theatre performance, as the final station towards reaching the initiative’s
Villuppattu, Paraiaatam, and other contemporary music indigenous to the village. Though Carnatic goals. Lastly, we will discuss the events that followed, contributing to the fate of its implementation.
musician T M Krishna is a spokesperson and figurehead for the festival, it is a local concern and, for In such a process, there is an inevitable and vibrant fluctuation between the architectural space and
instance, fisherman and environmental activist K Saravanan was a key representative from the be- the performative actions, which constantly shapes and re-shapes the relationships between space,
ginning. This paper will report on the 2018 festival and consider the importance of this performance narrative and time.       How can we generate a new cultural requisite that results in a joint profes-
platform for the development and support of Urur-Olcott Kuppam in terms of both environment sional and public action, through spatial agency? How can theatre act as an agent, shaping public
and ways of life, in the context of Chennai’s growth as a city. This emphasis on the cultural capital opinion, broadening and deepening the awareness of a specific site with a significant relevance in
of Urur-Olcott is a re-imagining of Chennai as inclusive city. Does it, however, revise geographies of the history of a city? Through what kind of performative actions, interdisciplinary methods and pro-
caste, educational and economic privilege, or merely extend these interests into new areas? Can it cesses can theatre bring to life an architectural space? What is the potential of the physical space in
assist the fisherfolk in their resistance to redevelopment and environmental degradation that threat- devising a performance?
ens their livelihoods?
Key Words
Key Words site-specific performance, ephemeral, non-theatre space, spatial agency, participatory initiative,
Urbanisation, periphery, Tamil Nadu, festival, temporary stages, ecology, community, equality Hempt house, social environment
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

668 669
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

670
Groups
Working
THEATRICAL EVENT

671

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

 WG WG

Susan Bennett Vicki Ann Cremona

University of Calgary University of Malta

Susan Bennett is University Professor at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is widely published across a Prof. Vicki Ann Cremona is Chair of the School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta. She graduated from
variety of areas in theatre and performance studies. In 2018, her volume, co-edited with Sonia Massai, on the the Université de Provence, France and was a Visiting Scholar at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
director Ivo van Hove will be published by Bloomsbury Methuen. Her current research concerns the relation- She was appointed Ambassador of Malta to France between 2005-2009, and to Tunisia between 2009-2013. She
ships between performance and value. She is series editor, with Kim Solga, of the series “Theory for Theatre is an executive member of the International Federation of Theatre Research IFTR and has contributed towards
Studies” with first volumes appearing early in 2019. founding Icarus Publishing Enterprise, a joint initiative between TARF, Odin Teatret Denmark and The Grotowski
Institute Poland. She has various international publications, mainly about theatrical events and public celebra-
Performance in the National Context: Canada 150 tion, particularly Carnival, Commedia dell’Arte, theatre anthropology, Maltese Theatre and costume. Her most
recent publication is entitled: Carnival and Power. Play and Politics in a Crown Colony Palgrave Macmillan 2018.
2017 marked the 150th anniversary of Canada’s Confederation – an occasion that the Canadian
Government sought to celebrate as ‘Canada 150’ with events throughout the year and from coast to Strategies of Power and Protest
coast, and rumored to have involved a Can. $0.5 billion budget commitment. From the outset, Can-
ada 150 was contentious since, for many Canadians, these festivities were tantamount to revelling in In his book, the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, JurgenHabermas shows the how
the colonization and genocide of Indigenous peoples and their cultures. Through the examination of the public sphere is situated in the space between civil society and the state, and how it brought
popular performance events staged in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, during 2017, I will pry open the about the shift of power ‘for’ the people to that ‘by’ the people. The public sphere implies a certain
variety of contexts in which these events were produced and the discourses that promoted, engaged self-consciousness of a public sector that is voiced through critical discourse by means of a pen, or
and/or critiqued them. At the same time as these performances aimed to reproduce the national more importantly, through cultural or spectacular manifestations. The type, form and extent of these
context that they were intended to celebrate both for Canadian and tourist audiences, the contexts manifestations is determined by the social context and the political environment in which they take
in which they were received were, at least in some cases, more explicitly political, aesthetic and/or place. This paper will focus on manifestations of protest and rebellion and analyse the negotiation of
popular. I am interested, then, in contested terminologies: how an asserted critical language can be power between the protesters and the political forces they are pitting themselves against. Starting
challenged by unexpected and countervailing frameworks in which performances take place and are out from Chantal Mouffe’s rejection of the unified subject, the paper will examine the relationship
understood. between de-centring ‘which prevents the fixation of a set of positions around a preconstituted point’
and its natural and opposite consequence: the institution of nodal points, and the way this affects
Key Words power relations.  It will also examine the strategies of power that are applied through the staging of
performance, nation, terminology, production, reception theatrical events, following Christopher Balme’s claim that the public nature of theatre makes it a
‘natural object of political control’.  It will try to discuss the language used within and with regard to
these theatrical contexts, and to what extent it determines the type of performance and spectacu-
larity that is shown. Through different case studies, the paper will observe the protest mechanisms
that are used in public events, and contrast them to more restricted, private environments.

Key Words
public sphere, protest, politics, control
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

672 673
 WG WG

Peter Eversmann Rikard Hoogland

University of Amsterdam, department of Theatre Studies Stockholm University

Peter Eversmann 1955 studied a year at the Wittenberg University, Ohio, USA and after that completed his studies Rikard Hoogland is a senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at Stockholm University. He has published in peer-re-
in History of Art and in Theatre at the University of Amsterdam in 1982. His dissertation De ruimte van het theater viewed journals such as Nordic Theatre Studies and Peripeti. He has also published book chapters in antholo-
The Space of the Theatre was defended in 1996. He is currently associate professor at the department of Theatre gies published by Rodopi, Cambridge Scholars, Palgrave, Ohlms, and Cambridge University Press. During spring
Studies, University of Amsterdam. He teaches and has published on the theory and history of theatre architec- 2017 he was a visiting researcher at the Freie Universität in Berlin.
ture as well as on empirical audience and reception research. Current research interests include the theatrical
experience of the spectator as a specific form of the aesthetic encounter, theatre iconology and the use of infor- The Call against Low Quality and Immorality at Albert Ranft’s
mation technologies for education in the performing arts. He is editor in chief of the Themes in Theatre series Brill.
Theatres in Stockholm 1921.
Contexts for Understanding Theatrical Events.The Role of Real I will exam the turbulence that was started by the premiere of Mikhail Artsybashev’s Jealousy in
World Knowledge and Experience Withfictive Worlds for Engaging March 1921. In the Christian daily paper Svenska morgonbladet published the 6th April the headline
With Theatre. was “Albert Ranft – a front man for theatre decadence”. The daily paper was connected to the Free
Church movement, and reported also about a private investigation of the public entertainment in
For understanding theatrical events we apply not only our knowledge of the real world places, times, Stockholm and its low standard of morality. The attack and the investigation was reported about in
people and events and what is impossible in that world but also our experience with stories, fic- several other daily papers, and often not in support of Ranft. In the same time he was also criticized
tional worlds and aesthetics. The mental models and schemata that we use to construct meaning for being too much of a businessman and that his repertoire not could be considered as high art.
function as so many contexts in which we apprehend and evaluate the theatrical event. The cogni- The question was even object for a debate in the Parliament. Of interest is that the main critic Per
tive processes by which we bring these contexts into play can be subsumed under four headings: Lindberg that accused Ranft for holding a love artistic quality, had produced the same play two years
comparing does the performance resemble in some way the world and/or fictions that I know?, earlier. During this time the theatre field was reaching the level of an autonomous field in Bourdieu’s
anticipating formulating hypotheses about how events will unroll, modifying changing ones ideas sense, and this made it possible to accuse one of the fields rulers for no longer keep up the standard.
about the world and/or fictional structures and achieving overcoming the challenges presented by This is what Bourdieu describe as a struggle on the field, and there alliances are built up in this case
the theatrical event.  So, when dealing with theatrical performances spectators are constantly pro- the Royal Dramatic Theatre and Per Lindberg. But they did also build alliances outside the field with
cessing them within at least two contexts: their perception of the real world and their experiences guardians of morality. From this standpoint it is possible to see the context through Bourdieu’s lens.
with stories, theatre and art. The paper will not only address the question how these two contexts Five years after this struggle the empire of Ranft had collapsed and the field of theatre was rede-
and their interplay are necessary preconditions for our assessment of theatrical performances, but signed.
will also explore how more or less forgetting these contexts accounts for feelings of immersion and
identification. Key Words
High art, Bourdieu, Morality, Theatre organization
Key Words
cognition possible worlds theory immersion identification
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

674 675
 WG WG

Willmar Sauter Beate Schappach

Stockholm University Institute for Theatre Studies, University of Bern, Switzland

Willmar Sauter is Professor Emeritus in Theatre Studies at Stockholm University. He was the first convenor of BeateSchappach studied Theatre and German Literature at FreieUniversität Berlin and at the Universities of
the Theatrical Event-Working Group when it was established in 1997. He has participated in all publications of Zurich and Berne. Since 2002 she has been working as a research assistant and lecturer at the Institute of The-
the group. atre Studies, University of Berne. In 2011 she finished her PhD Aids in Literatur, Theater und Film. Zurkulturel-
lenDramaturgieeinesStörfalls AIDS in Literature, Theatre, and Film. The Cultural Dramaturgy of Disorder. She is
The Explanatory Value of Contexts currently working on her habilitation project Dramaturgy. The Art of Tidying up. She is president of the Swiss
Society for Cultural Studies and convenor of the working group Literature–Medicine–Gender. In addition, she
worked as a dramaturg for theatre productions in Germany and Switzerland, e.g. in 1997 The Fall of the House
In most books on theatre history, each chapter on a new epoch or century is introduced by an over-
of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, in 2006 Turandot by Carlo Gozzi, in 2004 Judgement by Barry Collins and in 2006
view of the societal, political, technical and intellectual advances that characterises the period in Rich – Beautiful – Dead adapted from No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre. She curated several exhibitions, e.g. in
question. Such-like introductions are supposed to serve as a ‘background’ of historical innovations, 2013/14 Education as an Adventure and in 2011/12 Half Time. Looking at the Middle Age at VögeleKulturZ-
necessary for the understanding of the artistic developments of theatre and performance. What entrumPfäffikon Switzerland and in 2008 The Generation of ’68. Short Summer – Long Impact at Historisches
is the explanatory value of such background chapters? In contrast to these general chapters on Museum Frankfurt am Main Germany.
contemporaneousness, arguments are established that describe the cause of particular theatrical
events: because A happened, B was possible. I see the description of general, contemporary events, From Page to Stage – and Back. Text as Context of Theatrical
on the one hand, and the causal explanation of particular events, on the other hand, as extreme Events
positions in the range of contexts that are assumed to explain a theatrical event. There is an obvious
risk that the general ‘background’ is interpreted as a causal argument for why something happened
Literary texts and theatrical performances have a complex relationship, which differs depending
in a certain period, and there are similar risks that causal explanations are expanded to general
on the definition of text and the view on the functions of theatre. By conceptualising the dramatic
observations. Therefore I would like to propose some further distinctions concerning the use of var-
text as context of the performance the paper explores different forms of this relationship: a. The
ious contexts in order to discuss their explanatory value of theatrical events. Instead of asking what
performance as a transfer from page to stage, which is considered to be true to the text b.The per-
various contexts are, my main question will be: what can a context do? How is a context related to
formance as an interpretation of the text highlighting certain aspects of the text c.The performance
theatrical fields, theatrical playing and playing culture?
as a postulate using the text as a resource d.The performance as a critical examination of the text or
even opponent to the text approaching the text with suspicion e.The performance as an experience
Key Words
of alterity focusing on the otherness of the text.  The paper aims for a model of the relationship be-
Context, explanation, causality, event
tween text and performance, which can be used to describe and analyse, how theatre practitioners,
playwrights, spectators and critics understand the text-performance-relationship.  The presentation
discusses the following hypothesis: The discourse about the relationship between text and perfor-
mance is less about literature and theatre, but it negotiates the function of theatre in society. By
analysing the discourse on the text-performance-relation theatre scholars are enabled to reflect the
underlying discourse on the function of theatre.

Key Words
Drama, Text, Performance, Dramaturgy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

676 677
 WG WG

NaphtalyShem-Tov Daria Skjoldager-Nielsen

The Open University of Israel Stockholm University

Naphtaly Shem-Tov is a senior lecturer in the department of literature, language and the Arts at the Open Uni- Holder of two MAs – in Marketing 2007 and Theatre Studies 2012, both from the University of Lodz Poland.
versity of Israel. His research focuses on social aspects of Israeli theatre and applied theatre. His publications She is a PhD Candidate in theatre studies at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University
include articles and Acco Festival: Between Celebration and Confrontation, Boston: Academic Studies Press, Sweden. She has large experience in cooperating with cultural institutions, especially with theatres and the-
2016. Today he is studying the Mizrahi theatre in Israel. atre festivals as project manager, public relations and marketing advisor. Vice-chairwoman of the Rococo Foun-
dation since 2012, where she researches management and performance of cultural institutions. Her research
Mizrahi Autobiographical Performance interests lie within the fields of audience development, marketing approach to the theatre, cultural policy.

The article deals with three Mizrahi autobiographical performances in Israel, which construct Mizra- How Can Audience Development Projects Influence the Contexts
hi identity in different ways. Mizrahi Jews are literally Easterners or Orientals, and the term refers to of Theatrical Event?
Jews and their descendants originating in the Muslim and Arab countries. Most of them immigrated
to Israel during the 1950s, and they make up about half the population of Israel, but yet their eth- Audience development as a concept combines “financial, artistic, social and educational aspects
nic identity and culture are considered outside the dominant Israeli Western cultural orientation. of institutional efforts in order to address the audience in new ways” Lindelof 2015. Many Europe-
Inherent in the autobiographical narrative underlying these three performances, Mizrahi identity is an theatres introduce audience development projects to their programmes due to their common
enhanced by displaying real elements: physical virtuosity, the preparation and serving of food, and problems: the decrease of audience numbers and the increase of their age. Often their motivation
the use of official documentation and family records in performance. The acting modes and the is strengthen by marketing goals of the institution selling more tickets and cultural policy goals in-
focus on real elements in the autobiographical performance display the Mizrahi identity not only in cluding diverse audiences. What is being overlooked is the theatrical event understood as a complex
opposition to the cultural stereotypes with social oppression of the Mizrahi population in Israel, but social and aesthetic phenomenon. Lindelof calls it “a blind spot” of audience development. My
also, in most cases, position the Mizrahi identity as an alternative and assertive one. research project looks at audience development from the three points of view: marketing, cultural
policy and theatrical event. In this paper I will focus on theatrical event and its context, which plays
Key Words a significant role both for the presentation and perception of the performance. I will focus on the
autobiographical performance, acting modes, Israeli theatre, Jewish theatre, Mizrahi identity, eth- contexts of the spectator and use Martin and Sauter’s 1995 differentiation between theatrical and
nicity non-theatrical contexts, including development of this concept Sauter 2008. I am interested in how
audience development projects can influence the contexts of theatrical event. In my paper I will
focus on more dynamic structures of the spectator’s context e.g. education, previous experiences,
taste or preferences and how it possibly could be influenced by audience development employing
the method of “theatre talks” Sauter 1986, Scollen 2007, 2009, Hansen 2013, 2014 as influencing,
inspirational and democratising tool and explore other comparable approaches. Theoretically, I will
draw on Gadamer’s concept of “horizons” of our world, Sauter’s cultural context and Goffman’s
micro-sociology.

Key Words
audience development, theatre talks, theatrical event, context
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

678 679
 WG WG

Janne Tapper Frithwin Wagner-Lippok

University of Helsinki University of Hildesheim

I hold a PhD in theatre studies from the University of Helsinki, Finland 2012 and MA in theatre directing from Frithwin Wagner-Lippok – theatre director and theorist in Berlin, Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro. Professor for
the Theatre Academy of Finland 1987. I have worked as a theatre director for 20 years since 1987 in several representation and presence technics at Technical University DualeHochschule Baden-Württemberg Karl-
Finnish City Theatres, and in the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE. I have worked as a postdoctoral research- sruhe, Germany. At the University of Hildesheim he is writing his PhD thesis on the theatrical event as an
er in the Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Finland. At the moment I am continuing my research project affective space in productions of Jürgen Kruse und Bruno Beltrão. His theoretical-practicalprojectsfocusupon-
Theatre’s Philosophies on the Edge Between Correlationism and Speculative Materialism funded by Finnish contemporaryesthetics, performativity, and therestructuring of affectsbymedialization and itseffectsoncon-
Cultural Foundation. This project examines what implications the concept of contingency has on theatre prac- temporaniantheatre. After theatre formation in Canada, he hadfundatedtheavantgardetheatregroupTantalus,
tices and studies. It is inspired by philosophers Quentin Meillassoux’s 2008 studies. wasemployedbyseveral German theatres and collaborated in opera productions. He directedover 15 plays and
developped with Christina Schmutz in Barcelona new formats such as entrevistasperformáticas and lectur-
Set Theory in Theatre: Philosophy as an Event as2go performáticas combining theory and media-performance and including theorists and performers like
She She Pop and Rimini Protokoll, the results leading to several publications. After working at the Institut del
My paper examines theatre that employs mathematical set theory to illuminate thought as a re- Teatre, Barcelona, he cooperates with scientists, artists, and students at the PontifíciaUniversidadeCatólica
PUC in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, within the project „Theoretical Imagination in Contemporary Literary Studies and
ality. As a scientific influence set theory is one cultural context of theatre Gibson 2006. It reveals
Theatre Practice“ and the XII. International Congress of Literary Studies: Affective Spaces.
an alternative view of reality in relation to everyday realism. It illuminates not physical action on
stage, but rather hidden movement of thought in problem solving. A confrontation of these two
levels cause ruptures in everyday life and onstage as thought’s realm illuminates there stop-overs, Affective framing of the theatrical event – a phenomenological
deadlocks, dimensions of finitude and infinity and contradictions its dramaturgy is problem solving approach to JürgenKruse’s “Leonce and Lena”
see Berto 2009 Rokem 2016. Language creates thought’s problems Benjamin 1916 Fenves 2011.
Some theatre makers philosophy seems to be that set theoretic problems are reality that theatre The theatrical event may be, from a phenomenological view, conceived as a dialogical process in
can represent. Philosophy is a horizon that defines how we perceive reality, while a rupture caused the interspace of stage and audience, that consists in an onstage action framed by the contexts
by a new philosophy is an event see Zizek 2014. My research interest is to theorize above confron- attributed by the spectators – to constitute meaning. In Jürgen Kruse’s 2016 version of Georg Büch-
tation of these levels. I define problem solving as finite and infinite. Problems like taking a boot off ner’sLeonce and Lena, a neat additional character called “Lady Büchner”, invented by the director
in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot 1949 are finite, yet ontological and epistemological problems for the mise-en-scène, is writing throughout the play on sheets of paper which after a few lines she
of Estragon and Vladimir that ensue endless pondering are infinite. I will derive from set theoretic throws to the ground. It stays obscure what the actress is writing and what it means in the comedy’s
patterns in Kafka’s literature what kind of action illuminates thinking that never achieves a goal context. Only much later, someone picks up one of those sheets and reads the famous phrase of
Steinsaltz 1992 Knundsen 2017. In Sophocles’ Antigone Antigone and Creon employ contradictory Kubrick’s Shining “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” – typed by the mad protagonist over
models of justice, which proves that justice as an important context of human society has not been and over again. This retroactive meaning production can be discussed in the terms of Frederic Tyg-
defined properly. Onstage the finite level is expressed through vivid action and problem solving, the strup’s situational, relational, and corporeal affective space concept where affectivity is conceived
infinite level through motionlessness and silence: in Beckett’s plays and in Shakespeare’s Hamlet the as a spontaneous, complex, multi-layered temporal-spacial phenomenon. Related to the issue of
protagonists’ motionlessness and silence generate fierce discussion and a rupture. I will eventually migration – conceived, for its spatial and temporal dimensions, as a structural phenomenon of the
examine above dramaturgies in contemporary productions of Estonian Theatre NO99’s Filth 2015 theatrical event, rather than a content-related one, unexpected theatrical events can be seen as
and Unified Estonia 2010. “migrating” into the play, changing and widening a given context. The paper discusses the conse-
quences for the theatrical event and its corresponding affective space, using Michel de Certeau’s
Key Words space concept of transforming a place into a space by human agency, and Goffman’s frame theory
set theory, philosophy, thought, action, problem solving, dramaturgy, finitude, infinity as a background.

Key Words
Affectivity, affective space, Jürgen Kruse, frame theory, theatrical event, phenomenology
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

680 681
 Working TRANSLATION,
ADAPTATION AND
Groups DRAMATURGY
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

682 683
 WG WG

Ken Cerniglia Dorothy Chansky

Disney Theatrical Productions Texas Tech University

Ken Cerniglia is dramaturg and literary manager for Disney Theatrical Group, where since 2003 he has devel- Dorothy Chansky is Director of the Humanities Center at Texas Tech University, where she is also Professor
oped over fifty shows for professional, amateur and school productions, including Aladdin, The Hunchback of in the School of Theatre and Dance. She is the author of Kitchen Sink Realisms: Domestic Labor, Dining, and
Notre Dame, Peter and the Starcatcher, Newsies, The Little Mermaid, High School Musical and Tarzan. He has Drama in American Theatre University of Iowa Press, 2015 and Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Move-
adapted several Broadway scripts for young performers, including Beauty and the Beast JR., The Little Mer- ment and the American Audience Southern Illinois University Press, 2004 and co-editor of Food and Theatre
maid JR., The Lion King JR. and The Lion King KIDS. Recent freelance projects include Oliverio: A Brazilian Twist on the World Stage Routledge, 2015. Her work has appeared in TDR, Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies,
Kennedy Center, Monticello Wakes Fisher Ensemble, Bridges Berkeley Playhouse, and Hadestown New York the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Text and Performance Quarterly, and the Journal of Adaptation
Theatre Workshop. Ken holds a Ph.D. in theater history and criticism from the University of Washington and in Film and Performance.
is co-founder of the American Theatre Archive Project, artistic director of Two Turns Theatre Company, and
president-elect of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas LMDA. He has published several articles Adapting to the Times: Marvin’s Room and Medicine Then and Now
and book chapters and is editor of Peter and the Starcatcher: The Annotated Broadway Play 2012 and Newsies:
Stories of the Unlikely Broadway Hit 2013. He has been a member of IFTR since 2000 and is a former convener The migratory route traversed by all humans is the passage from life to death. Some experience an
of the Historiography Working Group. abrupt arrival at the border others wander, experiencing the migration as a long, meandering trek
across a landscape lacking legible boundaries. For many, the condition of travel is medicalized, with
Migrations of the Lion King: The First 20 Years on Stage the sojourner understanding her situation in terms of current scientific knowledge controlled by
authority figures. Such knowledge typically determines the actual care palliative, aggressive, chem-
In 1997, avant-garde director and designer Julie Taymor led a team of international artists with ical, homeopathic and help prosthetic, prescription, psychotherapeutic, everyday available at the
virtually no commercial theatre experience to create what would eventually become the most end, the latter inflected by government policies, personal assets, and popular prejudice. This paper
recognizable and profitable live productions in theatre history. Now, over 20 years since its considers dramaturgical challenges to understanding the production and reception history of Scott
Broadway premiere, The Lion King has been translated into over a dozen languages and seen on McPherson’s 1990 Marvin’s Room, which won the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play
every continent except Antarctica, with its 26th production touring new markets in Asia.  As Dis- in 1992 twenty-five years later closed quickly on Broadway after receiving decidedly mixed reviews.
ney Theatrical Productions’ resident dramaturg and literary manager, I will offer an insider’s per- The play treats the vicissitudes and ultimate coming-together-in-need of an extended family with
spective on the migrations that have helped create, narrate, and disseminate the musical inter- limited means, two of whose members are terminally ill, a third of whom is in the “dotty” stages of
nationally. Although rooted in the music of South Africa, The Lion King features elements and early dementia, with a fourth who has been in psychiatric lockdown. In 1992, the New York Times
has been inspired by experiences from many continents, a migration of textiles, textures, and hailed the work as “one of the funniest plays of this year as well as one of the wisest and most
texts from real cultures onto an imagined stage space. The musical’s dramaturgy itself is rooted moving” Frank Rich. But the 2017 reviewers shrugged, seeing in “yesterday’s clear-eyed reflection
in a story of personal and physical migration: birth, growth, exile, maturation, and return. Final- on life’s blessings and blights . . . today’s saggy, sentimental Lifetime movie manqué” and noting the
ly, for over two decades the production has migrated into new languages and cultures across the failures of its “long-ago vantage” to deliver any emotional punch. How can twenty-seven years be
globe, constantly exploring new ways to reach, inspire, and delight audiences with its iconic awe. so very long ago? Or, in today’s lightning-speed technology innovations, how could it not be? What
changes in popular awareness of disease and decline—primarily underwritten by the aging Baby
Key Words Boom cohort—trouble this depiction of family rapprochement, making it both legible and illegible
musical, Disney, migration, translation across generations and geographies?

Key Words
dramaturgy, medical, dementia
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

684 685
 WG WG

Bernadette Cochrane Christophe Collard

University of Queensland Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Bernadette Cochrane is a lecturer in drama at the University of Queensland. Publications include New Drama- Christophe Collard lectures in European literature, critical theory, and contemporary performing arts at the
turgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice Methuen Drama, co-edited with Katalin Trencsényi Vrije Universiteit Brussel Free University of Brussels. He holds a BA and MA in English and German Literature,
and “Screening from the Met, the NT, or the House: what changes with the live relay”. Theatre to Screen. Spec. and a PhD in American Drama. Articles of his have appeared among others in Adaptation, New Theatre Quar-
issue of Adaptation, July 2014 with Frances Bonner.  Forthcoming publications include “Blurring the Lines: ad- terly, Performance Research, Performing Arts Journal, Literature/Film Quarterly, Re-Thinking History, as well
aptation, transmediality, intermediality and screened performance?” for the Routledge Companion to Adap- as Studies in Theatre and Performance. He is also the author of the monograph Artist on the Make: David
tation and “Stage to Screen: remediating the remainders of authorship”. She is a contributor to the Cambridge Mamet’s work Across Media and Genres 2012, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Young Scholar Book Award
Encyclopedia of Stage Directors and Directing, forthcoming 2019. of the European Society for the Study of English ESSE.

Ethics, Agency, and the ‘Other’: Plays Resisting Translation Ecological Homologies: Between Metaphorical Migration and
Technological Extension
“Nura-Da Nura-Da Nura-Da Nura Nura Da”. The Secret River, by Andrew Bovell, begins with a scene of
Indigenous domesticity and a mourning call to country. Only some in the audience may have under- This paper proposes to present theatrical productions as performative phenomena functioning
stood the language being spoken, but few Australian audiences would have doubted that they were as ecologies – i.e. evolving environments in a constant interaction with other environments, tech-
about to see violent expropriation rendered theatrically. The Secret River, the multi-award winning nologies, and cultural contexts an interaction which itself accordingly allows for differences while
novel by Kate Grenville, is internationally acknowledged as one of the most significant contemporary operating simultaneously through metaphorical migration and technological interconnectedness.
versions of the so-called Australia settler narrative and its disastrous consequences for Indigenous Foregrounding the interaction and interpenetration of multiple signifiers and signifying systems,
Australians.   The signal difference between novel and it theatrical adaptation is the presence of the the ecology angle presents theatre as an artistic platform at once limited in space and time while
Darug people. Grenville chose to place the Dhurag at one remove Bovell, et al positioned the Darug, elusive and multidimensional, and thus arguably far more representative of human cognition than
centre-stage. Since European contact, over 130 Indigenous Australian languages have become ex- one-dimensional, ‘single-track’ artistic texts. Starting from the reasoned hypothesis that ‘reality’ as
tinct. Erroneously, the artistic team assumed that Dhurag was one of these. The correction of this perceived through the lens of human cognition is complexly entangled, inaccessible in an absolute
mistake gave rise to one of the most striking production decisions: the settler characters to speak sense, yet materialized at the same time, and hence only partially accessible via a collage of myriad
in English and the Darug characters to speak in Dharug without translation.   While both novel and constituents, this paper will rely on the advances achieved by the TAD working group in defining dra-
production have attracted considerable critical attention, little, or no consideration, has been given maturgy as the coordination of a creation’s conceptual coherence. Interestingly, a first element that
to the ethical implications of translating River for audiences outside Australia. The cultural specificity strikes when studying practitioners of this kind of thinking and creating is the recurrence of homol-
resulting from Australia being treated as “terra nullius” challenges translation norms regarding lan- ogy between text, stage, and space – a phenomenon which in theatre practice translates into what
guage and place. Translating Dharug into a different indigenous language raises questions of cultural Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye have called an “ecology of relationships” 2010. For with today’s
substitution and obscures notions of cultural specificity. To shift location is to elide the importance tendency towards stimulating “process conscious[ness]” Trencsényi & Cochrane, 2014, theatre mak-
of place and language to Indigenous Australians. Examining the proposition that the English lan- ing has gradually expanded from the traditional hermeneutics of understanding, interpreting, and
guage sections could be translated and the Dharug language sections should not, I argue there are representing a text, to understanding, interpreting, and negotiating between different cultural and
playtexts that resist translation. Using the instance of River, this paper explores broader theoretical signifying systems. Re-routing connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a tech-
reflections on the ethics and agency of translating Indigeneity. nology-induced sense of simultaneity as organizing principle, the study of said ‘ecological homolo-
gies’ should allow to study the epistemologically troubling tensions between received conceptions
Key Words of ‘meaning’ and an increasing awareness of the processes that bring them about – a brittle balance,
translation adaptation agency in short, between materialized complexity and processual logic.

Key Words
Dramaturgy, ecology, homology, technology, metaphor, migration
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

686 687
 WG WG

Graça Corrêa Silvia Dumitriu

Center for the Philosophy of Science, Universidade de Lisboa
Silvia Dumitriu is a recent graduate 2017 of the PhD programme at Royal Central School of Speech
Affiliated with the Center for the Philosophy of Science of Universidade de Lisboa, Graça Corrêa was until and Drama. The title of the researc project is Postdramatic Theatre and Deconstruction: An Anti-mi-
recently an FCT post-doctoral research fellow at CIAC-UAlg. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from The Graduate metic Approach to Contemporary Dramaturgy. She has written two plays, Mad About Love, a Comme-
Center of the City University of New York an M.A. in Theatre Directing and Education from Emerson College, dia dellArte play for the 21st century, and Cruel Games, a tragic farce. She has transalated plays by Ber-
Boston an Architecture degree from Universidade Técnica de Lisboa and a B.A. in Acting at Escola Superior de nard Marie Koltes, Sarah Kane, Eric Emmanuel Schmitt, Israel Horowitz. She has been project developer
Teatro e Cinema, Portugal. She was the beneficiary of a doctoral FCT Fellowship 2003-7, a Fulbright Scholar- and theatre director for productions that participates in important festivals in Romania and abroad.
ship 1995-7, a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Fellowship 1995-7 a Vera Mowry Roberts Dissertation Award
2009, and a Louisa Woods Memorial Fund Award 1996. She has worked in professional theatre productions Theatricality and/in Translation
as director, dramaturg, translator, and designer, in experimental projects as well as for the National Theatre
D. Maria II, Teatro da Trindade, TEC, Artistas Unidos, and other major theatre companies in Lisboa. She is the Thinking about theatricality as the irreducible trait of a text that refuses to settle down into a unique
author of a number of plays, five of which were produced. She is has published several essays on theatre, as translation onto stage matters, involves thinking about the relation between texts and multiplicities.
well as a book, Sensory Landscapes in Harold Pinter: A Study on Ecocriticism and Symbolist Aesthetics 2011.
Traditionally mediated by mimesis, the subordination of the singular to the general is problematized
The publication of a book on Gothic Theory and Aesthetics is forthcoming in 2018.
and questioned in postdramatic works. In postdramatic theatre text apparently loses its primary sta-
tus, as there is a fundamental and inescapable alterity that haunts the articulation of the themes and
Longing and Belonging through Migration: Dramaturgical other types of aesthetic structures and technical procedures. Sarah Kanes Crave, a play constituted
Concepts of Alterity in Philosophy and Theatre by a musically orchestrated series of interruptions and resistances, is an extreme example of an ap-
parently free play of signifiers, which seem to stand for a corruption of rationality, to point towards
This paper examines how philosophy may critically contribute towards discussing and understanding the dissolution of meaning, and to establish theatricality as an empty signifier. I would like to argue
the concepts and percepts of identity and alterity, in the context of the ongoing massive surge of that postdramatic theatre theory, by privileging the idea that representation is always already a
migration across the globe. Drawing on concepts from philosophical works by Brian Massumi Para- political act Lehmann 1999 manifests a tendency towards oversimplificating the contribution of con-
bles for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, 2002, Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari A Thousand text into the production of theatrical meaning, overlooking its instrumental role in manufacturing
Plateaux, 1980 What is Philosophy, 1991, Luce Irigaray An Ethics of Difference, 1993, and Jacques the artistic meaning.  Using concepts created by Derridaa analysis of the logocentric tradition, I will
Derrida On Hospitality, 1996, I will investigate how different dramaturgical techniques, utilized in attempt to recuperate the reverberation of the contexts into the production of theatrical truth.  Text
particular dramatic texts, interrogate notions of identity, alterity, empathy and hospitality. Plays and context relate to one another in Crave, conjuring the catastrophe of meaning and the collapse
examined include ancient dramaturgies such as Euripedes’s Children of Heracles c.430 BCE Anglo- of a dominant and seemingly imperfect concept of world context that structured the expectation of
phone dramaturgies such as Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language 1988 and David Grieg’s Damascus theatrical meaning. The theatrical translation has to recuperate the dramaturgy of the work which
2007 as well as other contemporary pieces such as Migraaaants! 2016 by Romanian-French writer overwhelms the confines of the textual and recuperates the resonances and resistances that struc-
Matei Visniec, The Golden Dragon 2009 by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, and Incen- ture the role of silence.  No poem without accident, no poem that does not open itself like a wound,
dies 2002 by Lebanese-Canadian author Wajdi Mouawad. By addressing ethical-affective percepts but no poem that is not also just as woundingDerrida in Kamuf 1991:233
such as empathy and hospitality in a theatre dealing with migration experiences, I will be linking
social, cultural and physical globalized deracination to the rising imbalance in the distribution of Key Words
wealth, and to shifts and abuses of poverty triggered by political and corporate unconcern and ap- postdramatic theatre, the Other, context, text, deconstruction
athy towards the “minor” Other. ---NOTE: I would like to be considered for a working-group spon-
sored open panel

Key Words
Philosophy and Theatre Ethics and Dramaturgy Contemporary Drama Affect in Theatre Identity and
Alterity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

688 689
 WG WG

Ulla Kallenbach Katja Krebs

University of Southern Denmark University of Bristol

Ulla Kallenbach, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for the Study of Culture, University of Dr. Katja Krebs is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the University of Bristol in the U. K., and her
Southern Denmark. Her principal field of research is imagination and drama analysis informed by two main research is mainly concerned with the relationships between translation, adaptation and reception. Focusing
perspectives: 1 a philosophic perspective informed by the history of ideas and 2 a scenic perspective exploring on European Theatre History, with particular emphasis on British performance histories, her work is particular-
the performativity of the text and the point of view of the spectator. Her current research project, funded ly concerned with the relationship between adaptation and translation practices, products and concepts, and
by the Carlsberg Foundation, is entitled ‘Imagining Imagination in Philosophy and Drama 1960-’. She is book the construction of dramatic traditions. Related research interests include pan-European theatre exchanges,
review editor of the peer reviewed journal Nordic Theatre Studies which she co-edited with Anneli Saro 2013- and the investigation of translation as performative practice. She has published widely on the relationship be-
15 and works as a dramaturg, most recently for the theatre group Livingstones Kabinet. Publications include tween translation and adaptation in performance and is one of the co-founders of the Journal of Adaptation in
stage/page/play: Interdisciplinary approaches to theatre and theatricality edited with Anna Lawaetz, 2016, Film and Performance as well as co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Adaptation.
‘The Disenchantment of the Wonderful - A Doll’s House and the Idealist Imagination’ Nordic Theatre Studies,
2014 and “Beautiful dream” or “loathsome delusion”: Imagination and Ideality in Nineteenth-Century Den- Enforcing Mutation: the Violence of Adaptation
mark, European Romantic Review, 2018. Her forthcoming monograph, The Theatre of Imagining – A Cultural
History of Imagination in the Mind and on the Stage will be published by Palgrave Macmillan 2018.
This paper explores what we mean by ‘adaptation’ both in terms of positions claimed within Adap-
tation Studies as well as in relation to ideas of migration. It attempts to establish what we mean by
Dramaturgy and Imagination ‘adaptation’ when discussing classic Greek tragedy in performance and to what extent terms such as
translation, version, rewriting, re-imaging etc. can or indeed should be distinguished from one an-
This paper will address the relevance of the concept of imagination to dramaturgy. Like dramaturgy other. The juxtaposition of the canonical classical play with its contemporary theatrical  reimaginings
is a discipline that looks both to the composition of the drama text, to the theatrical performance, can contribute to as well as complicate notions of the so-called original and its adaptations. Is perfor-
and to the reception by the spectator, so is imagination a multifaceted concept with multiple in- mance a related modality to adaptation, is the relationship between text and performance similar to
terpretations. Especially recent theories of imagination seem relevant to the conference theme of that of source text and target text, or are other considerations necessary when discussing contem-
migration in that they emphasise the suspension of the boundaries between e.g. the mind and the porary theatrical revisions of Greek plays? Can a relationship which involves a considerable degree
body or the real and the imaginary. While in a historical perspective, the cognitive capacity for imag- of transcoding, updating, and/or re-contextualization, be legitimately described as adaptations or do
ining was clearly set apart from sensory perception – albeit that in practice they might be difficult we need to employ an alternative conceptualisation of the relationship between the classic text and
to tell apart – recent studies of imagination e.g. Berger, C. C. & Ehrsson H. H. ‘The Fusion of Mental the contemporary performance than that of adaptation, and thus invoke a more specific nomencla-
Imagery and Sensation in the Temporal Association Cortex’ 2014 suggest that a border between ture? Addressing some of these questions, this paper investigates whether notions of performance
imagination and sensation is an illusion. Not only does sensation transition into imagination, imagi- of the classics and of adaptation are in a constructive relationship with each other.
nation is migrating into sensation and may alter our sensory experience. So how do we make sense
of what we experience, if the real and the unreal, sensation and imagination, in fact blend and can- Key Words
not be separated? Such questions are highly pertinent to the theatrical experience of the spectator Adaptation as migration, mutation and appropriation Contemporary Re-Imaginings of Classic Drama
and to the ways in which the drama text and performance dramaturgically anticipates, frames and
structures this theatrical experience. The paper will accordingly be exploring analytical strategies for
studying the ‘dramaturgy of imagination’, the imagination without limits, in the drama text.

Key Words
Imagination, Dramaturgy, Drama analysis
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

690 691
 WG WG

Margherita Laera Kasia Lech

University of Kent Canterbury Christ Church University

Margherita Laera is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where she is Dr Kasia Lech is a scholar, actor, storyteller, puppeteer, and a Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church
co-Director of the European Theatre Research Network based in the School of Arts. She has published widely University. She holds a PhD from University College Dublin. She trained as an actor at the Ludwik Solski State
on Italian theatre, theatre criticism, theatre translation and adaptation in edited collections and scholarly Drama School in Poland and has performed in numerous productions in Poland and Ireland, including starring
journals such as Contemporary Theatre Review, Modern Drama and Performance Research. She is the author as the Grey Cat, a puppet that co-hosted the awarded live TV show for children CyberMysz on Polish national
of Theatre & Translation Palgrave, 2019 and Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies television. She is a co-founder of Polish Theatre Ireland – an intercultural theatre company based in Dublin.
in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Peter Lang, 2013, and the editor of Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Kasia also runs Bubble Revolution a multimedia project that combines theatre, virtual exhibition, social net-
Repeat Bloomsbury, 2014. Margherita is the Senior Book Reviews Editor for the journal Theatre Research In- works, and storytelling to explore new ways of translating theatre it also looks at the role of non-native speak-
ternational. ing actors in staging translation. Kasia has published on verse and verse drama in contemporary performance,
theatre translation, multilingual theatre, multilingual actor, Spanish, Polish, and Irish theatres, theatre and
Emma Dante and Fausto Paravidino in Translation: Dealing with animal rights, and puppetry.
Foreign Audiences
No-longer the Ibsen’s Language of the Gods: Verse and
This paper investigates the work of two Italian dramatists, actors and directors, Emma Dante and Underrepresented Communities in Polish and British Theatres
Fausto Paravidino. Since the late 1990s/early 2000s, Dante and Paravidino have both enjoyed con-
siderable national and international acclaim, but the mode in which spectators have experienced This paper explores how in recent years, verse has become a theatrical language of underrepresent-
their work abroad has been significantly different: while Paravidino’s plays have been translated into ed communities and individuals. It argues that verse offers heteroglossic quality facilitating multi-
foreign languages and staged with local casts, Dante’s productions have toured untranslated, with lingual contexts and identities who escape simple geographical, national, or cultural boundaries.
their original Italian performers, mostly accompanied by surtitles. Both authors dissect aspects of Through performance analysis of three productions from Poland and the UK, the paper explores how
contemporary Italian culture in their writing, often focusing on dysfunctional family relations, the the theatre-makers use verse to provide the platform for migrant voices, challenging monolinguistic
pervasiveness of sexism and other forms of discrimination, and the intimate effect of politics and contexts, complicating the relationship between native and foreign, and confronting the dominant
the economy on characters’ lives. These similarities might suggest that Dante and Paravidino depict political contexts in which their works are created. Poland and the UK have been selected as two
similar characters and stories, but nothing could be further from the truth. The world of Paravidino countries in which there seems to be an increased need to redefine national as different to foreign
is that of the urban, literate, Europe-facing North of Italy who speak current standard Italian, but his and whose theatres are predominantly monolinguistic. The three productions are: “The Other Solos”
stories could be easily relocated anywhere in Europe or in the western world; on the contrary, Dan- directed and produced by a Spanish-British actor Paula Rodriguez 2017, “YEMAYA – Królowa Mórz”
te’s characters are inspired by the marginalised inhabitants of the rural, desolate and destitute areas [YEMAYA – the Queen of the Seas] written by Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk and directed by Martyna
of the South, especially Sicily, where people only or mostly speak local dialects and see the rest of Majewska for the Wrocław Puppetry Theatre 2016, and Adam Mickiewicz’s “Dziady” [Forefather’s
Italy, let alone the European continent, as a distant, unknown land who has forgotten them. There’s Eve] directed by Radek Rychcik for the Nowy Theatre in Poznań 2014. “The Other Solos” presents
a certain cosmopolitanism in the writing of Paravidino, and a marked localism in Dante’s work, albeit YouTube recordings of selected monologues from Shakespeare performed by actors based in the UK
one that aspires to ‘universality’. Paravidino’s characters are citizens of the world, while Dante’s and with various mother tongues, none of which is English. “YEMAYA – Królowa Mórz” explores the
characters are citizens of a metaphorical Palermo, seen as the city by antonomasia. In this paper, I refugee crisis calling for solidarity that goes beyond the nationality, language, or species. My analysis
focus on how issues of translation, international touring and intercultural exchange have influenced will look at the appearance of Sławomir Przepiórka as the Molecule. Finally, in “Dziady” Rychcik uses
the two authors’ approach to theatre-making. verse rhythms to translate this Polish national masterpiece from the worship of national uniqueness
and suffering to celebration of diversity. In his production, Polish and English languages are both
Key Words used, and non-native Polish speakers and the actors of colour finally get the opportunity to be rep-
playwriting, translation, translatability resented on Polish stages. I would like to be considered for a working-group sponsored open panel.

Key Words
verse multilingualism Polish theatre British theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

692 693
 WG WG

Mark O’Thomas Karen Quigley

University of Greenwich University of York

Mark is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Greenwich and formerly held chairs at Karen Quigley is currently Head of Theatre at the University of York, UK. Her forthcoming book project, Tracing
Newcastle University and the University of Lincoln.  He has worked as a playwright, translator and dra- The Unstageable: Conditions at Theatre’s Limits Bloomsbury discusses moments of impossibility in modern
maturg for a number of theatres including Soho Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre and the Royal National European theatre. Her recent writing on theatre and performance has appeared in Theatre, Dance and Per-
Theatre, and has adapted a number of novels for the stage where his credits include Jorge Amados Dona formance Training, European Drama and Performance Studies and Journal of Contemporary Drama in English,
Flor and her Two Husbands and Fernando Pessoas Book of Disquiet.    His most recent work is a musical and in the edited collections Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland and Performance
with jazz composer Andrea Vicari based on the impact of austerity in the north east of England.  Mark is and Ethnography.
Associate Editor of RevistaBrasileira de Estudos da Presença - the Brazilian Journal on Presence Stud-
ies - and his main research interest lays at the interface between translation, adaptation and dramaturgy. The Play is Getting in the Way of Me Explaining It: Negotiating the
His work in this area has crossed many disciplines including musicology, film and literature but his main
focus remains on performance writing and the history and cultural policy of the Royal Court Theatre. Borders of the Possible
The naming of a text as seemingly unstageable or unadaptable can provoke an irresistible and cre-
Both Alike In Dignity - the Royal National, the Royal Court and the
ative response in makers as they negotiate the borders of the possible. It seems that the draw of
Precarious State of the Nation a seemingly impossible task, the belief that everything can be staged, and/or a desire to encour-
age theatre to reach beyond limits continues to influence the ways in which theatrical adaptation
Theatres capacity to articulate the current state of a nation remains a critical and vital component in evolves in both textual and performative terms.  This paper focuses on Irish company Dead Cen-
its ability to respond to the here and now, where the immediate and the present become re-present- tre’s Chekhov’s First Play 2015-17, their intra-medial adaptation of Chekhov’s Platonov frequently
ed in time and space affording opportunities for a shared experience of critical reflection. In the UK, labelled as unstageable, and the company’s engagement with processes and principles of adaptation
its Royal National Theatre in London has risen as a central cultural hub offering a diverse programme for the stage. This production acknowledges and celebrates the inherent impossibility at the heart
of work that seeks to speak to the contemporary nation state in a variety of ways. Four kilometres of adaptation, particularly in terms of the complex network of relationships between the adapted
west, the Royal Court Theatre stands as a national theatre of new writing where it, too, endeavours to text and the adaptations in an intra-medial context, and the potential oscillations between these
offer a programme that articulates the contemporary context within the nation state. In this paper, I in theatre-making and spectatorial terms. Dead Centre’s acknowledgements of impossibility reveal
want to consider how these two national theatres, operating concurrently in the same city, approach themselves performatively on the stage in the production in a number of exciting ways, contributing
issues of nationhood, identity and migration through their direct engagement with works from other to the sense that unstageability is paradoxical and stubborn, and that impossibility can be a form
countries where both translation and adaptation become engines that drive, maintain and sustain of dramaturgy.  Chekhov’s First Play, then, stands as a fascinating example of the articulation of un-
a national cultural machine. In a contemporary climate that has seen a newfound populism for the stageability within the framework of performance. The production interrogates its own processes of
establishment of borders, walls, and new nationalisms, two questions therefore emerge - what role adaptation, rehearsal, labour and analysis via live commentary relayed through headphones to the
can these two national theatres play in provoking dialogue and dissension? And, how can a national audience, alerting us to the impossibility of the endeavour, even as we watch it unfolding. The play
theatre become a pivotal force in provoking a sense of nationhood that eludes nationalism? slips through Dead Centre’s and our fingers, disintegrating and exploding as it progresses. Simulta-
neously positioning the adaptation in relation to and as distinct from the adapted text, my paper
Key Words explores this production in order to spark a conversation about impossibility in adaptation as a way
national theatres nationalism translation royal court theatre of thinking about productive resistance between text and performance.

Key Words
Adaptation, dramaturgy, unadaptable, impossibility, Irish theatre, Chekhov
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

694 695
 WG WG

Annika Rink Stephanie Sandberg

Department of Theatre Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Washington and Lee University

Annika Rink is research assistant at the Department of Theatre Studies at the Institute of Film, Drama and Empirical Sandberg, Stephanie Stories in Blue, Understanding Human Trafficking www.understandinghumantrafficking.
Cultural Studies of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. There she got her master degree in Theatre org Sandberg, Stephanie, Stages of Dissent: Theater takes on hard questions in a contentious democracy in
Studies and German Philology and her state examination in German and Greek language and literature. Her main Sojourners Magazine, Washington, DC, September 2017. 3 Publications continued Sandberg, Stephanie, The
topic in research are performances and adaptations of ancient Greek drama on contemporary stage. Furthermore Birth of Trump’s America? Sweat by Lynn Nottage in Sojourners Magazine, Washington, DC, April 2017 Sand-
she works as a dramaturg and assistant director for different theatres with young performers and professionals. berg, Stephanie, Hell and the Modern Pastor in Sojourners Magazine, Washington, DC, March 2016. Sandberg,
Stephanie, Devils We Know in Sojourners Magazine, Washington, DC, July 2015.
Adaptation as Migration. Migrating Structures
Teenage Borderlines: Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls” and Jocelyn Bioh’s
When focusing on adaptation under the topic of migration it becomes obvious that migration is “The African Mean Girls Play”
right at the core of adaptation. In metaphorical terms, adaptation is always a sort of wandering from
one location to another whereby the ways are intertwined and the subject of wandering is changed Jocelyn Bioh, a Ghanaian-American playwright, takes on the tropes of the girls coming of age narra-
trough the influences of migration. The question that concerns adaptation and theatre is who or tive in her play SCHOOL GIRLS or THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY. This play uses Tina Feys 2004 film
what wanders in which way and why. For example not only themes and content can move from one MEAN GIRLS not as an adaptive platform, but as a strategy to get her work staged in New York. In fact,
genre or form to another but thematic aspects and dramaturgical structures can be transferred with- while Ms. Biohs Ghanaian play is brilliant and does draw on the cross-cultural stereotypes of teenage
out changing media and by staying within the same genre. Apart from adaptations based on form girl-cliques, bullying and hazing, SCHOOL GIRLS has very little to do with the Tina Fey original. This
and content, structures and conditions of production and reception can be adapted as well. This paper explores what Biohs play accomplishes along with the advertising and marketing strategy used
becomes evident regarding examples of productions of ancient plays in contemporary theatre where by her, her agent and the theatre company who produced it. She had to use and perform inside a
the institutional requirements for promoting young authors relating to a concrete performance, es- metaphor of whiteness in order to get her work seen and heard. Biohs SCHOOL GIRLS represents
pecially in the German speaking area, evoke conditions of production and reception of the ancient an important dramaturgical moment in the history of African female representation. School Girls
Greek. Because the source and the final product are dramas there is a lack of the usual constitutive Or, The African Mean Girls Play, by Jocelyn Bioh, is a dizzying romp through nasty-coming-of-age
change of media in definitions of adaptations. Therefore it is the thesis of the paper that not only teen dramedy that pays homage to Tina Fey’s classic Mean Girls. Taking place in a Ghanaian girl’s
contents and dramaturgies but institutional structures can be named adaptations as a phenomenon boarding school during the 1980s, Bioh’s first full-length play addresses cruel, clique-ish competition
of migration. Thus, possibilities and limits of definition of adaptation should be discussed and proved among adolescent women using the template of the American genre, yet something fresh emerges.
by examples. The story follows the queen of the school, Paulina MaameYaa Boafo as she vies to be named Miss
Ghana and participate in the Miss Universe Pageant. While the comedic ending is not significantly
Key Words surprising, there is a poignant and timely theme that emerges through the exploration of African
adaptation, structures, conditions of production and reception, ancient Greek drama beauty. Paulina wishes to be white so desperately that she dangerously bleaches her skin. When a
fairer-skinned Ghanaian-American girl enrolls in the school, Paulina’s jealousy flares. The pageant
recruiter clearly prefers the lighter skin and modern style of the new girl, Ericka Nabiyah Be, who is
eventually chosen to represent the school. Bioh’s thematic exploration of beauty carries through to
the end of the play as the girls watch the Miss Universe pageant on television and witness Ericka get
passed over in favor of white women. Yet the real beauty in the play is captured within the commu-
nity of support the young school women form that defies all expectations.

Key Words
Dramaturgy, Adaptation, Cross-Cultural Boundaries, Coming of age Narrative, African female narra-
tive
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

696 697
 WG WG

Ann-Christine Simke Kornelia Slavova

University of Glasgow Sofia University

Dr Ann-Christine Simke is a Teaching Assistant at the department of Theatre Studies at Glasgow Dr. Kornelia Slavova is a professor of American literature and culture at the Department of English and Ameri-
University as well as a cultural programmer at the Goethe-Institut Glasgow. Her current research can Studies, St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. She has taught courses in Cultural history of the
revolves around the practice of dramaturgy with a specific focus on theatrical documents and ephemera. US, popular culture, American drama, postmodern literature and culture as well as gender studies at Sofia
University, SUNY at Albany USA, UBC Canada, and other universities. Her publications are in the fields of Amer-
Migrating Repertoires, Migrating Audiences – The Case of the ican drama and literature, cultural translation, and gender studies. Her most recent books are The Traumatic
Re/Turn of History in Postmodern American Drama Sofia University Press, 2010 and American Drama on the
Volksbühne Berlin Bulgarian Stage: Theatre as Translation of Cultures Polis, 2014. She has translated many Anglo-American plays
for the Bulgarian stage. She has been awarded the Christo G. Danov National Prize in the humanities and the
This paper will look at the recent shifts in the theatrical landscape of the city of Berlin and its effects Paul Celan International Award.She served as associate editor of The European Journal of Women’s Studies
on repertoire and audiences of the capital. It understands dramaturgy as an institutional practice SAGE between 2008-2018.
that influences and shapes the profile of and discourse around theatre institutions. Shifts in their
make-up and policies have to be negotiated with and communicated to audiences in an attempt to Migration and Cultural Translation: The Travels and Travails of
create accessibility and facilitate an understanding of and potential identification with these insti- Eugene O’Neill on the Bulgarian Stage
tutions.  After the much discussed new directorship of Turkish-German producer SherminLanghoff
as the head of the then so-called postmigrant theatre Maxim Gorki Theater at the beginning of The paper discusses the uneven and winding journey of Eugene O’Neill to the Bulgarian stage under
season 2013/14, the recent nominations of Oliver Reese as artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble three different political regimes during the 20th century. Drawing on the critical discourses surround-
2017/18 and especially of Chris Dercon at the Volksbühne 2017/18 gave new rise to heated discus- ing his Bulgarian productions as well as paratextual material, several major patters can be observed:
sions about the purpose and function of these artistic institutions within Berlin’s cultural landscape.  in the 1930s his drama was embraced enthusiastically by Bulgarian theatre-makers and audience
Labelling Dercon a curatorial director instead of, so many argue, a truly artistic director like artist for its modernist aesthetics and the novelty of Broadway during the peak years of the Cold War his
and previous Intendant Frank Castorf, the new artistic directorship has trouble establishing itself works were dismissed by the communist censors as “marred with Freudianism, drug abuse, alcohol-
within the capital’s landscape. Actors, directors and maybe even audiences are seeking their “Volks- ism, and too much experimentation,” whereas since the late 1970s - and especially after the fall of
bühne” experience elsewhere, with, for example, many finding it at the rival institution Schaubühne communism - his plays have been subject to more heterogeneous appropriations for the purpose
Berlin.  In reference to recent scholarship on institutional theory and by drawing on critical notions of aesthetic renewal, cultural prestige, experimentation, and reflection on the anxieties of Bulgarian
of cosmopolitanism, this paper seeks to analyse the discourse around these recent shifts in the Ger- society. By looking at drama in translation not simply as migration of texts but as culturally translated
man capital’s cultural landscape with a specific focus on dramaturgical challenges around repertoire practices, embedded in the real context of political and social conflicts, the paper discusses diverse
building and potential audience migration. ways of performing and creating otherness both on and off stage, as well as issues of representation
of America and self-representation. Special attention is paid on the power relations enacted through
Key Words translation and adaptation, raising significant questions: How can theatre as a “travelling structure”
audiences, dramaturgy, institution, repertoire, cosmopolitanism cross over or displace national boundaries? What can be been lost and gained in the movement
and repositioning of dramatic works across space and time? Which themes and ideas from the ten
O’Neill plays staged in Bulgaria have travelled best and which have been suppressed or re-accentuat-
ed? How did his symbols of disintegration, disillusionment and decay correlate with the communist
symbols of enforced optimism? For its analysis the paper relies on drama reception theory as well
as cultural translation theory.

Key Words
translation, migration, theatre as culturally translated practices, Eugene ONeill, Bulgarian stage
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

698 699
 WG WG

Stuart Young
University of Otago

Professor Stuart Young is Head of the Department of Music, Theatre and Performing Arts at the University of
Otago. His research interests include: Russian drama, in particular Chekhov, and its reception abroad Transla-
tion Studies and translation for the theatre modern British drama and theatre documentary/verbatim theatre
New Zealand theatre and gay and queer drama.  He has published in Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, New
Theatre Quarterly, Australasian Drama Studies, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, and Journal of Dramatic Theory
And Criticism.  He is also a director, translator, and performance reviewer. He has translated plays by Chekhov,
Pushkin, and Simon Gantillon.  Circa Theatre, Wellington, has produced his translations of The Cherry Orchard
and Uncle Vanya.   His practice-led research on documentary theatre has resulted in the creation of Hush: A
Verbatim Play about Family Violence, which played in various parts of New Zealand from 2009 to 2011 Be |
Longing 2012, 2015, which explores immigrants’ experiences of settling in New Zealand and The Keys are in
the Margarine: A Verbatim Play about Dementia 2014. He was co-convenor of IFTR’s Translation, Adaptation
and Dramaturgy Working Group until 2017.

Migrant, Theatre of the Real, Dramaturgy

Migration is as an act of movement whereby, to quote Peter Nyers writing about refugees, “bodies
encounter and confront one another, … developing relationships that constitute the myriad ways of
being and living in the world” Rethinking Refugees x. Theatre is an exemplary site for staging such
encounters and, since the Ancient Greeks, has staged the story of the migrant, the foreigner.   Nyers
argues that such encounters “are structured and performed is of intense political significance.” In a
theatrical context those encounters are between not only representative bodies onstage, but also
the bodies onstage and those in the auditorium. This paper examines the very different dramaturgi-
cal and theatrical strategies of two contemporary plays, both exponents of Theatre of the Real, that
focus on the migrant and migration, and that understand migration to be necessarily relational and
inherently performative. Be | Longing 2012, 2015 is a verbatim play that tells stories of immigration
in New Zealand and shows how “Kiwi” culture is seen through the eyes of migrants. Milo Rau’s
Mitleid: Die Geschichte des MaschinengewehrsSchaubühne, 2016 is a semi-documentary play that
takes its cue from the inundation of refugees into Europe during the summer of 2015, placing that
crisis in a larger geo-political and historical context by shifting the focus to the Central African civil
wars of the 1990s.  Be | Longing’s mise-en-scene involves a double signification between actor and
character that parallels the experience of the immigrant, who resides between original and adopted
homelands, and it seeks to bridge the gap between stage and auditorium, between “them” and “us”.
Meanwhile, Mitleid, confronts audiences with that gap: its two separate narratives of witnessing
and prominent use of live feed onto a large screen draw attention to the spectatorial gaze and to the
spectator’s position as a performing witness.

Key Words
Migrant, Theatre of the Real, Dramaturgy
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

700 701
 NS

Samson Akapo
University of Ibadan

Samson Akapo currently teaches Choreography, Dance and Theatre design in the department of Theatre Arts,
University of Ibadan where he bagged his MA. Currently working to earn his PhD from the same department,

New
Samson is a scholar whose drive for academic excellence is second to none.

Nigerian Contemporary Dance and its Deference to Indigenous

Dance Forms
African dance performances have entered a dynamic new phase as a result of the influence of glo-
balization on culture and conversely, the impact of culture on globalization which is consequently

Scholars
referred to as African Contemporary Dance and this invariably has had its influence on the Nigerian
dance theatre stage. The nature of the Nigerian contemporary dance is one that constantly solicits
clarifications concerning its nomenclature, authenticity, components and techniques.As a formal
Artistic category, contemporary dance has a rather unformulated origin. Although the field did not
come to be so named until 1989s, the various techniques and ideologies that eventually melded to
constitute the genre can be traced to a more distant past, to the United States in the 1950s, and such
pioneer dancers/choreographers as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Lester Horton. ​Today,
the various innovations and departure from received dance forms initiated by these choreographers
are exemplified in the radical and experimental nature of contemporary dance.What are the iden-
tifiable indigenous culture-specific characteristics of African contemporary dance within the styles
akin to the prototype traditional dances? What are the key issues to be considered by an ‘African
dance’ critic, analyst and choreographer in proposing a concrete argument for African contempo-
rary dance? The objective is to establish a tradition that travels into every instance of contemporary
dance across the globe; one which would clearly be implicated in our characterization of a contem-
porary African dance. This paper, using Qudus Onikeku’s Iwalewa, seeks to establish paradigms of
Nigeria traditional dances within the framework of contemporary dance.

Key Words
Dance, Performance, Contemporary Dance and African Dance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

702 703
 NS NS

Nazli Akhtari Verena Arndt

PhD Student, University of Toronto Theatre Studies, University Mainz

Nazli Akhtari is a PhD student at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at University of Jan. 2018: Award for the best Master Thesis in the fields of european-jewish Literature by the Foundation for
Toronto. Her dissertation explores how matters of social memory and cultural identity are performed through european-jewish Literature-studies since 07.2017: Scientific Co-worker for theater studies at the Johannes
the lens of transnational digital embodied expressions. Nazli is also a performance maker who works at the Gutenberg University Mainz 06.2017 Master of Arts final grade 1,2 at the University Mainz - Title of Mas-
intersections of performance, video art, installation and theatre. She is an active member of Digital Drama- ter-Thesis: “Where was the comedy?” - Lachen im Angesicht des Unvorstellbaren in Theater und Film nach
turgy Lab DDL where she has collaborated on several projects including Stare. Print. Blue- Voyeuring the Ap- 1945. “Where was the comedy?”–Laughing in the face of the unimaginable in theater and film after 1945.
paratus in both Toronto and Berlin. Nazli has been involved in Le Grande Continental by Sylvain Emard Danse 03.2015: Invitation to the Workshop »Remembrance – Imagination – | Referring Back while “Going Further”
as a dancer and has performed in Vancouver’s Fight with a Stick’s debut performance Steppenwolf presented with Hannah Arendt« at Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee. Title of presentation: The Banality of Evil
at Push International Performing Arts Festival in 2015. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon in Contemporary Drama: Reading Elfriede Jelinek’s ‘Rechnitz The Exterminating Angel’ with regard to Hannah
Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts. Nazli has presented her research at several international Arendt’s Philosophy 05.2014 Bachelors of Arts final grade 1,5 at the University Mainz - Title of Bachelor-The-
conferences such as HASTAC 2017 Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory at the sis: „Life is a Cabaret“ – Das Musical zwischen Unterhaltungstheater und Gesellschaftskritik. “Life is a Caba-
University of Central Florida, Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University, and ret”–Musicals between entertainment and social criticism 05.2007     Wilhelm Hittorf Gymnasium Münster
American Association for Theatre Research ASTR 2017. Nordrhein-Westfalen  Abitur university-entrance diploma, final grade 1,5

Performing Madness in Radiochehrazi: an inquiry into Coming “here” and going “back”  – two examples of staging
overlapping politics of transnational and mad identities migration in 21st-Century German Theater

I propose a short presentation on one of my case studies, Radiochehrazi, which I plan to further de- „Are you scared we’ll take away your language? Are you scared we’ll take away your skin colour?
velop into the first chapter of my dissertation. Drawing on various concepts and theories in post-co- […] [Y]our tradition? […] [Y]our religion? […] [Y]our freedom? Your safety?” These are the ques-
lonial theatre and performance studies, my presentation contextualizes and studies how these tions the audience of SAFE PLACES by dramatist Falk Richter is confronted with by an internation-
concepts are manifested in the performative gestures and strategies of this anonymous Iranian per- al dancing ensemble which represents refugees seeking shelter in Europe. Meanwhile four Ger-
formance group in diaspora who used SoundCloud to podcast monthly narratives about the mad- man actors embody typical German debates, Europe herself and the abstract “Völkische Wir”, as
ness of three middle class Iranian intellectuals in a mental hospital. I will use this online performance well as Beatrix von Storch. The German – or western – fear of “the others” who “come here” is
as a case study to explore different strategies applied in order to create a piece that best reflects the contrasted by hounded, haunting dancing which transcends the mere rational approach of the
artists’ relationship to the reality of their presence, culture, and space. Furthermore, I will tackle the so-called “refugee crises”.  At the same time Common Ground 2014 by Yael Ronen explores the
following questions in regard to their performance: How does Radiochehrazi build a digital archival memories of 5 actors whose lives were directly influenced by the Ex-Jugoslavia-war in the 1990’s.
body that so heavily depends on embodiment? how does accessing this digital archive become the All of them are professional actors in German-language theatres and were brought together to
embodiment of such archive? How does its narrative engage the Iranian social memory and iden- go on a trip into the past, visiting their old homes and their old country – which no longer ex-
tity? What is the role of race and gender in these digital embodiments? What other external forces ists. On stage, they tell their seemingly autobiographic stories through contrasting different real-
and politics are at play in shaping these performances? I employ an auto-ethnographic methodolog- ities and emotions. Pop cultural references and absurd situations seduce the audience to laugh,
ical framework in order to analytically investigate what this performance does to me as a listening while at the same time being confronted with a war which threatens to fall into oblivion in Ger-
subject who not only constantly negotiates a transnational identity, but also lives the embodied many. My paper explores the different strategies of Falk Richters and Yael Ronans recent proj-
reality of a cyborg constantly shifting between organic and mechanical modes of being in the world. ects. Both are highly successful in Germany and important parts of the theatrical consciousness.
Therefore, it is important to question how they work and which image of migration they evoke.
Key Words
digital performance and embodiment hybridity, otherness and cultural identity, Middle East Iran Key Words
and diaspora transnational cultural communication, performance and politics of social memory, Falk Richter Yael Ronen migration war post-dramatic theatre
globalization and information economies, feminist and post-colonial theory
 
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

704 705
 NS NS

Neslihan Arol Maude B. Lafrance

Berlin University of the Arts University of Quebec in Montreal

Neslihan Arol, born in Istanbul, finished her master`s degree in Theatre Department of Kadir Has University Is-
tanbul with a practice-based research on clowning from a feminist perspective. For this purpose, she created a Maude B. Lafrance is a PhD student in theatre studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. She has been
solo clown performance with the title “The Ideal Woman,” that she further developed and performed in Vien- a Visiting Scholar of TISCH School of the Arts of New York University in 2015. Her thesis analyzes the presence
na for the Clownin International Women`s Clown Festival and in Helsinki for Red Pearl Women’s Clown Festival, of pop culture in contemporary theater throught the question of affect. She earned a master of the University
among others. Currently, she is a PhD student in the Faculty of Performing Arts at the Berlin University of the of Montreal on the theater of Romeo Castellucci. She also holds a formation in French literature McGill Univer-
Arts, where she continues her research on the relationship between laughter, feminism and solo performance sity and Italian studies Università per Stranieri di Perugia. Her researches also addresses issues of intermedial
forms. Apart from her solo works on clowning, meddahlık and stand-up comedy, she performs with „Bühne für dramaturgies, sound space and the politic of affects. She has written for JEU, Aparté, the Annuaire Théâtral,
for the Dictionnaire des oeuvres littéraires du Québec. At the Rennes University Press France, she contributed
Menschenrechte“, „gastkollektiv“ and „Clowns ohne Grenzen”.
in 2017 to Metteur en scène aujourdhui : identité artistique en question? Today’s Directors: Artistic Identity in
Question? et Faire théâtre sous le signe de la recherche Making Theater Under the Sign of Research. She has
participated in conferences in Canada, United States, France, Spain and England. She is also a member of the
Meddahlık: A Small Universe PRint - Interartistic Practices & Contemporary Scenes research group.

Meddahlık[2] was one of the popular genres of folk theatre prior to the advent of European-style
theatre in Ottoman Empire. Meddah literally means panegyrist because the word comes from the
arabic verb “meth”, which means to praise. There is a prevalent view that Hassan Bin Sabit, an Ara- The Affective Rhetoric of Pop Culture in Contemporary
bian poet and one of the Sahabah[3], was the first meddah as a praiser of the prophet Muhammad, Experimental Theatre : the cases of the Wooster Group, Big Art
his family and caliphs.[4] But the usage of this word in the context of Turkey indicates a comedic Group, and Olivier Choinière
storyteller. Nicholas N. Martinovitch addresses the role transition of meddah from panegyrist to
storyteller and claims: “... when the Mohammedan clergy forbade any reference to the saints in the This paper examines the transfer and recuperation of what I call an “affective rhetoric” specific to
plays, Meddahs went over to secular themes; at first, to be sure, these were of panegyric character. pop culture in contemporary experimental North-American theatre. It interrogates the presence
It was only very gradually that the Meddahs developed into story-tellers...”[5] and experience of pop culture within postdramatic shows from the 2000s, namely The Wooster
Even though meddahs moved to more secular themes with time and humor became an important Group’s House/Lights 1999, the Big Art Group’s SOS 2008, and Olivier Choinière’s Mommy 2013.
part of their performances, the connection between meddahlık and Islam has not been broken. So These plays articulate what is now a common feature of contemporary legitimate theatre: the
it is no surprise that today meddah performances can be seen mostly during Ramadan in Turkey. By mixing of high and low culture. In particular, I analyze how they display and distribute forms imag-
combining Islamic values and humor,  meddahlık can potentially serve as a counter-resistance to the
es, sounds, acting, text, etc. according to two main axes: singularity/trouble for high culture and
hegemonic ideas on Islamic culture being humorless and the demonization of Islam since 9/11.
standardization/entertainment for pop culture. I then interrograte how the paradigm of singularity
Moreover, meddahlık lends itself to the discussion of migration in theatre. Because the basis of in art Heinich, 2014 and its presumed critical function Caillet, 2008 generate a certain affective
meddah performances is a solo performer imitating multiple characters with different cultural back-
mode – just as the value of standardization in popular culture Morin, 2008 and the expected
grounds just by using few traditional props. This way meddah models the fluidity of identities and
entertainment effect Grossberg, 2014 create their own. The frontier between high art and popular
opens up possibilities for ambivalence and creation of new meanings.[6]
In my paper, I would like to discuss these points in more detail and support my discussion via show- entertainment is increasingly disappearing and even sometimes proclaimed to be dead. In con-
ing examples from my meddah practice, which premiered in December 2017 in Berlin.[7] trast, in the works studied in this paper, such frontier reemerges through a cold affective rhetoric in
the case of high art and through a warm affective rhetoric in pop culture’s case. In sum, based on
Key Words an aesthetic analysis of the three pieces, this paper explores the dichotomy of these two different
Meddah, Islam, Folk Theatre, Turkey forms of affective rhetoric.

Key Words
[1] Since meddah undertakes roles of many characters, animals and sometimes even objects in his stories, he was identified as a small universe bearing the Contemporary Theatre, Pop culture, Affect, Wooster Group, Big Art Group, Olivier Choinière
contents of the whole world by Selim Nüzhet Gerçek. See Selim Nüzhet Gerçek, Türk Temaşası: Meddah, Karagöz, Orta Oyunu, (Istanbul: Kanaat Kitabevi,
1942), 8.  
[2] Meddahlık (the art of meddah) was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO https://ich.
unesco.org/en/RL/arts-of-the-meddah-public-storytellers-00037 (accessed January 26, 2018).
[3] The term refers to the companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
[4] This information is written by Hussain Waiz Kashifi in Fütüvvet-Nâme-i Sultanî. See Özdemir Nutku, Meddahlık ve Meddah Hikâyeleri, (Ankara: Atatürk
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Kültür Merkezi Başkanlığı, 1997), 12.
[5] Nicholas N. Martinovitch, The Turkish Theatre (New York: Theatre Arts Inc., 1933), 22.
[6] Jill Dolan`s questions regarding monopolylogues supports my arguments: “Is it because the simple complexity of the solo performer’s presence and
transformation across multiple identities asks us to suspend our disbelief in particular ways that let us see and hear other people with more empathy and
understanding? Because we’re willing to look, through the solo performer as shamanic guide, at subjects we would otherwise avoid?” See Jill Dolan, Utopia
in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005), 68.
[7] Turkey premiere took place in Bergama International Theatre Festival on 11th of May 2018. Seehttp://en.bergamatiyatrofestivali.com/meddah-gel-
di-haaan305m.html (accessed June 07, 2018).

706 707
 NS NS

Matthew Bent Debajit Bora

Northwestern University Jawaharlal Nehru University

Matthew Bent is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama program at Northwestern Universi- A doctoral student in Theatre and performance studies JNU, working on the The History of Assamese theatre.
ty. He is also affiliated with Northwestern’s Middle East and North African Studies program. Matt received his He has completed his M.Phil from School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU in 2015. The thesis entitled Performing
BA from the University of Warwick, and his MA from Queen Mary, University of London - both in Theatre and History , Identity and Cultural Politics: the Ojapali performance of Assam. Earlier he earned a Masters in Mass
Performance Studies. Communication from Tezpur University, Assam. He has worked with NCERT, as Project fellow for Developing
online course on Art Appreciation.

Plants and Politics: Nassim Soleimanpour and the Work of the

Actor Migration, Ethnicity and Identity Conflicts: Looking at Rabha
community theatre of Assam
One of the first things that most people learn about the work of playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is
that it is performed by someone new every night. Each fresh performer has never seen the script be- The proposed paper is looking at Migration in the context of Assam and the conflicts between mi-
fore, and the secret of its contents are revealed to actor and spectator simultaneously, in the time of cro communities, the migrants viz-a viz local tribal communities with the Rabha tribe as my specif-
performance. In Nassim, Soleimanpour’s first new work since moving from Iran to Germany in 2013, ic example. Migrations for labour are complex economic, social and cultural issues but potential
he joins each new performer onstage, as well enlisting volunteers from the audience, to tell a story spaces of violence when they are woven with religious and caste identities. Assam, the eastern
of his childhood. In this paper, I will engage recent triangulations of labor, affect, and temporality in state of India shares a border with neighbouring Bangladesh and since the partition of India and
performance theory (Schneider, 2011, Ridout, 2013, Palladini, 2017) to focus on the way in which Pakistan, of which Bangladesh was Eastern Pakistan 1947, there have been large scale migrations
the work of these onstage volunteers inspires unexpected affective responses in relation to the art- from Bangladesh. This has created tensions and conflicts between the migrant labour and the local
ist. The participation of the unprepared performer raises the specter of the theatrical “plant”, with tribal populations. The tribal people in certain sense belong to the lower castes scheduled tribes as
attendant slippages around work and time in the theatre. This dynamic, I argue, plays out uniquely categorized by the colonial census. With the coming of the Hindu right wing government at both the
in relation to the labor of the circulating artist, as the border between social roles in the theatre are national and state level in 2014 and 2016 and trying to create modifications to the citizenship laws
blurred. of the country to create a vote bank particularly from the ‘Hindu’ migrants from Bangladesh, the
tension in Assam has worsened in the last few years. On the 31st of December 2017, the first draft
Key Words of National Citizen’s register NRC has been declared creating new tensions among the migrants and
Work, Affect, Circulation, Iran indigenous people of Assam, whose name are not included into the draft.  In this paper I want to
look at two tribal theatre group belongs to Rabha community of Assam, which are addressing the
above questions of migration, ethnicity and identity with newer aesthetics. While ‘Badungduppa’
theatre group critiques the state’s position and the emergence of identity conflicts in contrast to the
migrants, the other theatre group ‘Dapoon’ connecting to global issues of identity, of the dwarf in
a society creates more metaphorical references. I want to look at both these examples from Jeremy
Cover’s idea of performing identity and Baz Kershaw’s concept of politics of performance in relation
to environment and demography.

Key Words
migration, identity, theatre, assam, conflicts
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

708 709
 NS NS

Franziska Burger Vlad Butucea

Institute for Theatre Studies, University of Bern University of Glasgow

PhD Student Franziska Burger studied Theatre Studies and German Literature at the Universities of Bern and Vlad Butucea is a first year doctoral student at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research explores the rela-
Leipzig. Following her M.A., which she completed in 2013 with a thesis on the work of contemporary theatre tionship between embodied spectatorship, queerness and technology in theatre and performance. His PhD
director Gisèle Vienne, Franziska Burger was awarded a full Doc.CH-scholarship to conduct her PhD research project asks how the use of technology and media on stage can contribute towards challenging strict gender
on the relation between artists and objects in contemporary puppetry. Franziska Burger regularly contributes binaries and sexual orientations. Outside academia, Vlad is a practicing playwright, whose work engages with
to theatre journals such as double and figura and is a staff member of the Figura Theaterfestival Baden. themes such as gender, migration and the social impact of technology.

Beside Oneself. Configurations of Players and Puppets in The Cyborg Spectator: blurring corporeal boundaries in
Contemporary Puppetry intermedial theatre and performance

The description and analysis of the stage relationship between puppeteers and their objects is of This paper explores questions of embodied spectatorship in intermedial theatre and performance.
vital importance for a deeper understanding of visible manipulation, the predominant technique in Specifically, it asks how intermedial spectatorship can be described as a cyborgian experience,
contemporary puppetry where the puppeteer is interacting visible next to / over / under / besides in which the corporeal boundaries between the spectator and the technological design become
the puppet or object on stage. Drawing on theories of acting and methods of theatre analysis, this blurred. Building on Jennifer Parker-Starbuck’s concept of cyborg theatre - first introduced in her
presentation will investigate how, in contradistinction to conventional acting as a corporeal practice seminal study Cyborg Theatre. Corporeal/ Technological Intersections in Multimedia Theatre and
predicated on the human body alone, puppetry produces fictional characters in the interplay be- Performance 2011 - I will argue that not only the relationship between performer and technology
tween puppeteer and object. This interplay necessarily entails the de-prioritization of the human can be described as cyborgian (Parker-Starbuck, 2011), but also the relationship between technol-
body as the pre-eminent signifier of the theatrical sign system, and the emphasis of the ‘action force’ ogy and the spectator. I suggest that intermedial performance invites a visceral journey in which
Veltrusky of puppets and objects – their inherent potential to act – similar to the in theories of New the body of the spectator is physically affected by, and affectively immersed in, the technological
Materialism described agency, as the presentation will demonstrate with reference to select theatri- design. Technologies such as projections, animations, sound effects or virtual reality can generate
cal productions from 2000 to 2017 such as Gisèle Vienne’s Jerk 2007 or Blind Summit Theatre’s The such deep bodily sensations that, even in the absence of direct physical contact, the boundary be-
Table 2011. How can the emergence of the fictional character out of this interplay be described? tween spectator’s flesh and technology becomes blurred. This close, physical, tactile and immersive
And how is the co-presence of man and object related to the self-referentiality of the visible manip- engagement gives birth to new bodies: posthuman bodies (Hayles, 1999), hybrid bodies, bodies that
ulation? are half flesh, half machine, half real, half virtual - in other words, cyborgs (Haraway, 1991). By en-
abling the fluidization of corporeal boundaries between spectator and technology, the intermedial
Key Words performance space could then become the locus for new subjectivities, where other strictly defined
Puppetry, Puppet and Object Theatre, Contemporary Theatre, Theatre Analysis boundaries such as gender, race or sexual orientation might also become blurred or reconfigured. If
so, could we imagine new political potential for intermedial performance?

Key Words
gender, queerness, cyborg, theatre, technology, spectatorship
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

710 711
 NS NS

Priscilla Carbone Suchetana Chanda

School for Arts and Communication – University of Sao Paulo ECA-USP Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

Priscilla Carbone is a Brazilian dancer, actress, performance artist and drama teacher. She has a degree in Per- I am Suchetana Chanda, Ph.D Scholar in the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, affiliated to Ja-
forming Arts from the University of Sao Paulo focusing on movement and theatre pedagogy. She is in the 3rd davpur University, Kolkata.  I am doing my doctoral thesis on the subject of ‘child development’ through ‘chil-
semester of a Masters Degree in Dramatic Arts at the University of São Paulo, investigating the genealogy of dren’s theatre’. I did M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies 2013  and my Masters in Arts and Aesthetics
the body within the pedagogical practices in theater, under the supervision of Professor Dr Alice Kiyomi Yagyu. 2009 from the School of Art and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The title of my M.Phil
From 2008 to 2010 she trained in contemporary dance at Centro em Movimento CEM in Lisbon with various dissertation was In Search of ‘Community’: A Journey through Children’s Theatre. I have completed my. I did
choreographers. In 2010 she trained Contact Improvisation at London’s The Place Contemporary Dance School my Graduation in Sociology from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata 2009. I have worked as a children’s theatre facil-
for six months. In 2015, Carbone concluded her postgraduate studies on Rudolf Laban Movement Analysis itator, for more than a decade.  My research interests are conceptualizing children and childhood, children’s
in an educational context at Sedes Sapientiae Institute. Over the last six years she has been teaching Body theatre, child development, dialogic education etc . I passed the National Eligibility Test with Junior Research
Expression and Theatre Theory in professional drama schools in Brazil for young actors. She is member of Sem Fellowship in Performing Arts – Dance/Drama/Theatre by UGC, India 2013.  I had presented papers titled: 1. 
Palavras’s Dance Theatre Company, for which their last work ‘Secas’ was chosen by the governement to tour Theatre in School Curriculum: A Possibility, A Problem, in Bangalore University 2014 2. Missed Opportunities:
around various cities around the state of Sao Paulo. She has collaborated with choreographers and theatre Contextualizing Children’s Theatre, in the XIIth ISTR Conference, themed Interactivity and Performance Prac-
companies like Maura Baiocchi, Wolfgang Pannek, Verônica Veloso, Teresa Borges among others. tice: Local and Global Paradigms 2016. 3.      Excuse me, Whose Pedagogy, in Graduate Seminar on Knowledge,
Education and Society: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ZHCES, JNU

The actor’s body genealogy within pedagogical practices

Birds migrate. Do waves too?
This research will examine the emergence of the actor’s body in pedagogical discourse and practice
between 1850-2010. The research is based upon the studies of archives that are on the margins of We are all witnesses of an invisible migration which invokes a universal nostalgia. Being predomi-
official historiography; sourced from articles and newspapers, as well as teaching plans from the two nantly temporal it also entails spatial dis/re-location. The unnoticed migrants of human civilization
important drama institutions in Brazil: The Sao Paulo School of Dramatic Arts (Brazil’s oldest drama are the ‘children’ who leave one identity behind, in the journey for another. They embody the border
school) and the Bachelors Degree in Acting from Sao Paulo University (the most renowned theatre and the process of crossing the border; inhabit a ‘liminal’ space with enormous possibilities. It is a
course in Latin America). The study will take Michel Foucault’s approach to exploring historical sourc- narrative of individualistic, yet, collective migration. ‘Children’ hardly write about this journey(s),
es, known as ‘Archaeogenealogy’. This approach uses both archaeological and genealogical methods until the migration is complete, when they are no longer ‘children’. As if the act of writing itself
to research history. The aim is to construct another kind of history of the physical actor’s education, marks the death of the ‘authentic author’. Children, standing as the ‘other’ of the adult world, are
one that considers how other disciplines (such as medicine, psychology) have impacted and changed always re-presented. The language of the body, the most organic mode of expression for a child,
actor training. For example, advances in health and wellbeing in the mid twentieth century gave ac- is denigrated for being incomprehensible to the adults. Conceptually, ‘children’ is not a monolith-
tors not only a new understanding of their body artistically, but also subjectively- they gained a new ic-homogenous idea. Marking the boundaries of childhood is an act of normative ‘archiving’. Yet,
sense of governance in relation to themselves and others. This deeper awareness of the self created I consider ‘children’ as an example of “Lieux de Memoir”, after Pierre Nora; a floating identity. An
new levels of truth about the actor, which had not been experienced before. The paper will discuss archived childhood is devoid of the child; a melancholic nostalgia. In the open space of theatre the
the first curriculum for performers in Brazil, written by the actor Joao Caetano in 1801 which includ- body of a child can be a powerful medium of expression, which celebrates the lively ‘here & now’-
ed the following subjects, in order of importance: 1. Received pronunciation: (it was the first time ness. As a children’s theatre facilitator, I have witnessed, children writing ephemeral texts with their
that Portuguese grammar was given Brazilian pronunciation); 2. History: ancient, medieval, modern bodies, and by doing that creating their own identities, as G. H. Mead had argued. Slightest changes
and Brazilian; 3. Speech and voice: which focused on the intepretation of texts; 4. Fencing: “For the like making eye contacts, smiling, are indicators of re-discovering and reclaiming one’s identity. With
purpose of training theatrical art that contained the game of weapons”. It will show the change of a few anecdotes -gathered from a yearly residential theatre-workshop, now twenty years running
focus, formerly towards speech, the way of speaking, to a consciousness of the body, body expres- in West Bengal, India- I aspire to show that the individual migration-journey from one identity to
sion and stage presence that actors study today. another- of every child can only be grasped through their bodily writings.

Key Words Key Words

Body actor education Michel Foucault Migration, Children, Dis/re-placement, Aging, Liminality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

712 713
 NS NS

Leticia Contreras Candia Miriam Cummins

Pontical Catholic University of Chile Trinity College Dublin

Contreras Candia, Leticia. She is a State Professor in Spanish at the Santiago University of Chile. She studies Miriam Cummins is a second year PhD student in the School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin. Her re-
postgraduate studies in the Doctorate of Literature of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and is a CON- search examines the intersection of post-secularism, gender performativity, and performance in the postcolo-
ICYT intern. Her doctoral research topic is the representation of feminist knowledge-power in the narrative of nial world, and is funded by an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland postgraduate scholarship 2017-
women in the Southern Cone. He collaborated as an editorial assistant for Taller de Letras magazine. Currently, 2020. In 2017, Miriam was also awarded the Eda Sagarra Medal of Excellence by the Irish Research Council
she participates as a researcher in the Project Gobernanza para la Educación Superior en la administración for being the top ranked postgraduate scholar in that year’s funding call in the Arts, Humanities and Social
Bachelet 2014-2018: exploración crítica discursiva de la reforma, funded by the Department of Scientific and Sciences category. Miriam’s research interests include post-secularism and gender in performance, as well as
Technological Research, DICYT, under the Vice-Rectory of Research and Development from the University of postcolonial theatre especially postcolonial feminist theatre.
Santiago de Chile.

Post-secularism, Gender Performativity, and Performance in the

Emergence and tensions between bourgeois morality and worker Postcolonial World
morality
Known as “the secularization thesis,” the notion that “the more modern a society becomes, the
This work analyzes the spaces of dissenting representation of the hegemonic imaginary of national more secular it becomes,” has largely fallen out of favour among sociologists of religion since the
modernization configured in the work Desdicha obrera (1921) by Chilean writer and political activist beginning of the new millennium. In the current context of globalization and mass migration into
Luis Emilio Recabarren. With this purpose, we will follow the philosophical reflections of Michel Fou- Europe, Jürgen Habermas argues that there is a place for religion in the political public sphere on
cault regarding the concept of discourse, in addition to adopting the reading of this scriptural project, the basis that economic migrants and refugees from countries with religious cultures will never be
a gender perspective that allows us to explore the ideological struggles of the immediate political integrated otherwise. This presentation will examine how this new world of post-secularism is re-
scene and its resonances in the current ideological frameworks . In this way, we find in Recabarrens flected in performance in a new wave of British writers attempting to renegotiate postcolonial iden-
scriptural production the articulation of alternative subjectivities, specifically feminine, that fissure tity throughdiscourses of religion and sexuality. Under secular modernity, these were considered
the corporal orderings elaborated by the twentieth-century state discourse and the model of cap- the quintessential elements of private life, and in the public sphere, they create what Saba Mah-
italist modernization, but in no case define certainties that seek to obtain definitive solutions to mood has called “an explosive symbiosis.” For example, _What Fatima Did…_ by Atiha Sen Gupta,
the disastrous consequences of industrial capitalism or the unresolved conflicts of contemporary which was first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, in 2009, deals with the fallout surround-
Chilean society. The Chilean production of workers character operationalizes mechanisms and strat- ing British Muslim Fatima’s unexpected decision to adopt the hijab on the eve of her eighteenth
egies that allow writers as to denounce the exclusions and invisibilizations experienced by peripheral birthday,culminating in an Islamophobic attack when her non-Muslim boyfriend rips the hijab off
subjects. However, they masculinize the workers movements by closing the feminine semiotic space her head. Through analysis of performances such as this, this presentation will argue that although
instrumentalizing the subjectivity of women by virtue of a universal exploitation of man. However, post-secularism in its intersection with gender performativity presents the best opportunity yet for
Luis Emilio Recabarren in Desdicha obrera configures dissident and fragmentary feminine identi- the renegotiation of the identity of the colonizer and the colonized on a more equal basis, ultimately
ties that fissure national modernization programs. The protagonist of Workers Unhappy accuses the it is a missed opportunity through the colonial power’s reassertion of the Self.
Catholic Church of plunging women into ignorance, with the aim of enslaving and instrumentalizing
their bodies. The exploitation suffered by women, is no longer limited exclusively to the domestic Key Words
and labor space, now we must add to the scenario of the early twentieth century, a new body of post-secularism; gender; performance; postcolonialism; contemporary British theatre
female subjection: the Catholic Church. We are interested in recognizing the discursive strategies
that distinguish the speech of Rebeldía protagonist that configure subjectivities against hegemonics.

Key Words
Luis Emilio Recabarren, capitalist modernization and representation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

714 715
 NS NS

Nadya D’ Almeida Samik Dasgupta

University of São Paulo Jawaharlal Nehru University

Nadya Moretto D’Almeida – Is performer and PhD student at the department of performing Arts University Samik Dasgupta is a doctoral candidate at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He
of São Paulo /USP- Brazil. She has a masters degree in performing arts by the same institution and a Bachelor is researching on actor-training pedagogies which evolved in the post-Independence context of three urban
in Dance from UNICAMP. Her research interest includes contemporary dance, creative process, Japanese per- centres, Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay. His earlier work tried to theorise the theatre workshop as an alterna-
forming arts and Japanese aesthetic. tive paradigm for writing the theatre history of a region. He has published on the performativity of regional
identities circumscribing club football in West Bengal. His research interests include applied theatre, theatre
pedagogy and comparative aesthetics. His activism involves working with the Animal Welfare Board of India,
in regulating the life of animals in JNU and New Delhi.
Moving in territories -The Space in the performance of Shoichi
Fukushi
Shoichi Fukushi 1953- is a dancer and retired official based on Aomori, Japan. His artistic influenc-
Performing Guilt in a Refugee Crisis: Deconstructing Regional
es includes Shuji Terayama and butô dancers like Shigea Mori 1947-. His main activity as a dancer Identity post-1971 in Calcutta
is on performing in no-theatrical spaces which include streets, landscapes and any environmental
that Fukushi is interested in. Considering the Japanese culture element Ma as a cognitive operator In the aftermath of the war between India and Pakistan in 1971, a huge exodus of around ten million
that allows a communication oriented by the sense Okano 2012, in this presentation I will analyse people entered the state of West Bengal in India from former East Pakistan now Bangladesh.  The
the usage of space by the dancer Shoichii Fukushi, looking at two of his performances. First one I international relations discourse around this event categorically differentiated these refugees from
analyse took place in a gallery of art in Tokyo in 2014 where he performed with an installation work those who had migrated during the Partition of 1947. Dominant theatre groups in the city were fo-
by the visual artist Minako Miwa 1942- the second held in the Mount Osorezan in 2015. Osorezan cussing their energies on capturing the spirit of the revolutionary left, so much so that the figure of
is considered as one of the sacred places in Japan. Because of its geography, with mountains and the refugee is absolutely absent.  While 1947 had initiated a competitive cultural legacy around the
it river, Osorezan fits the Buddhist description for hell and paradise, that similarity have made this binary of “ghoti” a person who was born and brought up in West Bengal and “bangal” a person who
place be known as afterlife entrance in the Japanese legend. Through the idea of Ma spatiality - the was born and brought up in East Pakistan, the crisis in 1971 saw a shift in discourse as the refugee
materialization of Ma culture element- proposed by Okano, I investigate the way that the performer now came to be identified as “outsider” and “infiltrator” by the state.   In my paper, I propose to
interacts with space, intending to figure out what kind of movement and actions can be generating explore the breakdown of the binary of “ghoti” and “bangal” identity through the Calcutta trilogy
in this inter-space. of English-language Indian playwright Asif Currimbhoy, one of which was titled “The Refugee”. In
this play, we see the affective power of guilt at work, dividing generations against each other. Cur-
Key Words rimbhoy constructs the mis-en- scene through stereotypes of behavior by a Hindu professor and
Shoichi Fukushi, Japanese dance, Ma spatiality a Muslim professor in the University of Calcutta, where the Hindu professor gives “asylum” to the
Muslim boy, Yassin, son of his long- forgotten paramour, Rukaiya. The Hindu professor is shown to
have two children the same age as Yassin, who are more actively involved than Yassin, in working to
resolve the refugee crisis. Yassin is successively put through different stages of guilt about his state-
less existence, in the nation state of India. I perceive this guilt not merely as a catalyst in sparking
an individual’s conscience and problematizing the state’s responsibility, but as producing an abject
body whose performance dismantles the long-held cultural solidarities across the two states of West
Bengal and East Bengal.

Key Words
guilt, otherness, desubjectivation, rehabilitation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

716 717
 NS NS

Anuran Dasgupta Yannice De Bruyn

Jawaharlal Nehru University Ghent University

I am an M. Phil student in Theatre and Performance studies at the chool of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Yannice De Bruyn is a joint PhD candidate at the universities of Ghent and Brussels Belgium. Her project, called
Nehru University, New Delhi. For my M. Phil dissertation, I have been working on the performances of the Violence on Stage in the Netherlands 1630-1690, focusses on the theatrical representation of violence. She
Siddi community within Gujarat and Karnataka for the last year. I am currently interested in the role of merit is part of the research group ITEMP-Violence, which is short for Imagineering Violence, Techniques of Early
and evaluation within performances and the role of performance in ascertaining merit within society at large. Modern Performativity. Using concepts such as theatricality and spectacularisation, this team investigates how
Furthermore, I have continued training in other performing art forms other than theatre. I have trained in Hin- media both constitute and reflect the collective imagination in the Early Modern Low Countries.
dustani classical music since childhood and Kathak, a classical dance form from India. Maintaining such close
proximity with the classical arts of my country has not only given me a very deep understanding of these forms
but has also equipped me to engage in the political and cultural discourse around the classical that pervades
these forms. I have also taken a contemporary dance class during my three years at JNU through which I have The return of an exile – Guilliam van Nieulandt’s Antwerp success
become familiar with a body principle and pedagogy different from the Indian classical style.
How valid is the long-assumed chasm between the Northern and Southern Netherlands in the sev-
enteenth century regarding their respective theatrical regimes? That is one of the questions I con-
front in my doctoral thesis, particularly from the angle of the representation of violence. Method-
A Quest for Merit: a closer look at formation of Siddi identity ologically, this question demands a case-based approach in order to assess the complex equilibrium
in/through theatre that existed at any given time between the parties involved on both sides of the border. For this
workshop, I will discuss the painter-poet Guilliam van Nieulandt. Like many others at the end of
Siddis, a micro-minority of African-Indians, are said to have migrated to the Indian subcontinent over the sixteenth century, most of his family moved from Antwerp to Amsterdam for religious reasons.
four centuries ago. Against the backdrop of a race and caste based society in India, and the stigma Interestingly, Guilliam wound up back in Antwerp where he spent most of his career 1606-1629. He
associated with new racist narratives about Africans living in India today, Siddis have attempted to introduced the Antwerp stage with the spectacular Senecan blood tragedy that was already popular
assimilate themselves into Indian society with or without the support of the State. This paper will in Amsterdam and that offered an instrument of reflection in politically turbulent times all over Eu-
thus focus on the participation of the Siddi community in modern theatre which in recent years has rope. Van Nieulandt’s case raises the question whether his plays cannot also be read in light of his
served them as a site for articulating and positing their merit within the modern Indian society. The migratory background. Hypothetically, his mysterious move to Antwerp might have been motivated
discourse of a marked body within these theatrical performances, enable addressing experiences by the strong hope for reunification that existed in the Southern exile community, but that faded
of being perceived as an immigrant/foreigner in one’s homeland and at the same time it allows for as a result of political circumstances in the 1620s. This brings us to some old questions in theatre
creation of a positive body image based on appropriation of cultural stereotypes. This paper will look historiography: to which extent do theatrical practice and the exotheatrical reality that it relates to,
closely at the stage adaptation of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart done as a theatre workshop, organized respectively, contribute to the comprehension of the other? Or: does the detail and specificity of the
by Ninasam theatre Institute, with the Siddis of Manchikeri, a village in Karnataka. By analyzing case study outweigh the bias of its particularity? In this case, does it suffice to study one person, a
process of the workshop, production and rehearsals, it will try to unravel the ways in which a Siddi lone wolf perhaps, who despite his influence is representative of neither North nor South? Or does
identity was formulated through a past negotiated between the participants and the conductors of he inspire us to release these strict categories altogether? Solving my starting question demands a
the theater workshop. By analyzing the play’s content and narrative, this paper will also elaborate position in this historiographical framework.
on the performance’s capacity to create a temporal overlap enabling remembering of a past long
forgotten for generations. Following Rebecca Schneider’s thesis on theater’s dealing with the past Key Words
within re-enactments and their role in re-telling/re-inventing history, this paper will also analyze exile community Early Modern Low Countries Senecan tragedy case-based research
how different bodies choose to tell different histories. Borrowing Jane Desmond’s use of Physical
Foundationalism within the context of Tourism studies and applying it to theatre, it will also explore
theater’s role in negotiating perceptions of a marked body within society.

Key Words
Identity, Physical foundationalism, Performing race
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

718 719
 NS NS

Jennifer Decolongon Christopher Dowling

The University of Melbourne University of Warwick

Jennifer Decolongon is a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Mel- Theatre and Performance Research MA student at University of Warwick and Artistic Director of Men in Space.
bourne under the supervision of Elizabeth Anne Maxwell and Denise Varney. Her project, Border disputes:
Philippine drama in English - practice, theory and formation[s] of [post]national identity, is in its final stag-
es. Her research aims to develop a pioneering critical dramaturgy of the complex political and cultural ten-
sions that continue to test the contemporary Philippine social imaginary. She does this by showing how these The Corner - a Practice as Research project
cross-currents are articulated in the production and critical reception of English-language drama. As the status
of English as an ‘appropriate’ language for Philippine theatre has been hotly debated by Filipino scholars since How can we produce a space of a new and better politics? A politics of radical democracy, encom-
the nationalist movement of the 1960s, her work posits a uniquely archipelagic sensibility that Filipino play- passing the pluralist ideals of Chantal Mouffe? Since “space is ideological and performance [can] play
wrights forge in this former language of colonisers. Born and raised in Manila, Jennifer worked extensively as a a key role in the making and unmaking of its politics (Jestrovic), and recognising that art provides
professional actor until 1987 when she left the Philippines for Australia. She holds a Diploma in Dramatic Arts “a space of refuge for dissensual practice” (Rancière), two students set out to examine if, in an era
from the Victorian College of the Arts School of Drama in Melbourne and a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Literary dominated by Trump, Brexit and a rise of nationalist populism across Europe, theatre and perfor-
Studies from The University of Melbourne. mance practices could be used to create spaces of resistance to this toxic politics, hopeful that “the
tiny acts of micropolitics [could] make a difference [to] the macropolitics that make a difference”
(Miller). Inspired by Homi Bhabha’s idea of Thirdspace, being that space which “displaces the histo-
The Filipino family and cosmopolitan national identity in ries that constitute it” and which “sets up new structures of authority [and] new political initiatives”,
post-World War Two Philippine English-language drama and taking cues from the work of George Lakoff and Manuel Castells, interventions were staged in
the real world from posters in pub toilets to anonymous letters sent around the country to invite the
This paper develops a strand of my doctoral research project in which I analyse national identity public into online spaces in an attempt to provoke discussion and foster a productive dissensus as an
tropes in Philippine English-language drama to demonstrate the valuable role English-language texts antidote to the echo chambers which have helped to strengthen and encourage this political lurch to
play in moving critical and practice-based discussions about identity into a dynamic space imbued the right we are witnessing in the public sphere. The project showed that dissensus is being policed
with an archipelagic sense of ‘Place,’ history and culture. The Filipino family is arguably the most sig- out of public spaces in surprising ways, but that resistance occurs in the unlikeliest of places and
nificant trope of national identity in the Philippines. However, despite its importance as a source of comes from the most improbable of participants, whilst those moments of resistance that do appear
identity formation and social capital, theatrical representations of the Filipino family have received are precarious and vulnerable and thus need careful protection and encouragement to ensure that
scant attention from scholars. In this paper, I examine key maternal relationships in three popular those voices do not disappear in this effort our art has a vital role to play.
plays that wrestle with Filipino political culture, class representation and transnational social flows,
refracted through the lens of generations of fragmented, translocated families. The Ladies and the Key Words
Senator (Montano, 1953), Flipzoids (Peña, 1996) and The Folding Wife (Berry, 2007) all boast exten- Hybridity, Thirdspace, Practice as Research, Birmingham
sive production histories in different locations (Manila, New York and Sydney/Melbourne, respec-
tively) and are considered by scholars to be significant theatrical milestones of their time. I examine
how these cosmopolitan texts are imbued with a sense of what Bhabha calls the ‘unhomely’ (1992).
For Bhabha, in the moment of what he calls “extra-territorial initiation”, what is enacted is a kind of
redistribution of space, place and of belonging in a sudden abject recognition of the public world and
the private home as no longer separate, not merged either, but interconnected. These texts address
the tensions of postcolonial Filipino family relations at the same time that they embrace family life
as the transportable locus of an archipelagic Philippine identity and national (be)longing. I aim to
demonstrate how such instances of Philippine English-language “theatre and performance help us
experience our place in the cosmopolitan community” (Rebellato, 2009), beyond rigid confines of a
nationalist, indigene Filipino polity.

Key Words
Philippines, national identity, diaspora, archipelagos, cosmopolitanism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

720 721
 NS NS

Gemma Edwards Fabian Escalona

University of Nottingham The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Gemma Edwards is a doctoral researcher in the School of English at The University of Nottingham and is Fabian Escalona is completing his Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center of CUNY, City Uni-
funded by the Midlands3Cities/AHRC DTP. Her research interests focus on performance, place and spatiality versity of New York. He studied Art History and Theory at Universidad de Chile, and has a background in Latin
and her PhD will examine the representation and reception of the English rural in contemporary theatre. She American Studies. He worked as assistant editor for the Journal of American Drama and Theatre from 2014
is also one of the coordinators for the Landscape, Space and Place Reading Group, an inter-institutional and to 2015 and wrote theatre reviews for the Chilean magazine Revista Sangría from 2010 to 2016. His academic
interdisciplinary group which is held at the University of Nottingham each month. research focuses on colonial and contemporary Latin American theatre, political theatre and post-Colonial
studies.

Muck, Pigs and Cattle: Iconographies of the Farm Animal on the

UK Stage Luis Antonio Morante in Chile: early post-colonial theatre in a
transnational/transatlantic perspective.
Questions about how rural places and rural lives are represented through performance are increas-
ingly urgent at a time when tensions between rural and urban spaces are becoming more pro- In 1822, Uruguay-born actor-manager Luis Ambrosio Morante moved from Argentina to Chile, to
nounced: in 2016 both the UK’s EU referendum and the victory of Trump in the US Presidential lead the first permanent Chilean theatre troupe for a few years. He stayed in Santiago for three
Election exposed the latent dislocation between rural peripheries and metropolitan centres. This years, introducing a new acting style, and performing an innovative repertoire, including Spanish
paper analyses representations of the English rural on the contemporary British stage through a plays, texts of his authorship, translations of French romantic plays, and pieces of the Shakespearean
unique focus on the uses of rural animals, looking in detail at two recent performance texts - Richard canon. Generally, the plays performed by Morante expressed his political views, which tied together
Bean’s Harvest 2005 and Bea Roberts’ And Then Come the Nightjars 2014 - where the animal func- romantic aesthetics, libertarian ideals, and anticlerical convictions. Theatre during the early post-co-
tions as pet, companion and work machine. In order to do so, I combine insights from animal phi- lonial period in Latin America is a particularly under-studied topic by theatre historians, mainly con-
losophy Derrida, 2002 and animal geography Philo and Wilbert, 2000 to enable the spatial analysis sidered an interregnum between Colonial performances and the much later establishment of nation-
of the animal’s changing place in the represented rural landscapes. Through this blended analytical al theatrical traditions. In most recent scholarship, the few pages devoted to this period establish
framework, this paper seeks to recalibrate the existing urban-centric focus on the domestic animal a nationalistic approach, asserting that theatre, among other forms of symbolic production, would
in these disciplines by turning to theatrical representations of the farm animal in rural spaces. By have served mainly to create and reinforce patriotic ideals. This interpretation, therefore, underlines
attending to the multiple theatrical functions of farm animals in Bean and Roberts’ plays, this paper the study of theatre within the larger national project of each country, overshadowing cross-nation-
will show that the farm animal can be used as an index for reading alternative often anti-romantic al transits of aesthetic influences and artistic practices. Based upon the analysis of primary sources
rural imaginaries into the landscape - which in turn serve to complicate and subvert the dominant found in the archival research I conducted in Chile and Argentina, I propose to examine Morante’s
representation of the English rural as an idyllic but finite space which is caught in the past. contributions to Chilean theatre regarding the repertoire he introduced, as an example of exchanges
among different countries in Latin America, and in a larger transatlantic circulation –through trans-
Key Words lation and adaptation of European texts. By doing so, I propose to discuss the interpretation of the-
Contemporary Theatre, Rural Studies, Animal Geography, Animal Philosophy, Livestock atrical activity in a nationalistic key, stressing instead a transnational and transatlantic perspective.

Key Words
Transatlantic Theatre, Transnational, National Identity, Circulation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

722 723
 NS NS

Ana Luiza Fortes Carvalho Amanda Fromell

Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha Spain University of Birmingham, UK

Ana Luiza Fortes Carvalho is co-founder and member of the theater group A Ursa de araque and co-founder Amanda Fromell is a practice-led researcher, writer and dramaturg, with a passion for making performances
and curator of the female artists platform Piscina. She holds a Bachelors degree in Performing Arts and two that resonate with current political and social debate. She has worked with theatres and literary departments
Master´s Degrees: one in Theatre from UDESC / Brasil and one in Arts Practice and Visual Culture UCLM / such as the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden, the Birmingham Rep, Manchester Royal Exchange and Liver-
Spain. She is currently a PhD student in Arts at UCLM / Spain. His most relevant works are: Essays for the end pool Everyman and Playhouse Theatre. She is an associate artist with Making Space Arts and a script evaluator
of the world. Essay # 1: After the end (2017), in this colective piece the artist thinks the construction of her for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. She also works as a dance dramaturg, making performances using VR
own identity as a Latin American student, living in Europe, mixing fiction and autobiography. This work was and animation most recently on AΦE’s critically acclaimed VR-performance Whist. She is currently under-
presented at Mexico City, São Paulo and Madrid. EATING, SLEEPING, WAITING (2016) was her final work in the taking an AHRC-funded PaR PhD at the department of Drama and Theatre Arts, at University of Birmingham,
Master in Arts Practice and Visual Culture, and consisted of a reading / writing / translation of the diaries of the developing postdigital dramaturgies which investigate and challenge the power of algorithms in contemporary
poet Sylvia Plath, from the autobiographical performer point of view. Since 2009, Ana Luiza has been acting in society. Her practice is supported by Curve Theatre, and work-in-progress can be listened to at https://sound-
Women’s, a play by Daniel Veronese, directed by André Carreira, having performed in several Brazilian cities, cloud.com/makingspacearts/drowning.
and other countries such as Cuba, Argentina and Peru.
Complete Portfolio. http://cargocollective.com/anafortes Theatre and Algorithms - towards a digital political dramaturgy

OTHER - Research on ways of seeing ourself Existing within a global society means being part of its globalizing process (Giannachi, 2007), which,
in turn, means that radical artistic practices wishing to promote social change, ‘need to be utilizing
The main objective of my PhD project is to relate practice and theory when researching issues relat- the very processes of globalization and capitalist production that they aim to critique’ (Hardt and
ed to autobiography. My intention is to develop several artistic experiments and reflections, which Negri 2001:11). Beer echoes this claim by stating that resistance can no longer be fought at the
are the starting point for this construction of a “look on myself”, transformed or negotiated by the ground level, outside of the power structure, since domination now is an active part of what we do
attempt to be «other». In addition, there is the possibility to perceive how this displacement re- (Beer, 2009:992). A similar position is adopted by Causey 2006, who raises the need for an artistic
veals aspects of an identity which is in permanent construction and deconstruction, what Stuart Hall practice which functions from within the system. Theatre, in order to resist the oppressive controls
(2003) links to the way the subject relates to others and is represented.The ‘look’ itself, almost as in the domain of the virtual, needs to find ways of doing so through ‘a strategic manipulation of the
much as the gaze of others, is something that produces insecurity, since it establishes the possibility virtual, turning the system against itself’ (Causey, 2006:123). Drawing on Sarah Grochala’s research
of being judged and condemned. Moreover, to look at myself being a woman, involves shifting from towards a politics of structure (2017) and Mathew Causey’s development of postdigtial performanc-
the objectification and the desire of the Other to become the matter for a personal discourse. This is es (2016), this paper details how a set of algorithms can be used as blueprints for dramaturgical
in opposition to the hegemonic logic, pointed by John Berger (2016), that men look at women, while forms, content creators and subject matter, in order to make visible some of their hidden power
women contemplate themselves while they are looked at.From these self-referential practices, aris- structures. Specifically, it analyses a process of practice-as-research, where the creation of a series
es the possibility to build another feminine identity, no longer based on the perception of men. This of site-specific audio plays, ‘PlayPods’, are delivered through an interactive app. The app allows for
reflection is also based on the revision of the historical construction of “femininity”, carried out by certain details from the listener’s own smart phone to filter into the performance, generating ‘side
Maria Rita Kehl (2008), based on the Freudian maxim that women are related to the symbol of the effects’ towards an ‘algorithmic augmentation’, where the app enacts, live, certain elements of algo-
lack (from the reference phallus / no-phallus). Therefore, they tend to invent new narratives in the rithmic control.Bibliography Beer, D. 2009. Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures
present so as not to succumb to that gap. In this paper, my aim is to share and reflect about two of and the technological unconscious. New Media & Society. 116: 985-1002. Causey, M. 2006 Theatre
the practical experiences that I have been investigating: Otra and Eating, Sleeping, Waiting, taking and Performance in Digital Culture. From simulation to embeddedness, Routledge, New York Causey,
as a theoretical framework studies related to anthropology, psychoanalysis and art theory, such as M. 2016 Postdigital Performance, Theatre Journal, Volume 68, Number 3, pp. 427-441 Giannachi, G.
those briefly mentioned in this abstract. 2007, The Politics of New Media Theatre, Routledge, New York Grochala, S. 2017 The Contemporary
Political Play, Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure, Bloomsbury, London Hardt, M. And Negri, A. 2001
Key Words Empire, USA, Harvard University Press
Actress Autobiography Self-portrait Performance Intimate writing Real Fiction
Key Words
politics of structure, postdigital performance, app-based theatre, algorithmic augmentation, digital
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

724 725
 NS NS

Ester Fuoco Sung Un Gang

University of Genoa/ Université Paris Diderot University of Cologne

Ester Fuoco is a PhD candidate in Digital Humanities at the University of Genoa with a foreign co-advisor in Sung Un Gang is a Ph. D. Candidate in the Department of Theater and Media Studies at the University of
Paris. Her research focus is on contemporary theatre and dance and the applied theatre domain. Her disser- Cologne. In his dissertation, tentatively titled “Spectators and Spectacles: Female Audiences in the Early Ko-
tation research is about the aesthetic of perception and the semiotic of the body in digital performances. She rean Playhouses, 1902-1937”, he examines the negotiations of women’s roles in colonial Korea coined by the
held seminars in Paris, Milan, Rome and Bergen and she has participated in several international conferences. cultural discourse and practice of the theatre modernization. He completed his undergraduate studies in the
German Literature at University of Bonn M.A. and Seoul National University B.A. with two grants by DAAD.
Currently he is a scholarship holder of a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.
Corporeal intersections and hybridations in digital performances
In many contemporary theatrical or dance performances it is the creative process that constitutes The Infectious Love. The Public Discourse Surrounding Female
the show, It does not represent someone or something but presents to the viewer a new paradigm Students’ Theatergoing and their Role in Eugenic Marriage in
of hybrid human corporeal presence (Manovich 2001). Referring to the videos that will be shown as Colonial Korea
an example: Glow and Mortal Engine of Chunky Move (2 min) and Le sacre du printemps and Ego of
Klaus Obermaier (1min 45sec) it will be questioning how the performer’s body becomes a surface, The 1920s witnessed an increase of female students in Korean movie theaters, particularly in the
an object of infiltration, a liquid matter, an environment that could be manipulated losing its iden- romantic motion pictures from the West. The paper explores why female students as audiences
tity. The video shown bodies overexposed, outstretched or expanded to a point to reach a degree challenged colonial Korean society. Analyzing articles on female students and their theatergoing, I
of zero of its human subjectivity, particularly of its gender (Bauman 2000). Conclusion (3-4 min): argue that young female audiences deviated from social expectations that they be unworldly and
These bodies are entities ontological hybrids that exist only in the interaction between logical-com- sexually inactive. Korean newspapers and popular magazines plotted a scenario that romantic films
putational text and human bodies endowed with technological prostheses or embodied by specific would sexually activate young women, and that they would meet somebody and start a romance.
software (Diodato 2005). From an aesthetic point of view the performer’s body seen is both original This idea not only confronted the long-standing cult of women’s chastity, but also the ideal of the
and copy, it becomes the subject of multiple incarnations Baudrillard 1981, structurally identical but eugenic marriage. Korean eugenicists promoted that a body clean from STDs was the most import-
phenomenally different because they belong to a hybrid entity, a body-image in which its being is ant condition as the right spouse. Eugenicists reduced women to their reproductive functions and,
strictly linked to interactivity. We deal with these process from the standpoint of theatrical/dance due to the possibility of in-utero infection, ordered extra care—although it was mostly men who
performances presented, in order to reflect on construction of presence and perception in digital bought sex and became intermediaries of STDs. By and large, the controversy over female student
performance. audiences shows how women’s bodies and sexuality were considered as a resource for the nation
state, and how their behaviors were publicly debated and controlled—not only by the colonizer, but
Key Words also by their compatriots. Furthermore, this study illustrates how Korean women’s theatergoing and
Digital Performance, Embodiments, Theatre spectation were conditioned by expectations of them based on their sex, social ranks, economic
status, and ages. Doing so, this study contributes to a better understanding of the colonized women
in theaters as intersectional subjects, whose spectation concurrently challenged and reinforced the
colonial politics of gender.

Key Words
female audience, spectatorship, colonial Korea, eugenics, romantic motion pictures
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

726 727
 NS NS

Deepshikha Ghosh Srabasti Ghosh

Jawaharlal Nehru University Ambedkar University Delhi

I am currently doing PhD under the supervision of Prof. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi in Theatre and Performance Srabasti Ghosh was born in 1995, in Kolkata, India. She is currently an MA final year student in Performance
Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. My research topic is “Tagore’s Ex- Studies in Ambedkar University, Delhi, India. She graduated in Bengali Language and Literature from Presi-
periments in Dance: Art and Pedagogy in Santiniketan and Beyond.” I have completed previous studies includ- dency University, Kolkata, India. She is a dancer, theatre practitioner and performer. She is trained in Bharata
ing Honors, Masters and M Phil with First Class grades in English Studies and literature from the Department Natyam and Navanritya - a style of contemporary dance that was pioneered by Dr. Manjusree Chaki Sircar.
of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India. My research interests She started her training in theatre from Nandikar, a theatre group in Kolkata in 2007. Srabasti worked as an
are: Dance, Theatre, Music, Literature, Performance Studies, Twentieth century India and World phenomena. actor in many theatre productions in Kolkata. She was an assistant director in Aagshuddhi, an adaptation of
I have language proficiency in English, Bengali, Hindi and German B1 level. I have attended and presented pa- Arthur Miller’s The Cruicible, directed by Dr. Sudipto Chatterjee. She is interested in working on the female
pers in various national and international seminars and workshops in different parts of India. I have also partic- body, female identity, and the relationship between performer and spectator. Currently, she has created and
ipated and presented in the Summer Insitute Cologne [sic!], 2017 at the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, performed, ‘Lets Not Whisper’, which is a protest action against the taboo of menstruation.
University of Cologne, Germany, and at the Summer Camp of Yunnan University, China in 2012.

Pandavani: Casting Female Body in The Performance

Migration of Manipuri Dance Tradition: Asthetics, Politics,
Pedagogy My Paper is about the traditional storytelling form Pandavani from Chhattisgarh, India. A narrator
tells the story of The Mahabharata, one of the epic stories of India, accompanied by a group of
With the primary focus on the Manipuri dance style of India, I propose to study in this paper an aes- musicians. Teejan Bai is one of the most eminent performers of this style. She is the first female
thetic migration of a specific dance tradition with its geographical and socio-political shift. Rooted performer of the Kapalik style of Pandavani, where the narrator stands and tells the story. In the
in the ancient Vedic ritual practices, later on taking elements from Vaishnavism, this dance form of other style, which is Vedamati, the narrator sits and narrates. According to oral historical accounts,
the mountainous north-eastern region was once very much a part of the “cultural peripheral other.” Pandavani was traditionally presented exclusively by men, but through Teejan Bai, it has become a
How and why did it enter into the mainstream “Indian self” necessarily as one of the integral parts female dominated form. Why? what is the element of the performance of the female body which
of the reconstruction project of Indian nationhood (mid twentieth century)? Keeping postcolonial can surrogate the male performer? Pandavani marks the male heteronormative social space with
literary and performance theory as the theoretical framework of this research I shall investigate difference. It goes beyond the objectification of female body, where the female performer embodies
whether in this continuous interaction and tussle between the “core” and the “margins” (Bhaba masculine characters. This mythical space offers women a space of fantasy, free from their daily rou-
1990) this specific “postcolonial dramatic genre” (Dharwadker 2005) could “define a cultural identity tine of oppression. The myth through a female body offers also the feeling of empowerment. My pa-
for the nation” (Chatterjee 1997)? As a case study of this broader performance migration of Manipu- per will deal with the politics and performativity of the female body and the spectators’ gaze which
ri dance I shall look at Rabindranath Tagore who not only incorporated it into his dance theatre but has caused Pandavani to shift and evolve. What kind of spectator has helped Pandavani to evolve?
also institutionalized in 1920s thus bringing the regional into the university space of Santiniketan. These questions will allow the research to locate the myriad connections between performance, so-
Keeping the colonial postcolonial dichotomies and gender politics of India (1920s, 30s) in mind I will cial phenomena and the politics of cultural practice, cutting across spaces between the archive and
look at the shifts in its choreography as a result of its socio-political journey and how did it affect the the repertoire of embodiment. In order to better understand how the performativity of the female
corporeality and essence of the dance. body affects social gaze, the paper will refer to James Thompson’s concept of ‘Performance Affect’ in
relation to applied theatre, feminist theories by Elin Diamond and Judith Butler and Laura Mulvey’s
Key Words theory of gaze and visual pleasure. These texts will be discussed in the light of a possible approach
Aesthetic, Migration, Shift, Dance, Choreography, Corporeality, Institution, Pedagogy, Body Politics to the study of Pandavani.

Key Words
Performativity of Female Body, Social gaze, ‘In-between space’ of actor and spectator
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

728 729
 NS NS

LyaNisha Gonzalez Helene Grøn

Texas Tech University University of Glasgow

LyaNisha Gonzalez is currently working on her PhD in Fine Arts at Texas Tech University, located in Lubbock, PhD candidate in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow and member of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and
Texas, USA. She is in her second year of studies and her areas of concentration are Arts Administration and Migration Network GRAMnet. Helene Grøn is a playwright, librettist and researcher from Denmark, currently
Playwriting. LyaNisha has a BA in Drama from Spelman College in Atlanta, GA and an MFA in Acting from The doing her PhD at the University of Glasgow. Helene’s project explores how we can still think of “home” and
Actors Studio Drama School in New York, NY. Her plays have received productions both Off-Broadway and Off- “belonging” in an increasingly globalised world where many people are displaced. Conducting theatrical work-
Off-Broadway. LyaNisha is new to IFTR and The New Scholars Forum, and is looking forward to the opportunity shops with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, Helene explores how theatre, as a voice-giving medium re-
to expand her professional development while meeting other emerging scholars. lying on possibility and telling stories through and beyond words, can reshape and give new meaning to these
themes. Prior to embarking on her PhD project, she co-founded a theatre company, Leylines, bringing to the
stage stories of home, homelessness and being caught between languages and cultures.
Othering Others: The Black Female Body in Performance
African American theatre has a long history of speaking pain to power. Virtually every early piece of Compromised Belongings: Performing self and home in a
Black performance and theatre created has chronicled the African American experience included globalised world
investigations into migration—be it through the Atlantic slave trade, the movement north, or the
journey west. African American theatrical artists, especially playwrights, have used performance We live in polarised times: In the divisive political climate of Brexit, Donald Trump’s presidency,
to situate their othered bodies upfront and center while refuting the status of second-class citi- the so-called refugee crisis and forced migration, it becomes progressively difficult, in Jean Amérys
zens.   Nevertheless, within that fabric of the Black Other, stands another tier of otherness—the words, to imagine “how one would still be able to form the concept of home at all.” In my paper, I
Black woman. Suffering from the ills of sexism and classicism, Black women find themselves in an will look at ways in which different types of migrants may deal with questions of home and belonging
even lesser role than Black men. The theatre is often a vehicle of communication that sheds light on through artistic practice. Drawing on writings by Hannah Arendt and Jean Améry, I will argue that
the lives of a people whose stories have easily, and historically, been ignored. Re-focusing the light there is a performative element of self to exilic and migratory states, relying on individuals perform-
on their stories further helps to prevent a stasis of creativity within American theatre. Thus, utilizing ing the kind of self that could belong to the communities, nations and circumstances they find them-
Black feminist theory and the work of Black female playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, I will illuminate the selves a part of. Existentialist thinking examines how home and belonging are conditions for existing
complexities of the Black female body in American society and its portrayal on the American stage. in the world, and how loss of home can also mean loss of identity. The term, “compromised be-
By examining the play Venus, I will investigate questions of race and gender dynamics, as well as longings” thus covers these problems of self, identity and loss of home, as well as the compromises
interrogate the performance of belonging. and complications involved in belonging anew in exilic experiences. Drawing on my practice-as-re-
search workshops with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, I will argue that theatre, storytelling
Key Words and playwriting are uniquely able to address issues of compromised belongings, home and identity.
Gender, race, ethnicity, performances of belonging, and other Following anthropologist Michael Jackson’s thought that stories allow us to “recognise ourselves in
otherness”, I will reflect on how the space of theatre, dwelling in possibility, can reshape and reflect
senses of home and belonging.

Key Words
Performing self, home, belonging, storytelling, playwriting
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

730 731
 NS NS

Martina Guerinoni Gizem Gürer

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Milano Masters Degree Student at Theatre Department, Ankara University Turkey

Martina Guerinoni is a PhD student in Theatrical Studies at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy. Gizem Gürer comes from Turkey. She has been working as an actress and assistant director in several theatre
She is also a Social and Community Theatre worker and has developed theatrical skills with Grotowskis meth- projects since 2003, when she decided to start a master’s degree in the Theatre Department at Ankara Univer-
od. She earned a Bachelor in Literature and a Master in Modern Philology, in the field of Art and Performance. sity. She worked for Turkish State Theatre and some private theatre groups. Currently, she is living in Mainz,
During her Master she spent one semester in Germany, at Ruhr Universität Bochum.  She earned her Masters Germany and working with a performance group called Performance Art Depot, while at the same time pre-
Degree with a thesis on some examples of documentary work of Rimini Protokoll. From this thesis she derived paring her dissertation on the performer’s experience in performance art.
the essay: Rimini Protokoll: Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 & 2. Il Teatro di fronte alla Storia, in Comunicazioni
Sociali, 2 2017: 317-333.

Performer Experience in Performance Art Depot’s Be-Have

Performance: In Search for Symptoms of the Body
Social and Community Theatre as best practice for the inclusion
of migrant Women in Italy Performance Art Depot is a theatre group which has been working solely on performance art proj-
ects for ten years in Mainz, Germany. This research focuses on their ongoing project called Be-Have,
The essay aims to illustrate the experience of theatre for immigrant women run by the non-profit or- which premiered in November 2017. The directors of the performance define their project as based
ganisation Asinitas, based in Rome since 2005. This association coordinates Italian language schools on the reactions and the existence of bodies thrown into an unknown world. In this paper, I aim to
for refugees, migrants, immigrant women and mothers. It also organises expressive workshops for examine how the signifier/signified dichotomy breaks down in performance art in relation to the
children, a counselling service for women and families, IT workshops, educational, professional, cul- experience of the performer. I would like to analyse the performance Be-Have through the Deleuzian
tural and health guidance and several other activities. The main practice used by Asinitas to pro- conceptualisation of symptomatology. I argue that Be-Have is based on bringing out symptoms in
mote processes of inclusion is theatre. In the annual intergenerational theatre workshop for women the bodies of the performers, instead of on the representation of certain actions by the actors on
from different countries, the theatre is presented as an experience in which it is possible to express stage. As I am one of the performers in Be-Have, I use embodied research as my methodology and
oneself, to imagine, to share. Furthermore, it shows the possibility to make friends and to establish focus on my presence on the stage so that I can identify the changes in my performative experience
significant relationships that can be a support in many situations of social life, such as health, educa- throughout the performance. My main question is: If the performer’s experience in theatre is con-
tion, citizenship, work and living together. By combating the isolation of immigrant women, Asinitas ventionally defined by the concept of representation, can we describe the performer’s experience in
makes them protagonists and authors of the integration process between native and host culture. performance art as a ‘symptom’ or as ‘symptomatic’ in order to explain its position, that is distinct
Making a comparison with other Italian experiences of theatre with immigrant women, this essay from theatre?
aims to highlight this case history as exemplary and to underline its affinity with Social Community
theatre methodology, the predominant type of Applied theatre in Italy. In the field of social inclu- Key Words
sion, the critical point is whether performing arts are useful for immigrant women’s everyday life or, performance art, performer, presence, representation, symptom, embodied research
on the contrary, whether women’s life is useful for performing arts. In the latter case, theatre and
performing arts are only partially inclusive.

Key Words
Social Community Theatre, Women, Inclusion
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

732 733
 NS NS

Claire Hampton Reyazul Haque

University of Wolverhampton Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Claire’s research interests lie at the intersection between performance, contemporary culture, embodiment, Former correspondent of prestigious Indian media houses like Tehelka and Prabhat Khabar, Reyazul Haque is
trauma theory and gender studies. She is currently completing her PhD at Brunel University London where her currently doing his M.Phil. at School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU on the methodological approach of Dr. B.R.
research addresses the performance of female trauma through visual self- documentation, focusing on the Ambedkar. He has been translating books by Anand Teltumbde, Arundhati Roy, Khaled Hosseini, Pablo Neruda,
popular cultural phenomenon of selfies. She is full time senior lecturer in Drama at the University of Wolver- Ngugi Wa Thiong’O and Edurado Galeano.
hampton, UK.

Conversion as a Social Gestus: Distantiation, Identity and Belonging

Selfies at the Border: Framing Migration in a Caste Society
This paper considers the ethics of recognisability and response in relation to the multiple frames This paper deals with the mass conversion by Indian political thinker Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who along
of conception through which we view and interpret human life, drawing on an analysis of the way with his followers converted to Buddhism in 1956. Ambedkar denounced the Hinduism and em-
Syrian refugees are framing themselves and have been framed, in a variety of photographic images braced a form of Buddhism which he himself had developed. This conversion which took place in
depicting the current global migration crisis. The research focuses specifically on the cultural prac- a central Indian city Nagpur, inspired people of Untouchable castes from villages and cities to join
tice of the selfie examining the innate agency in self-shooting and problematizing the way that anti- together to carve out a new identity for themselves. The paper tries to look at this historic moment
immigration memes have appropriated and demonised this practice amongst refugees. The analysis through Bertolt Brecht’s concept of Verfremdungseffekt (V-effect), with its method of transforma-
is threefold I will consider the efficacy of selfies in maintaining and reclaiming individual identities tion of the means, creation of parables, making the appearance of event striking and perspective of
amongst those displaced by the current conflicts, arguing that selfie- shooting and the networked criticality and self-reflexivity in order to create a social gestus, that alienates oneself from organic
dissemination of those images via social media offers refugees a means of documenting and com- and natural belongings and makes new ones. This can be seen as the origin of a new Dalit Buddhist
municating a personal narrative to oppose the mediatised homogenisation of displaced individuals identity. Conceived as a method of salvation in the era of atrocities and migration, the V-effect of
and families. Sharing these images to the network is an act of human agency that combats the a mass conversion, which itself was strikingly transformed by Ambedkar and was not a conversion
de-humanising linguistic descriptions, such as ‘swarms’ to quote David Cameron, ITV News July 2015 as per convention and was based on the re-created Buddhist parables, not only tries to disrupt the
and the more insidious animalistic implications of the term migrant, the etymology of which lies in caste system as an organic timeless entity, but also necessitates the processes of alienation and
the seasonal migration of animals. Secondly, there is a need to highlight and challenge the appropri- association in the community life of villages and cities in which the converted people refused to be
ation of the selfie process in images by the main- stream British media and their consequent use in subjected to sympathy and claimed equality founded on reason. This paper looks caste system as
right wing anti-immigration memes. Finally, I will consider the threat that selfies taken in this context a set of mimetic performances, which Ambedkarite method tries to disrupt through his conversion
pose to western dominance, suggesting that the images and the networked technology required to while rejecting the organic and natural associations based on hereditary and hierarchical relations.
participate in this cultural practice are a symbol of modernity that in the hands of the ‘other’ trou- Thus, performative aspects of the actual conversion (Buddhist parables, the event, gestural dimen-
bles western authorities. sions, its meaning, and its immediate impact) will be discussed to underscore how V-effect helps to
understand the dialectics of this alienation and association. As a conclusion, this paper argues why
Key Words it is imperative to deploy the concept of V-effect to intervene in social-historical milieu, as Brecht
Selfies, Migration, Framing, Performativity conceptualises it.

Key words
V-effect, caste system, performance theory, conversion, theories of caste, alienation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

734 735
 NS NS

Rowena Hawkins Laura Hayes

Kings College London Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Rowena Hawkins is a first-year Arts & Humanities Research Council funded PhD candidate at King’s College Laura Hayes is a post-graduate student in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University
London whose research focuses on international Shakespeare festivals in Europe and their impact on re- UK, studying for an M.A. by research. She received her BA in Acting from the Royal Conservatoire Scotland and
ceived notions of “Shakespeare”. spent two years studying at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Currently, she is Senior Lec-
turer at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts NAFA in Singapore where she teaches movement and acting. She
makes theatre with the collective Autopoetics.

“It’s in Polish. Would you like a refund?”: Performing and

marketing the Other after Brexit and the strange case of ‘Waiting The playbox: Play-writing through play, objects, and the body
for Othello’ at the York International Shakespeare Festival (2017)
Lecoq claimed ‘‘Be quiet, play, and theatre will be born!’’ Lecoq 2002: 36 and developed a peda-
gogy that proposes the benefits of theatre-making using silent, embodied play in addition to text
Before the second performance of EKIPA Theatre’s ‘Waiting for Othello’, patrons were offered re- and speech. Rehearsal processes often start with a reading and analysis of a text, and the kind of
funds or ticket exchanges by the York Theatre Royal following audience complaints the previous playful, embodied exploration that Lecoq espouses arrives later in the process, if at all. I propose a
night. The show was, the box office explained, in Polish without subtitles. ‘Waiting for Othello’, which new method of playwriting - a playbox, written not only in words, but also in a curated dramaturgy
explored the racism faced by Shakespeare’s Othello as well as by the two black actors, both sons of of stimuli – of objects, images, sounds, and experiences. Unlike a Fluxkit, it is designed as a stimulus
African immigrants, auditioning to play him in a predominantly white country, raised questions of for play-making, rather than a performative experience. I will suggest that a playbox provides an em-
identity and belonging which felt especially pertinent in the wake of Brexit, as Britain wrestled with bodied, sensory route into creation that immediately initiates playful, affective relationships in real
its own identity in relation to an increasingly fractured Europe. It is interesting, then, that refunds space and linear time between the performers and provocations, and guides creation towards visual
were offered due to an apparent breakdown in intercultural dialogue. In this paper I explore ‘Waiting and physical modes of performance. In its etymology, a playbox makes an invitation not just to make
for Othello’ in this immediate context (the 2017 York International Shakespeare Festival, UK) and its theatre with the contents of the box, but to do so by playing with them. Using a phenomenological
original context (Poland) to ask two questions: what does it mean to hold an international festival approach Merleau-Ponty - Spielraum, I bring theories of play Turner, Vygotsky, Csikszentmihalyi,
at a time characterised by nationalism? And what, exactly, gets lost in cross-cultural performance? Winnicott into conversation with Lecoq’s pedagogy, based on the experiences of a rehearsal process
My analysis of this production is underpinned by Ric Knowles’ ‘materialist semiotics’, a theoretical using a playbox. I will show that the playbox offers a method of creation that synthesises embodied
approach which seeks to ‘illuminate’ ‘the social and cultural work… produced and performed by playfulness, spatial relationships, and the affective possibilities of objects to generate theatre that
theatrical productions in negotiation with their local audiences in particular cultural and theatrical from the outset works with visual image and somatic movement in addition to words.
settings and contexts. Knowles argues that materialist semiotics provides ‘a model for site-specific
performance analysis that takes into account the specifics and politics of location’. This approach, Key Words
therfore, will allow me to closely read the many nuances (social, political, and geographical) of the play-writing, dramaturgy, Lecoq, play
production and to argue that while the international festival offers hope as a space for cultural ex-
change across borders both real and imagined, it is also fraught with potential for misunderstand-
ings, mistranslations, miscommunications, and misappropriations.

Key Words
Shakespeare, festival, intercultural performance, racism, otherness
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

736 737
 NS NS

Benjamin Hoesch Sarah Hoover

Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen National University of Ireland, Galway

Benjamin Hoesch studied Theatre and Comparative Literature in Valencia, Tel Aviv and Mainz, Germany, where IRC funded PhD Candidate, 3rd Year, O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance at NUI Galway
he became a Teaching Assistant until 2018. Simultaneously, he studied Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Ireland. Thesis title: Gaming Audiences into Theatre. Thesis topic: the presence of participants as inter-subjec-
co-curated and organized festivals and presented his own stage work both nationally and internationally. Since tivities and their engagement into agentive, co-creative participatory theatre events in the lineage of live-ac-
March 2018 he is a Research Assistant in Giessen, working on his PhD for the research project “Festivals for tion role play researched through PaR methodology and theoretical frameworks drawn from performance
Young Artists” as part of the nationwide scholar network “Crisis and Institutional Transformation in Performing studies, theatre studies, and game studies. Publication: Lead editor and contributor, “Performance and Role
Arts 2734”, funded by the German Research Assembly DFG. Another upcoming book publication applies per- Play”. Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Zagal, José Pablo and Sebastian Deterding, editors.
formance theory to the reflection of tourism. Routledge, 2018. First with Honours in Theatre, Master of Arts at NUI Maynooth and Gaiety School of Acting
Ireland, 2014. Winner, Sr. Mary Lorenz Award for Excellence in Drama and BA in Theatre and Communications,
Mount Mercy University USA. Teacher, NUI Galway 2015-present. Executive Director, Bartell Theatre Founda-
tion Madison, WI, USA 2008-2013. Senior Reader, Fishamble: The New Play Company Dublin, Ireland. Writer,
Forever upcoming? – Young artists and festival institutions director, game designer and actor 1991-2013.

Festivals for young artists have spread over the field of theatre and performing arts over the last 20
years. In the German-speaking countries alone, dozens of renowned theatres maintain an annual
special programme designed to promote unknown artists, during or shortly after their education/ Gaming the Taboo: Affect, encounter and agency in Mentioning
training, by presenting their acting and directing to the public. The boom of such festivals, though, the Unmentionables participatory performances
has a paradoxical downside: As they include much more artists than the market could ever take in as
long-term professionals, festivals encourage an over-production of stage work, often under precari- This paper discusses the agentive engagement of participants in the participatory performance
ous conditions. Rather than securing and enabling artistic creation in the present, these institution- game Mentioning the Unmentionables by Kasja Greger. It interrogates the ways in which affect,
alized events seem to live by their promise to the artist of a career in the future – a future, however, resonating through those co-present in the playful space, can encourage reflective lacunae in the
which for theatre institutions themselves, in the face of budget cuts and decline of public interest, embodied understanding of self within the culture. Mentioning the Unmentionables asks partici-
has become doubtful. As part of the DFG-funded scholar network “Crisis and Institutional Transfor- pants to examine, in both intellectual and affective ways, the taboos and shame culturally associated
mation in Performing Arts” starting 02/2018, my presentation will examine the current trend of with women’s sexuality and menstruation by improvising as the Other in their midst: the woman.
festivals for young artists in their discursive and institutional contexts, as both a symptom and an ap- The game’s design uses rule-based interaction and game alibi to encourage experimentation within
parent way out of crisis. With an innovative focus on theatre as an institution, I regard these festivals the magic circle (Huizinga Salen and Zimmerman). Here, affects are felt by the participants’ body but
as a dispositif (Foucault) connecting discourse and praxis, art and infrastructure, organization and can be assigned to the character. As affects are “non-conscious experience[s] of intensity” (Shouse),
society – thereby shaping knowledge, subjectivity and power. At the conference – right after my first depth reactions by which form and content “depend on consciously positioning oneself in a line of
field research –, I want to outline key questions of my project and discuss further methodological narrative continuity” (Massumi 85), they can be difficult to unearth for examination and change,
perspectives and international comparability of my findings. but also surprising in the depth of reaction participants experience over the short event duration.
In the narrativisation that follows the event participants take agency to re-position themselves in
Key Words the cultural re-construction of shame. By making visible the multiplicities (Deleuze and Guattari)
institution, festivals, young artists, dispositif of character and self present in the playful space, this discussion allows participants access to both
embodied learning and intellectual distance, and encourages agentive resistance to the othering
process by which women’s sexuality becomes taboo.

Key Words
Agency, encounter, presence, affect, participatory theatre, inter-subjectivity, play, multiplicities
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

738 739
 NS NS

Sara Ismail Oluwafemi Jacob

Goldsmiths College, University of London Olabisi Onabanjo University

Sara Ismail is a performance maker, Feldenkrais Method practitioner and a PhD researcher in Performance and JACOB, Oluwafemi Ademola, Institutions Attended: Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Univer-
Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She holds a B.A in Theatre & Performance from the sity of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Membership of Profes-
American University in Cairo 2009, and an M.A in Contemporary Performance Practice from Royal Holloway sional Bodies: Association of Dance Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria (ADSPON), Member of the Society of
University of London 2014. Between 2010 and 2013, she worked with children and youth in underprivileged Nigerian Theatre Artist (SONTA), Member of National Association of Nigeria Theatre Arts Practitioners (NAN-
and informal urban areas in Damascus and Cairo using Forum Theatre. In 2015, along with her collaborator TAP) Member of Guild of Nigeria Dancers (GOND)
Emilia Robinson, they developed their piece The Stuff Our Dreams Are Made Of as part of Dance Research
Studio Artists in Residency Program. Her most recent conference presentation in 2017 RC21 Research Com-
mittee on Urban and Regional Development in Leeds titled Women Walking Cairo Everyday Spatial and Cor-
poreal Strategies as Resistance addressed the relationship between gender performativity and inhibition of TFD and Peace Building: A Study of the Conflict between Fulani
hip-movement in Cairo. Herdsmen and Farmers in Nigeria
Historically, Theatre for Development (TFD) has in different ways served or been used as a tool in
Corporeal Mapping: Home and Away diverse sectors such as education, orientation, entertainment, socio-economic and political aspects
as all are aimed at community development. This theatre relates to people in any society, conse-
Migration and displacement create a spectrum, rather than a binary, of being home, and away from quently,through its approach, it is able to presenti issues in diverse ways. Theatre is used to capture
it. This paper poses corporeal mapping as a methodology for exploring, tracing and reflecting on both the entertaining and educating aspects of the art. The process addresses socio-political and so-
the negotiation between the body and space around the theme of belonging. The project utilises cio-cultural acknowledgement for development in its primary sense of creation which makes it a tool
the notion of neutrality from Feldenkrais Method, as the place in which the body is neither moving, for conscientization as it sensitizes the entire populace or a given set of people. In many parts of the
nor engaging an intention for movement. Metaphorically, it is corporeal home space, which Anne world today including Nigeria, conflict is seen as a bad, disastrous and unethical act. But it can also
Bogart. In Feldenkrais Method practice, to go home is to suggest going back to the neutral configura- be used as a positive turnaround for a society. Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s theory views the contribution of
tion from which the movement experiment or exploration route first began. This neutral state is not TFD as a conflict prevention or solution for society. Conflict is bound to occur among individuals and
fixed, it changes as one adopts techniques that require the body to be organised a certain way, never in societies at large but what makes a society an ideal one is its ability to constructively manage con-
the less it can provide a frame of reference.   This paper attempts to answer the questions: How can flict so that it doesn’t end up being continuously threatened by violence. This research will source
practices of corporeal mapping further clarify the relationship between the body in urban space in information via news, documentary, text, books, articles, internets, journal and public lectures de-
regards to sense of belonging or displacement? How can the notion of neutrality in the body serve livered by various stakeholders. The aim of the paper is to show how TFD can help sharpen social
as an outline from which corporeal maps can expand? The project explores corporeal strategies in awareness and present alternative approaches to the problems of society. It will demonstrate how
urban space to develop tools and methods derived from embodied-practice that can be used in per- TFD has always been a powerful source of communication and how it can go a long way in preventing
formance practice as well as ethnographic research. It hypothesises that corporeal maps can further and resolving conflict in Nigeria especially that of the Fulani Herdsmen and Farmers.
clarify the relationship between the body and immediate urban space by taking a phenomenological
approach to corporeal mapping.   The paper presents and contextualises tools used and developed Key Words
through a series of workshops, and material produced by participants of the workshops, women of Peace, Conflict, Fulani, Herdsmen, Farmers
colour living in London. Visual and written material presented are the outcome of a workshop series
curated and partly taught by Sara Ismail in collaboration with artist practitioners Farah Aridi, Emilia
Robinson, and Laila Samy. Participants use drawing, scoring, reflective writing, and photography to
create, expand, reflect on and enrich their corporeal maps. It expands interweaves viewpoints, so-
matic practice within academic research, and draws on interdisciplinary connections between prac-
tice research methods and urban sociology.

Key Words
corporeal mapping, homespace, home space, performance practice, neutrality, somatics
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

740 741
 NS NS

Tatjana Kijaniza Suzanne Knip-Mooij

Queen Mary University of London

Tatjana Kijaniza is a dramaturge and PhD candidate at the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of Suzanne Knip-Mooij studied Theatre Studies and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam UvA. She gradu-
London. She holds a BA in Theatre Studies and Philosophy from the Free University of Berlin and a joint-MA ated from the research master Art Studies UvA. Her thesis was published as part of the Dutch/Flemish book
in International Performance Research from the University of Arts in Belgrade and University of Warwick. series AGENT. New Theses in Performance Research, Tectum Verlag Title: Moving through Releasement: a
She also studied Dramaturgy at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt and dramaturgically supported theatrical phenomenology of performance. Suzanne works as a lecturer and researcher in Theatre Studies UvA and is
projects. Her current research explores late- and post-Soviet artistic communities, focussing on the so-called currently organising the 4th Biennal Performance Philosophy Conference in Amsterdam. Additionally, Suzanne
‘unofficial’ performance art and the question of communality. works at DAS, Master of Theatre Amsterdam University of the Arts as external examinor and advisor to inter-
national theatre makers.

Waste and Stupidity: The Comradeship New Stupid and absurd

life-creation in Post-Soviet St. Petersburg Embodying the Dark Night: Towards an Apophatic Analysis of
Performance
This paper explores the specificities of post-Soviet life-creation through readings of performance
art practices of the artistic collective the New Stupid 1996-2002. The Comradeship New Stupid was This paper explores in how far apophaticism, i.e. negative theology and more specifically the medi-
founded by a group of artists at the Borey Art Centre in St. Petersburg. In pursuit of sincerity and an eval negative mysticism of the Beguines, could provide a critical instrumentarium for contemporary
art which would go beyond being exhibited and consumed, the New Stupid decided to live in disre- performance analysis. Apophaticism could be described most generally as a practice and strategy of
gard of the logic of sense and success, and to invest their energy in cultivation of a ‘unique stupid unknowing within theology. The strategy yields a negative epistemology that has recently been in-
gaze’. Drawing on the local traditions of the avant-garde art experiments, such as zaum’, OBERIUty, troduced in theatre and performance studies.    The paper traces an embodied form of apophaticism
Nichevoki, the New Stupid created a number of provocative and absurd public performances. Wast- that was later integrated in the mystical, speculative thought of most notably, Meister Eckhart. This
ing time, health, energy, beauty, erotic attractiveness, financial means were as much part of their presentation will aim to reevaluate concepts of mystical unification, simplicity and poverty in the
artistic program as any manifestation of childish, joyful and playful art. The paper examines New Stu- apophatic mystical texts of Marguerite of Porete, Mechtild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch to effect an
pid’s aesthetics of living by unpacking the cultural-philosophical foundations of the concept zhiznet- enriched critical perspective on what it means to approach the unsayable in describing and analyzing
vorchestvo life-creation, as well as group’s own philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on the origi- contemporary theatre and performance. Concentrating on a series of durational non-performances
nal performance documents, interviews with the members and memoirs, it considers the practices by choreographer Mårten Spångberg. Natten 2016 and Natten, The Series 2017, the metaphor of
alongside the notions of ‘waste’, ‘stupidity’, ‘prank’ and addresses the question how the archetypes sleep, and the possibility of audience participation through the act of sleeping form a point of depar-
of repressed mysticism, decadence, avant-garde play a formative role in post-Soviet life-creation. ture for analysis. In case of the latter performance, the dark night that spectators are invited into is
specifically female, performed by female dancers. In analysing Natten, The Series, the presentation
Key Words will approach the embodied, unsayable, liminal dimension of sleep in this performance by engaging
post-Soviet performance art, life-creation, absurdity, stupidity, waste-event the operative apophatic concepts of poverty and simplicity that mark the first step of its via negativa.

Key Words
Apophaticism, Performance Analysis
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

742 743
 NS NS

Grit Köppen Thomas Kuchlbauer

Berlin, University of the Arts University of Cologne

Grit Köppen studied Theater Arts, Cultural Studies, and African Studies in Berlin. She was junior fellow at the Thomas Kuchlbauer is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media Culture and Theatre at the University
Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies. She completed her PhD thesis `Performing Arts in of Cologne and a scholarship holder of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne. He is writing
Ethiopia: International Cultural Relations and Postcolonial Articulations´, which was published recently. She his dissertation on Petronius in theatre and music theatre, supervised by Prof. Dr. Peter W. Marx . From 2011
is a founding member of the working groups `Decolonized Aesthetics´ at the University of the Arts in Berlin, to 2016 he majored in Theatre Studies, and studied Musicology and Art History at Ludwig-Maximilians-Uni-
and `Performativity and Mediality in an African Context´ at the Bayreuth University. Currently she is working versität Munich.
as Post-Doctorate in the research training group `Knowledge of the Arts´ at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

The ‘Widow of Ephesus’ in the Theatre and Music Theatre of the 18th
Migration in the works of the playwrights Julien Mabiala Bissila Century
Congo and Aristide Tarnagda Burkina Faso
My paper examines the unconventional reception of the ancient tale, ‘The Widow of Ephesus’, in
In contemporary African dramas, migration is reflected as a result of harsh political and economic the European theatre and music theatre of the 18th century. The tale is part of the Latin novel Saty-
constraints. On the content level, enforced mobility is outlined as an ambivalent experience between rica, which was probably written by the courtier Petronius in the 1st century AD during the reign of
alienation and empowerment. On the aesthetic level, the experience of migration is conceived as a Emperor Nero (54-68 AD) and which recounts the adventures and frivolities of the young Encolpius.
constant shift of spatial and temporal dimensions, and as splitting and duplication of figures. These The inserted tale about a widow from Ephesus, widely renowned for her virtue and chastity, has
hypotheses are to be outlined on the analysis of two pieces. One piece by the Congolese dramatist numerous Christian motifs, such as grieving women in a tomb or crucified criminals. Nevertheless, it
Julien Bissila is about two brothers who worked successfully as actors before the outbreak of civil also includes corpse robbery and extramarital sexuality. The theatrical reception of the tale, there-
war, but who had to flee. Finally, they return home after years of absence and cannot recognize fore, seems to be a desecration or blasphemy (Bakhtin 1975) and furthermore, a parody or counter
Brazzaville again. They reflect on their ambivalent position as contemporary African artists within model to the Easter trope ‘Quem quaeritis’ or ‘Visitatio sepulchri’, a central impetus to medieval and
the European theatre festival scene and on alienation after returning home. Aristide Tarnagda, a early modern European theatre (Enders 2017). In my presentation, I explore this discrepancy in the
playwright from Burkina Faso, portrays in one of his plays a man who secretly and abruptly left his theatre and music theatre of the 18th-century, referring to the fairground theatre in Paris( Fuzelier
pregnant girlfriend to secure their economic existence. After migrating, he has to make the bitter 1714), Haymarket Theatre in London (Dibdin 1769) and German Lustspiel (Lessing 1750/60s). In
experience of a long-lasting stasis. He tries to overcome this state by means of a criminal act in order order to grasp the multifaceted changes in the process of reception and to differentiate between
to be able to move back. Bissilas drama highlights the political constraints, while Tarnagdas work the historical performance and the transmitted text, I refer to William B. Worthen’s approach to
points to the massive economic constraints that lead to migration. In both cases, the displacement is think of theatre and drama as a complex interplay. How does the agency of Petronius’ ancient novel
constructed as a mode of survival, alienation, self-assertion, and empowerment alike. The splitting affect the various adaptations and their performance? What does a reception of antiquity look like
of the figures refers to a fragile state of the subjects. – one that encompasses folk theatre, theatrical experiments, Christianity, carnivalesque and come-
dy? How does one analyse a reception of antiquity beyond canonical theatre forms and prevailing
Key Words images of antiquity?
shift of spatial and temporal dimensions splitting and duplication of figures
Key Words
adaptation, reception of antiquity, Petronius, theatre history
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

744 745
 NS NS

Karolina Kucia Mukesh Kulriya

Theatre Academy/UNIARTS Helsinki Royal Holloway University of London

Karolina Kucia b.1978 is a doctoral candidate in artistic research in Theatre Academy of the University of the Mukesh Kulariya is currently a PhD student at Royal Holloway University of London. My research project is
Arts Helsinki, where she has also done her MA in Performance Studies in 2014. She is a visual artist, perfor- “Bhakti [devotional Hinduism] in women’s folk songs of Rajasthan”, a western state in India. I completed my
mance artist and her background in artistic practice is in intermedia and sculpture MA, 2004, Poznan Art Masters and M.Phil from School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. My M.Phil disser-
Academy. She combines theoretical and practical work with objects, group processes and performances in tation was on the fourteenth century lower caste Muslim mystic figure, Ramdev and a cult around him. Since
both site-specific and staged context. Her main interests are lapse, error and stutter as well a parasitism and 2010, I have been working in western Rajasthan on craft, culture, folk music and oral traditions. Consequently
monstrosity in context of precarization of labor in neoliberal capitalism and in current form of art institutions. I have archived a large range of oral traditions and grass root musical forms and local music festivals such as
She has presented her works in Feminist Training Camp NO PLAY in nGbK, Berlin, SESC Pinheiros in São Paulo, “Rajsthan Kabir Yatra” and “Ajab Shahar”.
and in Mad House Helsinki and her papers in frame of 7th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms, In-
stitute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw in 2015 and VI Conference on New
Materialisms, The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia.
Efficacy of a Mela– A Study of Pilgrimage in Western India
The saint tradition in the medieval period was an important phenomenon across South Asia and
Monstrous Agencies intricately connected to lower caste labour and migrant populations. Focussing on such a mystic,
(Ramdev) in fourteenth century Rajasthan (Western India), I would try to trace through an eth-
The monstrosity is improper, without property, inappropriate but perhaps inappropriate/d (Trinh nograpic study, how the performances around the cult of the saints, symbolizing a lower caste and
Minh-Ha). It lives in the space between not yet and too much already. Monstrous Agencies is a class congregation, asserting historically through its performances a strong anti-caste assertion,
proposal of an analytic and organisational tool for re-articulation of cooperation and authorship, syncretic traditions and egaliatarin spirit is being increasingly appropriated by right wing groups
in particular context of procedures and institutions of artistic production. It analyses the existing and Hindu fundamentalism, subverting the anti-caste discourses, through intervening in the per-
structure in relation to politics of personhood and its adjustment to the precarisation of labour. formance manifestations. As Rajasthan is a cattle-based economy, temporary migration has been a
The paper problematises the question of singular authorship and ownership, proposing instead a part of communities life style, whether for economic or social reasons. Inherent in the festival are
mutation and distortions within a frame of an extended monstrous conjunction between bodies, long pilgrimmage which brings people from different part of the state to the congregation.There are
matters, tools, as well as procedures determining how knowledges produce common and owned. subtle transitions in the songs, symbols and didactic rhetoric by the present cult followings, which
How bodies, matters, tools, and knowledges mutate between the states of common and owned as point towards a right wing conservatism and I would focus on the annual fair held in the recent times
improper, inappropriate, proper and property. Collaboration in that context is regarded as a process (2015-17) to tease out these aberrations and distortions. I would like to emphasize how often the
of co-mutation rather than a process of adaptation. Monstrosity Haraway, Cohen, Davies dwells in perfomance aspects like songs and other micro performances still defy the growing fundamentalist
the double realm of partial and combined bodies science fiction or speculative future. This perfor- ideology to bring forth its basic syncretic character.
matively written paper unfolds the examples of organisational models of co-production alongside
the stories of monsters. Vagina Dentata as one of them is a model for an ambiguous organisation Key Words
of the event Vachhani. The example follows a figure of feminine monstrous and animalistic organ Pilgrimage, Performance, Religion, Right-wing, Caste
companion as a complex and contested conjunction of fantasies of power, fear, fluidity and uncon-
trollable. Monstrous can still live, animate and mutate pre-given representation, and remain unable
to represent itself. “Who are ‘we’? … It is a remonstrative question” Haraway, in which monstrare
stands for pointing, revealing, but also objecting. It is a performance, a display of already a displace-
ment, a re-cast of already a deformity. Being a form of a riddle, Monstrous Agencies gives agency to
monstrosity and monstrosity to agency, “a cure from malade of ignorance” Kritzman.

Key Words
Monster, Mutation, Displacement, Precarity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

746 747
 NS NS

Jochen Lamb Nageshwar Rao Lavuri

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Potti Sri Ramulu Telugu University

Jochen Lamb studied theatre science and philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Universität NageshwarRao is a Ph D scholar at Department theatre Arts, Potti Sri Ramulu Telugu University, Hyderabad.
Leipzig and obtained his degree as a Master of Arts in January 2018. In his master thesis he researched struc- He has finished his M phil on Chenchunatakamokaparisheelan and now he is doing his doctoral research on
tures of violence within mass surveillance and performative strategies of representing and transforming those Bahubhashanatakaprayokthaacharyapradeepkumar.
structures in contemporary performances.  Besides his studies he is organising and curating the socio-political
and cultural festival Open Ohr in Mainz since 2012. Furthermore he worked as Head of Organisation for the
international theatre festival Offene Welt in Ludwigshafen 2015.
Fall and fabrication of Chenchu theatre in effect of migration in
Telugu region
Violent mass surveillance in performance art
The paper anchors itself into the community practice of the Chenchu tribe, settled around the Nal-
lamal forest and hill areas of Southern India and regarded as a forest dwellers. Their migratory and
In contrast to other types of surveillance like public CCTV, espionage or self-expression in social me-
nomadic lifestyle is best expressed through their performances around the myths of “SriSailammal-
dia, digital mass surveillance possesses different properties which makes it hard to analyze it with
likarjunaswamy’s’ which plays on the origin story of their ‘tribal identity’ and reinforcing in the pro-
existing theories of surveillance like Michel Foucaults Panopticism without neglecting its medial and
cess the category designated to them by the colonial and post-colonial administration as a ‘scheduled
structural characteristics.  Two aspects are vital to describe the structure of this specific form of sur-
tribe’. Hence the ChenchuNatakam, as the performance is called, depicts their hunting-gathering
veillance: although it is imperceptible for the observed subject it unleashes violences against her/
lifestyle and their religious rituals. The objective of the paper is to trace how what used to be a
him. This violence is - at least during the process of surveillance - no longer targeted at the physical
performative ritual has increasingly become a genre of traditional performance and performed as a
subject but on its digital equivalent.  While it is impossible to perceive the difference between phys-
commercial enterprise and for livelihood of a large section of the community. Despite its commercial
ical and digital aspects by using body-centered theories of surveillance, different kinds of perfor-
circuit it is also seen as a dying form loosing audiences and spaces of performance systematically.
mances about digital mass surveillance have been staged during the last years. Many of them try to
The paper tries to look critically into these contradictory narratives and also understand how these
visualize the gap between digital and physical aspects and offer an experience of surveillance for the
forms play on identity issues by revealing lives and cultures of indigenous people but also creating
spectator.   In performances like Supernerds Schauspiel Köln, 2015 the spectator is both a potential
through its professionalization a different set of vocabulary and performative idioms. Exclusively
victim of invisible surveillance in his daily life but he also experiences observable demonstrations
based on kinship, migration from the tribal congregation has often created a crisis. My critical read-
of surveillance. The situation of the spectator must be analyzed in this context.  How can theories
ings relate to theories on identity politics and also micro community cultures referencing work such
of performative structures and network theory as description of digital structures be combined to
as Indian folk theatre by Julia Hollander and the folk theatre of north Karnataka by Basavaraj Naiker.
analyze the impact of surveillance on the citizen as well as the relation between performer and
spectator - both of them are as well under surveillance as they are surveillants themselves during
Key Words
the performance.
performance, migration, globalization, myth, aboriginal, fabrication
Key Words
surveillance, performance art, violence
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

748 749
 NS NS

Nika Leskovšek Ana Letunić

Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana Academy of Dramatic Art, Zagreb

Nika Leskovšek graduated from Dramaturgy, Philosophy and Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at Ana Letunić is a contemporary performing arts producer, curator and cultural policy researcher based in Za-
University in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is employed as a young researcher at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, greb, Croatia. She obtained with honours her Master in International Performance Research at University of
Film and Television AGRFT in Ljubljana, where she has also been enrolled in PhD Programme Performing Arts Warwick, UK and University of Arts, Belgrade. She worked as a producer and a programmer within projects
Studies since the academic year of 2016/17. She is active as a teoretician and practical dramaturge in the field such as Ganz New Festival Zagreb, European Capital of Culture Dubrovnik, World Theatre Festival Zagreb,
of theatre and contemporary performing arts, writes theatre reviews for daily Dnevnik and is being published BITEF Belgrade, International Choreographic Centre Amsterdam, Warwick Arts Center Birmingham and with
in several Slovenian journals Sodobnost, Maska, Dialogi and Literatura. artists such as Ivana Muller, Tea Tupajić, Sonja Pregrad and Nina Gojić. She is one of the authors and curators of
Unlisted, a series of site-specific performances that was realised in Belgrade, Serbia in 2012 and in Pittsburgh
and New York USA. She has published essays on performing arts curating and cultural politics locally and inter-
nationally, as one of her main research interests is the impact of cultural policies on programming strategies in
Performative Strategies for Spectators’ Management Before and contemporary performing arts. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the University of Arts in Belgrade, and has
After Slovenian Independence: Introductory Rituals been awarded a DAAD (“German Academic Exchange Service”) research grant; she is also an audience devel-
opment director in the European platform Advancing Performing Arts Project (APAP) and an Associate Lecturer
The paper focuses on the specifics of performative strategies for spectators’ management in a dis- at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb.
tinct socio-political period and context. It analyses and compares shifts in performance policies of
performative strategies before and after Slovenian independence highlighting differences in their
cultural and social meaning. It maps the transition of the Republic of Slovenia from socialism of the Migrating histories: Yugonostalgia and post-memory
Yugoslav state to neoliberal democracy and expansion of the capitalist market after its indepen-
dence in 1991 and its accession to the European Union in 2004. The performative strategies in focus The starting point of my research was the interest in the phenomenon of nostalgia for Yugoslavia
will be the ‘introductory rituals’ as Simon Kardum calls them, by which he refers to what Eda Čufer among younger generations that do not have a lived experience of the former country but still ap-
defines as ‘the rituals of introducing the spectators into the performance’ that happen outside time- propriate its supranational identity. While most authors dismiss nostalgia as ‘false’ and ‘irrelevant’,
space continuum of the actual performance event, e. g. press conferences and ad hoc happenings my argument is that the migrating history contained in Yugonostalgia can have an emancipatory
for promoting the performances … The paper will attempt to demonstrate the changing role and potential since, during the 1990s, the former Yugoslav countries underwent the ‘terror of forgetting’
meaning as well as politicality of the introductory rituals or accompanying events, their growing in order for new nationalisms to arise, and most of the socialist memory was ‘confiscated’. In the
theatralisation and emphasise their autonomisation from the performance or the main event it- first part of the paper, I provide the reader with the historical context surrounding Yugoslavia, the
self to the extend of overshadowing it. This will be done by analysing and comparing the media formation of the pan-Yugoslav identity and its decay. Another argument I present is that the project
announcements and press release before the premiere with the post performance responses and of Yugoslavia in itself was a nostalgic idea since it contained desires of a viable supranational unity.
reviews. Correspondingly, the demonstration will focus itself on the two theatre directors, that were Further on, I analyze the concepts surrounding nostalgia and post-memory, mostly relying on work
perhaps the most scandalised in the media from different socio-political periods: retrogarde theatre by Svetlana Boym and Marriane Hirsch. On the trace of Baudrillard’s thought, it proposes that the
of Dragan Živadinov (from his beginnings inside NSK movement in 1983) and the political theatre of sense of loss - while perhaps misconstruing what was lost - is nevertheless real enough to shape and
Oliver Frljić (after 2010). complicate contemporary understandings of national identity. After reflecting on the rise of regional
artworks based on post-memory, I examine particularities in the narrative transition from macro to
Key Words micro histories and the questioning of the East/West binary.
Performative Strategies, Spectators Management, Politicality, Slovenian Performing Arts
Key Words
national identity, migrating histories, yugonostalgia, post-memory
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

750 751
 NS NS

Dixon Li Wenjie Li
University of Pennsylvania Graduate Student PhD candidate in Drama, Theatre and Performance, University of Sussex

Dixon Li received a BA in English at Princeton University with certificates in African-American and American Wenjie Li is a London/Beijing based live art practitioner-researcher and playwright. Her work deals
Studies. After graduating, he moved to London on a Marshall Scholarship and began training as a dancer and with the politics of intimacy, gut feelings and the matter of fluidity. Burong has exhibited and per-
performance maker. While pursuing an MA in Writing in the Modern Age at Queen Mary, University of London formed in the Pratt Gallery (Manhattan), KCAA gallery (Beijing), the G12 Hub (Belgrade), PSA (Shang-
and an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths University, he participated in international dance festivals in hai), and various performing arts venues. Her co-authored book The Happening of the Contempo-
Florence, Normandy, and Venice and worked with choreographers Masaki Iwana, Claudia Castellucci, and Elisa
rary Performance Art and a series of interviews with the UK based artists and curators have been
Zuppini. He is now a first-year doctoral student at the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
published in China. She also writes children’s books.

Minoritarian Identity and Interpretive Conventions of

Crossing the bodily boundary: The concept of the nomadic and
Performative Form
the posthuman aesthetics in Live Art
In my paper, I reflect on the limitations that fetishizing traumatic affect—the tendency to focus on
‘Posthuman’ is a buzzword used in various fields, including science fiction, human enhancement
racial identity as a form of subjugated or injurious difference that is the result of racism—has had
technology and cyborg studies, but it is used in various ways. In my paper, the notion of Posthuman
for theorizing racial subjectivity and bringing embodied racial difference into performative aesthet-
will refer particularly to those individuals who have restrictively designated ‘Other-to-Human’ in
ic forms like dance, dance theatre, and performance art. Focusing on methodologies of false au-
contemporary modern society. Acknowledging that many people are politically dehumanized and
thenticity and false confession in a evening-length dance theatre piece I co-created in 2016, my
reckoned as not-human-enough is the first step to rethinking our definition of ‘human’. By looking at
presentation combines critical analysis of ethnic cultural scripts with autobiographical writing, and
how the posthuman body is represented in live art practices, this paper will investigate the question
documentation of my performance-making process. Originally made and performed for a primarily
of why artistsdehumanize/posthumanize their bodies.What is the potential embedded in the post-
non-Asian and internationally diverse London audience, this performance explored the insufficiency
human body to politically engage with controversial public debates and cultural representations?
of traditional performative and cultural scripts of Asian ethnicity, the ethnographic gaze, the coming
How might performance that blurs the bodily boundary generate new ways of conceptualising spec-
out narrative, the wuxia/kung-fu fight scene, the lotus blossom, and cheap commodities.Yet despite
tatorship?To answer these questions, I will introduce three performance pieces by two artists that
the plethora of very obvious cultural scripts and stereotypes, it was a fictional “coming out” scene
highlight enforced nomadic lifestyles of working artists and refugees. The first two are the UK-based
that repeatedly drew the most commentary, sympathetic responses, and assumptions of authen-
artist Richard Dedomenici’s Unattended Baggage and Street Cabinet in which, by using low tech, he
ticity from audience members. Using a critical race studies framework that focuses on racial affect
transforms himself into a moving object, a hybrid of man and thing (baggage or cabinet). His per-
and its effects on aesthetic and social forms (Fanon, Cheng, Moten, Eng) I want to ask, how have the
formance addresses the impact of terrorist attacks and gentrification on artists’ living conditions in
genres of the testimonial and the confessional over determined what we understand to constitute
London. The third piece is by Serbian artist Zoran Todorović. In Illegal People, he collects one large
“authentic” racial experience? What sorts of affects do we expect from the category of race? How
bottle of urine from a refugee camp in Belgrade and makes it into drinkable handcrafted beer for
do ironic or subversive affective performances reveal larger racial limitations in both western theat-
the public. I will explore these works within the framework of Rosi Braidottis’ nomadic theory, a key
rical forms and performances of everyday intersubjective recognition?
figuration for posthuman feminism in contemporary critical discourse that extends beyond feminism
and straddles many disciplines.
Key Words
Aesthetic Form, Race, Performance, Affect, Trauma
Key Words
Bodily boundary, nomadic subjects, posthumanism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

752 753
 NS NS

Ariadni Lignou Tsamantani Eva-Liisa Linder

Freie Universität Berlin Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre

Ariadni Lignou Tsamantani is a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research Eva-Liisa Linder is a theatre researcher and lecturer at the Drama School at the Estonian Academy of Music
is supported by the state of Berlin’s Elsa-Neumann-Scholarship. Ariadni holds an MA in International Perfor- and Theatre. She holds an MA in theatre studies from the University of Tartu and is a PhD student at Tallinn
mance Research from the University of Amsterdam and the University of Warwick, an MA in Modern Greek University School of Humanities, conducting research on the national stage in contemporary Estonia, in a com-
Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin and a BA in Theatre Studies from the National and Kapodistrian Uni- parative study of Estonian and European political theatre practices. As a freelance editor and critic, she has
versity of Athens. edited collections on theatre history and pedagogy and published several articles.

Between proximity and distance, pasts and presents: Golfo at the

ancient theatre of Epidaurus (2013) Globalisation vs nationalism: discussing national identity in
contemporary Estonian theatre
The present paper is a specific aspect of my ongoing Ph.D. research on the question of national
identity in contemporary Greek theatre. In my research, I explore the ways in which theatre onstage Estonia is an example of a tiny post-totalitarian nation-state on the border between East and West. It
but also at an institutional level may question singular conceptions of nation, whilst also redefining has searched for its identity through conflicting historical experiences affecting Eastern Europe and
national identities, especially in periods of crisis. Here I will focus only on the 2013 National Theatre Nordic countries: socialism and capitalism, local and global village, mythical past and modernizing
of Greece production of “Golfo” 1893, directed by Nikos Karathanos. In summer 2013, “Golfo” was future. During the last decade, Estonian theatre has contributed vigorously to the social discussion
presented at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, becoming hence the first Greek but non-ancient dra- on national identity which has revived at the age of migration. Recently, two prevailing concepts of
ma to be performed there. Taking into account the institutional context of the Epidaurus Festival Estonian national identity have emerged: 1 ‘e-Estonia’ as an advanced digital society, which provides
along with the “national” connotations that this pastoral drama gained during its long stage history, innovative service of e-Residency for a digital nation of global citizens – thus following the idea of
I will argue that the National Theatre’s performance was characterized by “reflective nostalgia” in imagined communities by Benedict Anderson 2 ‘Organic Estonia’ which is proud of its national his-
Svetlana Boym’s terms (2001). The performance although it moved the audience emotionally, did tory, traditional culture and intact nature, considering forests and bogs as its symbols – thus corre-
not attempt to restore an ideal image of a lost national past. Instead, while being nostalgic, Karath- sponding to the theories of geographic, ethnic and cultural nationalism as described by Hans Kohn
anos’ production invited a critical but not only rational reflection on the complex relationship be- and Anthony D. Smith. A number of recent productions discuss globalisation versus national identity,
tween past and present and on the very process of recollection. using strategies of documentary, devised and applied theatre. I shall examine the contribution of
scenic analyses to the ongoing debate on migration, using theories of nationalism and critical theory
Key Words of the Frankfurt School.
National identity, reflective nostalgia, Epidaurus Festival, Golfo
Key Words
globalisation, nationalism, national identity, documentary theatre, applied theatre
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

754 755
 NS NS

Chun Liu Lars Harald Maagerø

Southeast University, P.R.China PhD Student, Drama by Research, University of Kent

I am a PhD Candidate in Art Theory and Chinese Drama Costume Arts Studies, at the School of Arts, Southeast I am a Norwegian PhD-student at the University of Kent UK. I have a BA-degree in theatre studies from the
University, Nanjing, P.R.China. Over the past three years I have been committed to the study of Chinese drama University of Bergen Norway and McGill University Canada, an MA-degree in Shakespeare from King’s Col-
costumes, and the inheritance and transformation of costume design in Chinese contemporary drama. At the lege London and an MA-degree in directing from LAMDA London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. My
same time, I am paying close attention to the use of drama costume design elements in contemporary film and PhD-thesis is on canonical dramatic texts by for example Shakespeare, Ibsen and Brecht in contemporary di-
television works. From September 2017, I was financed by the China Scholarship Council CSC, and am currently rectors’ theatre. I also work as a director. In 2018 I will direct Twelfth Night Shakespeare in Tønsberg Norway
studying at the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Miami, USA, as a visiting doctoral research student. and La Traviata Verdi in Oslo Norway.

The Chinese Traditional Opera in Singapore –the role of Exploring Concepts of Nationality through a National Canonical
Intercultural Communication in the transformation of Play
immigrant culture
In the contemporary postdramatic theatrical landscape the traditional concepts of drama, such as
Intercultural communication is not just a physical displacement of national tradition in geospatial plot, character and mimesis, have largely been abandoned. Nevertheless, plays by canonical play-
space, but a creative practice that motivates the subjective reallocation and remodeling of symbolic wrights, including Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov, who all wrote within the dramatic paradigm,
resources. Taking as a starting point Peter Sellars’ argument that migration theatre gives rise to the continue to be extensively performed throughout the world. The European tradition of directors’
creation or reaffirmation of a community or communities, I shall be using the the work of Xianlin theatre, where directors create their own vision of pre-written plays, has shown a particular interest
Song, and Wetmore et al., to discuss the quality and importance of culture brought by immigrants in such texts. In my research, I study what directors find in canonical plays that resonate in con-
within the cultural context of the receiving country that they must adapt themselves to, as well as temporary theatre, and the strategies they use to utilise it. In his 2014 production of Ibsen’s Peer
the way the original culture was adapted to reach out to indigenous audiences. As the communica- Gynt at the National Theatre in Oslo, director Alexander Mørk-Eidem cast Ugandan-Norwegian artist
tor, the active subject will also re-recognize him/herself in cross-cultural practice and reconstruct the Amina Sewali as Solveig. This was not a case of colour-blind casting. Rather, Mørk-Eidem highlighted
emotional identity between himself and the source culture, forming thereby a new cultural identity. Sewali’s ethnic minority background throughout the production. Thus, he made a clear break with
In this process, due to the change of social and political contexts, the culture brought by immigrants the traditional view of the Solveig-figure, and this became a strategy for asking politically relevant
from their home countries will experience spontaneous selection and reengineering especially in a questions in a society that at the time tried to find its role in the European ‘migrant crisis’. In my
pluralistic society. In the act of performing opera in a new cultural context, there is much more than presentation, I will discuss how Mørk-Eidem, in this way, used perhaps the most Norwegian of all
the text that needs translation; the political and cultural structures also need to transform in order to plays, Peer Gynt, to enter into a contemporary debate about refugees and immigration in Norwegian
be understood within the new context. Therefore, in cross-border and cross-cultural areas, opera as society. Through this, I also hope to show that using canonical plays like Peer Gynt in such ways can
a cultural symbol inevitably faces the problem of translation in the process of communication. What be a particularly powerful political tool for directors, exactly because of the plays’ canonical status
is reflected behind the cultural translation and reference is the mutual game between the main and the expectations audiences have towards them.
bodies of communication, the complex scene of the new cultural situation. This essay uses Chinese
traditional opera in Singapore as an example. By tracing the changes that Chinese opera underwent Key Words
during a 180-year period, I will discuss the stages of transition from the time that immigrants the Directors Theatre, Canonical Plays, Norwegian Theatre, Ibsen, Peer Gynt
separated from their home culture and revitalized opera into a novel form of communication distinct
to Singapore, thereby showing how the continuous exchange of culture and emotion between immi-
grants and their home countries can transform a form into a distinctive practice.
.
Key Words
Chinese Immigrants in Singapore Chinese Opera Intercultural Communication
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

756 757
 NS NS

Saumya Mani Tripathi Ashley Marinaccio

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India CUNY Graduate Center Theatre Department

Saumya Mani Tripathi is a research scholar at School of Arts and Aesthetics,JNU. She is an ardent theatre prac- Ashley Marinaccio is a theatre artist and scholar who creates work to challenge the status quo. She is dedi-
titioner and currently teaches Theatre Arts at Maharshi Valmiki College of Education, Delhi University.She is cated to documenting the socio-political issues that define our times. As a director and playwright, her work
deeply invested in the interdisciplinary study of all art forms and is an amateur painter. She has been working has been seen off-Broadway, at the White House, United Nations, TED conferences across the United States,
on her documentary film on Farmer suicides for past 3 years . Her research area focuses on polictics and per- Europe and Asia. Currently, Ash is working on her Ph.D. in the Department of Theatre and Performance at the
formance and the role of new media in contemporary art. She is an active cultural activist and loves to travel CUNY Graduate Center, where she is focusing on theatre and war. Ash is the co-founder and founding Artistic
and document various cultural practises in India and abroad. Director of the theatre company and United Nations NGO Girl Be Heard, where she received numerous acco-
lades, including LPTW’s Lucille Lortel Women’s Visionary Award. She is a co-founder/director of Co-Op Theatre
East, member of the Civilians Field Research Team, and creator of the B.F.A. in a new web series. Proud mem-
ber of AEA and SAG/AFTRA.
Nostalgia, Memory and Performance in Delhi’s Urban Slum of
Kathputli Colony
Victim or Victor: The Production of Identity in New York City Social
In a country like India with multiple nationalities and diverse linguistic and ethnic diversity, a huge
Justice Youth Theatre
population undertakes internal migration in order to survive. This essay looks at the formation and
performance of memory and identity of artist community of Kathputli Colony: a home to world’s
This paper seeks to understand how the identity of victim, and victimhood are produced, and repli-
largest nomadic community of performers (including jugglers, musicians, dancers, puppeteers, ac-
cated in contemporary youth social justice theatre and how those terms inform personal identities
robats, snake charmers, magicians etc) as continuous marginalisation of the artist community in the
and the wellbeing of participants. I will be examining New York City-based youth defined by the
postcolonial urban Delhi.By looking at memory as a performative act, this paper attempts to explore
United Nations as persons between the ages of 15-25 years of age touring and performing theatre of
the formation of aesthetic communities, nostalgia and remembrance as performing history in the
the real that centers itself around the personal testimonies and narratives of participants’ stories of
present. It looks at memory as an act of formation of identity that asserts and performs the notion
violence, including domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, self-harm, gang and gun violence. In this
of the self for the migrating communities .It looks at the multiple social, political, economic and
paper, I am defining “theatre of the real” as a collectively devised form of live performance that re-
cultural wounds inflected on this migrating community and how performance acts as an articulation
lies on performers’ often a mix of “actors” and “non-actors” “real life” testimonies to create the nar-
and representation of these memories. Theatre and Performance engages in facilitation of such
rative of the piece. Through interviews with participants in New York City-based theatre programs, I
repressed memory by active engagement with physicality. The urban slum thus becomes a locus for
seek to understand the effects of writing and reciting stories of trauma on youth participants in front
the Formation of community on the basis of shared aesthetic sensibilities. Performance acts as a
of the public and finally, the impact these stories have on audiences. This project will call into focus
repository of cultural memory and landscapes. The primary source for this research is based on my 2
the migration of identities, performers bodies and audience as these performances are toured to
years of extensive field work with this community. The imagination of these communities as street/
youth audiences throughout the five boroughs of Manhattan. Since the scope of this project is large,
folk artists brings an added burden of selective patronage they get to ensure their survival. The
this presentation will focus specifically on the impact that this theatrical work has had on youth and
question of performance is thus a complicated one in this arena as most of these performers are not
the ways in which their identities are shaped by touring the work.
limited to one art practice as a signatory specialisation. The puppeteers are also musicians and toy
makers, and all of them have multiple artistic jobs as a means for earning livelihood .So, it becomes
Key Words
difficult for me to study any one performance in isolation. However, for the scope of this paper and
youth, gender, identity, theatre, political theatre, theatre of the real, ensemble devised theatre,
keeping in mind the time span that I am allotted, I will solely concentrate on the elements of theatre
touring, New York, United States
which would include puppetry and music performed by the artist community from Rajasthan. These
concrete examples will be analysed through the framework of memory, Identity and Performance.
The focus of this paper will majorly be based on exploring the question of memory and nostalgia and
shall use migration only as one of the sub-categories to explain the changing dynamics and represen-
tation of memory in these theatrical/performance elements.

Key Words
Migration, Performance, Memory, Folk, India, Delhi, Theatre, Street Art, Displacement,Cultural
Citizenshi
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

758 759
 NS NS

Monika Meilutyte Marija Milovanović

Vilnius University Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts Belgrade

Monika Meilutytė is the third year PhD student at the Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University. Theatre Born in Aranđelovac, Serbia in 1988. Graduated from the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary
audience, interactivity and media audience are her main fields of interests. Monika is also a new born lecturer Theory at Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, obtained her Master of Arts degree at Department of Management
at the Vilnius University. She teaches seminars of Contemporary Theatre, Media Theory and Communication and Production in Theatre, Radio and Culture at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Currently a PhD stu-
Texts’ Genres. Moreover, Monika have been the editor of theatre column of the art and culture monthly dent at the Department for Theory of Dramatic Arts, Media and Culture at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.
magazine Kultūros barai for five years. Since 2010, Monika took part in theatre conferences, workshops and Was and is a scholarship holder of European Forum Alpbach and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Participated in
exchange programs in Great Britain, Sweden, Ireland, Czech Republic, and other countries. Monika also is the several conferences and published several papers, essays, theatre critiques and translations. Her first book
fan of nature, lindyhop dances and French language. Political theatre and forms of reception is currently in press. Member of the Aesthetical Society of Serbia, lives
and works in Belgrade, Serbia.

Interactivity in theatre: what do spectators truly experience?

The Other and deconstruction of Balkanism in Basara`s play “The
In the past few years, theatre scholars conducting empirical audience research usually did not pay Government Inspector for Southeast”
special attention to performances providing interactive experiences. Other studies which focus on
interactivity often describe it as special experience, but such perspectives mostly are based on per- This paper deals with the play The Government Inspector for Southeast written by one of the most
formance analysis, not empirical audience research. Therefore, it is still unknown what does it mean prominent Serbian contemporary writers, Svetislav Basara, and staged at the National Theatre in
for theatre spectators to have an interactive experience during a performance. Thus, the aim of this Šabac, Serbia. Written as a direct reference to the classical piece by Gogol: The Goverment Inspector,
paper is to explore and conceptualise experience of interactivity in terms of theatre audience. In the play follows its structure with one crucial change – the control mechanisms are not internal but
this paper, interactivity is approached following the ideas of American media and communication external: this time, the Inspector comes from the European Union. Using the framework of Cultural
scholar James Gleason who studied the impact of interactivity on learning outcomes. He suggests and Performance Studies, this paper tries to investigate whether the writer`s and director`s inter-
that interactivity is not a feature of media, but the outcome of communication process. Following ventions question or reaffirm the discourse of Balkanism as formulated by Maria Todorova, as well
this approach, it is considered that theatre creators can propose only the potential for interactivity, as the ways the Kosovo issue emerges as a central corruption signifier in both the written and staged
but theatre spectators are the ones who decide whether to use this potential and create interactivity play whose plot is situated in a small town in Serbia, a country that is negotiating entry to the largest
during a performance or not. Thus, interactivity appears to be a subjective category and dependent political alliance of the European continent today.
on each individual. The paper also presents the first results of empirical theatre audience research
conducted in Lithuania. The performance “X tavyje” (“X in you”) created by theatre group Bad Rab- Key Words
bits has been chosen as an example. During the show, spectators are invited to analyze themselves The Other, Postcolonialism, Balkanism, Gogol, Basara, The Government Inspector
performing a psychological test in different ways: answer written questions, perform physical tasks,
interact with each other, etc.

Key Words
theatre audience, interactivity
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

760 761
 NS NS

Pushpita Mitra Alessandra Montagner

M.Phil Research Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New-Delhi, India State University of Campinas

Pushpita is currently pursuing her M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Alessandra Montagner is a doctoral candidate at the State University of Campinas (BR), performer, and direc-
Aesthetics in JNU. Her area of research lies in Music History, Popular Music-Studies, and Cultural Studies. She tor. She holds an M.A. in Dance Theatre: The Body in Performance (2012), from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of
has been recieving her training in Hindustani Classical Music for the past twelve years. She was also part of the Music and Dance / City University of London, and a B.A. in Performing Arts - Acting (2004) and Directing (2006)
documentation and research team of the Music Mapping Project’17 that ran in joint collaboration with the - from the Federal University of Santa Maria (BR). Her doctoral research consists in a practice-led investigation
performing artist Shubha Mudgal and Serendipity Arts Trust. on spectatorship and shock in contemporary performance.

Nazrul-Sangeet : Listening to musical-migration and the politics Touch and spectatorship: On What Escapes the Body to Return as
of reception Threat
This paper intends to study the 1950’s Language Rights Movement in context of East Pakistan, asser- Spectatorship is often defined by the faculty of sight, where vision tends to be overvalued in re-
tion of identity through language and particularly the deployment musical repertoire of the songs of lation to the other senses. However, if we approach spectatorship through the intertwinement of
Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976). The poet-composer’s anti-British compositions of 1920’s re-emerged perception, how can touch be conceptualised? This presentation reflects on the matter of touch
with new interpretations at this juncture when East-Pakistan/East-Bengal struggled for their sepa- perceived as a phenomenon that also characterises spectatorship, even when no physical contact
rate linguistic cultural identity. In this context I would trace the history through a critical perspective has taken place between the bodies of the event. To do so, it operates a reflective analysis of a per-
the post formation of Bangladesh and the iconocization of Nazrul and selection and choice of the sonal spectatorial experience of the piece On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God, by
songs, which constituted the Perso-Arabic Bengali lyrical style and Khayal repertoire, and the process Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, where the strong sensory appeal of fabricated faeces on stage repelled to
of naming him the national poet of the new state of Bangladesh. His works subsequently became the point of being felt on the skin. The air became explicitly heavy and dense, unbearable to breathe
representative of the new Bengali-Muslim identity which stood different not only from the Punjabi- because of the weight it acquired from the abject odour emanating from the stage, resulting in the
zed cultures of West-Pakistan but also from the Hinduized cultures of West-Bengal. Amidst these densification of the general atmosphere of the event that seemed to embrace the skin. Thus, the
complex political episodes of appropriation, community and identity formation my paper will try to combination of visual and olfactory disturbances engendered the perception of being exposed to
perceive modification, transformation and re-interpretation of a musical repertoire and writing of its the risk of contagion posed by contact with faecal matter. However, how can such contagion be
histories. It is important in this context to read it as re-presentation and “reterritorialization” which I perceived through the affective exchanges within the event? Does the spectator touch the event
connect to cultural migrations. Thus, Nazrul and his songs will exhibit how reception of music is de- by being there, immersed in it? What are the risks that the abject poses to the spectator? Finally,
termined by other socio-political factors standing outside his music and also involves a heavy stake what are the dimensions of touch in performance spectatorship? The theory of Julia Kristeva and the
in the production of its musical aesthetics, listening and singing practices. phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty are implemented as tools to help untangle the possible
interrelationships between touch, the abject, and spectatorship in the witnessing of performance.
Key Words
musical-migration,reterritorialization, reception, re-interpretation Key Words
touch, contagion, spectatorship
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

762 763
 NS NS

Karen Morash Manjari Mukherjee

Rose Bruford Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Education: 2017, Completed a PhD practice-as-research at Goldsmiths University of London, Department of Harvard University, Cambridge Mellon School of Theatre and Performance Studies June 5th to 16th, 2017Jawa-
Theatre and Performance awaiting graduation 2007, MA Distinction Text and Performance at RADA/King’s Col- harlal Nehru University, New Delhi PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies2016-present MPhil in
lege London Academic Posts Present Tutor, Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance 2015-17 As- Theatre and Performance Studies 2014-2016 Dissertation Titled: The Repertoire of Precarious Lives: Legiti-
sociate Lecturer, Goldsmiths University of London Academic Publications and Papers 2017 ‘The Never-Ending mate ‟and Illegitimate‟ Theatres of the Anglo-Indian Community, 1940-50, M.A. in Arts and Aesthetics 2012-
Search for a Suitable Work Space: Becoming an Academic/Artist/Parent’, presented at the Becoming Academic 2014 Presidency College, Kolkata B.A. in English Honours 2008-2011 Conferences: Migration and
symposium at the University of Sussex 2016 ‘Bryony Lavery: Nerves of Steel and a Forgiving Heart’ in Women, Marginality – A study of the Anglo-Indian Community‟s repertoire in Calcutta between 1940-50, Stockholm,
Collective Creation, and Devised Performance, ed. by Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva and Scott Proudfit New York: Sweden. June 13 to June 17, 2016 Migration and Marginality -- Exploring Anglo-Indian performance practices
Palgrave, 2016 2016 ‘The Silent Playwright: Strategies for Holistic Performance’, presented at the Sociology of in Kolkata, India at the Annual IFTR conference in the University of Hyderabad, Telangana July 6 to July 10,
Theatre and Performance Research Group’s Silent Voices colloquium, Goldsmiths 2015 Review of Contempo- 2015Tourism culture: Dangers of Assigning Folk as the safe keeper of culture at annual ISTR conference, held
rary Women Playwrights: Into the Twenty-First Century in New Theatre Quarterly 31 1 2010 ‘The Director’s in Mumbai University, Bombay. Jan 14 – Jan 17, 201 WORKSHOPS: Invited to a workshop titled Writing theatre
Writer: Bryony Lavery’, presented at Contemporary British Theatre: Towards a New Canon international con- history in a Global Perspective held by the Department of Theatre and Media-Culture, University of Cologne,
ference, Birmingham City University Other Posts Ongoing Professional playwright, with full-length and short Germany. May 18 to May 22, 2015 Distributing the Insensible: Assessing Amar Kanwars Lightning Testimonies
plays including Playground, The 9.21 to Shrub Hill, Sprint-Marathon, Tangles, Care produced in various London at the “ Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance colloquium in association with the University
and regional fringe theatres 2010-present Dramaturg/producer, Head for Heights Theatre Company of Warwick Feb 19, 2014

The Forgotten History of Playwriting Manuals 1888-1936 Migration and Marginality—Rethinking postcolonial Indian
theatre history through micro-minority communities
This ten-minute paper presents a line of inquiry which unexpectedly arose from my practice-as-re-
search PhD investigation into the praxis and methodologies of playwrights who engage with devising. My research is an exploration of a theatre history that is lost between the migration and marginality
Whilst researching standard pedagogical practices for playwriting, I discovered a series of manuals of micro-minority communities in the port cities of Calcutta and Bombay between 1940-1960. The
in the British Library, written in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, providing advice research focuses on the precarious state of citizenship and belonging of Indian micro-minority com-
to would-be playwrights, which have been rarely or, often, not acknowledged within academic dis- munities—such as Anglo-Indians, Parsis, Jews and Armenians. The members of these communities
course, and overlooked by contemporary playwright-instructors. In a 2013 issue of Contemporary are both foreign and Indian.
Theatre Review dedicated to the pedagogy of playwriting, guest editor Steve Waters states that the In this paper, I focus on the migration and marginality of the part British, part Indian, Anglo-Indi-
literature on playwriting ‘diminished to a trickle’ between William Archer’s Play-Making: A Manual an woman entertainers—their changing citizenship, homeland, identity, race and nationality which
of Craftmanship 1912 and Steve Gooch’s Writing a Play 1988. However, Waters and others have had set unprecedented changes in the social and cultural architecture of the country. Anglo-Indian
neglected a fascinating early seam of commentary on the topic, including texts such as Playwriting: women embodied the duality by being associated as the hypersexualised actress, as well as, the
A Handbook for Would-Be Dramatic Authors by ‘A Dramatist’ 1888 Agnes Platt’s Practical Hints on defeminised breadwinner. During Independence, the Anglo-Indian woman becomes a site of con-
Playwriting 1919 and Moses Malevinsky’s unusual The Science of Playwriting 1925, which uses an al- testation--she is de-linked from nationalism in her role of a public figure exhibiting her body, and
gebraic formula for dramatic structure. Utilising these texts and others, this paper argues that these linked back and identified as the new nation’s model woman citizen who is independent and joins
early manuals should be recognised not only for their historical value, but for the advice offered to the work force.
would-be writers, which is at times more strongly rooted in the professional workings of theatre With a special focus on famous Anglo-Indian actress Merle Oberon and jazz icon Pam Crain, I at-
making than more contemporary texts. Using primary evidence which indicates that twenty-first tempt to explore the citizenship of these micro-minority communities through a repertoire-based
century student playwrights desire training that provides practical collaborative opportunities, ex- methodology that breaks away from the monolithic colonial archive that often disregards or erases
tracts from a number of these early texts will be presented both in their historical context, and with the cultural history of these minority communities. It is through their cultural practices that I at-
a discussion of their relevance for contemporary writers. tempt to chart a new course of a postcolonial Indian theatre history.

Key Words: Playwriting, Playwrights, Pedagogical Practice, Pedagogical Texts, William Archer, Steve Key Words
Waters Migration, marginality, minority, citizenship, postcolonial, repertoire, performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

764 765
 NS NS

Kaustubh Naik Julia Nawrot

School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU University of Granada Spain

Kaustubh Naik has a MA in Performance Studies from the School of Culture and Creative Expression, Ambed- Julia Nawrot is a PhD student in the Department of General Linguistics and Literary Theory at the University of
kar University, Delhi and is currently a research scholar at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. He is keenly Granada. In order to develop her doctoral dissertation on the reception of Tadeusz Kantor in Spain, she counts
interested in 20th century Goan history, public spheres, nationalism, and debates around caste and language with a fellowship sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Science and Sports. Previously, she earned
in Goa. He has been awarded the DD Kosambi Junior Research Fellowship for the period 2016-18 by the Direc- her M.A. in Literary and Theatre Studies, she is also B.A. in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature and B.A.
torate of Art and Culture, Government of Goa. In 2016, he participated in the Summer Institute Cologne in the in Spanish Philology. Among many other things, she is interested in theatre theories of the twentieth century
Theatre Historiography seminar. He has previously presented at the International Conference on Maharashtra, and comparative literature.
New Delhi, Young Scholar’s Seminar, JNU, and the International Congress on Colonial Periodical Press, Lisbon.
He also writes on politics and culture in popular press.
The influence of Tadeusz Kantor on Miquel Mateu’s “Thursday
Today”
Purtugez Passport: Performing the anxieties of migration among
the Goan Catholic Communities Tadeusz Kantor, a Polish stage director, was one of the most important artists in European theatre
of the twentieth century. His revolutionary spectacles had a great impact all over the world. All five
A major repercussion of colonialism is how colonised communities negotiate their own foreignness theatre productions of the well-known Theatre of Death “The Dead Class” “Wielopole, Wielopole”
in the contemporary global order marked by the post-colonial conditions and modern nation states. “Let the Artists Die” “I Shall Never Return” “Today is My Birthday” were presented also in Spain. Sev-
The question of migration therefore occupies a central position in these negotiations. This paper eral Spanish artists have been visibly influenced by Kantor’s work and Miquel Mateu is one of them.
attempts to understand how narratives around migration are performed in Tiatr, a popular form “Thursday Today”, his first theatre production, was performed in Valencia for the very first time in
of comic theatre among subaltern Goan Catholic communities. Tiatr first evolved in the late 19th February 2016. As stated by the Spanish artist himself, the play was inspired by the ideas found in
century among migrant Goan Catholic communities in Colonial Bombay and served as a way of si- the Theatre of Death. This paper will focus on two main areas of this influence: on the one hand, the
multaneously negotiating urban modernity as well as to surrogate the absence of a ‘Goan’ way of use Miquel Mateu makes of the great themes of Kantor’s universe childhood, memory etc., which
life in cosmopolitan Bombay. Over the years, Tiatr has become a widely popular theatre form that are the primary subject of his play on the other hand, the usage of some specific objects, elements
is known best for its sharp and incisive political commentary and satire. In this paper, I would be of the scenography, will be analyzed in relation with Kantor’s aesthetics. The methodology applied
looking at two contemporary Tiatr performances, both titled ‘Purtugez Passport’ and premiered in in this presentation will be an inter-artistic comparison between “Thursday Today” and the works of
2016, as well as few comic sketches and songsperformed in Tiatrs to analyse how recent migration Tadeusz Kantor.
of Goan Catholics to the Europe by means of (re)claiming Portuguese citizenship, has placed them
in a peculiar location where they are implicated by the broader currents of national and global pol- Key Words
itics (Brexit, for ex). My paper seeks to address the issues of gradual disenfranchisement of Goan Tadeusz Kantor Miquel Mateu “Thursday Today” Kantors influence European theatre
Catholics due to the shift in power equations in post-colonial times and how popular theatre forms
like the Tiatr respond to these developments by articulating the many concerns of the Goan Catholic
communities around the issue of migration.

Key Words
Goa, Tiatr, Migration, Cultural Marginalisation, Indian Nationalism
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

766 767
 NS NS

Friederike Oberkrome Alina Orav

Freie Universität Berlin, CRC 1171 Affective Societies Estonian Academy of Arts

Friederike Oberkrome is a theatre scholar and a doctoral researcher at the CRC 1171 Affective Societies, based Alina Orav (b. 1989) is an Estonian artist and since 2014 a member of the Estonian Artist Association.Having
at the Freie Universität Berlin. She received an B.A. from the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and an studied in the Art Studio 5+5 (1995-2009), she obtained her Master´s degree (2017) in painting from the Esto-
M.A. from the Freie Universität Berlin. In her PhD-project, she engages with documentary performances in the nian Academy of Arts. She has acquired experience in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (2011-2012); in the
field of theatre and migration and asks how they mediate and transform affective relations between different ECUAD in Vancouver (2015) and attended anamorphic painting internships in Amsterdam (2015) and London
people, places and time spans. Her research interests include contemporary forms of narration and historic- (2013).In 2014 she created her own author’s image making technique called polyview painting, for which she
ity in theatre, interrelations of theatre and public space as well as spatial aesthetics in the arts since 1945. obtained the State Real Estate Ltd Science and Development Grant in 2017. Her master’s thesis introduces the
new direction. Orav researched 3D art representing Estonia in many international street art events.She has
done over 12 solo exhibitions. Orav has participated in group shows in Estonia; but also in Vancouver, Watford,
Helsinki, Berlin, Florence, Tokyo and Stockholm. In 2015 she curated an exhibition at the Concourse Gallery
Migratory messengers – The mediatedness of documentary (CA) involving 22 artists.She is currently expanding the polyview picture idea into other fields such as theatre,
post-migrant theatre architecture and animation. The first polyview animation will be shown at the Tallinn Art Week in June 2018.I
would like to suggest ideas on how polyview image could be used in scenic design - what innovative opportu-
A great deal of performances in current German post-migrant theatre draw extensively on docu- nities would this create and what kind of new stories this enables to embody.
mentary material images, videos, testimonies, records as well as on personal narratives to critically
engage with the history and current condition of German migration-society. Performances such as
Common Ground or Die Lücke interrogate the interstices between private experiences and public Potential of the Polyview Moving Image in the Future
discourse or societal power relations. In my presentation, I conceive of these performances and Stage Design
their means of political reporting as a theatrical actualization of the messenger speech. This refers
especially to the affective potential of making a distant or past event present again on stage, which A polyview image is a type of picture I created in 2014. It is a combination of the anamorphic per-
is key to the messenger as dramaturgical device. Taken as a theoretical model for the performative spective viewed from an acute angle and the ambiguous illusions as the source ideas to create multi-
mediation of social relations, the messenger appears as a figure of the third that mediates between ple interpretations of the same complex picture viewed from different (currently up to 6) angles (see
distant and/or different parties. It thus contours an approach towards performance analysis that visuals and further explanation: www.alinaorav.com).One theatre set would transform into another
considers both the level of aisthesis and discourse between which the messenger implies a close if observed from a different side. Polyview scenic design would be an ideal physical embodiment of
mediation. A media theoretical perspective on post-migrant documentary theatre informed by the the Rashomon effect1, which occurs when the same event is given contradictory interpretations -
affective characteristics of the dramaturgical messenger speech is promising for multiple reasons: in our case simultaneously by either two audiences or by one group of individuals taking different
firstly, it transgresses a binary representational model of the documentary which seems especially corporeal locations towards the stage monitoring the same interaction. . In theatre, two (or more)
relevant in post-migrant and/or postcolonial contexts. Secondly, it draws attention to the entangle- contradictory plays may now be perceived in the same time and space. The same actor would be
ment between the performance and its discursive environment. And thirdly, the characteristics of playing another role, if viewed in an opposite environment. It would be an innovative multi-function-
the messenger enable a critical reflection on the societal position and image of ‘the migrant’. al, space- and material efficient solution.My research is informed by my own artistic practice exhibit-
ing polyview paintings in various sizes and environments; and observations on street art made when
Key Words representing Estonia painting anamorphic images in international street art festivals abroad. I take
German Post-Migrant Theatre Documentary Mediality Relationality Messenger as my theoretical framework the work of Imitiaz H. Habib and Choi Jae-Oh with special focus on the
connection between plays and Trompe-l’oeil or surrealist paintings; and the use of the concepts of
contradiction, multistable perception and (pictographic) ambiguity in theatrical space.

Key word
polyview moving image, stage design, innovation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

768 769
 NS NS

Claudia Ortega Rodríguez Alan Parker

Universidad Pedagógica Nacional de Colombia University of Cape Town & Rhodes University

Claudia, 24 years old, is currently in her tenth semester of the BA in Education in Performing Arts at the Peda- Alan Parker is a choreographer, performer and lecturer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa,
gogical National University in Bogotá, Colombia. She has worked in different performances and theatrical plays where he teaches physical performance and choreography in the Department of Drama. Alan holds a MA in
during her career, such as “Al márgen”, a play based in the life and works of colombian writer Andrés Caicedo, Drama, specialising in choreography, from Rhodes University and is currently engaged in doctoral research at
that was performed across several rural towns and cities in Colombia. She has participated in several dramatic the University of Cape Town through the Institute for Creative Arts’ ICA PhD programme in Live Art, Interdis-
lectures both at the municipal school of Boyacá, and in the International Book Fair of Bogotá. Additionally, she ciplinary and Public Art. Parker’s PhD research considers the relationship between live arts and the archive,
became part of the research seedbed called “Research – Creation / Education = Phi” where she worked as a with a specific focus on choreographic strategies aimed at performing the archive. In 2016 he was awarded a
research assistant and is currently part of the artistic investigative project “Voices and bodies of the commu- Live Art Fellowship with the ICA and, in 2017, served as a Writing Fellow for the upcoming publication Acts of
nity and their researchers”. As a result of her investigative interests, she gave her first paper entitled “The ‘Re- Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa. As a choreographer, Alan has presented work over the
search – Creation / Education = Phi’ from a Situated Learning perspective” 2017 at the International Congress last ten years at numerous South African arts festivals and performance platforms including the National Arts
of Artistic Education in the District University of Bogotá, Colombia. She has also participated in short courses Festival in Grahamstown, the Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg and the Live Art Festival in Cape Town. He has
relating to the “commedia of arts” technique and made various artistic appearances. also been the recipient of the Theatre Arts Admin Collective Emerging Theatre Director’s Bursary 2013 and
Artist-in-Residence at the Dance Space in Johannesburg 2014.

Methodologies Developed in the Project: “Voices and Bodies of the

Community and its Researcher”: A Process of “Research-Creation/ Conceptualising the role of archival detritus as a ‘line of flight’
Education” for embodied research practices
The paper, entitled “Conceptualising the role of archival detritus as a ‘line of flight’ for embodied re-
This presentation tackles the working methodologies developed in the Investigation-Creation, proj-
search practices”, proposes and explicates a particular embodied research methodology for anarchi-
ect called ‘Voices and bodies of the community and its researchers’, carried out by students and
val investigation where archival detritus understood as that which remains once a performance has
professors of the BA in Performing Arts at The National Pedagogical University of Colombia. This
ended is re-conceptualized as a ‘line of flight’ for a reimagined re-enactment of past performances
project investigates the students’ experiences with non-school communities such as theater groups,
as a means to discover new, alternative possibilities nascent within the archive. The paper considers
LGBT communities, children deprived of schooling, and people who live in rural areas. The students
Deleuze & Guattari’s 1987 concept of deterritorialisation in relation to Massumi & Murphie’s 2016
developed workshops and theatrical plays with the communities, and at the end of the work, they
understanding of the anarchive as a research creation methodology concerned with unearthing and
systematized their experiences as teachers of the process. The paper will present the methodologies
revealing that which the archive cannot hold or that which it keeps invisible and/or hidden. The
used by the group of teacher-artist researchers, to consolidate a process framed in the emerging
archival object, or detritus, is thus theorized as a springboard or departure point for ‘lines of flight’
category developed by Giovanni Covelli Meek: “Research-Creation / Education” which aims, from a
that move the subject/researcher away from the known territory of the archive, toward new, un-
research perspective, to unify the disciplinary knowledge specific to the performing arts and their
known territories initiated through creative and imaginative engagement with archival detritus. This
educational processes.This presentation will be broken down into three components, each of which
methodology for creative research practice is further explicated and explored through reference
corresponds to the different steps in which the project was developed. Each one of them derives its
to one of the author’s doctoral practical research projects Detritus for one 2015. This performance
own methodology which, when unified, will determine the methodological procedure of the project.
project becomes a case study to further reflect on the ways in which detritus, through interfacing
These components that in turn will title the chapters of the document are: investigative -the first
with the body of the subject/researcher, might initiate new pathways to new territories and, in so
stage of the project-, creative -second stage of the project-, and formative, which is found in both
doing, release, unlock or discover new potentials and possibilities within past performances in the
stages and therefore in the whole project.The presentation proposes to study and understand the
archive.
methodological aspects of the project as a systematization of experiences: critical, reflexive, analyti-
cal and generator of knowledge as developed by Flor Abarca. Inasmuch as I am also part of the proj-
Key Words
ect, it is interesting to identify how the words of a documental analysis can become the dramaturgy
anarchive deterritorialisation embodied research archive
of a play. To conclude, the framework of my research is developed from the pedagogical theories of
situated and meaningful learning according to the definition by Días Barriga.

Key Words
Artistic Creation Processes Investigation-Creation Performing Arts Creation Methodologies “Re-
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

search-Creation / Education”

770 771
 NS NS

Priyanka Pathak Sailu Pattepu

Jawaharlal Nehru University University of Hyderabad

Priyanka Pathak is a graduate from the National School of Drama New Delhi, 2013, specialized in design and PattepuSailu is a JRF scholar at Department of Theatre Arts, S. N. School of Arts and Communication, University
direction. She is currently pursuing Ph.D. research in Theatre & Performance Studies at the School of Arts & of Hyderabad and worked with distinguished theatre exponents like Prof. NeeluKamaluddin, AbhilashPillai,
Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has been practicing theater since 2003 in Delhi as designer, Duglus O’ Connel. He has participated in several national and international conferences and projects includ-
director and acting teacher. Her area of interest is devising performances around the idea of interventionist ing  IBSEN festival, UKIERI thematic partnership project on “Scenography in Digital Age” and IFTR 2015. He
performances in public sphere. She has devised a performance on the economy of shit and mapping its path has presented a papers on Padyanatakam Identity of Telugu region from glorious days to decline in the IFTR
within the city. 2015, on Gender Bending in Southern India: The curious case of Surabhi Theatre in the IFTR 2016 and on The
Intercultural Legacy of MoharramPeerlaPanduga: A Ritual Performance of Telangana in the IFTR 2017. He had
participated in many workshops lead by eminent theatre personalities from India and abroad.  He has conduct-
ed workshops in different areas of Hyderabad for the children and presently associated with CAMS Theatre
Migrated, Displaced or Relocated Audience of the Street: Group, Hyderabad as a practitioner.
Memories of Sites of Resistance and its Absence in urban
Landscape.
Migration and identity politics: A curious case of formation of
Delhi is a metropolitan city, the capital of India and also a hub of migrants and daily commuters who
Telangana a newly born state of India
come to work every day. Since the implementation of neo-liberal policies in the late nineties, efforts
have been made to re-constitute the city as a global one through beautification drives: clearing con-
The paper intends to unravel the tension and potentially conflictual relations between Telengana
gested slum locations, building middle class housings and malls. This has resulted in thousands of
and Andhra Pradesh which were merged together at the time of independence (1947) and Reorga-
people from under-privileged backgrounds being evicted and compelled to re-locate to the outskirts
nization of the states (1956) of the Union of India despite its vastly different ethnic characteristics.
of the city. The evacuation drive actually makes the original settlers of these sites a migrant service
Within the larger socio-economic and political conflict and violence between these two commu-
population who come back to their original location daily for work. The city consumes, as I argue,
nities, the paper intends to focus on the cultural politics intertwined with identity formations and
the poor in service labor in order to manage daily operations for the middle class but does not ac-
reassertion of Telengana identity particularly in recent times (2009 onwards). In this context I would
commodate them as its own. Jan Natya Manch Janam is one of the activist street theatre groups that
take the case study of the cultural group Dhoom Dhoom an artiste collective of writers, ballad sing-
have constantly engaged with the sites and the people which this city has always treated as ‘other’,
ers, poets and performers who took on a key role during the movement and struggle for separate
making them migrant within their own city. The group is losing its spectators and its performance
statehood for Telengana. The group went to the masses with a slogan such as “Maata (Dialogue),
locations, due to these dislocations. The performance sites mapped through the run of the play
Paata (song), Aata (Dance)”,and adopting strong caste and class reassertion. The paper will partic-
Machine from 1978 till today, allows one to understand the changing urban landscape. Two recent
ularly focus on the dissemination of their cultural programme at the grass root level and bringing
works from theatre and performance studies by Susan Haidecke and Shannon Jackson, in their own
about a mass mobilization and a movement since 2009. The paper intends to read the performances
local contexts are built around ‘street arts’ or ‘social works’. They both refer to Ranciere‟s notion of
of Dhoom Dhoom within the critical frames of performance and identity politics particularly the
affect which draws together a public into a collective democratic space through the mediation of
critique offered by Dr. Kevin Hetherington and taking from the volume edited by Asha Sarangi and
performance. I will take up Machine’s past circuit in comparison with the present and try to explore
Sudha Pal interrogating the politics of regional formations within national frameworks.
site memories and absences, and see its efficacy in creating critical modes of resistance amongst its
congregations. The perspective of space and audience allows me to theorize and construct critical
Key words
frames with reference to Etienne Balibar’s notion of ‘worksites of democracy’ and Janelle Reinelt’s
Migration, identity, agitation, theatre, politics and strategy.
application of this to theatre practices.

Key Words
Migration, Site specific, Street Theatre, Global Cities, street audience, spectatorship absence
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

772 773
 NS NS

Jovana Pavićević Deborah Pollard

Faculty of Philology and Arts, University of Kragujevac, Serbia University of New South Wales (UNSW)

Jovana Pavićević was born in Kragujevac, Serbia in 1982. She defended her PhD thesis The Poetics of Sarah Deborah Pollard is a director and dramaturge based in Sydney, Australia. Her artistic practice encompasses
Kane in the Context of New British Drama in May 2016 at the Faculty of Philology and Arts, University of Kragu- collaborations with different practitioners from dancers to farmers to performers and visual artists among
jevac where she currently works as an Assistant Professor and teaches courses in theatre history and dramatic others. Trained originally in theatre as a performer, her practice has shifted over the past 25 years towards
literature. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary drama and theatre, performance studies, a hybrid between performance and visual arts. She has worked extensively within the Australian Theatre
applied theatre, bibliotherapy, psychodrama and gender studies. She has participated in various national and and Performance sector and her works have toured internationally. Deborah recently completed her PhD at
international conferences and published research papers on Anglo-American literature, drama and theatre. the University of Wollongong and is currently an Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the University of New South
Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Jan Fabre’s “Mount Olympus”: Drama and Theatre as Alternatives

to Spiritual Bypassing
Entanglements with time: staging time in the theatre
The author of this paper tends to explore drama and theatre as a mode of inquiry, that is as a mode
that analyzes, reveals, and communicates artistic and human condition and provides further discus- My research examines the historic and contemporary function of time as a compositional tool in
sion and research on topics associated with these issues. The paper takes Jan Fabre’s 24-hour Mount the theatre medium to further the conceptualisation of developments in performance practice that
Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy performed at Belgrade International Theatre Festival BITEF in counter and reflect upon the underlying temporal dynamics of mediatisation. It addresses the ques-
September 2017 as an example of а complex event that combines artistic-composed behaviour with tion: What is the aesthetic and political significance of time based dramaturgical strategies to the
everyday-spontaneous behavior. Since Fabre employs stories and characters from Greek mythology theatre medium in an era defined by accelerated perceptions of time? The paper focuses on my
and tragedies only to reshape them by means of different languages, bodies, objects, choreogra- creative research project, Yowza Yowza Yowza [2014], a 24-hour choreographic action that recreates
phies, time, and space, the performance has provoked debates over the content, theatrical lan- photographic documentation of the 1930s dance marathon phenomenon. This reflexive analysis
guage, and the function of time and audience and, above all, over the qualities that make up tragic examines how the works’ aesthetics of duration and repetition encouraged engagement with the
vision. This paper argues that Fabre’s overall vision – ‘humanity’s time, time of the birth of tragedy, personal plight of the performer that of the intrigue and ethical precariousness that comes with
of the descent into hell and the volcano of evil, ceaselessly spewing its ashes’ – presents Greek myth watching the endurance of another. Such responses to the work were further heightened by the live
as an early form of psychology that brings to light the mysterious workings of the psychethus en- webcast of the performance that enabled spectators to tune in at anytime with anonymity and ease.
abling the audience to face painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. To elaborate on these findings the paper draws upon recent theoretical conceptions of a shift in time
as a representational tool to a central aesthetic concern of the theatre medium. It also engages with
Key Words recent theoretical understandings of intermediality and remediation: the incorporation and integra-
Fabre, performance, myth, psyche, insight, audience tion of technology within theatre and its impact upon theatre communication. This is made evident
through a rethinking of the collective ‘liveness’ that has often defined the medium.

Key Words
Temporal dramaturgy, Intermediality
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

774 775
 NS NS

Dan Poston Daniela Potenza

University of Tübingen and City University of New York INALCO and Università degli Studi di Napoli LOrientale

My BA was in English Literature from Harvard College 2003, and I subsequently earned an MA in Performance Being an advanced PhD candidate in Arabic Literature from INALCO and L’Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Ori-
Studies and Literature from NYU as well as an MFA in Writing from Bard College, both in 2007. I then worked entale, with a dissertation on “The kaleidoscope effect. Rewriting in Alfred Faraǧ’s plays as a multifunctional
as a teacher, professor, and theatre reviewer in Buenos Aires, as a nationwide political event producer for the strategy for a multilayered creation,” I have recently studied the transformation of preexistent Arabic texts into
2008 Obama campaign and inauguration, and as a Manhattan technology research lab administrator. Simul- dramas. This has made me become accustomed to working on both contemporary theatre and other Arabic
taneously, I’ve written and staged several plays and collaborated with Ei Arawaka to create new art-context works, such as epics, tales, poetry and Historiography, from classical, modern and contemporary periods.  I
musicals in spaces like MoMA and the Muenster Sculpture Project. I am currently employed as a Research am currently teaching Arabic Language and Literature at L’Università degli Studi di Catania Italy, while I keep
Associate at the University of Tübingen, teaching and completing a dissertation on Joseph Addison and trans- researching in literature with a focus on contemporary Arabic theatre and its social impact. As I speak Italian,
atlantic 18th-century theatre and politics for the CUNY Grad Center Theatre program. French, Arabic and English, and I have lived and studied in Italy, France, UK, Tunisia and Egypt, I try to apply my
multicultural experiences and my interdisciplinary background to enrich my research. Apart from my studies
of the text, I am also developing a new interest in performative arts.
English, Iroquois, German: Historically Staging Conrad Weiser’s
Interpretative Work in the 1744 Lancaster Treaty
Showing humanism through performative arts.  A comparative
The theoretical question that I am asking is about reading a translated transcript of a historical event study of My Papers Weren’t Done? and Zapi Rouge
as a performance text. Sandra Gustafson has described the printed 1744 Lancaster Treaty between
the Iroquois League and the British colonial governments of Virginia and Maryland as similar to a Considering the immediate relevance and the pervasive media coverage on migration, this contribu-
declamatory play like Addison’s Cato. By tracing the biographical and political connection between tion compares two plays that are different in relation to their context of production and similar for
Addison and the English-Iroquois interpreter of the Treaty, the paper asks to what extent it is use- their use of performative arts as tools to enquire on migrants’ identity and to ‘humanise’ them. The
ful to read the Treaty as in part a staging through surrogation of European political conflicts via compared works are, on one hand, ‫( ؟شصلخ ام يقرو‬My Papers Weren’t Done?, 2017), a community
Native American speakers. Following Gustafson’s suggestion, the Treaty is genealogically related play produced and directed by the Egyptian theatre company Red Tomato by way of an interactive
to the 17th- and 18th-century British “Indian” plays, in which censored political controversies are workshop of collective creation with the group of performers. All performers were youths between
addressed through staged native sovereignties. Does the focus on the translator in this instance 18 - 23 years of age from Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan who enact students
help to make apparent the apparatus through which we receive the historical account of a political coming from different countries dealing with the complicated bureaucratic process of applying to
event, or, dialectically, does it occlude a transmission of alterity, hampering through historiography University. Rapping is an integral part of the work and allows characters to express their feelings. On
the translator’s diplomatic efforts? The paper considers the disappearing textual action of the live the other hand, Zapi Rouge is a poetical French play, written by Françoise Glière and performed by
interpreter, a German-born religious refugee, as an example for how intra-European emancipatory the Lili Label company, about the story of ‘Toi’ You, a kid detained in a ZAPI - ‘zone d’attente pour
conflicts were performatively present in racialized colonial encounters. If the treaty event is shaped personnes en instance - ’ an immigration waiting zone. The story is told by the women working
by the apparatus of the English neoclassical play, is it possible to recover a sense of an Iroquois dip- in the centre who encountered Toi during his stay there. Toi does not have a precise identity, but
lomatic practice and apparatus, relevant also to us as contemporary interpreters, by attentending to like all children, he has dreams. His dream is to work in a circus. Acting as a clown and an acrobat,
some of the formal ommissions of the printed drama? Agamben’s hermeneutical investigation of Toi’s atypical behaviour within the ZAPI brings smiles where usually there are none.Following theo-
Foucault’s concept of the apparatus reveals a methodology through which “sacralized” Iroquois met- ries on the humanism of the Other (Lévinas 1972) and on the performative power of performance
aphor can be “profaned” (i.e. restored for common use) and the multi-national poltical encounter in (Fischer-Lichte 2004), personal stories shared through singing in My Papers Weren’t Done and smiles
colonial Pennsylvania can be partially relocated to a small part of southwest Germany, where both caused by comic performances in ZAPI Rouge are considered as individualising and associating devic-
the interpreter and Hegel were shaped by violent theological controversies. es aiming at an ethic of obligation.

Key Words Key Words

translation, colonial, Iroquois, English, German, European, Native American, historiography, political Migration, efficacy, ‘humanism of the other,’ performing arts, raising awareness
performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

776 777
 NS NS

Yana Prinsloo Vishnuprasad Reghunathan

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Research Scholar

From 2011 to 2017, Yana Prinsloo undertook her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Theatre, Film and Born in 1980, Vishnuprasad M R started writing poetry at the age of fifteen. Above all his other identities, the
Media Studies at Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz and Vienna University. In early 2017, she finished one that truly defines his being is that of a ‘poet’ because poetry gives expression to his existence as ‘becoming
her master’s thesis “Reset Postmodernity? Das not doing opinion im Angesicht der ent-sinnten Gegenwart“ human’. For the past twenty years Vishnuprasad has published two anthologies of poetry and he has been
which was published by Tectum in the same year. Currently, Yana is a PhD candidate and graduate teaching writing poetry, articles, and columns on art and science in both English and Malayalam, a South Indian Dravid-
assistant at the Department for Film-, Theatre and Cultural Studies at the University of Mainz and an editor ian language. Poetry for him is an education just like any other institutionalised knowledge systems. Vishnu’s
of 3SAT´s daily Kulturzeit. Her research focuses on contemporary theatre/art/dance practices and their repro- research experiences in ecological sciences and the experience as an activist in Greenpeace International gave
duction or contradiction to political phenomena as well as on the reproduction of artistic/theatrical strategies him a conservationist outlook towards nature. However, it was his engagement in performance studies that
in politics. transformed the conservationist stance into a more-than-human perspective of the ecology. Currently, he pur-
sues PhD in theatre and performance studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University JNU, on the ecology of Padyani, a
ritual performance of South India. He believes that research oriented art project has tremendous potential to
expose the phenomenal and political currents of the contemporary.
Performances of Truth – Truthfulness in Performances
Post-truth, post-factual politics, alternative facts: A fundamental debate about what truth is has
been dominating the political and cultural debates for quite some time. Facts and evidence seem Permeable edges of a ritual ecosystem: Thinking through
to have become a flexible corrective in everyday life (Latour 2017: 27). One symbol for these ten- boundaries of Kottangal padayani
dencies is the concept of conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists offer their audience alternative theories
and alternative culprits. By doing so they destabilize the “truth”, which “we” so far have agreed on. Permeable edges of a ritual ecosystem: Thinking through boundaries of Kottangal padayani Padayani
Those theorists challenge our system of knowledge and truth production, which is not able to com- is a week-long ritual performance in the south-Indian state of Kerala, performed annually during
pete with the rapidness of attack in the digital world. The perception and the processing of truth nights dedicated to Mother Goddess in Devi temples. Kottangal padayani, one of the significant
seems to become a matter of individualized consumption, provoked by the fragmentation of society padayani-s in Kerala, is performed in the miniature ecosystems called kaavus or sacred groves where
(Reckwitz 2006: 592, Bauman 1997: 146).Currently, the phenomenon of immersive art is spreading humans, plants and machinic entities are inter-linked and give rise to various performances. The
widely (Glauner 2016: 30). It reflects on the individual experience and has been criticised as a repro- present paper examines how Kottangal padayani modify the boundaries of human, vegetal and
duction of the hegemonic neoliberal discourse but also as a critical gesture against these tendencies machinic bodies within a village ecosystem where it is performed. Drawing from Bruno Latour’s ac-
(Lehmann 2016: 27; Mouffe 2015: 130).By working immersively, Signa, an Austrian theatre troupe tor network theory and Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoieisis, this paper inquires dynamics
makes the construction of religious cults a subject of discussion by forcing the audience itself to of ritual boundaries in the anthropo-vegetal and machinic network of Kottangal padayani. For this I
adopt specific body practices during their Heuvolk performance. Rabih Mroué uses his performance analyse “adavi’, a performance event in Kottangal padayani, in which the ritual space is temporarily
lectures to link facts and fiction in a garment of factual knowledge. “Forensic Architecture”, a re- designed as a forest. The villagers collect tree trunks with leaves and fruits and they are temporarily
search agency, tries to “find the truth” in unsolved criminal cases by reconstructing the crime scene. fixed on the performance ground. Some people hold the branches in their hand and some others
Based on these examples, the objective of the presentation is to develop a “dispositif” (Foucault climb up the trees and enact deforestation. I would like to examine how human, vegetal and machin-
1978, 120) of conspiracy. Therefore, I intend to analyse artistic works, which bend, repeal, override ic bodies permeate and emerge as performance. While the question of nature in Kottangal padayani,
the concept of truth by showing alternative realities or possibilities of truth production, based on and in fact rituals in a broad sense in India, is generally addressed through the traditional concept of
the definition of truth by Hannah Arendt and Foucault and their attempts to interrogate the relation wholeness and natural holism, I argue that an ecosystem perspective is essential in understanding
between power and truth. different associations and transitions in Kottangal padayani where humans, plants and other non-
human machinic bodies have equal material presence in the ritual network. Taking forward Erica
Key Words Fischer Lichte’s analysis of the materiality of performance, I attempt to understand how ‘ecosystem
post-truth, immersion, performance lectures, Forensic Architecture, Arendt, Foucault materiality’ operates in the permeable frontiers of a ritual ecosystem.

Key Words
Padayani, ecosystem, ritual
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

778 779
 NS NS

Nathaniel Ridley Moacir Romanini Junior

University of Otago State University of Campinas - Unicamp

Nate is a second year PhD student at the University of Otago, having previously completed undergraduate Moacir Romanini is an actor-performer who obtained his Masters degree in Arts of the Scene from the Insti-
studies and a Master of Arts degree at Victoria University of Wellington. He currently contributes teaching to tute of Arts, Unicamp, Brazil. He is currently reading for his PhD degree from the same institution under the
an undergraduate paper on the history of theatre where he finds many excellent examples of students not guidance of Matteo Bonfitto Jr. His research proposes an investigation about the reinvention practices created
doing the readings. His areas of research include pedagogy, the digital humanities, adaptation theory and the by Latin American performers who find in Earth-body-art possible paths to the dissolution between art and life
reception of works of the theatrical “canon” in post-colonial environments. in favor of an ethic of presence.

Why Undergraduates Dont Read and How They Get Away With It: A Landscape, empty, latency: the Earth-body-art and absence as a
Tale of Fatigue, Triage and Grades performative potency.
N. Katherine Hayles identifies reading as a key tool with literary study disciplines. However, despite This presentation is an integral part of the PhD research that I am conducting as part of my Postgrad-
its importance, Theatre Studies and English Literature students appear to have a troubled relation- uate Program in Performing Arts at Unicamp’s Institute of Arts. The work of the Cuban performer
ship with reading. Anecdotal evidence suggests that rates of reading amongst undergraduates are Ana Mendieta is analysed, and in particular, the actions she carried out in the landscape. While ex-
low and that improving these rates requires time-consuming and often draconian intervention on amining her work in these natural spaces, I seek to raise issues related to concepts of “present-pres-
the part of teachers. This paper illustrates the rates of reading within Theatre and English courses ence and present-absence“ in her performances. As a first exponent of Earth-body-art that, unlike
and to identify why students do not complete or even start reading assigned texts or to seek out Land Art, positions the artist in the image - in present presences and present traces – Mendieta
alternative reading sources such as Wikipedia or SparkNotes. The reasons for this are demonstrated builds her relational networks with the natural environment, distinguishing it from its environmental
using quantitative and qualitative data collected through a survey of undergraduate students en- logics. Dialoguing with the studies of Josette Féral and Amanda Boetzkes, the aim of this commu-
rolled in Theatre Studies and English Literature courses at universities in New Zealand and Australia. nication is to emphasize the retraction movement of Mendieta in her photoperformances or in her
The analysis of this data shows how undergraduate students struggle to or even actively avoid as- videoperformances, in which her presence becomes something questionable, when , for example,
similating to the culture of best academic practice. It also shows how a multitude of factors influ- we think of presence in performing arts. In considering the symbiotic relationship that is established
ence students to engage in acts of “non-reading”. This information may act as a foundation allowing between Mendieta and the landscape, the paper shall reflect on absence as a performative power.
for improved pedagogical practices within Theatre Studies and English Literature. Understanding From the movement that goes from the performer’s presence in the image until its disappearance in
what factors influence students to fail to complete assigned readings will allow educators to develop the landscape, the actions of Mendieta question the positioning of the artist within the work. When
teaching strategies targeting the root causes of poor reading practices amongst students rather than considering absence as a performative potency, wouldn’t the performer be repositioning the ethical
merely reacting to their symptoms. Works Cited Hayles, N Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media role of the artist in her time?
and Contemporary Technogenesis. The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Key Words
Key Words Absence, Earth-body-art, Performance Art
Digital Humanities, Pedagogy, Reading, Internet
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

780 781
 NS NS

Kathleen Schaag Benjamin Silva Farias

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of English Pontifical Catholic Universty of Chile

In lieu of a CV, I am including a narrative bio, which the New Scholars Forum requires. Please let me know if Literature professor. Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Aesthetic Studies both by the Pontifical Catholic Univer-
I should send a CV instead.  Katie Schaag is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the English Department at the sty of Chile and Doctor c in Literature also by the Pontifical Catholic Universty of Chile. He works as a professor
University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she recently earned her PhD in English Literature with a specialization at the Pontifical Catholic Universty of Chile. His critical work discusses the relations between theater and edu-
in Theatre and Performance Studies. Her essay “Biological Plasticity and Performative Possibility in the work cation, marginalities and cultural plots in 21st century Chile.
of Catherine Malabou and Curious” is published in _Inter Views in Performance Philosophy_ Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2017. Her book project, “Conceptual Theatre,” explores the political potential of thought experiments in
African American avant-garde closet drama. She has presented research at international conferences including
Performance Studies International at Stanford University and Theatre, Performance, Philosophy at University The Outdated School in the Chilean Scene of the 21st Century:
of Paris-Sorbonne. Education, Biopower and Marginality
During June 2006, massive student demonstrations in the streets of the main cities of Chile marked
“Will blackness please step out and take a curtain call?” the beginning of a reform that -claiming free and quality public education-, years later, would be
Ed Bullins’ Conceptual Theatre able to establish free education in higher education.The Chilean dramatists of the new generations
become part of this conjuncture and in several of its assemblies “put on stage” the student mo-
In this presentation I will argue that Black Theatre Movement BTM playwright Ed Bullins’ experimen- bilization.In this particular presentation -part of a larger investigation- I will analyze the dramatic
tal texts are key to the formation of a genre I call the Conceptual Play and an archive I call Conceptual text and the staging of Luis Barrales, La mala clase (2009).In this work you can see how biopolitical
Theatre. Close reading of Bullins’ _The Theme is Blackness: A One-Act Play to be performed before control, masked by neoliberalism, denies any kind of possibility and freedom, subjecting students to
Predominantly White Audiences_in 1966, I argue that Bullins innovates a form of site-specific the- the violence and control of a disciplinary society in Chile.During the 21st century, the issue of mar-
atre of the mind that resists material embodiments of blackness on the public stage. _The Theme is ginality and precariousness has increased in Chile and Latin America through the implementation
Blackness_ creates a space to contemplate the concept and aesthetics of blackness itself, detached of a neoliberal policy, a legacy of the military dictatorships of the southern cone; causing a terrible
from racialized bodies. A speaker announces that the character “Blackness” will appear, the lights go structural change in society. Intervening in multiple areas of life, extending to school, considering it
out, and, for twenty minutes, the dark theatre encompasses the play’s form and content. Subverting as a device designed to produce students: bodies / gears of industrial machinery.The Chilean gov-
white spectators’ desire to encounter concrete, realistic black characters and scenes, the play spa- ernments have proposed educational reforms that aim at an education system more in line with the
tially and temporally deflects embodied racialization onto the sensory and perceptual processes of globalized world, but which, nevertheless, have not been successful, generating conflicts of all kinds
the audience. My analysis of _The Theme is Blackness_ aims to shift our understanding of the BTM and remaining only in theories, turning the school into an outdated technology for young people.In
from a theatre of reality to a theatre of imagination. Resisting the critical tendency to emphasize short, the discourse in La mala clase gives an account of the reality of the periphery of the modern
BTM’s communal aesthetics and revolutionary politics, I argue that Bullins’ theatre is more strongly city, where the slogan is to survive the commodified society and survive the public education that
engaged in interior contemplation than exterior action. Building upon and departing from the histor- delivers outdated teachings.
ical lineage of closet drama, _The Theme is Blackness_ resists the white gaze to reimagine blackness
outside of visibility. Rejecting the notion that social change only happens through physical action, Key Words
Bullins’ Conceptual Plays catalyze a politics of the imagination. Chilean Theater, education, marginality, biopower

Key Words
Black Performance Studies, Visual Cultures, Avant-garde Theatre, African American Drama, Black
Theatre Movement, Conceptualism, Abstraction, Blackness, Interiority, Dematerialization, Imagina-
tion, Politics and Aesthetics, Experimental Forms
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

782 783
 NS NS

Nina Helene Skogli Luxsnai Songsiengchai

University of Agder, Faculty of Fine Arts University of Hyderabad

My name is Nina Helene Skogli (b. 1988) and I am currently a Ph.D. research fellow at the University of Agder Luxsnai Songsiengchai is a theatre artist and lecturer from Thailand. Currently, she is pursuing Ph.D. in Theatre
in Kristiansand, Norway. I started working as a researcher at the University in September 2017. My project Arts at S.N. School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad with Indian Council for Cultural Rela-
concerns, in short, theatre that addresses ongoing conflicts, and the cognitive reflection process these perfor- tions ICCR scholarship. Her research focuses on Transgender in folk performance. At the time she has been in
mances initiate. I am interested in the dramaturgical and aesthetical strategies that specific performances use India, she has conducted social movement projects for empowering people through Theatre process covered
to encourage the reflection process after the transitory performances have ended. Earlier, I worked on edu- Northeastern and Southern communities in suburban India. She also presented papers at IFTR conferences in
cational and interdisciplinary projects at Kristiansand Kunsthall, a contemporary gallery, in addition to being a 2015 and 2016.
freelance performer.

The Changing Space: Thai popular folk theatre and the spaces
Soft Eyes and Migratory Routes: Discussing dramaturgical for Kathoey self-expression
strategies in a performance concerning politics of immigration
This paper is part of the dissertation project “Life as Kathoey in Likay troupes in Thailand: an eth-
For this paper, I want to use the performance Soft Eyes 2016 by Artilleriet Produksjoner as a point nography of transgender female performers in the 21st century”. Likay is a Thai popular folk theatre
of departure. Soft Eyes concerns the politics of immigration; it tours the Norwegian Schools, where since the reign of King Rama V1868. Nowadays, it remains in popularity among the rural population,
it is watched by pupils from the age of 16 to 19. At the end of the day, all the pupils are gathered in and is appreciated amid working classes in the outskirts of the city. The presentation focuses on “the
the school auditorium to discuss their experiences. I want to highlight some of the dramaturgical changing space” or the life behind the curtains of the folk theatre stage. The paper seeks to highlight
strategies of Soft Eyes, to see how they raise questions concerning the theme and initiate a process the performers’ diverse queer identities and their intertwining with regional, linguistic, socio-eco-
of acquiring a form of accumulated experience.   In that sense, this paper will briefly explore two nomic and class-based differences. The aim of the paper is to explore how the changing space marks
different forms of migration. It examines the dramaturgical strategies of Soft Eyes that address immi- a site of the articulation of the cultural pluralism of kathoey identity. The ethnographic research
gration and the social and political landscapes that set the backdrop for the refugee crisis. However, for the study was conducted in 2017 based on participant observation and in-depth interview with
it also explores a different kind of migration, one that deals with the transitory nature of theatre and performers from three transgender troupes including community members in central Thailand. The
its spectators. When affected by the theatrical strategies of a performance, and when challenged to first section briefly describes the characteristic features of the changing space, which carries a great
reflect upon the event after the so-called “fall of the curtain”, the spectators undergo a process of significance in the performance practice of Likay troupes. I will argue that the changing space creates
momentary experience that becomes a form of accumulated experience – or a peirastic concept of a unique relation between Likay actors and the communities where they perform. Activities and oc-
experience. Despite theatre being a transitory medium, some experiences migrate from the here- currences within this area will be seperately discussed as the key finding. It clearly reveals significant
and-now of the performance to become part of a spectator’s horizon of understanding. Central to differences between kathoey identities in modern and folk performance. I will conclude by suggest-
this paper is theory on momentary, accumulated and peirastic experience. ing that the performance of kathoey identities through folk theatre does not limit itself only to the
stage but starts before the show itself, in the changing space behind the curtains.
Key Words
Refugee crisis, spectators, experience, dramaturgical strategies Key Words
Kathoey, transgender identity, folk theatre, backstage, Thailand
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

784 785
 NS NS

Rebecca Sturm Eszter Szabó-Reznek

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities

Rebecca Sturm is a PhD student at the ERC project ‘Developing Theatre – Building Expert Networks for Theatre Born on July 16, 1990 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Assistant research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of
in Emerging Countries after 1945’.In 2016 she finished her master’s thesis supervisor: Prof. C. Balme about Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute for Literary Studies. I am also writing my PhD thesis
the Bavarian State Theatre in the post-war period at the Institute for Theatre Studies of the LMU in Munich. at the University of Szeged, Hungary. My research focuses on multi-centered cultural spaces in 19th-century
Her current project ‘Theatre Experts for the Third World: ITI and the globalization of theatre’ focusses on the Hungary, national and regional identities in Hungary and Transylvania. My focus is Transylvanian theatre and
international efforts of the ITI during the Cold War. press in the last decades of the 19th century: theatre management the self-image and self-positioning of the
theatre regional identity models proposed by the theatre and the press Transylvanian intellectual networks
and their relations with the theatre.
The ITI and the globalization of theatre in the Cold War
The founding of the International Theatre Institute ITI under the UNESCO umbrella in 1948 was How Much for a Theatre Ticket and a Seven-Course Meal?
part of a larger trend of epistemic communities in the post-war period. Expert networks of scien- The Economics of a Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Centenary
tists and artists were created to promote international understanding which was supposed to help in Transylvania
prevent future global conflict. The purpose of the ITI was to “promote international exchange of
knowledge and practice in theatre arts.” This met with severe difficulties in the Cold War Era. With In my paper I will approach the problem of the economic history of theatre. How can we use account-
member states from both sides of the Iron Curtain, and national ITI centres often being depen- ings, letters on loans and credits, bills to reveal the management and financing models of a theatre,
dent on state funding, attempts to use the ITI as a tool of Cold War cultural influence were often how can we contextualize the expenses, what does it tell us if the numbers don’t add up? Choosing
made. My presentation will focus on the East and West German centres of the ITI and how they a micro-level analysis of a vast number of archival and press sources, I will attempt to reveal through
coordinated their exchange of theatrical knowledge in the political environment of the Cold War. these general questions the financial aspects of the centenary of professional Hungarian acting in
Even though ITI efforts were supposed to be understood as non-political, the two German centres Transylvania, celebrated in the Hungarian theatre of Cluj, Transylvania in 1892. Having in the back-
both located in Berlin adopted their countries’ rivalry, using political means like travel restrictions, ground the framework of the cult of the centenary or centenary fever of the 19th century Quinault
treaties, and the help of government agencies to do this. Their involvement with the “Third World 1998, Leerssen–Rigney 2014 with all its great festivities, I will present a case-study of a celebration
Theatre Committee” and various efforts in “theatrical development aid” was also part of the cul- organized by a theatre that was at the same time peripheral as seen from the capital city, Budapest
tural Cold War, trying to gain influence through soft power instead of a more direct approach in and central as Cluj was considered the cultural center of Transylvania. I will analyze both the hard
the non-aligned countries of the Global South. My presentation will be based on my current re- numbers and the discourses on the finances of the theatre during the three-day centenary – with
search for the ERC project Developing Theatre, and archival material from the German ITI centre. festive lunches, outdoor celebrations, gala performances bringing even the aristocracy on stage. This
way we can get a picture of the economic status and complex financing of the institution: aristocratic
Key Words patronage, donations from the local economic elite, support from the city and partial state support
ITI, expert networks, cultural Cold War, globalization, third world, Developing Theatre, East & West were all present at the end of the century. But most importantly, at the same time when the local
Germany aristocracy, the historical patrons, presented two tableaux vivantes as part of the celebrations, in
the “backstage” – the management – the most important issue was to reach total state support, the
nationalization of the theatre.

Key Words
economic history, centenary, finances, state support, patronage
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

786 787
 NS NS

Cory Tamler Leila Tayeb

Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance, The Graduate Center, CUNY Northwestern University

Cory Tamler is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a Leila Tayeb is a PhD candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University Evanston,
former Fulbright scholar Berlin, 2010-2011. She also makes collaborative and research-based performance work about IL, US. Her dissertation, “Sonic Upheavals: Music in Libya, 2011-2017,” is an ethnography of sound practices
place and space, teaches creative writing and performance, and translates from German and Serbo-Croatian into English. and political formations in post-Gaddafi Libya. She holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York Univer-
sity, an MA in International Affairs from the New School, and a BA in Politics from the University of California
at Santa Cruz.
Writing About Silence: The Grant Questionnaire as Dramaturg
Can we think of funding models as dramaturgical forces on artistic work? Recent writing both on what it Bousaadia’s House: Memories of Alterity in Libyan Performance
means to do dramaturgy and what it means to think dramaturgically tends to define dramaturgy as a practice History
that is speculative rather than prescriptive, that is irreducibly a process—in other words, its tone is question-
ing. Project-based models of funding require artists to narrate their work while it’s still in progress and to A children’s call-and-response in 1940s Benghazi led its singers and listeners on a search without
extrapolate its end result, often long before they’ve begun to make the work. Grant applications ask pointed end: “Where is Bousaadia’s house?” “Just go a little more forward” [wain 7osh bousa3dia? gaddam
questions that try to expose the heart of the proposed piece, in a voice not unlike the removed, questioning lagaddama shwaya]. Moving in a group as they followed the repeated instructions, kids stepped
stance adopted by many contemporary dramaturgs. forward in rhythm, snaking through the streets around their own houses. Oral histories of the time
  report that sometimes Bousaadia himself would show up, a dark-skinned man with a large round
Remembering that to practice dramaturgy is so frequently described in terms of asking questions, this paper drum or smaller percussive instruments, singing in a language these Arabic-speaking children did not
looks at grant questionnaires themselves as more than passive information receptors and transmitters. Artists understand. In the proposed work, I take the figure of Bousaadia, performed in varying iterations
and grantmakers alike often claim that applying for a grant is worthwhile even if your project is not selected throughout Libya and Tunisia, as an entry point through which to approach questions of alterity in
for funding because it forces you to make decisions about your project. I analyze U.S. American grant ques- and around the northern coast of Africa during and after Italian, French, and British colonialism.
tionnaires as texts to ask what kinds of decisions they force artists to make and what potential kinds of artistic Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, and in conversation with scholars of the Stambeli
practice get edited out by the dramaturgy of funders. Understanding the process of applying for a grant as a tradition in Tunisia, I construct a history of performance in Libya that aims to illuminate shifting
dramaturgical process that shapes the work is the first step towards identifying how dramaturgical thinking discourses and embodiments of difference under shifting regimes of governance and shifting con-
could be applied to improve the relationship between the grant and the work. figurations of white supremacy. To build this history, I start with recent references to the Bousaadiya
performance tradition in Libyan popular culture, in which performances of local pride are linked with
Key Words childhood memories of Bousaadiya. From there I trace backwards through an archive of colonial
Terayama Shuji, skinship, public performance, public, social codes, Japanese theatre, dramaturgy photographs, following the excavating work of Malek Alloula, to uncover both performance traces
and racializing frameworks. What work does the continued collective memory of these performanc-
es do in Libyan cultural politics? How are the notions of difference present in these performance
traditions informed and transformed by globally hegemonic forms of racialization and normativity?
In my analysis I draw on Joseph Roach’s work on memory and racialized performance, as well as Ann
Stoler’s approach to ongoing imperial ruination.

Key Words
alterity, Libya, performance history
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

788 789
 NS NS

Isabel Thaler Rubkwan Thammaboosadee

State University of Campinas – Brazil University of Warwick

Isabel Thaler is a PhD student of Performing Arts at the State University of Campinas – Brazil since March 2017. Rubkwan Thammaboosadee is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Theatre and Performance Studies at
Her PhD research is investigating the Theatre of the Oppressed. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies University of Warwick, UK. After she earned the master degree in MA Performance, Culture and Context from
of the University of Leipzig – Germany and a Master of Arts in Cultural Education/ Cultural Management of the University of Leeds, Rubkwan returned to Thailand and worked as a full-time lecturer and playwright in the
University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein – Germany. In between the Bachelor and the Master studies, she Department of Performing Arts, Bangkok University from 2013-2015. She was in charge of undergraduate
worked for one year in the cultural department of the Goethe-Centre Kampala, Uganda. During her academic courses such as playwriting and drama and. She wrote and directed plays combining frameworks from across
formation, she conducted various theatrical and intercultural projects in Germany, Uganda and Brazil. disciplines to reveal a human relationship in everyday life as a production of the society. The title of her current
PhD thesis is “Performing Happiness in Neoliberal Thailand: Performances of Happiness in the Everyday Life of
Precariats in Bangkok”. Using an ethnography approach, she is exploring how happiness is performed by urban
workers who live among uncertainties and vulnerabilities in terms of political and socio-economic circum-
The Theatre of the Oppressed and participation in public space stances in Thailand. The circle of her research on performance studies extensively covers various areas includ-
ing everyday life, happiness, consumption, social media, cultural studies, social sciences, and urban studies.
The presentation aims to engage with the aspect of participation and active involvement of the
spectator in scenic events with reference to the Theatre of the Oppressed. Conceived in difficult po-
litical times in Brazil. its initiator Augusto Boal forced to go into exile, the Theatre of the Oppressed
Cold Neon Lights and Nostalgia for Home: Urban Alienation
is clearly linked to political questions. On that basis, the paper will discuss the possibility of the
transmission of the aspect of participation in the artistic space to the public sphere. To contextual- of Thai Immigrants in Neoliberal Bangkok Performed in Thai
ize the public sphere and civil society the paper would refer to Hannah Arendt’s, reference to the Country Music
democratisation of the citizen. In addition to this, I will investigate the theme of participatory art, as
formulated by Claire Bishop, and its relation to the Theatre of the Oppressed in the contemporary Due to the rapid urbanisation of Bangkok in the 1980s, there has been a massive migration from
context. In his last book “Aesthetics of the Oppressed”, Boal elaborates ideas about the citizen-artist, the countryside into the city. Moving to Bangkok became a norm for poor farmers who wish to pur-
who has to reconquer his and her own aesthetics, through the three most powerful means of com- sue their dreams and improve their quality of life. This paper explores how Thai country music or
munication: sound, image and word and in this regard I would argue how these provide support and ‘Pleng Looktoong’ performs immigrants’ urban alienation through identities, displacement and nos-
artistic resources for the citizen, designated to the role of spectatorship in the spectacle of modern talgia for their beautiful hometown. This paper also discusses how the lyrics of Thai country music
society offering him/her a chance of active participation in public space. performs immigrants’ urban alienation regarding the external relationship such as spatial environ-
ment, community and economic status and also the internal relationship including self-respect and
Key Words self-actualisation. Whereas most of the Thai urban mass music emphasises about a life’s struggle
Theatre of the Oppressed, participation, theatre and politics and encourages audiences that hopes and dreams are waiting for them at the end of the tunnel,
Thai country music is rather more realistic about the unpleasant reality and hopeless dreams. Bang-
kok, in most of the country music, is often referred to as a stage or a theatre filled with a concrete
jungle, neon lights, superficial life and cold-hearted people where the immigrants have to perform a
‘striving role’ in order to survive. On the other hand, in the music, immigrants’ hometown is referred
to as nature, warmth and love. Although there is a significant number of immigrants who have been
working and struggling in Bangkok, the socio-economic and political conditions in Thailand have
restricted their rights to challenge the status quo. On the account of the insufficient support from
the state and labour unions, Thai country music thus plays a vital role in not only emotionally con-
necting immigrants and expressing their feelings but also pacifying them to remain in the system
submissively.

Key Words
Urban, Alienation, Displacement, Immigration, Music, Nostalgia, Thailand
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

790 791
 NS NS

Ruba Totah Abbie Trott

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz University of Melbourne

PhD Researcher, Transnational Social Support Training Group ”, Mainz, Germany, since Oct 2016, focusing on An experienced theatre and performance stage and production manager across community theatre, circus
‘Syrian Artists Experiencing Refuge in Europe’. Holder of a B.A in English Literature and Translation, and an M.A and multimedia performance Abbie Victoria Trott is a Theatre Studies PhD candidate at the University of Mel-
on Gender and Development from Birzeit University-Palestine, 2013, focusing on Performing Art and Social bourne. She is undertaking a longitudinal theatre reception study with young regional audiences to examine
Change in relation to Religiosity, Class and Sexuality. 10 years of programs management experience in Child the impact of participatory media on their experience of contemporary theatre. Abbie competed her Masters
Culture and Education, using performance as the main promoter for expression. of Philosophy in Theatre Studies at the University of Queensland in 2016 where she researched co-presence
in multimedia performance.
From Subjective to Hybrid: Syrian Performance in the Diaspora
Distributed Meaning: Hungry Ghosts and Meaning in Transition
Since the beginning of the Syrian Refugee crisis, Syrian artists arriving in Europe seek professional
opportunities as ways for new beginnings where they can invest in previous experiences and reflect Hungry Ghosts (2018) – intended for 15 to 18-year-old audiences – traces the Malaysian Airlines
on identity issues related to their Diaspora. The European theatre society and formal institutions, MH370 disaster, Malaysian government corruption, and ‘2’, a young Malaysian migrating to Mel-
on their part, seek potential for cooperation and integration whether by targeting professional or bourne. Postdramatic in form, Hungry Ghosts examines objects and bodies – after the aeroplane’s
amateur Syrian performers. Theatre by and about Syrians is increasing in Europe as a result of these disappearance – in a state of constant transition: meaning-making becomes an act of translation. If
efforts and a hybrid art is emerging from this interconnection, bringing the subjective into a global we accept that meaning is central to young audiences’ engagement (Eleonora Belfiore and Olivier
perspective. This paper focuses on productions and biographies of 3 Syrian theatre-makers in the Bennett 2007, 225-275), and primarily determined by personal beliefs and experiences (Matt Omas-
Diaspora, as part of a transnational group directly connected to European cultural Institutions. It ta 2011, 49), what happens to performance when the intended meaning is understood differently?
examines their subjectivities, in view of Diener’s understanding of subjectivity, as expressed in the Here I critically analyse data collected from young audiences and theatre artists about the premiere
period before displacement and in the current period. Inspired by the definition of performativity by season in Melbourne and subsequent regional tour of Hungry Ghosts. Using ‘transition’ as a lens
Worthen and Reinelt, this paper argues that the social, political and economic processes around and I investigate how young audience members’ collective understanding of the work was refracted
within the doing of theatre include cooperation processes and relations pertaining to the subjective through the meaning generated by the writing, direction, design and dramaturgy of Hungry Ghosts
motivations of artists and emerging on a day-to-day basis, but are influenced by the overall displace- in combination with social and participatory media which surrounded the production. I propose
ment experience. Subjectivities of artists are explained beyond the postmodern in theatre studies, that any emergent divergences between the theatre artists intentions, and what is understood by
where reality is present and performed by its encounters. Theatre on the Syrian refugee crisis be- the young audience engender a richer, deeper understanding of theatrical meaning as a collectively
comes a site of encounter and an experience where artists are a real witness of, and performers distributed, and developed, experience for young audiences.
about the crisis.The performativity of the hybrid productions by Syrian artists in the diaspora com-
bines urgency and excitement while operating realities with open presentation of these realities. Key Words
Based on Brah’s concept of the hybrid production as a microcosm of a diaspora space, performing Youth, Audience, Meaning-Making, Digital, Regional
the subjective influences public spaces in Europe where representations related to race, religion,
and integration are discussed.

Key Words
Performativity, subjectivity, Transnational Communities, Hybridity, Theatre, Refugee Crisis.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

792 793
 NS NS

Argyro Tsampazi Ante Ursić

Queens University Belfast UC Davis - Performance Studies Graduate Group

Argyro Tsampazi is a dance practitioner from Greece. She is currently completing a PhD in Dance at Queen’s Ante Ursić’s interest as a researcher in the domain of circus is in performances that offer possibilities to wid-
University in Belfast, after finishing her Masters in Choreography at Fontys University in The Netherlands. She en the perception of circus, what and who it encompasses, and its politics. Currently, he is investigating the
also graduated from Aristotle’s University in Greece with Bachelor degrees in Dance Teaching and Theology. animal-human relationship in contemporary circus. Most of his career as a performer and choreographer has
She is currently engaged in research on a choreographic method investigating the applications of Orthodox taken place in the field of New Circus. Ante was educated at the circus schools in Brussels, Berlin, and Moscow.
Ascetic practices in the choreographic processes and dance performance. He holds a distinguished Master’s in Performance Studies from New York University. At the moment he is pur-
suing his PhD in Performance Studies at UC Davis.

Embodied Transitions: A Journey Through Ascetic Ritual and

On Clown Politics
Dance Movement
My proposal focuses on the red-nosed August clown. I find that Bataille’s notion of formlessness and
My proposed paper discusses the findings of a case study, in the form of a choreographic residency,
Kristeva’s concept of abjection intriguingly relate to and describe aspects of the August clown figure.
which occurred in October 2018 in Shawbrook, Ireland. Six dancers from Greece took part in the
Further, drawing on Rancière’s ideas on politics, I will disclose how the qualities of formlessness
study for the duration of a week and followed a unique schedule of prototypical dance practice in-
and abjection exemplified by the August clown are employed by activists to express discontent with
volving rituals from the Orthodox monastic tradition. The schedule included dance workshops and
political and cultural authorities through the act of pie-ing, referring to social activist such as Noël
improvisation leading to a performance as well as fasting, meditating, keeping silence and working
Godin Brussels, Biotic Baking Brigade San Francisco and Les Entartiste Montreal.  I suggest that The
in the night-time, amongst other Orthodox practices. It required the participants’ full devotion and
August clowns can turn anybody into a clown and anything into “matter out of place.” They do not
involved exhausting mental and physical work. After observing activity during the workshops and
leave their abject position, rather they destabilize hegemonic order, even if only momentarily, by
examining the interviews which followed the residency, it was made obvious that for most of the
exerting formlessness upon the other. I propose to call this clown politics. The August clown does not
participants a transition had happened in terms of their own mental and embodied states. The danc-
aim to change their abject place by executing logos, but rather aim to bring the other into a realm
ers described the residency as a very unique experience and to mention some of the expressions
phôné. Clown politics do maintain what is most fundamental in Rancière’s ideas: there is always a
that they used: ‘an esoteric journey which led to a journey of the body’, ‘…the time stopped and
disagreement between the parties involved a double wrong in play. Through political action, equal-
that gave me the opportunity to meet myself and the others’, ‘…being in a bubble where you forget
ity is expressed, and thereupon, a re-distribution of the sensible can occur. Further, clown politics
about your everyday life and meet yourself’. What are the effects of this practice on the participants’
are employed by political activists and artists to expose authorities to ridicule and humiliation. Even
lives as dance practitioners and human beings? Can this practice constitute a meaningful transfor-
though pie-ing activists do not wear oddly fitting clothes, a red clown nose, and oversized shoes, I
mation and embodied learning experience?
suggest that they are contemporary heirs of the August clown.
Key Words
Key Words
Dance, Embodiment, Orthodox Monastic Rituals, Esoteric Journey
Circus, Clown, Politics, Abjection, Formlessness, Political Activism, Political Performance
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

794 795
 NS NS

Henna Vainio Annelies Van Assche

University of Jyväskylä Ghent University

I am a first year doctoral student from Jyväskylä University, Finland. I graduated in June 2016 with excellent Performance studies scholar Annelies Van Assche is connected with research groups S:PAM Ghent University
qualifications. My major is philosophy, so my academic interests are theoretical, but I am very keen on inter- and CeSO KU Leuven since 2014. In her FWO-funded research project, she studies the working conditions of
disciplinary and more practical ways to approach the theatre. I have also studied theatre research as my minor. contemporary dance artists in Brussels and Berlin. Before, she worked as a production manager at P.A.R.T.S,
The main theme of my dissertation is the possibility of tragedy in our days from the viewpoint of the theory the contemporary dance school directed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in Brussels.
by Friedrich Hölderlin. If I have to summarise the research question very simply, it would be: is tragedy as a
theatrical form still possible today?

Chasing Your Own Tail: on Artists and Projects

The Unsolved Conflict – About The Possibility of Tragedy based on In Temporaries 2012, contemporary dance artist Igor Koruga talks about the working conditions
Friedrich Hölderlins Theory of artists and how these shape artists’ lives. He concludes that ‘it comes down to this everlasting
accelerating loop of chasing a promising future that might never come’. This phrase is reminiscent
The presentation focuses on the main research questions of my future dissertation about the possi- of Wile E. Coyote who keeps chasing the Roadrunner, while everyone knows he will never catch it.
bility of tragedy in our days. The topic combines interdisciplinarily philosophy of art, theatre research Coyote’s chase stands for the ever-unsuccessful attempt to achieve something. In the project-based
and literature, and contributes to the long philosophical debate on the death of tragedy. It is also performing arts sector, many artists never seem to make ends meet despite being resourceful and
part of the greater debates on antique and modern, as well as modern and postmodern. My main motivated. Within my contribution, I will especially focus on the artist’s chase, which has a threefold
interest lies in the theory of tragedy by the poet-philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin 1770-1843: How his dimension: firstly, project-based artists are continually chasing money in order to pursue their art
theory, especially about dramaturgy, differs from the Aristotelian tradition? Are there any common making, in the first place, and to earn a living, in the second place. Additionally, artists are chasing
features in the dramaturgies of Hölderlin and the late modern theatre? Is it still meaningful, his idea programmers, who facilitate the chase after money because the ball is in their court to offer studio
that the loss of tragedy is tragic? Some of Hölderlin’s ideas are surprisingly modern. Hölderlin states space, to provide co-production budgets, and to present creations. My fieldwork has exposed the
that it is impossible to imitate antique, so the concept of tragedy has a different meaning in mod- often-vain efforts artists make in endless networking and self-promotion. Lastly, project work goes
ern culture: for him, the loss of tragic is characteristically tragic for modern. According to Philippe hand in hand with paperwork and much time is spent chasing papers concerning administration,
Lacoue-Labarthe, Hölderlin’s theory is based on irreconcilable or unsolved confrontation or conflict. finances, legality, or unemployment benefits. Through dissecting this three-dimensional chase and
Unlike Aristotelian tragedy that emphasizes whole and complete action, Hölderlin leaves the ex- providing an empirically grounded description, I aim to illustrate how the prevalent project system
tremely attuned conflict somehow unfinished. Instead of pure linearity the action is based on the keeps artists poor.
balance that arises, for instance, from caesura, and alternation between ambivalent dialogue and
choir. My hypothesis is that Hölderlin’s theory can give tragedy a chance even today, or at least we Key Words
can ask in his spirit, what is tragic for us. project, funding system, contemporary dance, chase

Key Words
tragedy dramaturgy Hölderlin, Friedrich
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

796 797
 NS NS

Tim Vergeer Abhimanyu Vinayakumar

Universiteit Leiden University of Hyderabad

Currently: PhD Candidate at Leiden University 2016-2017: Master of Arts Dutch Studies summa cum laude Abhimanyu Vinayakumar is an emerging young Director who made his debut in theatre when he was eight
2014-2016: Research Master of Arts Literary Studies cum laude 2011-2014: Bachelor of Arts Dutch Studies. years old, through the children’s plays of Rangachethana, Thrissur. Later he trained in Kathakali in Kerala Ka-
lamandalam. Following completion of his Post Graduate studies in Theatre Design & Direction from the Uni-
versity of Hyderabad, he has directed five plays so far, Marimankanni, The Lover Inside, Yamadoothu: After
the Death of Othello, a Malayalam adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello and No.14 Walkthrough, a
Playing with Passions: Twice Two Parallel Adaptations of Spanish site-specific performance based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, ‘Trail of Your Blood in the Snow. His
Comedias in Flanders and the Netherlands between 1660-1670 latest directorial venture is Maroon – a multimedia performance also based on a short story by Marquez. The
performances Marimankanni and Yamadoothu were selected for the Bharat Rang Mahotsav in 2012 and 2013;
In the seventeenth-century Low Countries, audiences did not attend native plays written by Dutch Yamadoothu: After the Death of Othello was also performed at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala
and Flemish playwrights as much as plays translated and adapted from Spanish. According to con- ITFOK-2013, and the National Theatre Festival Of Kerala. He is also the Director of Janabheri National Theatre
Festival, a national theatre festival dedicated exclusively to directors below the age of 40. Presently he is a
temporary critics, the so-called comedias nuevas were emotionally more exciting. This begs the
research scholar at the University of Hyderabad Theatre Arts, and has obtained a Junior Research Fellowship
question: In which sense were Spanish plays better suited to excite the spectator? From transfer
from the University Grants Commission.
studies, we know that cultural transfer is always a reconstruction of the receiving culture. In this
paper, I discuss the translation and adaptation of Pedro de Calderón’s El mayor encanto amor (1637)
as the Flemish play Ulysses in ’t eylandt van Circe (1668) by the playwright Claude de Grieck and as
the Dutch play De toveres Circe (1670) by Adriaan de Leeuw. This case study can tell us how a Spanish Deconstructing the text and theatrical space – Analyzing
play was emotionally appropriated in the Flemish and the Dutch theatre traditions, and how Spanish the politics in aesthetics
culture was acculturated in the Low Countries accordingly.
Non-proscenium performances generally suggest the need to move in a very different dimension
Key Words rather than a mere realistic approach. Through the process of creating a varied spectacle, these per-
cultural transfer Spain Low Countries emotional cultures adaptations formances deny the conventional method of the visualization of the absence. (Proscenium perfor-
mances more or less intend to visualize objects or events which are absent on stage or are nowhere
connected with reality. We should also see that whether such linear representations are influencing
the spectator any longer). Therefore it is important to analyse the impact of such performances in
the contemporary era, and see whether they arouse any connection with the spectator any more.
In contrast, non-proscenium performances generate a method that can strongly influence the spec-
tators by means of a scenography which makes use of the ‘space’ currently available or by ‘going
with the present’. This is made possible by creating a materialistic scenic language through decon-
structing the text. Thus site- specific performances, created out of multiple interpretations, break
the conventional space and actions in theatre and hold the attention of the spectator. Creating a
site-specific performance, ‘No.14 Walkthrough’ in a two-storied house in Kerala, was a transforming
experience in terms of the of the performance language of theatre. The performance cleaved out
14 images from the short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: ‘Trail of Your Blood in the Snow,’ by mak-
ing use of each and every architectural aspect of the building. These performances that make use
of the five senses provide a novelty to performance dramaturgy, along with a conspicuous sensory
impact. Shouldn’t we replace the rhetorical political method with a novel version of Brecht’s ‘poli-
tics in aesthetics’ in contemporary performance? On the basis of the recent studies by Erika Fischer
Lichte about the alignment of text and performance in contemporary performances, this paper will
postulate the growth of theatre as an evolution from the act of viewing or hearing performance, to
a different way of experiencing theatre.
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

Key Words
Spectator, space, aesthetics, politics, text and performance

798 799
 NS NS

Christina Vollmert Surendra Wankhede

University of Cologne, Department of Media Culture & Theatre School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Christina is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media Culture & Theatre at the University of Cologne, where Surendra Wankhede is a student in the school of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is pursu-
she is also a research assistant at the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung theatre collection. In her disserta- ing his M.Phil/ PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies. He has been active as an actor, writer and director of
tion she examines industrial and commercial exhibitions, bourgeois festival culture and the representations of theatrical productions for the last 15 years. He has written three plays for children: Footpath (one of his most
community in the urban context of Frankfurt am Main. Her PhD project is affiliated to the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate significant productions), Apulaki, and Dineshcha Shodhat. He has been participating in theatre workshops
School for the Humanities Cologne. every year. He has also acted in the Bollywood Hindi film Singham Returns.

Location & Nation - Theatrical Representations of the Past Protest Expressions of the Oppressed: Ambedkarite Jalsa
in fin-de-siècle Frankfurt/Main.
Of all the diverse forms of art and theatrical expressions in India, there are very few that represent
As Benedict Anderson has shown, the sense of nationality - the personal feeling of belonging to the the historical, cultural and political search for belonging and identity of the oppressed majorities
nation - derives from imagined communities, bound together by cultural roots, religion and political commonly called Bahujans of Indian caste society. Kept out of the centers and sources of knowledge
dynasties. Considering the German Unification 1871, where 25 territories constituted the Kaiserre- and culture, their cultural work has been considered as a part of bonded labor and liturgical service.
ich, there seemed to be a need for a common cultural identity, since many unique traditions and But for first time in history, Bahujans began to articulate their desire for political and cultural emanci-
practices were carried over into that new entity. In my paper, I will analyze a municipal spectacle pation and a new identity with the beginning of Satyashodak Jalsa (Truth-seeking Assembly), a theat-
that addressed this need for identity through theatrical presentation: The urban festivity Altstäd- rical form as well as movement, established by Jyotirao Phule in mid-19th century colonial India. This
tisches Fest 1905, which tried to create a local identity via reenactments and pageants. It was also tradition was carried forward by many other artists of the oppressed community. It is in this context
an attempt at highlighting Frankfurt’s status within the German Empire. By analyzing the Festspiel that the Ambedkarite Jalsa, a musical folk theatre, was created and gradually developed with the
German term for a short play, written for a special event, I will investigate how the urban bourgeoisie emergence of the anti-caste movement led by the Indian politician and thinker Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
of Frankfurt undertook an invention of tradition Hobsbawm by using particular symbols, metaphors Jalsa is focused on a dialogue-based form which tries to build historical as well as cultural bridges
and identification figures. Furthermore, I am interested in the ways this social event itself, as well of identity and sense of belonging in a highly unstable modern Indian social milieu. The objective of
as the architectural space and the associated exhibitions, assumed , what I call, theatrical sensibility this paper is to bring to light the study of these forms and undo the historical negligence given to
and influenced cultural memory through its staged historicity. In this case study, I will examine the the study of this form. It shall analyze the ways these artistic forms challenged existing thoughts and
role of the Festspiel for the construction of community, national identity and a particular cultural traditions, and provided the teaching of new ideals to society. Such performances generate emo-
self-consciousness through theatrical representation.  Methodologically, my approach is rooted in tion, inspiration and enthusiasm needed for the community’s struggle of emantipation. This paper
theatre historiography influenced by New Historicism Greenblatt. My PhD thesis uses concepts of will analyze the political forms of emotion and how they are generated and manifested through this
theatricality and understands the 19th century as a theatrical era (Peter W. Marx). collective, political ritual. I will do this by using B.R. Ambedkar’s ideas of rationality and emotion with
which he developed his criticism of caste system of India.
Key Words
theatricality, city spectacle, historiography, festivity, national identity, community Key Words
Ambedker, Ambedkarite Jalsa, Marathi theatre, Satyashodhak Jalsa, Cultural invention
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

800 801
 NS NS

Lalitha Sindhuri Yarasuri Shuntaro Yoshida

University of Hyderabad Tokyo University of the Arts

Lalitha Sindhuri is one of the leading young Kuchipudi Dancers in India trained under Dr. Vedantam Satya Shuntaro YOSHIDA is currently a Ph.D. student at Tokyo University of the Arts and Research Fellowship for
Narasimha Sastry. Having completed her BTECH in Computer Science and Masters in Dance, she is currently Young Scientists of Japan Society for the Promotion of Scientists. He was born in Japan in 1989. He obtained
pursuing her PhD in Dance at Hyderabad Central University under the supervision of Prof. Aruna Bhikshu. She two master degrees in the Department of Dance at Paris 8 University from 2014 to 2016 and in the Depart-
is the recipient of awards like Balashree National Award from Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, Outstanding Young Person ment of Music at Tokyo University of the Arts from 2012 to 2016. As part of his Ph.D. studies, he is selected
Award, JCI, Priya Lasya 3E Enchanting , Educating and Empowering Award, Young Woman Achiever Award. for a one-year research project at New York University from 2018. His thesis focuses on “Anonymity in Con-
Having about 850 performances to her credit, she has been selected to the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Doc- temporary Dance History”. His master’s thesis is “Flash Mob Dance, Transformation of Space: Configuration
toral Research Fellowship 2017-18 to pursue a part of her Research at Barnard College, New York City under and Perception of Spectators” at Paris 8 University and “The Chance of Videodance: Cases of Choreography,
the guidance of Dr. Uttara Asha Coorlawala. Environment and Spectators” at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Universality vs. specificity: Impact of Cross-Cultural Influences Flash Mob Dance, the anonymity of contemporary dance
on Indian Dance
Since the early 2000s, flash mobs have been observed throughout the world, and video recordings
The need to showcase the Indian tradition and culture to the world became a priority during the of different types of flash mobs are easily found online. One interesting aspect of flash mob dance is
post-colonial era. The approach of Traditional Indian dancers in reconstructing the dance forms to the variety of ways that they are choreographed, which partly accounts for a large number of flash
fit in the status of ‘Classical’ was unique. It was unique because they adapted the Latin Term ‘Clas- mob videos. The way these videos are organized is based on choreography, however, the processes
sical’ and derived their definition of this term. Google gives the translation for this term in Hindi as of choreography in flash mob dance are not clearly understood, and there are few studies on the
“Shaastriya” or that which follows the Shaastra. Hence, the traditional Indian dances revisited the topic. This paper describes flash mob dance in contemporary dance history, extending to choreogra-
ancient treatises like Natya Shaastra to earn themselves a ‘classical’ status along with following the phy processes and theatrical performance. I present the flash mobs’ history, which has inspired my
‘Western’ standards to fit in the proscenium stage. This paper explains the situation of post-colonial research, and illustrates the concept of mobilization. In flash mob dance processes, we suggest the
face of traditional Indian dance forms (major focus on Bharatnatyam and how it became a model to choreographer cannot have the right to create and distribute media among anonymous persons. I
all other classical forms). The paper speaks about how the dance form got renovated/being reno- then present a categorization of statuses relating to the space used in flash mob dance: 1 projector,
vated to appeal to the global audience concerning subtlety, body aesthetics, choreography on one 2 participants, 3 accomplices, 4 passersby, and 5 camera persons. We show the anonymous space’s
side and adopting new contexts and new stories, etc on the other side. The paper concludes with the various roles in creating spectator participation and conflicts with dance in the public area. Finally,
analysis of how the dance form worked/ is working to adapt Universal elements as well as retaining as cases studies, I describe a structure and representation of the flash mob Dominique Bagouet
the specificity of the style by validating any new additions to the form with the ancient treatises. 2012, and a flash mob improvised at Nuit Blanche 2014 in France. This allows me to prove a ten-
dency toward general homogeneous choreographers, audiences, and spectators, who I define as
Key Words a public gathering of complete strangers, who perform a pointless act and then disperse. They are
classical, traditional, cross-cultural influence Kuchipudi Bharatanatyam Universality Specificity organized via the Internet or Mobile phones.This study employs Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the “car-
Indian nivalesque” as its theatrical framework to examine how anonymous spectators participate equally
in flash mob dance in urban space. It also explores whether these case studies appear as a way of
resistance to neoliberalism.

Key Words
Anonymity, mobilization, participation
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

802 803
 NS NS

Ana Zanandréa
UFRGS - Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Theatre director and PhD student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul with research focus in theatre
direction and creative process. Master in Performing Art Studies 2012 from the University of Nice- Sophia
Antipolis and the Free University of Brussels European Commission scholarship. Bachelor in Theatre Direction
2009 by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Ana Paula was also a performing arts special student for
half year in Portugal at the Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro University, financed by the Santander Bank grant.
Between 2014 and 2016 she lecturer theatre direction and acting at the Federal University of Rio Grande do
Sul”. Her most important works as theatre director are “Concentração” 2015 and the trilogy “O País de Helena”
2009.

Actors’ direction: bodies in process

The theatrical creative processes are constituted by fine webs of professional and social interac-
tions. This domain of intertwined risks and trials requires a complete corporal engagement of all
participants involved in the artistic project. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the
implications of the director’s body on the creative process. In this sense, this study presents a prac-
tise-led research conducted by the researcher in her role as director. Material was collected from
the rehearsals of “Concentração”, a play created and restaged in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The
collected information, in form of videos, pictures, handbooks and interviews, was analysed accord-
ing to concepts of Sophie Proust to better understand the effects of the director’s spatial position in
the rehearsal room, the manner of listening and observing and the “showing” practice in the actor’s
direction process. Additionally, the relationships amongst the actors and the director and between
the researcher and the “object of study” are aligned and discussed. The preliminary results reinforce
the importance of the theatre director’s body in the process of actors’ direction beyond the audi-
ence arrival and underline that the director’s body remains apparitional during the performance
even though its absence on stage.

Key Words
Actors’ direction. Director. Staging. Creative process. Theatre director’s body
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

804 805
 Organizers Partners

УСТАНОВА КУЛТУРЕ
ВУК СТЕФАНОВИЋ КАРАЏИЋ

Embassy of the Republic of Korea Magyarország Nagykövetsége

Belgrád

Media partners

The Congress is supported by

Friends and sponsors

Exceptional partners
IFTR 2018 Belgrade

IFTR 2018 Belgrade

806 807
 IFTR 2018 Belgrade

808