CFP: The "Exotic" Body in 19th-century British Drama (5/25/2014; 9/25-26/2014)

The ‘Exotic’ Body in 19th-century British Drama

University of Oxford

Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford

Funded under the 2011 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships scheme, European Commission

September 25-26, 2014

Deadline: May 25, 2014

Convenor: Dr Tiziana Morosetti (Oxford)

Confirmed speakers:

Professor Ross Forman (Warwick), Dr Peter Yeandle (Manchester),

Dr Hazel Waters (Institute of Race Relations, London)

Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the representation of the Other on the 19^th-century British stage, with key studies such as Acts of Supremacy: The British Empire and the Stage, 1790-1930 (Bratton et al. 1991), The Orient on the Victorian Stage (Ziter 2003), Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Brooks 2006), Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character (Waters 2007), Nineteenth-Century Theatre and the Imperial Encounter (Gould 2011), China and the Victorian Imagination: Empires Entwined (Forman 2013). Building on these, the conference aims at exploring the concept, politics, and aesthetic features of the ‘exotic’ body on stage, be it the actual body of the actor/actress as s/he performs in genres such as the ‘Oriental’ extravaganza, or the fictional, ‘picturesque’ bodies they bring on stage. A term that in itself needs interrogation, the ‘exotic’ will therefore be discussed addressing the visual features that characterize the construction and representation of the Other in 19^th-century British drama, as well as the material conditions, and techniques that accompany the ‘exotic’ on stage on the cultural and political background of imperial Britain.

One of the dissemination activities for the two-year project ‘The Representation of the “Exotic” Body in 19th-century English Drama’ (REBED), funded under the 2011 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships scheme, the conference also hopes to function as a site for discussing the state of the art on the ‘exotic’ in the theatrical cultures of both Romantic and Victorian Britain; contributions on ongoing research and/or recently completed projects are therefore particularly encouraged.

Although attention will be paid mostly to the non-European Other, papers addressing a European ‘exotic’ are also welcome. Topics include the following: 

Definitions of ‘exotic’:

• Is the non-European Other on stage really ‘exotic’?
• Are any genres more ‘exotic’ (or more liable to convey ‘exotic’ stereotypes) than others?
• Do different dramatis personæ and/or settings convey different degrees of ‘otherness’?
• Can the British on stage be ‘exotic’, and, if so, to what extent?
• Is the spectacular on stage itself ‘exotic’?

Staging the ‘exotic’ body:

• How are costumes, make-up, scenery, movements employed to construct the ‘exotic’?
• Are any visual features more recurrent than others?
• To what extent is the visual representation of the ‘exotic’ body historically accurate?
• How does music contribute to the staging of the Other?
• Who embodies the ‘exotic’? Is the acting career informed by bringing the Other on stage?
• Who were the audiences? Did their composition have an impact on the performance of the ‘exotic’?
• Are any experiences abroad relevant to how managers staged the Other in Britain?
• In what ways were representations of the ‘exotic’ body informed by venues?
• The Other on the London stage and the provinces

Cultural and political backgrounds:

• To what extent did audiences’ expectations affect theatrical representations of the Other?
• In what ways do class, gender, race inform the acting and managing of ‘exotic’ pieces?
• To what extent did scientific and anthropological accounts inform theatrical portraits of the Other?
• Were illustrations of (European and/or) non-European countries informed by theatre?
• In what ways have political narratives influenced (or been influenced by) the ‘exotic’ on stage?
• Has the legal frame for the theatre influenced the staging of the Other?
• Visual points of contact between popular entertainment and theatrical representations of the Other

The travelling ‘exotic’:

• How do texts such as Arabian Nights, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Mazeppa ‘travel’ between dramatic and non-dramatic genres?
• Survival of a Romantic ‘exotic’ in the Victorian staging of the Other;
• Is Othello on the Romantic and Victorian stage ‘exotic’?
• How do translations/adaptations from other languages contribute to the construction of the Other on the British stage? Can we define a British specificity when it comes to the ‘exotic’?
• Has the theatrical representation of the ‘exotic’ in Britain had an impact on non-British stages?

The legacy of 19^th-century ‘exotic’ body:

• Contemporary plays/performances addressing the Other on the 19^th-century British stage (e.g. Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet)
• The ‘exotic’ body on the British stage in a diachronic perspective
• The non-European Other in the 20^th- and 21^st-century Christmas pantomime

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short bio should be sent to rebedconference@gmail.com by May 25, 2014. Speakers whose abstracts have been accepted will be notified by June 15.

CFP: RAPPT "Economies of Amateur Performance" (3/7/2104; 6/28-29/2014)

RAPPT Inaugural Conference

London

June 28-29, 2014

Deadline: March 7, 2014

RAPPT (Research into Amateur Performance and Private Theatricals) is an international interdisciplinary network of researchers working on amateur performance and private theatricals (rappt.org)

"Paying the Piper: Economies of Amateur Performance"

The organization seeks proposals for presentations to be given at RAPPT’s inaugural conference, which will take place in London from June 28-29, 2014. This conference is inspired by the Pic Nic Society, arguably the first amateur dramatic society in England. This group, which performed in the Tottenham Street Theatre, London, only survived for a few years at the turn of the nineteenth century; it was motivated by a desire for cooperative endeavour, mutual pleasure, and a fair amount of elitism. Although in British English a picnic is now usually an informal meal eaten out of doors, it used to mean something like a potluck supper in American English, that is, a meal to which everyone brings a dish.  The Pic Nic journal explained in 1803, ‘The title of Pic Nic, given to this Paper, is used in the sense applied to it by a neighbouring Nation, signifying a Repast supplied by Contribution; and to this Miscellany all persons of genius and talent are invited to contribute.” It was ridiculed for a variety of reasons, as depicted in James Gillray’s famous etching, “Blowing up the Pic Nics.”

This conference will showcase the results of two RAPPT projects currently underway: 1) a collaboratively curated digital archive of the Pic Nic Society, which will serve as a digital dramaturgy site for 2) an amateur production of one of the plays that members of the society performed at the Tottenham Street Theatre. The committee’s goal is to situate this research into conversations about the economies of non-professional performance across periods and locations. In drafty church halls and lavish ballrooms, on board ships, in parlours and in purpose built spaces, lovers of the performing arts have long collaborated creatively without the sanction of academic or professional recognition. Yet not-for-profit performance still has a cost. The extravagance of the Earl of Barrymore’s theatricals at Wargrave practically bankrupted him and, as the Pic Nic controversy demonstrates, the fashion for private performance was, at the very least, perceived as a financial threat to London’s patent theaters.

The organizers invite papers on any aspect of non-professional performance, but particularly those that investigate:

• The cost and funding of amateur performance;
• The role of commercial publishers and theatrical suppliers in feeding the craze for amateur theatricals;
• The involvement of professional performers in amateur productions;
• Rivalries and tensions between professionals and amateurs;
• amateur performance in the context of a funding crisis in the humanities

Please submit proposals of 250-500 words electronically (doc or pdf) by March 7, 2014 to rappt2014@gmail.com. Queries and statements of interest welcome to the conference address or individually to conference organizers Judith Hawley (j.hawley@rhul.ac.uk) and Mary Isbell (mary.isbell@yale.edu) Please include with your proposal:

• Name and Affiliation
• Email Address
• Postal Address
• Telephone Number
• A/V Requirements

Performance: University of Hertfordshire "Platform Performances: The Pacifist by John Brandon & Conscientious Objector or Coward?: The Story of Arthur Waterman (7/17/2013)

Victorianists and theatre historians in London next week are very welcome to join us for performances of two 1-act First World War plays:  The Pacifist by John Brandon (1918) and Conscientious Objector or Coward?: The Story of Arthur Waterman (2013).  

“From a young female doctor's suspicions that her fiancée is a spy, to the unpatriotic musings of a seemingly respectable government official amidst the Zeppelin bombings on London, to the real-life experiences of a conscientious objector in war-time Hertfordshire, these are the playing out of the fears on the Home Front that our ancestors experienced.”

The Brandon play, first seen at the Brixton Empress in 1918, has obvious antecedents in late-Victorian melodrama - though up-dated to take account of the war-time situation.

The plays, performed by a professional cast, take place in central London at the Swedenborg Institute in Bloomsbury on Wednesday 17 July at 7:15 pm (Nearest tube: Holborn/Tottenham Court Road).

Admission is free and refreshments will be served. More details can be found at the Hertfordshire University website or please do contact me if you’d like to know more.

Event: The Santa Fe Opera Presents "Oscar Wilde: Celebrity or Notoriety" (7/25-28/2013)

In preparation for the world premiere of Theodore Morrison’s production of Oscar: The Love that Dared (an opera based on the life and loves of Oscar Wilde) the Santa Fe Opera will be hosting a symposium on Wilde.

Merlin Holland, biographer, editor, and only grandchild of Wilde will give the keynote address on Thursday, July 25 to kick-off the symposium. The next few days will include a variety of events, including papers, staged readings, round table discussion, all leading up to the world premiere.

Registration is $85. For more information contact Chad.Thomas@uah.edu or call 505-946-2417.

For more on Morrison’s production see the Santa Fe Opera’s page on: http://www.santafeopera.org/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=5682

Registration open: Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage (7/11-14/2012)

Registration is now open for the major international conference ‘Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage’ (to be held in the Storey Institute, Lancaster, 11-14 July 2012).

Please visit the website for further information (https://sites.google.com/site/victorianpantomime/2012-conference).

The full programme is available for download from the website. A list of confirmed panels and speakers is to be found at the base of this email. You’ll see an excellent line up of speakers from across the UK, North America and Australia. John MacKenzie will provide the keynote lecture: ‘All the Empire’s a Stage: the Context and Performance of Imperialism’. (Emeritus of Lancaster, Edinburgh etc). He is author of Propaganda and Empire, Imperialism and Popular Culture and series editor of Manchester University Press’ Studies in Imperialism. Jane Pritchard (Victoria and Albert Museum) will deliver a special session which includes the exhibition of early film footage highlighting dance practice. The conference includes papers from academics working in the fields of theatre history/performance studies, Victorian literature, cultural history and museum studies. Cengage is sponsoring a special session on digital archives and Victorian Studies.

Event: Shared Visions: Art, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (2/11/2012)

Shared Visions:
Art, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Saturday 11th February 2012, 9.30am to 6.00pm (Registration from 9.00 am)

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, Millburn House, Warwick University

This one-day conference, held in conjunction with Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, will explore the connections between art, theatre, and visual culture in the nineteenth century. During this period, the ‘art of seeing’ challenged the traditional dominance of the written word. Vision, previously denigrated as deceptive, became considered as a universal language, accessible to all, and more authentic than text. Popular theatre, especially melodrama, led the way in exploring the possibilities of the new visuality. This conference will explore the visual culture of theatre and exchanges between theatre and the visual arts.

Conference fee: £20 (£10 for postgraduate students)
Tea and coffee, sandwich lunch, and an evening wine reception (6.00pm–7.30 pm) are all included.

Registration is now open: www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/staff/jim_davis/sharedvisions.

Although the registration fee may be paid on the day of the conference, we would be grateful if delegates would register in advance, preferably by the 8th February, so that we have a sense of the numbers intended for catering purposes.

For further information on the conference, please visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/staff/jim_davis/sharedvisions/, or contact Jim Davis: Jim.Davis@Warwick.ac.uk, or Patricia Smyth:patricia.smyth@nottingham.ac.uk.

Directions: The department is located in Milburn House located in the University Science Park.  It is about 10 minutes walk from the main campus by footpath, but there is no direct road access from the campus itself. The closest railway station is Coventry. If you are arriving by train, either take a cab to Milburn House directly or take a bus to main campus and walk. If you are driving, you will need to access Milburn House via Lynchgate Rd and the Science Park, as shown on the campus map. There are parking spaces for visitors at the front of the building. The main entrance to the building is at the side, facing right. Campus maps may accessed via http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/visiting/maps.

Accommodation: For any delegate who requires accommodation on campus on Friday 10th or Saturday 11th, accommodation is currently available starting from £60 per night at Scarman House and Radcliffe House, which may be contacted throughreservations@warwick.ac.uk. Early booking is advisable.

Plenary Speaker: Shearer West, University of Oxford, ‘Benjamin Robert Haydon’s “Punch or May Day”’

Confirmed papers:

History and Narrative:

• Peter Cooke, University of Manchester, ‘Gustave Moreau: The Theatre, Theatricality, and Anti-Theatricality’
• Cathy Haill, Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘“Hold it! What a Picture!” - Art, Living Pictures and Poses Plastiques on the Nineteenth-Century Stage’
• Annabel Rutherford, York University, Toronto, ‘Drama in Art in Drama: The Interweaving of Visual Art and Theatre’

Stage Adaptation:

• Barbara Bell, Edinburgh Napier University, '“...taken from the original”: Word, Image and the Drive for Authenticity in Early Stagings of the Works of Sir Walter Scott’
• Karen Laird, University of Manchester, ‘Reconstructing J. Ware's “The Woman in White: A Drama in Three Acts” (1860)’
• Melissa Dickson, Kings College, London, ‘Visions of the Orient: Manufacturing the Arabian Nights on Early Nineteenth-Century London Stages’

The Art of Theatre: Lights, Costume, Scenery

• Veronica Isaac, Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘The “Art” of Costume in the Late Nineteenth Century: Highlights from the Wardrobe of “The Painter's Actress”’
• Janice Norwood, University of Hertfordshire, ‘Posing Questions: The Iconography of Two Female Theatrical Impresarios’
• Jane Pritchard, Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘The Iconography of the Ballet at the Alhambra, 1884 – 1912’

Religious Spectacle:

• Peter Yeandle, University of Lancaster, ‘Spectacles of Sin or Performances of Divine Grace? Seeing the Ballet Through Anglican Eyes, c. 1880 – 1900’
• Anjna Chouhan, University of Leicester, ‘Performing Religion in Shakespeare on the Late Victorian Stage'
• Leanne Groenveld, University of Regina, '“I felt as never before, under any sermon that I ever heard preached”: English and American Responses to, and Representations of, the Oberammergau Passion Play, 1840 – 1900’

Dramatizing the Environment:

• Viv Gardner, University of Manchester, ‘The Image of a Well-ordered city: Manchester Theatre Architecture, 1880 – 1910’
• Trish Reid, Kingston University, ‘Ah, my own village home before a palace”: Nostalgia and the Rural Idyll in Melodrama of the 1830s and 40s’
• Mary Jane Boland, University of Nottingham, ‘Through the Eyes of Others: Reassessing Audience Engagement with Joseph Peacock's Pattern Day at Glendalough’

Stage Spectacle:

• Hayley Bradley, University of Manchester, Delighting the Eye Rather than the Ear: The Triumvirate's Autumn Dramas at Drury Lane
• Jane Jordan, Kingston University, ‘From Popular Novel to “Sensational Equestrian Drama”: Late Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Adaptation for “an amusement loving public”’
• David Mayer, University of Manchester and Cassie Mayer, Independent Scholar, ‘Exit with Dead Horse’

Registration open: Shared Visions (2/11/2012)

Plenary Speaker: Professor Shearer West, Head of Humanities Division, University of Oxford

Saturday 11th February 2012
9.30am to 6pm

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, Millburn House, Warwick University

This one-day conference, held in conjunction with Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, will explore the connections between art, theatre, and visual culture in the nineteenth century. During this period, the 'art of seeing' challenged the traditional dominance of the written word. Vision, previously denigrated as deceptive, became considered as a universal language, accessible to all, and more authentic than text. Popular theatre, especially melodrama, led the way in exploring the possibilities of the new visuality. This conference will explore the visual culture of theatre and exchanges between theatre and the visual arts.

Panels will include: Stage Spectacle, History and Narrative, Dramatizing the Environment, Adaptation, The Image of the Actress, The Iconography of Dance, Religion and Ritual, and Violence.

Conference fee: £20 (£10 for postgraduate students)
Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided.

Registration is now open:

www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/staff/jim_davis/sharedvisions

For further information on the conference, please contact Patricia Smyth: patricia.smyth@nottingham.ac.uk

CFP: Reading Paratext: the Economies of 19th-Century Play Publishing (5/30/2011; 11/17-20/2011)

Working Session CFP “Reading Paratext: the Economies of 19th-Century Play Publishing"
American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR) conference 2011
Montreal, Quebec Canada
November 17 – 20, 2011
Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel

What does a play’s title page tell us about the business of theatre? How do publisher catalogues reveal economic and cultural change? What can we make of a playbook’s preliminary pages, the Dramatis Personae, production history and the like? This session explores how paratext, the “extra” printed matter around the dramatic text, can open new angles on cultural, material, and social contexts. It borrows the model of historical-structural scrutiny in Gerard Genette’s influential study, Paratexts, for the case of playscripts.

In this Working Session, participants will collaboratively analyze four types of paratext—title page, publisher catalogue, an advertisement for a non-textual product, and a list of characters. The mode we envision is collective methodological experiment, offering preliminary contemplation from new samples rather than conclusions drawn from long-term projects. We seek participants who have incorporated paratext in their research, and who are prepared to offer comments, both prepared and off-the-cuff, about industrial-era intersections of publishing and theatre worlds. Specialization or expertise is not required, though ideally, participants would be familiar to some degree with both subjects—paratext (from print culture, book history, publishing history, or material text angles) and English theatre/performance/media history of the long nineteenth century.

The format is non-traditional, structured as a collective, analytic “show-and-tell” centered on four genres of paratext (a title-page, an ad, a catalogue page, and a dramatis personae list). Months before the conference, having agreed on four specimens, panelists will examine and prepare remarks about them. At the seminar, as the images are projected, participants will present initial “readings” of the samples—a “thick description,” observations, and questions—as the springboard for conversation among panelists and finally with the larger group (attendees).

Please send (1) a c.200-word description of your relevant work—uses of and questions about paratext, expertise/familiarity/interests in nineteenth-century theatre and play publishing; (2) if possible, a file-copy of some paratext used in your research; (3) a brief biography paragraph (affiliation, projects, and publications).

Deadline Monday 5/30.

Contact (enquiries welcome): Kate Wilson (PhD Candidate, Theatre, CUNY) Wilson.katec@gmail.com and Mary Isbell (PhD Candidate, English, University of Connecticut) mary.isbell@gmail.com


ASTR: http://www.astr.org/