European Theatre Perspectives

Exploring channels for cross-cultural engagement in performance

A symposium co-organized by Culture Hub (London, UK) and the Grotowski Institute (Wrocław, Poland), within the Theatre Olympics and European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 programmes.

BARBARA: Infopoint/Café/Culture, ul. Świdnicka 8c, 50-067, Wrocław
7–9 November 2016

We are delighted to welcome all speakers and registered attendees to the European Theatre Perspectives (ETP) symposium.

ETP offers a forum dedicated to exploring new channels for cross-cultural dialogue and engagement in performance. Bringing together researchers and practitioners working in different regional, linguistic, and disciplinary contexts, this international event aims to facilitate wide-ranging discussion of current issues and debates in the field.

As Homi K. Bhabha has argued, terms of cultural engagement are themselves produced performatively, through ongoing negotiation, rearticulation, and hybridization. ETP therefore focuses on movements of knowledge and knowhow that traverse European borders, broadly conceived; that is, it encompasses not only dynamics of exchange and mediation across Europe, but also what Erika Fischer-Lichte calls ‘processes of interweaving performance cultures’ between Europe and other world regions.

Through a range of mixed-mode panels and presentations, ETP will gather insights and perspectives on work that has sought to bridge communities in innovative ways — including via theatre- and performance-making, research, translation, documentation, emerging technologies, activism, and other forms of reciprocal recognition or co-action. The sessions address the following areas in particular:

• multilingualism, adaptation, and cultural translatability
• communicating embodied technique and experience
• practices of identity, witnessing, and collective remembering
• migration and statelessness
• strategies of disruption, resistance, and care
• forums, networks, and community practices
• digital arts and humanities
• publishing, preservation, ethics, and access initiatives
• models of support and sustainability

Alongside and in dialogue with this sharing of learning and expertise, the event provides a rare collaborative space for thinking through a key strategic challenge for the field, as set out by Janelle Reinelt in a speech in Wrocław during her presidency of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). Using Open Space Technology, this extended session will invite participants to consider ways of addressing in practice what Reinelt calls ‘the political project of building a truly international performance culture’, appropriate to the diversity and connecting flows of social life in and beyond Europe today.

About the programme

To maximize the time available for live exchanges and debate, many symposium papers are pre-circulated here. Papers marked with an asterisk* in the schedule below will not be given in full during the panels, but will form a basis for further conversation, and we eagerly recommend reading them in advance to aid your participation in and enjoyment of the event. Please note that all linked texts are working versions, for private individual use only.

Translation — between cultural and linguistic contexts and between different kinds of expertise and experience, both critical and embodied — will be at the centre of discussions during the event. The main working language of the symposium will be English, but translation and interpreting assistance between English and Polish may be arranged where required, upon request. We also encourage the practice of ‘conference whispering’ by participants, as set out by the Global Outlook::Digital Humanities working group; see the Translation Toolkit for more details.

More information and updates about the symposium, including the Book of Abstracts, can be found on the ETP page on Culture Hub and also via Twitter (@CultureHubTeam, #etp2016).

We look forward to many inspiring and thought-provoking conversations over the three days of the event, and we wish you a wonderful stay in the city during this special edition of the Theatre Olympics and the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016.

Schedule

Monday 7 November

8:30 Registration

9:00 Welcome
Duncan Jamieson & Adela Karsznia

9:20 Panel: Dramaturgies of Participation
Aljoscha Begrich, Rimini Protokoll: Listening cooperation
Tomasz Kubikowski, Living a Contact: What Stanislavsky can teach us about communication (text)
Rebecca Forsberg & Mays Hajjaj-Sylwan, RATS: Research, Arts & Technology for Society — Stockholm University’s research theatre
Marin Blažević, Rethinking mis-performance in-between international and intra-cultural [cancelled]
Chair: Alissa Clarke

10:35 Break
Tea and coffee

10:45 Panel: Postcolonial and Postmigrant Performances
Khalid Amine, Theatre in the Postcolony and the Burden of Double Critique: The case of the Maghreb (keynote paper) (text)*
David Schwartz, Born to Run: Political theatre supporting the struggles of refugees (text)*
Azadeh Sharifi, A Manifesto for a Postmigrant Archive
Christel Weiler, Talking about or with the Other? (English text; Polish text)
Chair: Erika Fischer-Lichte

12:00 Lunch
Please note that a buffet lunch will be provided for symposium speakers. All other registered attendees are welcome to purchase food from the café at the venue.

13:00 Lecture
Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Body as Site of Interweaving Performance Cultures (keynote paper)
Chair: Małgorzata Sugiera

13:50 Break
Tea and coffee

14:00 Panel: Digital Cultures
Mateusz Borowski, Distributed Memory: Cloud and performative practices of recollection (English text; Polish text)*
Franklin J. Hildy, The theatre-finder Project: Problems of sustainability and the possibilities for preservation of large-scale cross-cultural research projects
Nic Leonhardt, Geteilte Geschichten: Exploring theatre histories as shared and divided (text)*
Chair: Patrick Lonergan

15:00 Break
Tea and coffee

15:15 Discussion (via Skype)
Theresa Lillis, How well does academic work travel? The problematics of linguistic ideology and locality
Respondents: Janelle Reinelt, Khalid Amine, Tomasz Kubikowski, Maria M. Delgado
Chair: Margherita Laera

16:00 Community Café
Project showcase and drop-in session: guests are invited to share and give feedback on each other’s creative or research projects in the café at the venue. Tea and coffee will be available.

16:45 Long Table
Maria M. Delgado, The Spaces Between: Reflections on Europe, culture, and its others (text)
For an introduction to the Long Table format, see the video and text resource created by our colleague Lois Weaver.

17:45 Close

Tuesday 8 November

8:30 Registration

9:00 Lecture
Janelle Reinelt, The Politics of Reciprocity in International and Interdisciplinary Collaborations (keynote paper)
Chair: María Estrada-Fuentes

10:00 Break
Tea and coffee

10:10 Panel: Cultural Mobility and Translatability
João Florêncio, Dig Deep and Find Nothing: Ungrounding the Last Human Venue
Evelyn Wan, Prototyping Decolonial Practices: Speculative futures for Performance Studies
Małgorzata Sugiera, Performativity in Translation: The cultural mobility of words and ideas (English text; Polish text)*
Chair: Christel Weiler

11:25 Break
Tea and coffee

11:35 Panel: Performing Cultural Heritage
Mischa Twitchin, ‘We went with this text to Stuttgart…’
Patrick Lonergan, Beckett and National Performance/Beckett as National Performance (text)*
Helen Gilbert, In the Slipstream: Indigenous denizens and intercultural performance in Europe (keynote paper)
Chair: Maria M. Delgado

12:50 Lunch
Please note that a buffet lunch will be provided for symposium speakers. All other registered attendees are welcome to purchase food from the café at the venue.

13:50 Panel: Performance Processes
Paul Allain & Stacie Lee Bennett, Physical Actor Training — an online A–Z
Nick Sweeting & Sarah Grange, Improbable: Past, present, and future
Alissa Clarke, ‘The Habit of Holding Out One’s Hand’: Potent pleasure, kindness, and care in the intercultural performer training space
Susan Melrose, Expert-intuitive process in creative decision-making in performance [cancelled]
Chair: Helen Gilbert

15:00 Break
Tea and coffee

15:10 Film and Discussion
Margherita Laera, Translating Theatre: ‘Foreignisation’ on stage
Chair: Tomasz Kubikowski

16:00 Community Café
Project showcase and drop-in session: guests are invited to share and give feedback on each other’s creative or research projects in the café at the venue. Tea and coffee will be available.

16:30 Panel: Performance Strategies
María Estrada-Fuentes, Performative Reintegration: An affective approach to applied theatre and DDR in Colombia (text)*
Maria Kulikovska, Art is a Political Body
Yesim Yaprak Yildiz, Performing Truth and Subjectivity in Public Confessions
Chair: Janelle Reinelt

17:45 Close

Wednesday 9 November

8:30 Registration

9:00 Open Space Session
What can we do to build a truly international performance culture?
Facilitators: Sarah Grange & Nick Sweeting
Convenors: Duncan Jamieson & Adela Karsznia

All registered attendees are invited to participate. This session includes tea, coffee, and lunch breaks for everyone present.

For more information about taking part in Open Space events, please visit the website of Improbable’s Devoted and Disgruntled initiative.

14:00 Close


Symposium registration is available at www.bit.ly/etps2016. Attendance is free.