PROPOSED PANELS -Submit to the panel's contact person by October 15
Before and After: Engines of Combustion and Transformation
Inspired by the 2020 conference theme “Drive” that connects motion with repetition with explosion, this panel will explore the theatrical explosions that have transformed or re-formed aesthetic or pragmatic practices. As we think of matter transforming through explosions that provide power and force for change (and also wasted energy and polluting exhaust) we ask participants to think through the following questions: What were explosive moments in Latinx, Indigenous or Latin American theatre? What was the fuel for these explosions? Where did the spark that caused combustion come from? How can we trace the momentum, the drive, of Latinx, Indigenous, and Latin American theatre to these explosive moments? What were the unforeseen or the ignored byproducts (the pollutants, the wasted energy) of these explosions? What was transformed? What still needs to be transformed by an explosion?
This panel currently has no chair and is being administered by Bethany Hughes. Please submit a 250 word abstract along with your affiliation and contact information to Bethany Hughes at bethanyhughes+lia@umich.edu. If interested in chairing panel please indicate so on your submission.
Climate Change
A feature of the past several decades includes a slow-roiling realization that human activity and will are changing the earth’s climate. Indigenous peoples across the Americas, and the world, predicted and warned that unchecked human greed would lead to mass destruction of eco-systems, war, and famine. As we gather in Motor City, we must remind ourselves that before inhabitants of this land built an industry of steel, speed, and fumes – the land was cared for by the Anishinaabe, as well as the Wyandot, Iroquois, Fox, Miami and Sauk. What does it mean that we call it now “Motor City”?
Increasingly, theatre artists have turned their attention to dramatizing the growing crisis and its impacts on us all. This call seeks papers and/or presentations which analyze the relationship between Latinx, Latin American, and Indigenous plays, productions, and theatrical practices and environmental degradation. How have Latinx, Latin American, and Indigenous artists utilized Native ways of knowing, for example, to draw attention to the dangers of the Anthropocene? How do Latinx, Latin American, and Indigenous use animal or spirit characters to bring light to environmental destructive human activity? How does art-making in a world beset by climate catastrophe change plot, style, production choices, etc?
Please submit a 250 word abstract along with your affiliation and contact information to Courtney Elkin Mohler at carmel.elkin@gmail.com.
Decolonizing Institutional Norms, II... A Breakout Session (co-sponsored by LGBTQ+ and ATDS)
At ATHE 2019 over a dozen people responded to a call to come together to discuss, strategize, interrogate and share ways in which we might move toward decolonial practices in administration, artistic seasons planning, syllabi and curricula development, and scholarship. This year we are widening and returning to the circle to ask interested participants to come prepared to discuss what, specifically, we each have done to put decolonial ideas/experiences into action; how have we put tools into hands normally left disempowered by institutional norms?
If you are interested in participating in this resource sharing breakout session, please email a brief introduction of yourself and how you might add to this session to Courtney Elkin Mohler at carmel.elkin@gmail.com
Performance and Pedagogy
In this era of challenging politics, what tools of resilience do our students need that we can provide through understanding performance? This question speaks to us from the 2020 conference theme. As we navigate precarity, instability, polarity, procedure, procedure denied, inflammatory rhetoric, injustice, revelations, and protests how can our pedagogy inform our students and our nation of ways of seeing, listening, and acting that are impactful and just? How can we teach the future in our classrooms? What specific techniques or assignments have been useful for guiding your students through moments of unrest in a play, in a life, in a country? What pedagogical commitments have shaped the community you create in and outside of the classroom?
This panel currently does not have a chair and is being administered by Bethany Hughes. Please submit a 250 word abstract along with your affiliation and contact information to Bethany Hughes at bethanyhughes+lia@umich.edu. If interested in chairing panel please indicate so on your submission.
Performing Detroit: Moments and Ideas
Fort Detroit, Detroit, Motor City, Motown, Rustbelt: Colonization, Immigration, Industrialization, Borders, Performance, Bankruptcy…There are many phases to Detroit’s history, and it is constantly transforming. From its earliest days in the French fur trade and as a military outpost, to its eventual height as an industrialized city, and its decline and bankruptcy the city has been involved in every moment and idea of note in American history. With a remarkably diverse population in the metro-Detroit area (including African American, Arab American, immigrant, transplant, settler, Indigenous, and arrivant descendants) but with an insidious history of racism and segregation Detroit brings together peoples and histories and performances from across the globe and across time. Leaning on industry but full of vibrant and creative entrepreneurs and activists, the city is a model of how the past and the present collide to create the future. And how the arts can shape and bolster and challenge a community.
This panel invites submissions that connect to the multi-faceted history of Detroit through historic or thematic papers that interrogate the connections between and through the phases of its long history and many populations. What does it mean to be a border city for theatre and arts culture? How have waves of immigrants brought distinct performance practices to the city? How did industrialization impact the city’s unique musical profile? How has the city’s bankruptcy impacted its arts organizations? What contributions have Latin American/Latinx artists made to the Detroit arts community? How has theatre challenged the current moment and provided pathways to a better future? How might we imagine what is to come from the performances created by Detroit artists or for Detroit audiences? What does it mean to perform Indigenous Detroit?
This panel currently has no chair and is being administered by Bethany Hughes. Please submit a 250 word abstract along with your affiliation and contact information to Bethany Hughes at bethanyhughes+lia@umich.edu. If interested in chairing panel please indicate so on your submission.