CFP Special issue of Theatre Journal on 'Adaptation'

18 September, 2013

 

Theatre Journal - special Issue on 'Adaptation'
 

Call for Papers
 
Adaptation charts a culture’s relationship(s) with other places and times. Whether understood through “doubleness” (Christine Geraghty), “intertextual dialogism” (Robert Stam), or other ways, adaptation suggests a negotiation of history and geography that may also encompass discourses of interculturalism. Structurally, adaptation can test the boundaries of textuality and genre: it is, after all, at the borders of an art form that its key features become most apparent.
 
Aside from studies of Shakespearean revisions and versions, theatre’s critical engagement with adaptation has been less well investigated than in narrative and film, even though theatre has a history of adapting: in addition to revisiting ‘old’ narratives, theatre has embraced ‘new’ technologies that intersect with issues of intermediality. The potential for applying David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s term, “remediation,” to theatre can effect a shift in how we understand the structural nature of theatre and its relationship with other places, times, and forms.
 
Adaptation studies no longer simply mark where a ‘reworked’ narrative is ‘faithful’ to (or even deviates from) an earlier version. This special issue invites contributions that challenge and expand the construction and interpretation of adaptation in theatre generically, theoretically, methodologically, or technically. Submissions may explore the current politics and practices of adaptation in theatre; the (re-)interpretation of adaptation through intertextuality and/or interculturalism; adaptation in the context of remediation and/or intermediality.
 
This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal co-editor Joanne Tompkins. Submissions (6000-9000 words) should be e-mailed to managing editor Bob Kowkabany (doriclay@aol.com) no later than 15 April 2014.

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