CALL FOR PAPERS, Our States of Emergency: Theatres and Performances of Tragedy, Scenography Working Group, IFTR 2024, Manila, Philippines, 15-19 July 2024

Responding to this year’s IFTR theme of Our States of Emergency: Theatre and the Performance of Tragedy, the Scenography WG focuses particularly on the call’s grounding of tragedy as a state of existence structured by imbalances of power as well as a form of performance. Equally the call explains emergencies as outcomes of accumulated human mistakes, caprices, and excesses, the impact of which are on human and non-humans, and on local and global environments.

 

As emergencies and tragedies may accrue creative responses in exigencies of re-invention, scenographies can manifest at breaking points in individual existences, as much as in larger ecosystems, communities, cultures and societies as channels for tragedy’s catharsis.  Therefore, through this year’s IFTR call, we welcome responses to themes of scenographies of vulnerability, revelation, renewal, care, catharsis, survival, or otherwise connected to emergency and tragedy.  Proposal for example could address dis-placement, precarity, and crisis of places and bodies, taking on board, and going beyond, resilience and failure through the performance  of scenic, sensory, embodied and technological matter.  

 

How might thinking through scenographies manifest within the aesthetics of staging loss in social as much as environmental landscapes? How might materialities of performance act as catalysts for care and enlightenment? How might scenographic tools and processes (situated, co-creative, embodied, material, technological, immaterial, collective, social, and political, amongst others) be brought into play in emergencies that are local or global?

Delegates are invited to respond with papers, practice or seminar provocations on themes in relation to states of emergency, and performances of tragedies. While going beyond the topics suggested below, which consider scenography as space, costume, lighting, sound, digital, crafts and technology based, proposal can be explore:

 

- Performing landscapes (environments, spaces and bodies) in crisis, ranging from the personal to the global, perceived through a scenographic lens.

- Aesthetics of performances in hiding, in contexts of conflicts, resistance and for survival.

- Marginalised communities and scenographic practices as strategies of cultural and communal affirmation.

- Scenographies against oppression and against power imbalances.

- Scenographic matter and performances at risk of epistemicide.

- Empathy generated though scenographic matter in performance.

- Aesthetics of socio-cultural renewal, regeneration, and re-invention in scenographic practices.

- Design-led storytelling as catalyst for resilience: scenographic participation, belonging, and co-creation.

- Scenographic reading of contemporary tragedies including of modern stagings of historical tragedies.

- Scenographies of care, resistance, subversion, redemption, and re-invention.

- Eco-scenographies in a time of climate disaster.

- Situated and culturally-specific practices of scenography that addresses crisis.

 

The working group welcomes responses to the above themes and proposals from researchers from the Global South and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds as well as scenography specialists from all fields of performance design. Presentations in different forms format are invited (see below).

 

Please note that this is not promoted as a hybrid conference, therefore accepted presentations should be presented in person at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

 

Format of Presentation

Abstracts for the following three formats should be submitted no later than 2^nd Feb 2024 via IFTR’s Cambridge Core portal. Please specify Scenography Working Group when submitting your abstract (choose Scenography WG from the drop-down menu). 

 

1. 250-300 word abstracts Academic paper presentation (20-minute maximum) followed by questions.

Abstracts will be peer reviewed internally before acceptance. The formal presentation will be followed by a question and answer session to promote in-depth discussion and constructive debate within a supportive environment. This format is ideal for those looking for feedback prior to a future submission for publication.

 

2. Seminar Proposal / Provocation for focused group discussion (15-minute maximum).

Presentation will be followed by small group discussions responding to the themes of the provocation. This format is useful in developing ideas, connections and gaining further theoretical insights as part of the process of research within a supportive environment.

 

3. Performative presentations, material fragments of performances and workshop demonstrations are welcome, however these should fit within the 20 minutes maximum presentation format and should be agreed with the WG convenors in advance.

 

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: Abstract submissions will close on the 2^nd Feb 2024.

 

Please note that to submit an abstract for consideration you must be a member of IFTR.

To check if you are already a member or to register as one, click here:

 

To present at the World Congress each member will need to buy membership of IFTR and in Spring 2024 register and pay for the conference (IFTR operate a banding system and a number of concessions are available).

 

Additional information such as the form the proposed submission and any information about restrictions to your availability over the course of the IFTR World Congress should be included on the online form under ‘equipment required’ and MUST be discussed (via email) with the Working Group co-convenors. 

  

Please note: IFTR rules prevent individuals from presenting more than one paper during the conference.

 

Working Group Co-convenors

 

Dr Donatella Barbieri d.barbieri@fashion.arts.ac.uk

Dr Christina (Xristina) Penna x.penna@derby.ac.uk

 

 

Conference Dates: 15 – 19 July 2024

 

Conference Venue: University of the Philippines Diliman