CALL FOR PAPERS
Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism
The Text Strikes Back: The Dynamics of Performativity
Issue number 17, 2009
The 20th-century theatre has witnessed the gradual decline of verbocentric drama in favour of the image, the performing body and, more recently, the digital and media technology. Concomitantly, the playwright has gradually been superceded as the initiator of theatrical creation by the director, the performer or the composer of a hybrid media spectacle. From Artaud’s infamous condemnation of playwrights as the reptiles of the theatre, through Barthes’s announcement of the death of the author, to Lehmann’s more recent claim for a state of postdramatic theatre, theorists have also been working towards the demise of both the written dramatic text and its skilled artistic producer, the playwright. However, after many years of a theatrical praxis that has denied the artistic value of words in contemporary theatre, there has been a reevaluation of such absolute distrust and rejection of language from the stage. The power of words to heighten sensory perception and refine the mental processes of audience reception has now been recognized and many contemporary playwrights show a renewed ability to use words phenomenologically and reconstitute their performative effectiveness. Obviously the word is finding a new function in today’s theatre and the playwright is negotiating a new meaningful position in the complex contemporary reality of infinite theatrical possibilities.
Issues to be tackled on the above problematics could indicatively be:
· the “postdramatic” playwright
· authorship / authority / auteurism
· word versus image
· collaborative theatre
· devising text / adapting text
· the body as text
· performing and un-forming the word
· hyperstage / hypertext
· the virtual, the corporeal and the symbolic in the art of theatre
· playwriting in the electronic media age
· narrative and poetry into performance
· the way(s) and politics of adaptation
· theatrescapes / wordscapes
Papers should not exceed the length of 7,000 words (including footnotes and bibliography) and should be double-spaced. They should adhere to the latest MLA style of documentation and should be submitted electronically in the form of Word document to the editors of the issue, Savas Patsalidis and Elizabeth Sakellaridou, at the following e-mail addresses:
spats AT enl.auth.gr and esakel AT enl.auth.gr
School of English
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
54124 Thessaloniki Greece
spats AT enl.auth.gr and esakel AT enl.auth.gr
Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2008
Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism
The Text Strikes Back: The Dynamics of Performativity
Issue number 17, 2009
The 20th-century theatre has witnessed the gradual decline of verbocentric drama in favour of the image, the performing body and, more recently, the digital and media technology. Concomitantly, the playwright has gradually been superceded as the initiator of theatrical creation by the director, the performer or the composer of a hybrid media spectacle. From Artaud’s infamous condemnation of playwrights as the reptiles of the theatre, through Barthes’s announcement of the death of the author, to Lehmann’s more recent claim for a state of postdramatic theatre, theorists have also been working towards the demise of both the written dramatic text and its skilled artistic producer, the playwright. However, after many years of a theatrical praxis that has denied the artistic value of words in contemporary theatre, there has been a reevaluation of such absolute distrust and rejection of language from the stage. The power of words to heighten sensory perception and refine the mental processes of audience reception has now been recognized and many contemporary playwrights show a renewed ability to use words phenomenologically and reconstitute their performative effectiveness. Obviously the word is finding a new function in today’s theatre and the playwright is negotiating a new meaningful position in the complex contemporary reality of infinite theatrical possibilities.
Issues to be tackled on the above problematics could indicatively be:
· the “postdramatic” playwright
· authorship / authority / auteurism
· word versus image
· collaborative theatre
· devising text / adapting text
· the body as text
· performing and un-forming the word
· hyperstage / hypertext
· the virtual, the corporeal and the symbolic in the art of theatre
· playwriting in the electronic media age
· narrative and poetry into performance
· the way(s) and politics of adaptation
· theatrescapes / wordscapes
Papers should not exceed the length of 7,000 words (including footnotes and bibliography) and should be double-spaced. They should adhere to the latest MLA style of documentation and should be submitted electronically in the form of Word document to the editors of the issue, Savas Patsalidis and Elizabeth Sakellaridou, at the following e-mail addresses:
spats AT enl.auth.gr and esakel AT enl.auth.gr
School of English
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
54124 Thessaloniki Greece
spats AT enl.auth.gr and esakel AT enl.auth.gr
Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2008