cfp.english.upenn.edu

The Graduate Theatre Syndicate and The Performance/Politics Humanities Institute Working Group, Co-Conveners Harmony Bench (Dance), Ryan Skinner (Ethnomusicology and AAAS), and Jennifer Schlueter (Theatre) at The Ohio State University will host “Shifting Boundaries/Crossing Cultures: the Politics, Process, and Performance of Collaboration,” April 5th and 6th, 2013. We are pleased to announce that the keynote speaker for the conference will be Stephen Wangh, who studied with Jerzy Grotowski in 1967 and is the author of An Acrobat of the Heart. His playwriting credits include work as an Associate Writer for The Laramie Project, The People’s Temple, which won the Glickman Award for Best Play in the Bay Area, 2005, and many other collaborative works. Additionally, Stephen Wangh has taught physical acting technique in the United States and Europe. In addition to his keynote address, he will teach a workshop for conference attendees. His new book, entitled The Heart of Teaching, is due out this winter. This conference will be concurrent with the university’s production of aPOEtheosis, a devised piece of theatre created by U.S. director Joe Brandesky, and Czech theatre artist Petr Matásek. Brandesky and Matásek will be discussing their work on the performance during the conference.
Collaboration between disciplines and across borders presents a unique set of challenges even as it becomes ubiquitous in artistic and professional pursuits. Collaborative work also offers an opportunity to examine the ways in which politics implicitly and explicitly inform our practices. In addition to conference-style papers, we particularly welcome workshops, performances, or other non-traditional methods of engaging in dialogues which address the personal/political/ cultural negotiations inherent in any collaboration, creative or otherwise. Some of the questions we hope may be addressed by the conference include, but are certainly not limited to the following:

• How does collaboration trouble our own sense of space, challenge our concept of equality, and force us to redefine our expectations?
• What role can/should collaboration play in pedagogical practice?
• How has the rapid evolution of networking technology shifted our understanding of collaboration and the processes by which we collaborate with others?
• What challenges are presented in interdisciplinary collaboration and what strategies may be deployed to overcome them?
• How does inter-cultural collaboration shift the boundary between public and private?
• Can collaboration be considered a diachronic phenomenon? For example, in what ways do writers engage in collaboration with their predecessors and previous cultures through adaptation or translation, or with their audiences and future cultures through reception?
• How does acculturation influence the negotiation of international collaboration?

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words in Word or PDF format, along with affiliation and contact info to Geoffrey Wilson at wilson.2428@osu.edu.
Deadline for submission is 31 January 2013. Panelists selected for the conference will be notified by the mid-February.

Geoffrey Wilson
Vice-President, Graduate Theatre Syndicate
Department of Theatre
The Ohio State University
wilson.2428@osu.edu