Performing Crisis: Interdisciplinary Insights on Identity and Existence
Call for Book Chapters for Edited Volume
Performing Crisis: Interdisciplinary Insights on Identity and Existence
Deadline for Abstract Submissions has been extended to October 31, 2024
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (Baldwin 2).
The 21st century has been marked by multiple crises affecting individual and collective lives. From social and political turbulences to environmental disasters and pandemics, such crises challenge the ideas of identity and existence leading to inward and psychological turmoil. In the work titled Liquid Modernity, Zygmunt Bauman discusses how humans live in an era characterised by constant flux and uncertainty. Bauman describes ‘liquid’ modernity as a state where traditional social structures keep dissolving and changing, leading to a perpetual crisis (7-8). This continuous disturbance paves the way to an unstable world without certainty. The absence of certainty further unsettles humans resulting in identity crises, meaninglessness, suffering, trauma, and other schisms that often give birth to the need for revisitations, reflections, and responses. In a way, moments of crisis carry the undertones of revelation that expose underlying truths, prompting overarching transformations and diverse perspectives. This aspect of transformation acts as a connecting link between crisis and theatre.
In his work Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Augusto Boal stated, “The theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it” (16). As an artistic, literary, social, and cultural form, theatre has a unique quality to re-represent and interrogate crises. Its ability to engage the audience/spectators intellectually and viscerally makes it a revolutionary medium for examining/exploring the multifaceted dimensions of crisis. The performative aspect of theatre can reinterpret and transform the unrepresentable/intangible experiences of crisis into a tangible and visual form by revisiting memories of the respective moments of crises through re-enactment, catharsis, and alienation effect. Thus, theatre can serve as a powerful tool for understanding, representing, and in turn allowing healing from various crises giving rise to social awareness, action, empathy, and healing. In this way, theatre performance creates a communal space where audience/spectators engage with the representation of crisis through revisitation to the past that eventually leads to individual/communal healing in the present.
The proposed volume seeks to bring together cutting-edge research on the representation of crisis through the medium of theatre and how theatre can act as a space for both shaping and reflecting various responses to crises through interdisciplinary adherences to areas of inquiry such as Memory Studies, Trauma Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, and others. Through such a synthesis, this volume aims to bring forth multiple scholarly frameworks for understanding the role of theatre in exploring the multifarious dimensions of staging/performance perspectives related to crises for further thinking and practice in this rich and emergent area of inquiry.
The volume is expected to be published by mid-2025. Original and unpublished research articles are invited (but certainly not restricted to) the following areas:
- War and Theatre
- Crisis, Memory and Theatre
- Performing Trauma on Stage
- Ethics of Representing Crisis and Trauma
- Identity Crisis and Theatre
- Audience Response to Representation of Crisis in Theatre
- Therapy, Healing and Theatre
- Postdramatic Theatre and Staging Crisis
- Staging Nationhood
- Migration, Displacement, and Theatre
- Crisis and Gender: Feminist Perspectives
- Crisis, Violence and Theatre
- Crisis and Postcolonial Theatre
- COVID-19 pandemic and Theatre
- Theatre as Resistance: Crisis, Activism, and Social Change
- Crisis in Folk Theatre
- Theatre as a Response to Political and Social Crises
Submission Guidelines:
- Articles should strictly follow MLA 8 style guidelines.
- The proposals should contain an abstract within 500 words, a maximum of four keywords, and a brief bio-note of the author within 150 words.
- The abstract, keywords, bio-note, and other credentials should be sent in a separate MS Word file.
- The last date for submission of abstracts is October 31, 2024, and they must be sent to shuchishmita43@gmail.com.
- Selected contributors of abstracts will be notified by November 15, 2024.
- The full papers (expected by January 10, 2025) should be approximately 5000 to 7500 words in length, including notes and bibliography.
Contact Information
Bibliography
Baldwin, James. “As Much Truth as One Can Bear.” New York Times Book Review, 14 Jan. 1962.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Polity Press, 2000.
Boal, Augusto. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2002.