CFP: Critical Stages, Special issue on Post-millennial Australasian Dramaturgy

Type of post: Association news item
Sub-type: No sub-type
Posted By: Kathryn Kelly
Status: Current
Date Posted: Mon, 26 Sep 2022


Critical Stages CFP: Post-millennial Australasian Dramaturgy
(Eds) Kathryn Kelly, Julian Meyrick, Fiona Graham, Moana Nepia & Emily Coleman


This special edition aims to build on scattered accounts of Australasian dramaturgy in national and international publications over recent decades to provide a timely focus on the field now.

Send 300-word abstract to kl.kelly@qut.edu.au
Due 30 October 2022



Call for Papers: Post-millennial Australasian Dramaturgy
Adopting a place-based curation outlook, this edition embraces the full spectrum of Australian and Aotearora/New Zealand theatre culture, incorporating First Nations and Māori live performance practices, and the modern settler, post-colonial drama of both nations. Within this complex narrative, Australasian dramaturgy has a history filled with contention, paradox, improvisation and passionate practice.


The centrality of place in this edition seeks to honour the distinctive nature and primacy of First Nations and Māori cultural practices and scholarship. This will be supported by the appointment of cultural consultants to ensure the agency of First Nations and Māori perspectives in the curatorial process.

As Turner and Behrndt note in their seminal work, Dramaturgy and Performance (2016), “dramaturgy is as diverse as performance-making itself”. We offer an inclusive conception of dramaturgy drawn from existing Australasian scholarship and the global dramaturgical research that has most impacted the local field.

We recognise dramaturgy as a specialised field of professional knowledge, with shared approaches and objectives that sit alongside distinctive patterns of work. Our broad church outlook allows for different currents of dramaturgical theory and practice to exist in their contradictions and challenges without invalidating potential commonalities arising from their distinctive Australasian context.

To encourage a wide range of submissions, we welcome traditional research articles on the last ten years of dramaturgical practice and theory, case studies, interviews and panel discussions in video or text form, diagrammatic representations, models and theorisations, and innovative proposals that value oral traditions, or capture other dramaturgical practices in culturally appropriate ways.

We welcome submissions that relate to or engage with the following:
  • The traditions and current practices of First Nations and Māori dramaturgy, decolonial and decentring dramaturgy, allyship in dramaturgy, intercultural, transcultural and relational dramaturgy, and the incorporation of First Nations, Māori or Indigenous perspectives into cultural resurgence in Australasian dramaturgy.
  • New play development, production dramaturgy, institutional dramaturgy, literary dramaturgy, translation, theatre criticism and adaptation.
  • New dramaturgies, New Materialist Dramaturgy, Expanded Dramaturgy, Slow dramaturgy, Porous dramaturgy, Spatial dramaturgy, Archipelago dramaturgies, Heterarchical Dramaturgies and Saltwater dramaturgy.
  • New media dramaturgy, digital dramaturgy and the confluence of scenography and dramaturgy, particularly ecoscenography, eco-dramaturgy and visual dramaturgy.
  • Dance dramaturgy, choreo-turgy, curation and dramaturgy, co-dramaturgy and devising dramaturgy.
  • Dramaturgy of Belonging, Divisive Dramaturgy, Dramaturgy of Mobility, Unresolvable Dramaturgy, Viral Dramaturgies and dramaturgy as cultural intervention.

Critical Stages has made the generous offer of potentially including the publication of a new Australasian play/theatrical text.

About your Abstract
The abstract should outline the planned submission, indicate the format of submission and also include a 50-word biography identifying all collaborating authors.


Timeline
Proposals (Abstracts of 300 words, including a short biography): 30 October 2022

Selection:     15 December 2022
First drafts:  30 June 2023
Final drafts: 15 September 2023
Publication: 30 December 2023