[Comedias] ASTR Call for Participants

[SPG]

Call for Participants

American Society for Theatre Research

November 11-15, 2009 

THEATRE, PERFORMANCE, DESTINATION


Working group:  New Approaches to Plays from the Spanish Golden Age: Destiny, Nation Formation, & Puerto Rican Perspectives

    Conversations across disciplinary lines are revolutionizing the ways that theater people approach plays from the Spanish Golden Age (c. 1580-1680).   This Working Session invites you to join the revolution first-hand, as part of a team of scholars, practitioners, aficionados, and newcomers hammering out new approaches to a trio of classical plays.  


➢    One team will work on Lope de Vega’s intensely theatrical Lo fingido verdadero, a rarely-printed play with great promise for application within a wide variety of theater-studies contexts.  Translated as Acting Is Believing, this gripping comedia (c. 1607) is part saint’s play, part self-portrait, part symposium on production and reception, and all reflection on theater’s role in shaping individuals’ destinies.

➢    Another team will work on Lope’s justly famous Fuente Ovejuna, a widely-anthologized exploration of theater’s role in nation formation.  Boasting one of the rarest, richest translation-and-production histories in Spanish dramaturgy, this romance-revolutionary extravaganza (c. 1612) presents complex challenges for actors, audience members, critics, and students alike – challenges that clamor for 21st-century American “takes.”

➢    Yet another team will work on Lope’s recently-revived (and widely toured) Los melindres de Belisa.  Closely linked to the University of Puerto Rico’s Facultad de Humanidades, this sparkling satire (c. 1610) offers excellent opportunities to reconsider relationships between plot and character, come to grips with Comedia’s strong roles for women, and gain a Puerto Rican perspective on performing Lope in contemporary America.

Each team will profit by the oversight of an experienced artist-scholar, who will help to facilitate the Session’s unusually demanding working process.

Formed to talk across disciplines, bringing together members whose experiences spring from different areas of theater practice and modern language study, teams will start work by energetically reading their target play (mid-June).  They’ll identify a specific challenge to pedagogy, performance, translation, analysis, or reception that the team’s members find compelling (early July).  Team members will then pool their skills to work out new approaches to the challenge they’ve elected to explore (early September), discuss and refine the new approaches they’ve mapped out (mid-September), and post a précis of their findings for other teams to read (early October).  Other teams’ responses (mid-October) will raise questions to answer in preparing a dynamic team presentation (early November) for the conference in San Juan (November 13).

    To join a team, please submit a 250-word proposal to astr_gold_2009 at yahoo.com.  In your proposal, please tell us which of the Working Session’s target plays catches your interest most urgently, and why.  (More information about the plays is available at http://spanish-golden-age-plays.wikispaces.com and www.comedias.org.)  We also request a brief sketch of your academic/artistic background, detailing skills you’ll bring to your team.  (Prior experience with the Spanish Golden Age is welcome, but by no means a pre-requisite.)

    Please note that ASTR requires receipt of proposals by Friday, May 15.  Other regulations governing the management of Working Sessions are posted at http://www.astr..org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Default.aspx.

    Questions regarding this Session may be directed to the conveners at astr_gold_2009 at yahoo.com:

Ben Gunter, Florida State University
Susan Paun de García, Denison University
Amy Williamsen, University of Arizona
Dean Zayas, University of Puerto Rico
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