[Comedias] Roundtable: For a Theater of the Future, Part I

[AHCT Listserv]

Resituating the *Comedia* Roundtable: For a Theater of the Future, Part I

Friday, December 4, 2020

2:00 – 4:00 p.m. PST

Organized by Barbara Fuchs (University of California, Los Angeles)

Event details:
http://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/resituating-the-comedia-roundtable1/



This event is free of charge, but you must register in advance to attend.
All audience members will receive instructions via email after
registration. Click the following link to register directly with Zoom:
https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcrde-prz8iGdFix0bWId6_sqiyacfNGg2Q



The history of theater is intimately bound up with the creation of public
fora, the development of the city, and notions of citizenship. Theater
examines both our private and our social concerns on a shared stage; it has
always thrived when it can provide a commons—a meeting place for minds and
spirits. In the early modern period, which saw the first large-scale
commercial theaters, performances occurred outdoors, moving from the
streets to informal spaces that only gradually developed into open-air
theaters, with little in the way of scenery or other apparatus. Whether at
the edges of the city, as in London, or at its heart, as in Madrid,
theaters offered a place to reflect on community and belonging. Across the
Hispanic world, performances were authorized despite moralists’ misgivings
because they helped pay for social services through the *hospitales de
pobres*. Early modern theater thus offers a model of relevance and
resilience: although it was periodically censured and repeatedly closed
down during epidemics, it remained flexible enough to adapt or relocate
while continuing to engage audiences.



The Covid-19 pandemic has both exposed and exacerbated crises in the world
of theater. There is a widespread sentiment among practitioners and critics
alike that the closure of the theaters should afford the chance to come
back stronger, rethinking key questions of form, audience, access, and
funding models. Given the long history of theaters closed due to plague and
political unrest, what lessons might we learn for how best to reflect,
regroup, and reimagine theater going forward?



As part of the Center & Clark’s year-long core program “Resituating the
*Comedia*,” we have convened a number of key figures in the Los Angeles
theater world—directors, playwrights, producers, scholars—for two
roundtables to examine the affordances of the pandemic closures in light of
the long history of urban theatermaking and theater’s enduring role as a
civic commons. Our goal is to produce a set of recommendations for the
theater.

We have also commissioned brief proof-of-concept digital theater pieces
that enliven the classics in new formats. These will be presented at the
January session; we expect progress reports from the artists in December.



Key questions will include:

•    What models of resilience does theater history offer contemporary
practitioners (alternative modes/locations)?

•    How can theater draw on its own history in bridging this transitional
period, and how can it reemerge as a different sort of public art?

•    What new affordances—more democratic access, greater diversity,
transnational collaboration, lower bars to entry, etc.—has the pandemic
yielded, and how might they be made permanent?

•    What role can the classics play in appealing to audiences now? How can
audiences be re-engaged, expanded, and renewed?

•    What types of performance experimentation do periods of crisis elicit?

•    How can theater provide community and a space for urgent cultural
conversations through various media?

*Program*

2:00 – 2:30 p.m.
*Presentations *(approximately 2 minutes each)
Kristy Edmunds, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance
Olga Garay-English, OMGArtsplus
Michael Hackett, University of California, Los Angeles
Erith Jaffe-Berg, University of California, Riverside
Jessica Kubzansky, Boston Court Pasadena
Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine
Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times
Edgar Miramontes, REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater)
Jonathan MunÞoz-Proulx, A Noise Within
Jon Lawrence Rivera, Playwrights’ Arena
Gabby Shawcross, Gensler Digital Experience Design, Los Angeles
Madhuri Shekar, Playwright
Sean Stewart, Author & Experience Designer

2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
*Discussion *(moderated by Barbara Fuchs)

3:30 – 3:45 p.m.
*Artist Presentations* (approximately 5 minutes each)
Annie Loui, University of California and Artistic Director, CounterBalance
Theater
Allan Flores and Fernando Villa, Efe Tres Teatro
Elena Araoz, Princeton University

3:45 p.m.
*Concluding Remarks*
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