Conferences and Meetings

Conferences

American Society for Theatre Research and Theatre Library Association
Annual Conference 2009
San Juan, Puerto Rico
November 12-15, 2009
Theatre, Performance, and DestiNation

Performing arts archives and special collections are a destination for artifacts and ephemera – as well as for the artists and scholars who experience them. The research process is a journey undertaken for diverse purposes and outcomes. This panel poses an investigation of the kind of “play” that occurs between archive and destination, research and journey, and the scholar-pilgrim-voyeur. This Plenary will consider the following:

• How does a performance undertake the journey from ephemeral cultural expression to tangible archival evidence? How do archives and special collections serve as destinations for performances?
• What is involved when a performing arts archive or collection travels from its place of origin to a new repository, or across repositories in different geopolitical regions? What does it mean for a collection to come “home?”
• What challenges are presented to archives and special collections when theatre itself “travels” (as when it tours), becoming, in effect, a moveable destination?
• How does research travel to archives and special collections negotiate the tension between pilgrimage and voyeuristic consumption? In what ways does research travel become performative?
• How do libraries and archives participate as sites of privileged viewing and local experience? How do special collections engage issues of privacy or stage themselves to an audience?
• Are theatre archives and special collections themselves an “island?” How do they reflect or reinvent “island culture?” Are they tied to the mainland of performance practices or archival methodologies? How do theatre archives and performing arts collections “travel” across these boundaries?

Sharon M. Carnicke, University of Southern California, Historic Performance and the Politics of Statehood

Lofton Durham, University of Western Michigan, Researching Jacques Milet's Destruction de Troie: Historiographic and Archival Vectors of Late Medieval Theatre and Drama

Elinor Fuchs, Yale School of Drama, Intersections of Documentary Sources and Theatrical Interpretations

Francesca Marini, University of British Columbia, From Venice, Italy to Venice, California: Research Travel, Belle Époque Italian Playwrights, and the Accidental Discovery of Love

Colleen Reilly, Chair, TLA Plenary

Complete program and registration information will be available at the ASTR website in September.

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