CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
250 word proposals for presentations (which should not exceed 20 minutes delivery time), with any relevant technical requirements, and any further enquiries, should be submitted to Dr Karoline Gritzner (kgg@aber.ac.uk) NO LATER THAN 5 JANUARY 2009.
Conference fee and registration details will be confirmed in early 2009.
SCOPE:
Howard Barker is widely acknowledged as a major British dramatist (who has now had staged, broadcast or published over a hundred plays), director, theorist, scenographer and visual artist. In recent years, his reputation has extended to a position of international eminence. Our principal objective is to bring together as many Barker scholars and practitioners as possible from their different countries, to explore and analyse the full range of his remarkable body of work. It has become apparent that there is a wide interest in Barker’s work, principally in France and America where his productions of his work are burgeoning (a four-play season at Paris Odéon in Spring 2009, alongside a fifth and sixth concurrent Paris productions, and new productions of two early works this year in New York). Barker’s own theatre company, The Wrestling School, which has recently become financially independent, is now in its third decade, and has increased its annual work from one production a year to two, continuing to explore and present innovative work, uncompromisingly. It is a timely juncture to review Barker’s art of the theatre and both widen and intensify scholarly attention to the unique expanse of his work in the context of international theatre, at Aberystwyth University (where Barker is Honorary Professor, and where there has been an unparalleled tradition of student and professional productions of Barker’s work for over two decades). The conference will include a rehearsed reading of Barker’s play A Wounded Knife, unperformed outside of Denmark, and possibly an exhibition of his paintings.
Topics to be discussed in relation to Barker’s work might include:
Philosophy and ethical re-evaluation; Practical perspectives: Acting; Direction; scenography and mise-en-scène; Music and sound; Landscapes; Gender and sexuality; History and politics; Language; The Body and physicality; Visual and aesthetic dimensions of the work: beauty and anxiety; Production history: The Wrestling School, and/or beyond; Eroticism and seduction; Barker in the context of European and world theatre; Tragedy/comedy; Stylistic developments within the Barker canon; The religious and the spiritual; Barker’s re-visioning of classic drama texts; Barker’s radio drama; Paintings and drawings; and other perspectives on Barker’s Art of the Theatre.
CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS (subject to change):
Howard Barker
Prof Elisabeth Angel-Perez (University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, editor of Howard Barker et le theatre de la Catastrophe and translator of Barker’s essays): Reinventing Grand Narratives: Barker’s Challenge to Postmodernism
Dr Charles Lamb (University of Winchester, author of The Theatre of Howard Barker): Barker’s pictorial landscapes
FURTHER CONTRIBUTIONS PROPOSED BY*:
Prof Heiner Zimmermann (University of Heidelberg): visual memory in Barker’s drama
Ms Melanie Jessop (Actress and Outreach Officer, The Wrestling School Theatre Company): Anxiety in Acting Barker
Mr Gerrard McArthur (Actor and Director, The Wrestling School Theatre Company): Overcoming the Paralysis of Naturalism: Barker’s Bodies Making Brains
Prof Michael Mangan (Exeter University): Prisons in Barker’s drama and theatre
Prof Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, London): Barker’s Genealogy of Morals
Dr Graham Saunders (Reading): The Wrestling School theatre company and The Arts Council archive
Dr Christine Kiehl (University of Lyon 2): The Paris Odéon 2009 Barker Season: analysis, with interviews with directors
Mr Jay King (Florida State University): Time in Barker’s drama
Mr George Hunka (Superfluities Redux website, New York): Beckett, Foreman and Barker
Dr Clare Finburgh (Essex University): Barker’s women characters
Dr Chris Megson (Royal Holloway, London): ‘Evidence in contempt’: Evocations of Anti-History in Barker's Theatre
Mr Daniel Sack (Stanford): A Landscape Without Maps: Scenography as Character in Howard Barker's The Castle
Prof David Ian Rabey (Aberystwyth): Barker’s poetry in the 90s and 2000s
Dr Carl Lavery (Aberystwyth): Barker, Genet, Kantor and the politics of death
Dr Roger Owen (Aberystwyth): Barker’s address to Dionysus |
