Performance Studies Focus Group 11Th Annual Pre-Conference REAL PLAY: Exploring the “Reality” of Virtual Worlds, Games, and Experiences
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ATHE Performance Studies Focus Group 11th Annual Pre-Conference REAL PLAY: Exploring the “Reality” of Virtual Worlds, Games, and Experiences curated by Beth Hoffmann and Barnaby King SFG welcomes you to its eleventh annual pre-conference, which, taking place in the heart of the US “play Ptourism” market, investigates the paradoxical ways in which various versions of “play” become pressed into service of the “real” and vice versa. This focus on what might be called the authenticities of play serves as a way of linking together critical issues central to very different resonances of the term: the construction of touristic desires; the dynamics of online gaming cultures; and the relationship between play and efficacy in resistance movements. The “real play” theme was initially inspired by Jane McGonigal’s New York Times bestselling book,Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World(Penguin 2011), in which she argues that “games can be a real solution to problems, and a real source of happiness.” She blends performance studies with her experience as a game designer to break down an assumed boundary between play and reality, advocating a broader social application of the technologies and behaviors inherent to play in order to bring about positive social change. But while McGonigal’s focus is ultimately on making play do certain kinds of work, this pre-conference will take a step back to think about how concepts of “play” and “reality” or “play” and “work” historically have been produced in relation to one another. As a counterpoint to Reality is Broken, L.M. Bogad’s central participation in the pre-conference will foreground a different conception of play’s efficacy: namely, as a powerful tool for distinctly politicized resistance. Bogad will help us explore what he calls ‘tactical performance,’ which he describes as a conceptualization of “serious play” with the aim of producing “performative, nonviolent images to contest and critique power.” “Play” has long performed a wide range of structural functions in the field of performance studies, appearing as rhetoric, research method, hermeneutic, theoretical concept, practice, and so on. As a nod to this, the pre- conference likewise makes use of a series of different methods of scholarly exchange to conduct its explorations, including a scholarly roundtable, a practical workshop, and a practice-as-research game designed to unlock the multiple and contradictory potentialities of a massively-scaled theme park. Thanks for joining us! We look forward to a vibrant dialogue, starting here at the pre-conference and continuing throughout ATHE. Sponsored by the Association for Asian Performance Edited by Kathy Foley two issues per year Dedicated to the performing arts of Asia, both traditional and modern, print editions available Asian Th eatre Journal aims to facilitate from UH Press the exchange of knowledge throughout the international theatrical community electronic editions for the mutual benefi t of all interested available from Project scholars and artists. Th is engaging, Muse (muse.jhu.edu) intercultural journal off ers descriptive and analytical articles, original plays and back issues older than play translations, book and audiovisual three years availablelable reviews, and reports of current theatrical actactivitiesiiiivities iinn AAsia.sia. FFull-colorull-colo plates and online from JSTORTOR bblack-and-whitelack-and-white photographsphotograp illustrate (www.jstor.org)org) eeachach issuissue.e.e � for more information visit www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/atjw.uhpress.hawaii.edu or contact UHP Journals tel: 808-956-8833808 956 8833 � fax: 808-988-6052808 98 email: [email protected]@hawaii.edu University of Hawai‘i Pressessess 2840 Kolowalu Street www.uhpress.hawaii.edu Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822 About PSFG he Performance Studies Focus Group (PSFG), which has been in existence for over a decade, has changed Tthe shape of the conference as a whole, in both form and content. Since its inception the PSFG has expanded the scope of ATHE’s scholarship, drawing upon interdisciplinary methods, scholars, and ideas to broaden the field. The PSFG has consistently sponsored a wide variety of multidisciplinary panels and has, within the context of ATHE, expanded the scholarship and discussion of the parameters and functions of “performance.” Since 2003, the PSFG has hosted an exciting preconference exploring in depth a variety of PS topics. PSFG Officers and Members-at-Large 2012–2013 Focus Group Representative Megan Shea Conference Planner Joseph Cermatori Treasurer Lindsay Adamson Livingston Secretary Melissa Wong Webmaster Raimondo Genna Graduate Student Representative Gillian Young Members-at-Large Patrick McKelvey Lindsay Gross Nikki Yeboah Miriam Felton-Dansky Jason Fitzgerald 2013 Pre-Conference Organizers Beth Hoffmann and Barnaby King Program Design Raimondo Genna If you would like to learn more about PSFG, please attend our annual membership meetings. See the ATHE program for the times and locations of these meetings. PSFG Pre-Conference Schedule Wed. 31 July 3.15 pm 9.30 am Vans depart for park from outside hotel lobby. Registration and Tea/Coffee 4.00 pm 10 am - 12 pm Arrive at Universal’s Islands of Adventure Theme Park. We will play an immersive alternate-reality game titled Roundtable discussion on the disciplinary “state of The Theme Park is Broken. play” in performance studies. Participants: L.M. Bogad, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Jill 9.00 pm Dolan, D. Soyini Madison, Bruce McConachie, and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck. Park closes. 12 - 1 pm 9.15 pm Working Groups meet over lunch to plan strategy for Reception. game or to discuss other business. Meet outside the Latin Quarter in Universal CityWalk See program insert for lunch details. and await instructions. 1 - 2.45 pm Thurs. 1 Aug Workshop. 10 am -12 pm On tactical performance, led by L.M. Bogad. Debriefing session and award ceremony. 2.45 - 3.15 pm Break. Preparations for departure. About Featured Guest L.M. Bogad . M. Bogad (www.lmbogad.com) is an author concerned with creative nonviolent Lprotest and its potential to change the world. He writes, performs, and conspires with mischievous artists such as Agit-Pop, the Yes Men, and La Pocha Nostra. He is a veteran of the Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Laboratory, and a co-founder of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (www.clownarmy.org). He teaches as a professor of political performance at the University of California at Davis, and is the Founding Director of the west coast branch of the Center for Artistic Activism. Bogad’s newest performance, ECONOMUSIC: Keeping Score, appeared in NYC at the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics; at festivals in Helsinki and Sao Paulo; and at SF MOMA. His play, COINTELSHOW: A Patriot Act was published by PM Press. He also wrote and produced a documentary, Radical Ridicule: Serious Play and the Republican National Convention. Bogad’s first book, Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements, analyzes the international campaigns of performance artists who run for public office as a radical prank. His next book, Tactical Performance: On the Theory and Practice of Serious Play, analyzes and critiques the use of guerrilla theatre/art for human/civil rights, social justice, labor and environmental campaigns. Bogad has led Tactical Performance workshops in the US, Europe, North Africa, and South America, helping activists create performative, nonviolent images to contest and critique power. Department of Theatre MFA Programs in Directing and Design/Technology– Costume • Lighting • Scenic • Sound • Technical Direction BFA Programs in Theatre, Acting, Musical Theatre, and Design/Technology– Costume • Lighting • Scenic • Sound • Technical Direction Information: www.usd.edu/theatre or 605.677.5418 RENT, Spring 2013 About the Roundtable Participants ennifer DeVere Brody serves as JProfessor and Chair of the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University where she is affiliated with in the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Her essays appear in Theatre Journal, Signs, Genders, Callaloo, Text and Performance Quarterly and numerous edited volumes. Her books, Impossible Purities (Duke University Press, 1998) and Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play (Duke University Press, 2008) both discuss relations among sexuality, gender, racialization, visual studies and performance. She served as the President of the Women and Theatre Program and on the board of Women and Performance. She held the Board of Visitors Chair at Northwestern University. Her work in queer and race studies has been supported by the Ford and Mellon Foundations as well as by the Monette Horowitz Trust for Research Against Homophobia. Currently, she is working with colleagues on the re-publication of James Baldwin’s illustrated book, Little Man, Little Man and on a new monograph about the intersections of sculpture and performance. ill Dolan is the Annan Professor of English and Theatre, and directs the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at JPrinceton University. Among other books and articles, she is the author of The Feminist Spectator as Critic, originally published in 1988 and released in 2012 as an anniversary edition with a new introduction and, most recently The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for the Stage and Screen, which will be out this July from Palgrave 2013. Her blog, The Feminist Spectator, won