WHAT PERFORMS? TABLE OF CONTENTS CONFERENCE COMMITTEE Welcome . 3 COMMITTEE Program Chair Local Arrangements Program At-A-Glance . 6 Margaret Werry Nancy Erickson, University of Minnesota ASTR Administrator Working Groups A . 8 (Thursday, November 20) Conference Committee Local Liaison Harmony Bench, The Ohio Faedra Chatard Carpenter, WHAT WHAT Career Sessions 1-8 . .12 State University University of Maryland (Friday, November 21) Robin Bernstein, Harvard University (Executive ASTR Officers Working Groups B . 14 Committee Rep) Heather S. Nathans, (Friday, November 21) Tufts University Lucy San Pablo Burns, President Working Groups C . .. 16 University of California, Los Angeles Patrick Anderson, PERFORMS? (Friday, November 21) University of California, Debra Caplan, Baruch College San Diego Working Groups D . 21 Jonathan Chambers, Vice President for (Saturday, November 22) Bowling Green State Conferences University, ex officio Catherine Cole, Working Groups E . 25 Dorita Hannah, University (Saturday, November 22) University of California, of Tasmania Berkeley Working Groups F . 30 Kellen Hoxworth, Stanford Vice President for Publications (Sunday, November 23) University (Graduate Student Marla Carlson, Caucus Rep) University of Georgia Career Sessions 9-15 . 33 Mary Isbell, Yale University Secretary (Sunday, November 23) Ric Knowles, University Cindy Brizzell-Bates of Guelph Empire State College, State 2 Hotel Floor Plans . .. 36 Scott Magelssen, University University of New York of Washington, ex officio Treasurer ASTR14 ASTR14 Exhibitors & Advertisers . 39 Colleen Reilly, Slippery Rock TLA Officers University (Theatre Library Nancy Friedland Association Representative) Columbia University Karen Shimakawa, November 20-23November President New York University Angela Weaver Shannon Steen, University University of Washington of California, Berkeley Vice President Joanne Zerdy, Illinois State University Laurie Murphy SPONSOR THANKS New York University Career Sessions Executive Secretary The American Society for Theatre Research Coordinators Stefka Mihaylova, Colleen Reilly and the Theatre Library Association thank Slippery Rock University the following sponsors: University of Washington 2014 Treasurer Ann Folino White, Michigan State University Baltimore PRESIDENT’S WELCOME At this year’s conference you will see a mix of the “old” and the “new” – a combination of familiar formats such as plenaries and Career Sessions, alongside “PerformASTR” events, with new initiatives supported by the American Theatre Baltimore Archive Project, the ASTR Task Force on Working Conditions, and the ad hoc Committee on Mentorship. 2014 As we work to make ASTR an ever-more engaged, supportive, and powerful organization we should make sure we take full advantage of our best resource – our members and the thoughtful, challenging, innovative scholarship you bring to the conference each year. Thank you for all the hard work you’ve put into the work you will share here in Baltimore and have a wonderful time! 20-23November A SPECIAL NOTE FROM Welcome to ASTR 2014 and thank you for joining us this year as we explore THE PRESIDENT ASTR14 If I were to interpret the question “What Performs?” the question, “What Performs?” in another way, my answer might be “Nancy 3 I find that I look at each ASTR conference booklet Erickson.” Over the decade that she has been with the same way I used to look at the course catalog ASTR she has performed the role of mentor and in college – as a document full of wonderful cheerleader, and if it is possible to perform the role opportunities to delve into the unknown. This of the eye in the center of the hurricane that is the year’s conference begins with that same open- annual conference, Nancy wins the part every time. ended, questioning spirit of curiosity. And isn’t that This conference marks our last event with Nancy, inquisitive spirit the great joy of our scholarship and who has been such a dedicated member of what brings us back to ASTR year after year? the ASTR team for so many years that planning This year I invite you to ask new questions, to visit conferences without her smiling presence seems a Working Group where you have absolutely no almost unthinkable. During my two years as PERFORMS? idea what the topic means and no background in President, I’ve turned to Nancy countless times for that area of the discipline. Will those encounters her advice, and I have always been deeply grateful prompt you to ask old questions in new ways, or for the way in which she is able to offer guidance perhaps shed light on your own work? They may while still allowing the organization to develop or they may not, but what they will signal is that under the leadership of its members. WHAT passion for constant learning that drives us all. Nancy, I hope you know what an astonishing difference you have made to ASTR and how deeply you will be missed. All our very best wishes go with you as you set off on your next adventure! Heather S. Nathans President A NOTE FROM THE PROGRAM CHAIR WHAT WHAT Welcome to Baltimore, and to ASTR2014! This year we convene around what appears to be a simple question: What Performs? It PERFORMS? points us on the one hand to the familiar, but less often studied, stuff of theatre—puppets and props, costumes and stage machines. But it also invites us to press against our discipline’s boundaries, question its philosophical armature, train our critical sights on new objects and actors, and engage with the vigorous interdisciplinary debates surrounding “new materialism” and “post-humanism.” The value of any conference theme, of course, is as 4 much in how we rebel against it as run with it, and there is much in these particular debates to resist. Can we ASTR14 ASTR14 claim to be post-human or newly material at a moment when current events, local and global, remind of the persistence of inhumanity, dehumanization, and material November 20-23November want? (That this conference takes place by a harbor through which scores of humans were traded as things adds a layer of trenchancy to such questions). This conference is an opportunity, in testing a new optic, to weigh the critique of humanism against its unfinished business, the limitations of old materialisms against the uncertainties of the new. If theatre is a machine of political imagination, can it help us imagine a truly just 2014 post-human politics? This is a genuinely open question on which the contents of this program constitute a Baltimore referendum. A NOTE FROM THE PROGRAM CHAIR Baltimore Together with the six plenary sessions, and three Also bringing theatre-makers together with scholars, 2014 concurrent paper panels, the backbone of this program Faedra Carpenter will chair a panel of representatives is a slate of 35 exciting working groups, where from Baltimore’s vibrant performance scene in a conveners have taken up the conference theme and discussion that engages with the city as an ecology: turned it to the ends of an unusually varied range of how do theatres survive and thrive in a changing urban sub-disciplinary fields. The State of the Profession panel, geography where diverse communities, local economies, chaired by Robin Bernstein and Uri McMillan, invites city policies, and national trends intersect? The relatively group conveners to talk about how the conference new ASTR/TLA initiative, the American Theatre Archive theme was embraced, resisted, or reconfigured in their Project, is holding its first workshop with Baltimore area 20-23November group’s discussions and papers. What questions and theatre artists, administrators and archivists during this problems, old or new, does the attempt to think about conference, and complements TLA’s tour of Baltimore’s theatre’s non-human actors prompt? Where does that newly restored, landmark Hippodrome Theatre. ASTR14 attempt serve and where does it chafe against our I hope that this gathering is as productive and discipline’s core commitments, particularly for those of provocative for you to experience as it has been for me 5 us invested in problems of social and racial justice? to plan. My thanks are due to many for their help in that Elsewhere, the experiment of integrating live process: to the large and brilliant program committee, performance into the conference continues as Brian to Shaun Franklin-Sewell and Cynthia Ward in the ASTR Herrera takes up the baton of PerformASTR from 2013 office, and especially to Nancy Erickson. I count myself curators Spatula&Barcode. This year, PerformASTR asks lucky to have benefited from Nancy’s expertise and how the creative research and artistic practice of ASTR support in planning this conference, and wish her all the members might also benefit from the discussion-rich, best as she concludes her years with this organization. development-focused format of the working group. Look for the program insert to find out more about the Margaret Werry, PERFORMS? exciting evening of performance scheduled for Friday University of Minnesota and other site-specific or durational works peppering the 2014 Conference Program Chair program. WHAT WHAT 2014 PROGRAM AT-A-GLANCE Ongoing throughout the PerformASTR DiversityFellows 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM Conference: PerformASTR Kent A-C, 4th Floor Coffee Break See detailed schedule for titles. 1:15-3:30pm Harborside AB, 4th Floor (Exhibit Hall) THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20 Theatre Library Association Tour 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM 8:00 AM-2:30 PM of the Hippodrome Theatre Concurrent Paper Panel 2 - (Other) ASTR Executive Committee Meeting Meet at the ASTR