CONFERENCE FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENDED DEADLINE
ACTING WITH FACTS:
PERFORMING THE REAL ON STAGE AND SCREEN
1990-2010
Due to interest in the event we have extended the deadline for proposals to 11th May 2010.
University of Reading
Wednesday 01 – Friday 03 September 2010
The University of Reading Department of Film, Theatre & Television is pleased to announce an international conference on factual drama, linked to the Arts and Humanities Research Council project ‘Acting with Facts: Actors Performing the Real in British Theatre and Television Since 1990’.
Factual drama has burgeoned in the UK and elsewhere during the two decades under review. The conference presents an opportunity for practitioners and academics to debate the significance of an important cultural shift. While ‘Acting with Facts’ research has focused on the British context, the conference welcomes papers on material from outside the UK.
Distinguished guests who have agreed to attend and contribute, schedules permitting, include:
David Edgar
Patricia Hodge
Mark Lawson
Jan Ravens
Sylvia Syms.
There will be several ‘Keynote Panels’ at the conference, rather than ‘Keynote Lectures’. These aim to enable two or more speakers to debate key issues and provoke further discussion. Speakers participating in Keynote Panels include:
Steven N. Lipkin
Carol Martin
Bella Merlin
Brian Winston.
Other conference events:
a lecture/performance from iceandfire Theatre Company’s ‘Outreach’ group Actors for Human Rights (director: Christine Bacon)
a film screening (yet to be finalised)
a Book Launch for the 2nd edition of Derek Paget’s No Other Way To Tell It (courtesy of Manchester University Press)
The Project Team invite proposals for individual papers on any aspect of modern stage or screen docudrama between 1990 and the present. Papers might, for example, focus on:
Verbatim and Tribunal Theatres
Community and Constituency Theatre involving documentary/factual material
Screen (that is to say film as well as television) hybrids that include elements of reconstruction/dramatic performance
Theatre and/or Screen dramas based on fact and focused on social and political themes
Film and television ‘biopics’ centred on individuals in the public eye
Historical-Event television and film
Docudrama and New Media.
We are also interested in papers that incorporate practice of some kind into the presentation. Possibilities for theoretical/practical focus might include:
the specific demands made by different media on actors’ and other creatives’ competencies when making or performing fact-based drama
comparisons and correspondences between docudrama and fictional drama
the ways television docudrama has responded to:
the 1990 Broadcasting Act,
increased international co-production,
the digital revolution,
accelerated social and political change since 1990
the impact of social and political change (nationally and internationally) on documentary theatre since 1990
the ethical and/or institutional and/or practical constraints on docudrama (e.g. legal restrictions, marketability, cost), and the aesthetic consequences that follow
the usefulness of existing academic theories (of form, genre, format, audience, etc.) in the analysis of stage and/or screen docudrama.
PROPOSALS
Please send your 200-word proposal by email or letter to arrive no later than:
TUESDAY 11th MAY 2010
to Conference Organiser: Dr Heather Sutherland
'Acting with Facts' Conference
Department of Film, Theatre & Television
Bulmershe Court
University of Reading
RG6 1HYUK
email: [log in to unmask]
The ‘Acting with Facts’ team:
Principal Investigator: Dr Derek Paget
Co-Investigators: Professor Jonathan Bignell, Ms. Lib Taylor
Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr Heather Sutherland
|