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>>>>>>> A FRIENDLY REMINDER: if you click REPLY to this email, you will be sending an email to over 1400 subscribers. Please do so only if you wish to respond to everyone. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear Colleagues, Please join us next Wednesday, 13 January, for Quorum, the research seminar series of the Department of Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. For the first event of 2010, we're thrilled to host an extended seminar, with papers by two visiting scholars from North America: Dr. Ric Knowles (University of Guelph, Canada) and Dr. Tavia Nyong'o (New York University, USA). Both papers draw from a rich pool of cultural sources to address a politics of difference and the discourse of civil equality. 15.00 ? 17.00 Dramaturgy Across Difference Ric Knowles University of Guelph, Canada 17.15 ? 19.00 The Gentrification of Freakishness, or, Invisible Landlordism of Posthistoric Capitalism of Tabu Tavia Nyong'o New York University, Canada Queen Mary University Arts Building Mile End Road, London E1 4NS Refreshments will be served. All are very welcome. Warmly, Johanna Linsley **** Dramaturgy Across Difference Why is dramaturgy across difference so difficult? Focusing on Toronto, "the world's most muliticultural city," this paper probes the role of the dramturg working across cultural difference. Beginning with received dramaturgical wisdom and the problems of intercultural performance theory, it moves on to survey the practices of some of Toronto and Canada's most experienced dramaturgs to attempt to formulate appropriate intercultural dramaturgical practices for play development that employs non-western forms and belief systems. The paper concludes with a case study of the creation process in Toronto of Kuna/Rappahannock playwright Monique Mojica's new play, Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way, in which dramaturgical principles are being developed based on the structural principles embedded in the textile and pictographic arts of the Kuna people of coastal Panama, a project on which Knowles is working as dramaturg. Ric Knowles is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph, editor of Canadian Theatre Review, and past editor of Modern Drama. Among his books are The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning, Reading the Material Theatre, Theatre & Interculturalism (forthcoming from Palgrave), and, co-edited with Monique Mojica, the two volume anthology of First Nations drama, Staging Coyote's Dream. He is general editor of the book series, Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, and has just won the Excellence in Editing Prize for sustained achievement from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in the US. **** The Gentrification of Freakishness, or, Invisible Landlordism of Posthistoric Capitalism of Tabu At a moment when civil equality has assumed political primacy, what are we to make of those differences to which queer acts and lives remain inextricably attached? Is social acceptance contingent upon a worrisome process of queer gentrification? Or can freakishness ? as a non-identitarian category of sex, creativity, and collectivity ? resist its burial and memorialization by the invisible landlordism of Tabu? Through a look at some work by Michel Foucault, Slavoj ?i?ek, Jack Smith, Taylor Mac, Jennifer Miller, Samuel Delany, Filip Noterdaeme, Bruce La Bruce, Todd Browning, Renate Lorenz and Pauline Boudry, this talk will explore the cultural history of ?the freak? in popular amusement, in cultural lore regarding the sexually, genetically or genitally different, and in contemporary tactics to reclaim the epithet for artistic and political purposes. The lecture will argue that freaky theory and performance enable a queer parallax view on the symbolic and material processes of gentrification. Gentrification thereby comes to serve as a stand-in for the traumatic Real of capitalism itself, a prop in the play of queer and freaky theatricality. Tavia Nyong'o is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies at New York University. His research and teaching interests include black and postcolonial studies, queer and affect studies, performance history, and popular music studies. His first book, The Amalgamation Waltz, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2009, and he is working on two new projects, one on the intersections of punk and queer and the other on black aesthetics in a "post-racial" era. ______________ To join, leave or suspend list postings, visit www.scudd.org.uk/list ______________