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REMINDER: CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS ACTING WITH FACTS: PERFORMING THE REAL ON STAGE AND SCREEN 1990-2010 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: FRIDAY 30 APRIL 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, Lib Taylor Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr Heather Sutherland