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