Performance and State Violence
15-16 June 2022 at Queen Mary University of London and Online
The discipline of theatre and performance studies has approached issues of state violence in myriad ways – prison drama projects, the performativity of military displays, and theatrical protests against certain laws, to name a few examples. While these topics come up frequently, the actual role of the state, and how its involvement in questions of performance and theatricality relate to its broader aims, interests, constitution, and reproduction, are often overlooked, sidestepped, and under-theorised. This conference invites responses which contextualise performance analysis within broader critical theories of the state.
This conference will be held in a mixed capacity both online and in-person. Conference tickets are free but RSVP is essential.
For in-person tickets, visit bit.ly/PaSV-IP
For online tickets, visit bit.ly/PaSV-O
Schedule
Day 1
15 June
| 9:30 | Registration |
| 9:50 | Welcome and Opening Remarks |
10:00 | Panel 1: Interpolation Staging subjection: theatricality and concealment in the bourgeois courtroom – Lucy Freedman Theatre of War: Rehearsal, Pedagogy and Space – Emilia Weber Staged Trails: Egyptian Subjects and the performative nature of Colonial Violence – Ahmed Abozaid |
| 11:30 | Panel 2: Gendered Violence Returning to The Scene of the Crime, Trauma, Gendered and Racialized Violence in Ana Mendieta’s Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973) – Bryony White The Nordic model, state protection, and sex work as work: Maïa Izzo-Foulquier’s Curriculum Vitæ Pute et Peintre (2017) – Savannah Whaley Lastesis: Chilean Viral Performance – Micaela Signorelli |
| 13:00 | Lunch break |
| 14:00 | Keynote Presentation by Jennifer Doyle |
| 15:00 | Coffee Break |
| 15:30 | Performance Work by Lucy Beynon and Lisa Jeschke |
Day 2
16 June
| 9:30 | Registration |
| 9:55 | Welcome |
10:00 | Panel 3: (After) Colonialism Landscaping Dispossession: Settler Outposts and Palestinian Real Estate in Jonah’s Whale – Shane Boyle (In)Security Theatre: Protest and the Performance of Institutional Authority – Carla Lever Policing of Immigration in 1920s Britain: Questioning Racial and Colonial Structures of State Violence in Performance – Mridula Sharma |
| 11:30 | Panel 4: Policing CopWatching, or, Spectatorship and the Police – Martin Young Call To Arms (2021) by PentHouss Performance Lecture by Vanessa Macaulay |
| 13:30 | Lunch break |
| 14:30 | Panel 5: Performance and Authoritarianism Antigone, the Strong Female Leader and the Indian Nation State – Souradeep Roy Eva’s Wedding (1972): Socialist Agonism in the work of Alex Mlynarčík – Sam Čermák Unsettling the Complacency of the Present: Cordelia Lynn’s Love and Other Acts of Violence and Lene Therese Teigen’s Time Without Books – Alex Watson |
| 16:00 | Coffee Break |
| 16:15 | Performance Presentation with Sebastian Mylly |
| 16:30 | Keynote presentation by Aylwyn Walsh |
| 17:30 | Closing remarks by Swati Arora |
| 18:00 | Wine reception |
Financially supported by:
Performance and State Violence 