Things Unspeakable: Theatre after 1945
June 08, 2011
“Things Unspeakable: Theatre after 1945”
is an international, interdisciplinary conference
on theatre and human rights
of the University of York, UK
which will take place from October 07 until October 08, 2011.
Participants and speakers include:
Ice and Fire Theatre Company
Professor Catherine Cole, Berkeley
David Edgar, playwright
Professor Erik Ehn, Brown
Professor Gay McAuley, University of Sydney
Nighat Rizvi, actress and activist, Pakistan
Rt Hon. Albie Sachs, South Africa
Professor Carole-Anne Upton, editor of Performing Ethos,
University of Ulster
Katharine Viner, Deputy Editor, Guardian
This conference addresses the terrain of the unspeakable in relation to
theatre and performance. It invites reflection upon the idea of the
unspeakable as it has been represented in the theatre, both in European
and non-European contexts.
In his 1947 memoir, L’Espèce Humaine (The Human Race), Robert Antelme
pinpoints the ‘unimaginable’: the moment of confrontation between the
concentration camp detainee and the liberator, the American soldier. In
the wake of accounts from survivors of the concentration camps, the term
‘unspeakable’ has taken precedence in our collective imaginary when
describing moments of unfathomable suffering. It has also informed
renewed philosophical debate about history, representation and ethics.
Philosophers such as Theodor Adorno and Sarah Kofman have reflected upon
the singular tension, evoked by Antelme, between the unspeakable and
systems of representation, and upon the horror that demands to be
represented but cannot be. Debating points might be:
* What particular issues of form and performance arise in relation
to representations of the unspeakable in the theatre?
* What is the relation between enshrined understandings of the
unspeakable and the resurgence of plays and performances about
torture, war and genocide?
* To what degree has the realm of the unspeakable gained new
currency within established and emerging trends in political theatre?
* To what degree have playwrights and other artistic practitioners
drawn upon the vocabulary deployed in accounts of the Nazis’ Final
Solution when reflecting upon war, genocide and the repetition of
catastrophe?
Possible areas for investigation may include, but are not limited to:
* theatres of witness, war, and genocide
* theatre and censorship
* theatre, law, and the unspeakable
* theatres of the body and silence
* theatre and philosophical discourses of the unspeakable
* verbatim theatre
* theatre companies working in human rights contexts
* theatre and 9/11
* theatre and torture
* theatre and apophasis in religious and philosophical history
* the unspeakable and contemporary political theatres
*Proposals of up to 250 words for papers of 20 minutes are invited, to
be submitted by June 10, 2011 to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
. *
Conference Directors:
Professor Mary Luckhurst, Department of Theatre, Film and Television,
University of York, UK
Dr Emilie Morin, Department of English and Related Literature,
University of York, UK