TORCH's Theatre and Performance Network are hosting a one day symposium on Theatre and the Experience of Time.
The idea for this symposium originated in a discussion of this line from Beckett’s Endgame, and how it conflates the experience of being alive and the experience of being in the theatre – as audience, and as performer. The symposium explores the way theatre can work with the experience of time through different traditions and genres: from farce to experimental minimalism, from the marathon works of Robert Wilson to the expressionist sketch, a temporal spectrum that takes audiences from ‘time flies’ to ‘the minutes drag’ or even a sense of dropping out of time, in trance-like absorption. Theatre, perhaps more than any other medium, works with the power of the instant. Yet there may also be a sense of endurance or ordeal for the performer. The symposium encompasses this range of temporal experience by its combination of traditional academic papers and enactment sessions involving audience participation. Join us for this unique opportunity to explore time and performance.
The symposium honours the work of Jane Goodall (University of Western Sydney), ground-breaking scholar and theatre practitioner whose publications include Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin and Stage Presence.
Schedule
10:00am - 10:45am: KEYNOTE
David Wiles (University of Exeter), “Timing in the Performance of Shakespeare: First Principles”
11:00am - 1:00pm: PAPERS (Chair, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr)
Jane Goodall (University of Western Sydney), “Breathing Space and Running Time in Contemporary Theatre”
Eveliina Pulkki (University of Oxford), “Kafka: The Director’s Cut. Challenges of staging Kafka’s episodes in Amerika (Schauspiel Köln, 2013) and The Trial (Music Theatre Wales, 2014)”
Susan Jones (University of Oxford), “Rhythm, Pace, and Time: The Choreographic in Beckett”
Laura Marcus (University of Oxford), “Émile-Jacques Dalcroze and ‘the Palace of Rhythm’”
2:00pm - 5:00pm: EXPLORING TIME THROUGH PERFORMANCE (Chair, Jane Goodall)
Nicolai Hart-Hansen, “Renditions of Time in the Stage Environment: a Designer’s View”
Jonathan Heron (University of Warwick), “’Timeless earth sky as one’: a workshop on Beckett’s endlessness in performance”
All are welcome. Registration is required for this event. To register, please click here.
Humanities & Performance
Theatre and Performance
Contact name: Charles Surface
Contact email: charles.surface@ell.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Open to all
