Theatre Symposium Conference

Theatre Symposium is an annual 2-day conference focusing on a single scholarly topic. International attendees gather to present papers and to discuss and explore the topic as a group, creating an intimate opportunity for the sharing of ideas, concepts, and opinions. This year's annual event will be held as an SETC pre-Convention event in March and is organized by the individual who will act as the editor for the ensuing journal. 

Selected papers presented at the conference are reviewed by the editorial board, further edited, and published for the next volume of Theatre Symposium, a scholarly journal published annually by Alabama Press and available on EBSCO. Individual members of SETC receive a copy of Theatre Symposium as a benefit of membership.

Volume 32

Keith Byron Kirk, editor of Volume 32, is an associate professor of performance studies and theatre pedagogy and a former director of graduate studies at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Theatre Department. His forthcoming work includes a chapter for the Cambridge University Press volume Rodgers and Hammerstein in Context as well as a new play on the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright titled Ipseity. His upcoming research projects each combine performance and American studies and will engage new explorations of performance and American cultures and includes a volume exploring specific instances of Civil Rights-based African American Funerary Ritual as mobilization narratives and their performances as similar to oratory found in standard dramatic works. In addition, his most recent work explores the emergent area of civic dramaturgy as an aspect of performance and community engagement with an edited volume offering multiple viewpoints from an impressive selection of performance scholars, exploring dramatist August Wilson’s plays and their community-inscribed audiences. 

Claudia Orenstein, Keynote Lecturer of Volume 32, is a scholar, dramaturg, director, actor, and puppeteer. She received her PhD in directing and criticism from Stanford University and is a professor of theatre at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has worked and studied in the United States, France, India, and Japan. Her current research focuses on the use of mixed media in contemporary performing object theatre and puppetry forms in India and Japan. She has also written on political theatre and on intercultural performance. Her books include Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations (coedited with Alissa Mellos and Cariad Astles), The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (coedited with Dassia Posner and John Bell); The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation (cowritten with Mira Felner), and Festive Revolutions: The Politics of Popular Theatre and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre, TDR, Theatre Symposium, Animated Encounters, Puppetry International, Puck, and Mime Journal. She worked as a dramaturg for Shank’s Mare (LaMaMa, lida International Puppetry Festival) and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (King's Theatre, Edinburgh; Singapore Interna-tional Arts Festival). She has trained in various physical performance traditions including kathakali, Kabuki, kyogen, bharata natyam, Balinese dance, commedia dell'arte, and puppetry. She serves as associate editor of Asian Theatre Journal, has been a board member of the Association for Asian Performance, and is currently on the board of UNIMA-USA. She has run a month-long winter education abroad program for Hunter College in India, and she creates original puppet performances with her company, Trade Winds Theatre. 

Past Events & Publications

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Past Issues of Theatre Symposium

  1. Commedia dell’Arte Performance 
  2. Theatre in the Antebellum South 
  3. Voice of the Dramaturg 
  4. The Reemergence of the Theatre Building in the Renaissance 
  5. Drama as Rhetoric/Rhetoric as Drama 
  6. Crosscurrents in the Drama: East and West 
  7. Theatre and Violence 
  8. Theatre at the Margins: The Political, the Popular, the Personal, the Profane 
  9. Theatre and Politics in the Twentieth Century 
  10. Representations of Gender on the Nineteenth-Century American Stage 
  11. Constructions of Race in Southern Theatre: From Federalism to the Federal Theatre Project 
  12. Elizabethan Performances in North American Spaces 
  13. Theatre in Transit: Tours of the South 
  14. Theatre, War and Propaganda 
  15. Theatre and the Moral Order 
  16. Comedy Tonight! 
  17. Outdoor Drama 
  18. The Prop’s the Thing: Stage Properties Reconsidered 
  19. Theatre and Film 
  20. Gods and Groundlings: Historical Theatrical Audiences 
  21. Ritual, Religion, and Theatre 
  22. Broadway and Beyond: Commercial Theatre Considered 
  23. Theatre and Youth 
  24. Theatre and Space 
  25. Cross-cultural Dialogue on the Global Stage 
  26. In Other Habits: Theatrical Costume 
  27. Theatre and Embodiment 
  28. Theatre and Citizenship 
  29. Theatre and Race  
  30. Theatre and Politics  
  31. Theatre and the Popular  
  32. Material Performance and Performing Objects