EcoDrama

Ecodrama Playwrights Festival & Symposium Update

The Ecodrama Playwrights Festival & Symposium On Theatre and Ecology is now closed to play submissions, and have reissued their call for proposals for the symposium. The CSPA sesions are also still open, and are linked at the top of the column on the right. We hope that you’ll apply to one or both and foresee some overlap and sharing in the final symposium. We, the CSPA, will be concentrated on the more scientific research side of the symposium, but are very excited to see everything everyone has to offer!

The Revised Call:

May 21~ 31, 2009 ~ University of Oregon

Ecology is at the heart of burgeoning creativity and interdisciplinary scholarship across the arts and humanities. This Festival, together with a concurrent Symposium, invites artists, scholars and activists to share their work, ideas, and passions with one another and with the larger community.  

CALL FOR PROPOSALS for Artist Workshops and Scholarly Papers.  FEB. 1 2009 DEADLINE

We welcome creative and innovative proposals for workshops, round-tables, panels, papers, working sessions, installations, or participatory community gatherings that explore, examine, challenge, articulate, or nourish the possibilities of theatrical or performance responses to the environmental crisis in particular, and our ecological relationship in general.

The form and format is wide-open and we will schedule and shape the Symposium around the types of proposals received and selected. We especially encourage artists who have performance work they would like to present to develop a workshop in which they present all or part of their work, and then use it as the basis for involving others in exploration. We encourage proposals that go beyond a recitation of ideas or positions, and instead bring presenters and participants together as they engage the driving question of how theatre has or might function as part of our reciprocal relationship with ecological communities.

Possible topics include: 

  •  land and body in performance;
  •  representations of bioregionalism; 
  •  eco-literacy and performance;
  •  representation of/and environmental justice; 
  •  green theatre production; sustainable theatre;
  •  design and technology developments towards green practice;
  •  old cultural narratives/new stories;
  • indigenous performance; 
  •  community-based performance/ecological communities; 
  •  sensing place/staging place; 
  •  the ecologies of theatrical form and/or space; 
  •  animal representation; 
  •  application of ecocriticism to plays, performance and culture.

    Send a one-page proposal and/or abstract by 1 February, 2009 to: 

    Earth Matters Symposium 2009, Theresa May, Director, 

    Theater Arts, VIL 216, University of Oregon
    Eugene, OR 97403. 

    Please include: type of session & title; time-length (60 min; 90 min; 2+ hours; half-day); bio or cv. 

    We encourage proposals that include more than one presenter; however, single person proposals are accepted and will be combined with others as themes and formats allow.

    CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

    The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CPSA) in partnership with EARTH MATTERS ON STAGE: Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and Symposium on Ecology & Theatre at the University of Oregon, Eugene is asking for presentations from the national arts community focused on building ecologically and economically sustainable models in the arts.   The EMOS Festival and Symposium takes place May 21-31, 2009.

    The CSPA is a start-up arts-service organization focused on researching, developing and implementing change to increase the ecological and economic sustainability of the arts in the United States. The CSPA will be hosting a series of focused sessions within the larger symposium to deal with practical change and repeatable models.

    While the content and format of the presentations is open to the creativity of presenters, preference will be given to presentations that focus on critical analysis, scientific data and documentation as the basis for support of a project’s relationship to issues of sustainability. We seek shareable and repeatable models for active change in arts practice.

    Based on the proposals received, presenters may be grouped into topical sessions and may also be asked to participate in roundtable and/or panel discussions to be able to best compare and contrast existing and proposed models of sustainable change, especially as it may highlight the balance of the ecology and economy in contemporary arts practice.

    Possible topics include presentations on the impact or future impact of LEED certified arts facilities, company greening initiatives, the creation of efficiency standards for the arts, government initiatives, production methodology, education of theater artists, individual projects created with ecology in mind, re-use programs and any practical documentation of positive ecological sustainable change.

    While the CSPA’s session at the symposium will focus on practice and the practical application of change, we encourage all presenters to also submit to the general call from The Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and Symposium on Ecology and Performance. They seek “creative and innovative proposals for workshops, round-tables, panels, working sessions, installations, or participatory community gatherings that explore, examine, challenge, articulate, or nourish the possibilities of theatrical and performative responses to the environmental crisis in particular, and our ecological situatedness in general.”   See the EMOS Call for Proposals at: www.uoregon.edu/~ecodrama or email ecodrama@uoregon.edu.

    Please send a one-page proposal and/or abstract by January 1, 2009 to:

    Earth Matters Symposium 2009
    The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts

    (attention Ian Garrett)

    c/o LA Stage Alliance

    644 S. Figueroa St.

    Los Angeles, CA 90017

    Or you may email your materials to conferences@sustainablepractice.org

    Please feel free to direct any questions to the CSPA via email at conferences@sustainablepractice.org