CFP - DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS 17 MAY 2021 

Modern Visuality and Nineteenth-Century Performance

Theatre and Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century AHRC-Project

Conference at Exeter University, 31 August – 3 September 2021

This event is organised as part of the three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century, for which Prof Jim Davis (University of Warwick) is the Principal Investigator.

Keynote speakers:  

Michael Gamer, University of Pennsylvania

David Taylor, Oxford University

The nineteenth century is associated with the transformation of traditional ways of life, rapid technological advances, radical changes to the environment, and the emergence of new conceptions of subjectivity. Theatre was central to the culture of this period, so how far did it reflect or shape the experience of modernity? The Modernist experiments of the latter part of the century used to take centre stage in discussions about modernity, but how far can the popular, commercial theatrical culture of this period be seen as the locus of an emergent modern aesthetic?

This is the third and final conference of our project investigating nineteenth-century stage spectacle, the viewing practices associated with it, and its relationship to the wider visual culture of this period. With this event, we return to one of our core concerns: to consider nineteenth-century spectacle as a new and experimental form and as both a facet and product of modernity. We welcome ideas for papers on all aspects of the visual culture of theatre, from theatrical ephemera to links with the world of ‘high’ art, to new spectacular and immersive technologies. We particularly welcome submissions that bring questions of methodology to the fore, offering new contexts through which we may understand the theatrical spectacle of this period.

To read the full call for papers, submit an abstract, join our mailing list, and find out more about the project, please visit our website https://theatreandvisualculture19.wordpress.com. For queries, please contact Patricia Smyth, P.M.Smyth@Warwick.ac.uk.

Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts sees three contributions from our staff in the June 2019 issue On Theatricality.

Theatricality, Michael Fried and Nineteenth-Century Art and Theatre
by Patricia Smyth

Theatricality as an Interdisciplinary Problem
Julia Peetz

Theatricality
A dramatic form of contesting spectatorial codes
Goran Petrović-Lotina

Conference at the University of Warwick

_{Thursday 27 – Saturday 29 June 2019}

This research event will consider new ways of thinking about nineteenth-century stage spectacle, its meanings, its relationship to a wider visual culture, and its spectators. This period is associated with a widespread transformation of conceptions of vision and subjectivity, evidenced by an explosion of graphic imagery and new forms of visual experience such as panoramas and dioramas. Theatrical spectacle was at the centre of this emergent trans-medial, popular visual culture; yet there has been no major work to address this area since Martin Meisel’s seminal study, Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England, of 1983. Organized as part of the three-year AHRC-funded collaborative project, ‘Theatre and Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century’, this event aims to foster cross-disciplinary discussion of spectacle and spectatorship in this period.