Gramma
Journal of Theory and Criticism
http://www.enl.auth.gr/gramma
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Text Strikes Back: The Dynamics of Performativity
Issue number 17, 2009
The 20th-century theatre has witnessed the
gradual decline of verbocentric drama in favour
of the image, the performing body and, more
recently, the digital and media technology.
Concomitantly, the playwright has gradually been
superceded as the initiator of theatrical
creation by the director, the performer or the
composer of a hybrid media spectacle. From
Artaud?s infamous condemnation of playwrights as
the reptiles of the theatre, through Barthes?s
announcement of the death of the author, to
Lehmann?s more recent claim for a state of
postdramatic theatre, theorists have also been
working towards the demise of both the written
dramatic text and its skilled artistic producer,
the playwright. However, after many years of a
theatrical praxis that has denied the artistic
value of words in contemporary theatre, there
has been a reevaluation of such absolute
distrust and rejection of language from the
stage. The power of words to heighten sensory
perception and refine the mental processes of
audience reception has now been recognized and
many contemporary playwrights show a renewed
ability to use words phenomenologically and
reconstitute their performative effectiveness.
Obviously the word is finding a new function in
today?s theatre and the playwright is
negotiating a new meaningful position in the
complex contemporary reality of infinite theatrical possibilities.
Issues to be tackled on the above problematics could indicatively be:
? the ?postdramatic? playwright
? authorship / authority / auteurism
? word versus image
? collaborative theatre
? devising text / adapting text
? the body as text
? performing and un-forming the word
? hyperstage / hypertext
? the virtual, the corporeal and the symbolic in the art of theatre
? playwriting in the electronic media age
? narrative and poetry into performance
? the way(s) and politics of adaptation
? theatrescapes / wordscapes
Papers should not exceed the length of 7,000
words (including footnotes and bibliography) and
should be double-spaced. They should adhere to
the latest MLA style of documentation and should
be submitted electronically in the form of Word
document to the editors of the issue, Savas
Patsalidis and Elizabeth Sakellaridou, at the following e-mail addresses:
(spats /at/ enl.auth.gr) and (esakel /at/ enl.auth.gr)
School of English
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
54124 Thessaloniki Greece
(spats /at/ enl.auth.gr) and (esakel /at/ enl.auth.gr)
Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2008
