BALANCING ACTS ISTR 2023

BALANCING ACTS

ISTR 2023

5-6 May, University of Galway

Sponsored by the University of Galway and Irish Theatre Institute in association with Dundalk Institute of Technology

Balancing Acts Conference Schedule 5-6 May 2023

 

Schedule Key

PINK: PANEL/PG-ECR Workshop

GREEN: BREAK/CATERING

YELLOW: KEYNOTE

 

Conference Team

Miriam Haughton, Sarah Hoover, Luke Lamont, Ciara L. Murphy, Finian O’Gorman

 

FRIDAY 5^TH MAY

 

PANEL 1: Performing Balance in Crisis, Care, and Covid

9.15-10.30: Studio 1, ODC

Chair: Ian R Walsh

Vicky Angelaki (Mid Sweden): Balancing Intersecting Crises: Sustainability, COVID and Climate in Crimp and Kirkwood

Sinéad O’Donnell-Carey (ATU Sligo): Where is live performance in a post-pandemic world?

Yingjun Wei (Trinity): “Hybrid organising saved us”: Hustling Feminist Theatre through the Precarity of the Covid-19 Pandemic

 

PANEL 2: Embodiment, Experience and Self in Contemporary Performance Practices

9.15-10.30: Studio 2, ODC

Chair: Mike Finneran

Alinne Fernandes (UFSC): Asphyxia and Isolation in Marina Carr’s ‘Grow a Mermaid’: A Brazilian Radio Play

Aoife McGrath (QUB): Shared Experiences of Care: embodied knowledge in PaR collaborations between dance and social science

Maria Tivnan (UoG): Parent as Artist/Artist as Parent: Making Work ‘work’

 

COFFEE: 10.30-11, SULT

 

Opening Remarks: Aoife Noone (GTF), Miriam Haughton (UoG), Ciara L. Murphy (DKIT)

 

PANEL 3: Balancing at the Intersection of Theatre and Education: Ethics, Partnerships, and Research-based Approaches

11-12.15, Studio 1, ODC

Chair: Luke Lamont (UoG)

Fiona Fearon (DKIT): The Ethics of Teaching Trauma, Criminality and Deviance in Contemporary Irish Theatre

Fiona McDonagh and Dorothy Morrissey (MIL): Teacher-artist partnerships: Navigating between education and theatre

Charlotte McIvor and Gavin Friel (UoG): “Can We Ever Really Know This Works?”:

Experimenting with Research-based Theatre as Consent Education with an Irish National Policy and Secondary School and Third-Level Education Ecology

 

PANEL 4: Balancing genre, tradition and the future

11-12.15, Studio 2 ODC

Chair: Finian O’Gorman (TCD)

Daithí Kearney (DKIT): Balancing Time: Seeing the past, present, future and other time in the productions of Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland

Marianne Kennedy (UoG): Ar Ais Arís and coming back again

Sharon Phelan and Jackie Gallagher (MTU): The Use of Contemporary Dance as a Tool to Enhance Wellness in Educational Settings

 

12.30-1.30 Lunch – brown bag lunches available from SULT

 

1.00-1.45: Postgraduate/ECR Workshop with Charlotte McIvor ODC Studio 2

Job Applications and Interviews

Delegates are welcome to bring their lunch with them

 

1.15-2.00: ISTR AGM: All welcome

Moore Institute, G010

Delegates are welcome to bring their lunch with them

 

2-3: ARTIST KEYNOTE: Studio 1

Sonya Kelly in conversation with Ursula Rani Sarma

Chair: Maria Tivnan

 

3-3.30: BREAK

 

3.30-4.30: KEYNOTE LECTURE: Studio 1

David O’Shaughnessy (UoG), ‘Balancing the repertory: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, theatre manager’

Chair: Miriam Haughton

 

4.45-6: Book/Project Launch

Wine reception and finger food, SULT

Ciara Murphy, Performing Social Change on the Island of Ireland: From Republic to Pandemic (Routledge 2023), launched by Miriam Haughton

Paul J. Halferty and Cathy Leeney, Ed. Analysing Gender in Performance (Palgrave 2022), launched by Aoife McGrath

Miriam Haughton, IRC Laureate 2023-2025 ‘The Price of Performance: A Question of Economic Sustainability for Independent Theatre Production in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland 2000-2020’ launched by Máiréad Ní Chróinín.

Suggested Evening Entertainment – Galway Theatre Programme Link: https://galwaytheatrefestival.com/collections/shows

 

SATURDAY 6^TH MAY

 

PANEL 5: Unraveling Complexities: Perspectives on Irish Arts Practices, Funding, and Community Wellbeing

9.15-10.30: Studio 1 ODC

Chair: Alinne Fernandes

Mike Finneran (MIL): Balancing expectations and outcomes and so much else in Irish applied arts practices

Ciara O’Dowd (SGI): Should the Arts Council of Ireland be paying by the word?

Ian R. Walsh (UoG): Crossed Wires: Galway Community Circus’s LifeLine and Issues in Measuring Wellbeing

 

PANEL 6: Off-Balance: Inequality, Precarity, and Liveness in the Theatre Industry

9.15-10.30, Studio 2 ODC

Chair: Cathy Leeney

 Abir Al-Laham (Heidelberg): Of Bodies and Spaces: Balancing Inequality in Theatre Representations

 Samantha Cade (UCD): “Live” in a Pandemic: How Dublin’s Theatre Industry Addressed Work in the COVID 19 Pandemic

Eamonn Jordan (UCD): Precarious and Intersectional Class Imbalances and Inequalities

 

10.30-10.45: COFFEE SULT

 

PANEL 7: Contemporary Irish Theatre: Navigating Ethics, Aesthetics, and Auteurship

10.45-12:15, Studio 1 ODC

Chair: Sarah Hoover

David Clare (MIL): “Otherness in Ursula Rani Sarma’s Blue”

Stefanie Weenink (UoG): Gawd and Gulder: Language as a Key Marker of Identity and Irishness in Brian Friel’s Plays

Justine Zapin (UCD): Playboy, Blanco, and a Jury of One’s Peers: Balancing Drama Off and On the Irish Stage

Luke Lamont (UoG): The author on stage: auteur-ships, precarious ethics and documentary aesthetics

 

PANEL 8: Class, Gender, and Academic Challenges: Balancing against the odds

10.45-12.15, Studio 2 ODC

Chair: Eamonn Jordan

 Alexander Coupe (Liverpool): Stitched Up: Class and Compromise in Post-Agreement Feminist Performance

Bogdan Mihai Florea (Nu Nu Theatre): Theatre, the pandemic, a bit of Treplev, some Sloterdijk, an academic journal, depression and (my) mental health in general

 Finian O’Gorman (TCD): Artificial Intelligence and Irish theatres studies: How ChatGPT can turn academics into amateurs.

 Helena Young (UCD): Gender Balance in Brokentalkers

 

12-1: Lunch SULT

Brown bag lunch

 

12.30-1.15: PG/ECR Workshop G010 Moore Institute with Patrick Lonergan

Publishing and Grant Applications

Delegates are welcome to bring their lunch with them

 

KEYNOTE Lecture: 1.15 -2.15 O’Donoghue Theatre

Danielle Bainbridge (Northwestern)

Chair: Ciara L Murphy

 

BREAK 2.15-2.30

 

KEYNOTE PANEL: 2.30-3.30 O’Donoghue Theatre

Safe to Create/Irish Theatre Institute

Panel: Louise Crowley, Olwen Dawe, Esosa Ighodaro, Ciara L. Murphy, Niamh O’Donnell

Chair: Mary McGill

 

3.30-3.45: BREAK

 

PANEL 9: Adapting Tradition: Exploring Intercultural, Philosophical and Feminist Perspectives in Theatre

3.45-5.15, Studio 1 ODC

Chair: Vicky Angelaki

Gustav Parker Hibbett (TCD): Reimagining Othello

 Patrick Lonergan (UoG): Balancing Acts: Caryl Churchill and Anthropocene Feminism

 Jiayu Yin (Soochow/TCD): On the “Going Out” and “Going Back” of Chinese Intercultural Theatre: Reflecting on Meng Jinghui’s Intercultural Adaptation

Chengyun Zhao (TCD): A Study of the Xiqu Features in Lin Zhaohua’s Three Sisters Waiting for Godot from the Perspective of Taoist Philosophy

 

PANEL 10:The art of balance: Dramaturgies of identity and ethics in contemporary Irish theatre

3.45-5.15, Studio 2 ODC

Chair: Paul J. Halferty

Chaomei Chen (TCD): Gender, Ethics, Ableism: A Dramaturgical Balancing of Contemporary Irish Identities in Ulysses 2.2

Sarah Hoover (UoG): Balancing on one heel: mixed live/digital dramaturgy in It’s True I Love You All So Much

 Shonagh Hill (QUB): Moving in Feminist Solidarity

 

Conference Ends