The 31st annual Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT) conference at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies invites proposals to our conference “We Live Together” taking place February 9-11th, 2023.
“We Live Together” is as much a question as a mission statement. This phrase suggests broad responsibility to each other, to the sciences, to supporting movements toward social justice, to realizing indigenous protocols, to engaging with economics, and to fighting for ecosystems.
Together prompts us to grapple with a variety of contradictions between individuality and community, hospitality and hostility, and solidarity and exclusion. Working within these contradictions, we call on performance to create spaces in which we can imagine ways to live a future together. Together as human beings who, despite individuality, desire to connect with one another and with other species in virtual and physical spaces. Together as new communities emerge to demand equity, recognition, and conversation. Together across national and political borders. Together across disciplinary and institutional barriers. Together as lives on a planet facing challenges that require global actions for survival.
We are interested not only in the what, but the how: How do we story-tell and world-build in the academy and outside of it, in theatre spaces and communities, in the virtual and IRL worlds? How do we begin not only to imagine, but also to enact new modes and models of being and living together?
We invite engagements which consider the interactions of bodies, presences, communities, ecologies, economics, and ecosystems, as well as conversations around life and liveness, community and public life, persistence, and survival. We encourage critical reflections on togetherness, the common/commons/undercommons, and conversations around who is included in “we.”
Possible topics include:
- Artistic collectives and collective creation
- Intersections and interactions across identities
- Political solidarity, activism, and performance
- Performing conflicts and differences
- Transcultural performances, multilingualism, and globalization
- Strategies for encounters, sharing, and cohabitation
- Coexistence across species
- Utopian imaginations of multiplicity and diversity
- Technology and social/cultural connections
- Multiverses and pluriverses
- Fabulations, storytelling, and world-making
We welcome proposals from students, scholars, practitioners, artists, industry professionals, and adventurers. Presentation formats include:
- Paper presentation
- Creative/embodied presentation
- Curated panel discussion
- Roundtable discussion
- Workshop
- Reading
- Performance
- Screening
- Game
Please prepare a proposal (max 300 words) and biography (max 150 words per participant) to be submitted via our online application forms by no later than October 24, 2022. For applicants proposing a curated panel, you will be responsible for securing the presenters; the conference organizers may assist in the process if needed. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the organizers at foot2023.cdtps@gmail.com.
Visit UofT.me/FOOT2023.
About FOOT
The Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT) is the annual conference held by the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Organized by graduate students at the Centre, its goal is to provide scholars and artists an outlet to showcase, critique, review, perform, discuss, and analyze the changing world of drama, theatre, and performance.