Announcing a new series of publications called ‘Gatherings,’ a Chapbook series co-edited by Stephen Johnson and Jenn Cole and printed at Coach House.
We are opening this series with a first call for submissions of short works for consideration— works that, in some measure and by some means, emerge from individual research, through creative expression.
If this seems like an odd request–it is. Our belief is that it shouldn’t be…and that is the impetus behind this publication.
We seek short works of poetry, prose, diagrammatic playfulness of any kind, or drawing, painting, photography, digital manipulations, and other works of art that we might be able to reproduce in a small volume.
As you read this, you may be asking a few questions–more than a few. If so, read our ‘Manifesto’–that’s right, we have a manifesto–and consider our goals. If you have comments, we would be very interested in hearing them. This is a work in progress. We hope it always will be.
We will begin reviewing submissions for the first issue on November 22. While we cannot absolutely guarantee that work submitted will make it into the first volume (we are collecting submissions for the first two issues), we do guarantee that all work will be valued, and handled with care, pride and respect.
Style and Submission Guidelines
Submissions of a more literary or textual nature should be kept to whatever can be included on one page. We invite imaginative formatting and formal expression. Please submit text documents in .docx file format. Submit images in high resolution .jpeg.
We ask that, along with your submission, you send a 200-word summary of the work that contextualizes its production in association with your research. We will give you an opportunity to edit this before publication. Our intention is to publish this ‘context’ along with the work.
Please send submissions to performancegatherings@gmail.com with the subject line, “Gatherings Submission.”
Looking forward to your creative submissions!
Stephen Johnson and Jenn Cole, Co-Editors
Gatherings Manifesto
- Gatherings is a forum for theatre and performance scholars to explore creative work that is inspired by their work as scholars, and not aside from that work. We seek to encourage a space where the scholar and the artist in each of us can meet to advantage. This is not to say that no such spaces exist–but not enough, and not of this kind.
- Gatherings is a place for those who are steeped in scholarship to employ modes of working not ordinarily circulated in scholarly publishing: performative texts; poems of all kinds; short-form prose; performance traces; figurative marginalia; the visual manipulation of words; scripts; scores; diagrams and other manifestations of the mind; visual interpretations and manipulations of the work of the scholar; and many other modes of expression. We know that the work of the scholar often travels through many of these forms of expression toward the rigours of the scholarly publication. These transitory ways of confronting the scholarship and the archive are worth examining.
- Gatherings is a print publication, chosen with the belief that, while the web is a wonderful thing, there is something tactile in the work of the scholar. We emphasize materiality and materials, and the sense of touch, and advocate the use of paper, pen, printing presses, paints, graphite, ink, and wax, of words and figures, of found objects, decay and traces, of documents manipulated and visual experiments as documents. All techniques are welcome. We believe in the materiality of the held literary and artistic object.
- Gatherings occurs at a moment when Canadian Theatre and Performance Scholars are often practitioners or practice-based researchers. This publication is a space for materials that reflect these endeavours. It is also a space for the secret, amateur, nocturnal, marginal, desperate scrawlings of the artist-in-us-all.
- Gatherings recognizes that by exploring alternative ways of working, the academic employing artful methodologies and sharing their processes/productions might become a happier academic. Likewise, the academic who holds a volume of their community’s creative work is likely to become happy too.