Performance, Ecology and the End of the World
“Sinais de Cena” journal
Published on Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Abstract
The reflection on the potential of performing arts to rethink humanity's relationships with the natural domain has been gaining clearer contours since the end of the 20th century. In this edition of Sinais de Cena, we invite the academic and artistic community, among others who are built around a curious spirit concerning these matters, to write about the performing arts action possibilities - not only about the symbiotic correspondences between performance and ecology but also about the way in which end-of-the-world narratives have opened spaces for imagining possible futures. Being receptive to all types of epistemological views on the topic and sub-themes that may branch from this, we are equally available to welcome perspectives that are built on or through artistic practice, around stage performances or experimental research processes in contexts of institutional programming or of an informal nature, without restrictions of a conceptual order or in terms of formal writing possibilities.
Announcement
Argument
The reflection on the potential of performing arts to rethink humanity's relationship with the natural domain has been gaining clearer contours since the end of the 20th century. The challenge launched by Una Chaudhuri in 1994, through her article “There must be a lot of fish in that lake: toward an ecological theater” –i which demanded from theatrical practice a consistent response to the environmental crisis – is, by many, considered the kick-off of the field of knowledge associated with what we today call Eco-performance or Eco-theatre. Since then, a growing number of authors have been delving deeper into the terms (material, philosophical, cultural, and/or political) through which artistic practice can be articulated with ecological thinking (e.g., Baz Kershaw, Wendy Arons and Theresa May, Alan Read, Vicky Angelaki, Carl Lavery, Lisa Woynarski), developing new questions and conceptual perspectives around the capacity of the performing arts to bring about a change in attitude towards the way we live on Earth.
One of the main issues addressed by this interdisciplinary field is the anthropocentric tradition of the theatrical medium itself, within which humanity has occupied the central role of artistic questioning, relegating contemporary practice to the sphere of culture, as opposed to a savage idea of nature that exists “outside” the world. Some more recent practice has attempted to break with this bipartite logic, insofar as it has sought to consider the natural environment, not only through its biological attributes but also ethical ones – recognizing, in this way, the complexity inherent to human understanding of the network of ecological relationships in which it is necessarily integrated and the intrinsic value of other forms of life.
Another emerging question is how artistic practice deals with the ontological paradox that is established between performance and ecology since the realization of the former is often opposed to the preservation of the latter. The traditionally urban and consumerist culture of which the performing arts are part is complicit in the same system of resource exploitation that puts the planet's environmental health at risk. In this sense, the fundamental challenge is no longer so much the question of how we can theatricalize the various facets of nature, but how it can per-form us. In general, this vision has translated into the building of artistic experiences in which the audience is seen as a community based on the shared responsibility of acting in a system of co-existence with the material reality that surrounds it.
More recently, the recognition of the fatality of a climate catastrophe has been producing countless dramaturgy and creative processes around the imperative of the end of the world. Brian Kulick's book released in 2023 – Staging the End of the World: Theater in a Time of Climate Crisis –ii seeks to precisely account for the multiplicity of perspectives that the performing arts have brought about the end of times, as we conceive it, and about the possibilities of adapting to a necessarily dystopian future. In this context, the practice of performing arts has embodied a plurality of manifestations that vary between the representation of the affective, social, and political dimensions associated with the collapse of humanity and the agency of forms of imagination about the worlds to come.
In this edition of Sinais de Cena, we invite the academic and artistic community, among others who are built around a curious spirit concerning these matters, to write about the performing arts action possibilities - not only about the symbiotic correspondences between performance and ecology but also about the way in which end-of-the-world narratives have opened spaces for imagining possible futures. Being receptive to all types of epistemological views on the topic and sub-themes that may branch from this, we are equally available to welcome perspectives that are built on or through artistic practice, around stage performances or experimental research processes in contexts of institutional programming or of an informal nature, without restrictions of a conceptual order or in terms of formal writing possibilities. Basically, open to the diversity of topics and ways of knowing that point to the formation of an artistic-ecological thought invested in recovering the collective meaning of things.
Submission guidelines
Submission Terms are available at: https://revistas.rcaap.pt/sdc/about/submissions
Login or Register to make a submission.
Submission Preparation Checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
- The manuscript is their own original production and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including their own production.
- The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
- The text follows the standards and bibliographic requirements outlined in Author Guidelines in the "About the journal" section.
- In the event of submission to a peer-reviewed section (e.g, Thematic Dossier or Applied Studies), the instructions available in Practical guide for reviewers were followed.
- The files submitted are in Microsoft Word format and do not exceed 2MB.
- The manuscript contains nothing abusive, defamatory, calumnious, obscene, fraudulent or illegal.
- All the authors of the manuscript are identified on the submission platform.
- The Cover Page has been submitted, identifying all authors, affiliations, ORCID, and contacts.
Author Guidelines
- E-mail articles to: sinaisdecena@gmail.com.
- The journal accepts texts in Portuguese, English, French, Spanish and Italian.
- Send manuscripts in their final version with Word format, 1.5 line spacing, Times New Roman, 12-point font. Do not number the pages. Title of the article in bold, Times New Roman, 14-point font. Title and text must be aligned to the left.
- The title of the Word document should indicate the number of the journal, the section in which the article should be included and two words from the title: e.g.: SdC1 ESTUDOS female dramaturgy.
- The originals must be unpublished and not submitted to another publication; must follow the editorial rules of the journal. Originals that comply with the journal's standards are subject to scientific arbitration.
- The proposed articles are submitted for a first analysis to the Editorial Board. The articles which enter the Applied Studies and Thematic Dossier sections are then submitted to a scientific double-blind peer-review done by anonymous referees specialized in the different areas. The referees are chosen among the Scientific Committee, and in some cases external advice by specialists in the area of the proposals is required. The final decision to publish is made by the Editorial Board taking the referee’s reviews into consideration. In case alterations or corrections are asked for, the Editorial Board will zealously look into their introduction.
- Acceptance of the article will be informed two months after its submission (unless other deadlines are announced in the Call for Articles).
- An extra page, preceding the article, should contain the title, full name of the author, professional affiliation, ORCID, electronic address, abstract (with around 200 words) in a different language than the article, 5 key words and a Bio-blurb (of around five lines). In case the article is in English, the abstract and key-words must be sent in a different language.
- The heading of the article must bear only the title.
- Articles destined to the Thematic Dossier and Essays should have maximum 6.000 words.
- Articles included in the Book Reviews section must have between 1200 and 2500 words. They must be accompanied by an image of the cover of the book and a reference to the work reviewed: Ex: Edward Gordon Craig, Rumo ao novo teatro & Cena, translation by Luiz Fernando Ramos, S. Paulo, Editora Perspectiva, 2017, 217 pp.
- Images (royalty free) referred to in the article should be sent in .tiff or JPEG format with 300 dpi. Images should include a short legend with the following information (when they refer to an art performance): Show Title, Name of Author (when applicable), Staging, Choreography, Company’s Name or Production, Year of the premiere (Name of actors on the photo), [F] Name of Photographer. e.g.: Dias felizes, by Samuel Beckett, staged by Roger Blin, Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, 1969 (Madeleine Renaud), [F] by John Haynes.
- Images following the text must be identified and numbered: e.g. SdC1 ESTUDOS female dramaturgy 1; Sdc1 ESTUDOS female dramaturgy 2, etc.
- Captions corresponding to images must appear after the bibliographic references of the article, with Times New Roman size 11.
Submission Deadline: 30.09.2024
Editorial Team
EDITORS & EDITORIAL BOARD
HONORARY EDITOR
- Maria Helena Serôdio CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-9213-2195
EDITOR
Marta Brites Rosa CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-7405-7574
EXECUTIVE BOARD
- Filipe Figueiredo IADE - UE (Faculty of Design, Technology and Communication), Portugal / CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8040-4870
- Gustavo Vicente CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2130-4025
- Licínia Ferreira University of Coimbra / CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0731-139X
- Paula Gomes Magalhães CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2171-9634
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTAriana Galamba CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3129-9108
EDITORIAL BOARD
- Ana Clara Santos CIAC (Arts and Communication Research Centre of the University of Algarve), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4845-4741
- Andresa Fresta Marques CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8610-8562
- Bruno Schiappa CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6698-5488
- Catarina Firmo ESELx (Lisbon School of Education, Politécnico de Lisboa), Portugal / CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4756-5055
- Cosimo Chiarelli CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-2505-0739
- Emília Costa CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8684-683X
- Eunice Tudela de Azevedo CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugal https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5268-6372
- Joana d’Eça Leal CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3659-8361
- Maria João Brilhante CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1654-0496
- Pedro ManuelArt EZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, the Netherlands / CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2688-9816
- Rita Martins CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5157-9962
- Teresa Faria CET (Centre for Theatre Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), Portugalhttp://orcid.org/0000-0003-1380-5281
Subjects
- Thought (Main category)
Date(s)
- Monday, September 30, 2024
Keywords
- performance, ecology, end of the world, theatre studies
Contact(s)
- Marta Rosa
courriel : sinaisdecena [at] gmail [dot] com
Information source
- Marta Rosa
courriel : sinaisdecena [at] gmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Performance, Ecology and the End of the World », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/w6wa