From where I sit, I think the issues of time and money are
first on EVERYONE'S agenda. Is it worth it? What has ACTR done for me lately?
What can it do? And the issues of time and money translate into who wants
to/ can't/ can get heard and why? Politics. Why bother ... who cares? My
questions are, "Am I watching ACTR die...should I save it...Whither ACTR?
How important is it?"
CIRCULATION OF IDEAS - What happens to ideas presented at ACTR conferences? They seem to drop like sediment to the bottom of the glass, going nowhere. Why? We leave time for questions/discussion and nothing much happens. Much like my thesis defense...in fact, I am often thinking defensively when I plan my papers for the conference. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. I find "telling" papers is different from "giving" papers.
My own experience has been that ACTR offers an open, generally supportive, forum for the presentation of ideas (such as the "naming" of a Second Wave Alternate Theatre in English Canada) but the implications of these ideas are never taken up. We are all busy with our own stuff. And the concept of mentoring has not really caught on.
I have strategically tried to cultivate new thought over the 10
years I have been part of ACTR. At first, I worried about what
meanings you would make from the findings of my research. But it was
needless. These conversations are still pending. How can we invigorate
the circulation of ideas within ACTR so we are actually creating a body
of research and a stimulating discourse that attracts more ideas and interest?
SATISFYING MULTIPLICITY - So we are caught up in our stuff; that doesn't mean we don't want to share it. Special Interest Groups can accommodate diversity under a single umbrella. Playwrights, Teachers of Performance, Improvisers, etc. could meet as autonomous cells within ACTR so programming is structured around macro and micro events. This format was effective for the International Drama in Education Research Institute held recently at UVIC. The daily schedule included presentations to the delegates as a body while part of every afternoon was given over to smaller groups. Could this structure serve ACTR?
WHAT IS MY AGENDA FOR ACTR? - To continue to contribute as I can to a community committed to asking questions about THEATRE. It is my observation that there has never been a time in recorded English-speaking history when the idea of THEATRE has been discursively imagined so narrowly fixed as a "theatre of representation" with ALL that implies. Information, facts, authenticating through "reality"...the bottom line. But I live inside an illusion of my making. Discourse fails my experience. Theatre/ drama/ performance is all around me. Children show me the inborn power of pretend and transformation. Yet I feel something slipping away. How are we addressing this?
Shall we apply the RSVP Cycle or Burke's Dramatistic Pentagon to give us an action? Are we radically refiguring ourselves or maintaining while we let it unfold? Proceeding is about what we can and cannot change and our performance while we are trying to sort it out.
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