2016 ATHE Latina/o Focus Group Proposed Panels
Panels looking for Participants
Please contact up to two session coordinators by October 15. Session Coordinators
will let you know if they will include your paper in their panel by October 19. Once
the Session Coordinators have selected their panelists, they should propose their
panel through the ATHE webpage http://www.athe.org/?page=16_Proposal and
submit a copy of their proposal to Latina/o Focus Group Rep Jimmy Noriega
(jnoriega@wooster.edu) and Conference Planner Noe Montez
(noe.montez@gmail.com).
1. The Latina/o Focus Group invites nominations for new books whose scope
includes work in US Latina/o, Latin American, Native American, or Indigenous
Theatre and Performance Studies. If you have a newly published work that you
would like to see in the spotlight panel or if you would like to nominate another
scholar, please contact Conference Planner Noe Montez at noe.montez@gmail.com
by 10/15.
2. The Latina/o Focus Group invites dissertation level graduate students
conducting work in US Latina/o, Latin American, Native American, or Indigenous
Theatre and Performance Studies to submit a chapter of their work for the Latina/o
Focus Group’s Emerging Scholars Panel. This panel will pair dissertation writing
students with a faculty respondent who will respond to the work and offer
possibilities for development. If you are a dissertating student and would like to
nominate yourself for the Latina/o Focus Group’s Emerging Scholars Panel, please
contact Conference Planner Noe Montez at noe.montez@gmail.com by 10/15.
3. The Latina/o Focus Group invites any and all interested parties to submit a play
for the roundtable discussion Teaching Culturally Diverse Plays in Intro and Theatre
History Courses. This panel invites participants to present US Latina/o, Latin
American, Native American, or Indigenous plays that they teach in Intro to Theatre
and Theatre History Courses as a way of resisting mainstream and Euro-centric
theatre narratives. If you have a play that you would like to talk about for this
discussion, please contact Conference Planner Noe Montez at
noe.montez@gmail.com by 10/15.
4. Evelyn Diaz-Cruz (diazcruz@sandiego.edu) proposes:
A colleague, Lisa Brenner, and I are planning to submit a multi-disciplinary panel for
Chicago. We have been writing a series of monologues based on interviews with
millennials, that we are compiling for a book on the student loan debt crisis. We
were strategizing on presenting with some students, a variety of monologues with
hopefully a respondent that can contextualize our presentation.
5. Anne Garcia-Romero (Anne.Garcia-Romero.1@nd.edu) proposes:
The Latina/o Theatre Commons Fornes Institute: Advocacy and Archive
This panel will bring together scholars and artists involved in The Fornes Institute,
whose main purpose is to preserve and archive the legacy of Maria Irene Fornes,
award winning Cuban-American playwright, director and teacher. This new
initiative, supported by the Latina/o Theatre Commons, aims to organize
workshops, convenings and has future plans for a permanent retreat/gathering
space/library. This panel will analyze the current developments in the Fornes
Institute through presentations, followed by a discussion. Panel Chair: Anne GarcíaRomero Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs Assistant Professor Department of Film,
Television and Theatre University of Notre Dame Founding member of the Latina/o
Theatre Commons Fornes Institute advocate on the Latina/o Theatre Commons
Steering Committee Confirmed Panelist Lisa Portes, DePaul University.
6. Hector Garza (hectorgarza@yahoo.com) proposes:
Maria-Tania Bacerra and I are hoping to present a panel. We are working on
exploring theatre in/as revolution in the Americas. We are working specifically in
Central America as we examine the connection between revolutionary theatre and
contemporary theatre in Nicaragua. We are looking for other panelists.
7. Gad Guterman (gadguterman95@webster.edu) proposes:
We Are What We Do: Labor, Stereotypes, and Identity
“What do you do?” These four little words, so commonly invoked, illuminate the
importance that work holds in forging a sense of identity in the United States. As
Heather Long sums up in a contribution to The Guardian, “In the US, we’re obsessed
with people’s jobs…we would like everyone to walk around with their business card
attached to their forehead.”[1] It follows that questions of identity often hinge
around questions of labor. Indeed, occupational identity and professional identity
are subjects of increasing study. Conceptions of Latinidad in the United States, then,
often insinuate jobs: what Latina/o bodies “do” is key to understanding Latinidad in
the US.
I am looking for papers and/or performance pieces that together will illuminate
1) how theatre and performance artists stage working bodies in defiance of or in
concert with stereotypical notions of Latina/o labor;
2) how public displays of Latinas/os at work challenge notions of both Latinidad
and labor;
3) how connections between labor and identity are shifting and how performances
participate in these shifts.
My own contribution to the panel, tentatively titled “‘The Most Public Justice Ever’:
Sonia Sotomayor’s Theatrical Labor,” will discuss how Sotomayor’s performances in
and out of the Court insist on new ways of seeing both Latinidad and justice at work.
Heather Long, “Americans Love to Ask People ‘What Do You Do?’ It’s a Habit We
Should Break,” The Guardian, 8 March
2014, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/08/americans-jobuncertainty-looking-for-new-life-meaning(accessed 10 September 2015).
[1]
8. Eric C Heaps (eheaps@indiana.edu) proposes:
“Only Cannibalism Unites Us: Socially, Economically, Philosophically”
In 1928, Brazilian poet and playwright Oswald de Andrade wrote the Cannibal
Manifesto, shifting the polemics of post-colonialism to the carnal, positing that
Brazil’s greatest strength was its ability to “eat” other cultures. For this panel, I
propose to explore the way in which the theme of cannibalism has guided Latin
American theatre artists as they consume the work of hegemonic powers, making it
their own. At the center of the panel presentation is a reading of the Cannibal
Manifesto. In addition, a selection from Newton Moreno’s A Refeição will be read in
translation. I’m seeking additional participants who wish to explore this theme for
its social, economic, and philosophic implications in
Possible topics include:
ral cannibalism
Preference for participants will be given to:
http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_11/manifestos/deandrade.html).
9. Jorge Huerta (jhuerta@ucsd.edu) proposes:
“The Embodiment of Labor in Latina/o Theatre.”
Labor. Chicano theatre was born out of a very important labor struggle; the Teatro
Campesino giving voices to and performing farm worker bodies in an international
struggle to recognize the miserable living and working conditions of the farm
workers in California (and beyond) in the 1960s. When the Teatro separated from
the Union, that group and other teatros explored and exposed the themes of the
urban workers. Thus, Chicano theatre and labor have been inextricably intertwined
since the 1960s. Alongside the Chicano theatre movement Latina/o theatres and
playwrights were also exploring the themes of labor in plays such as “The Conduct
of Life,” “Anna in the Tropics,” “The Women of Juarez,” the list goes on. How do
Latina/o playwrights, performers and ensembles enact and embody labor in their
performances? Are there distinctions in time, place, and Latinidad between
playwrights of different geographies or cultures?
10. Carlos Manuel (cchavarria@contracosta.edu) proposes:
I am working on a performance-based panel in which two performers present their
work and two academics respond to the work, leading a conversation between the
academics, the artists and the audience.
11. Teresa Marrero (Teresa.Marrero@unt.edu) proposes:
Exploring a “Labor of Love”
-Discussing new paradigms of sharing labor (such as the Commons approach). How
has this network gained momentum and what is the possible impact on the field of
Latina/o theater and Latina/o theater studies?
-How is labor distributed among theater makers within a given (Latina/o)
organization? What of the notion of ‘wearing many hats’? How does this further or
hinder creativity?
-Investigation into the notion of theater/art-making as ‘a labor of love’ (that is,
not remunerative)? Who does this notion serve? How is this implicit in grantproposals? Does this notion of ‘labor of love’ apply equally to all artists or is it
expected of some more than others, does it matter if the artist belongs to an
ethnic/or gender group such as Latina/o? How are these mechanisms evident? How
can they be exposed?
-Does Latina/o theater of the 21st century propose new paradigms of sharing the
labor of theater making? If so, what are some of its inspirations (Teatro Colectivo
movements in Latin America? Teatro Chicano? Another world theatre tradition?
Paradigms from socialist countries?
-How are the arts funded under models other than the American? How does
this influence the labor of artmaking among Latinos and groups considered ‘ethnic’
in countries other than the US?
12. Courtney Mohler (cmohler@scu.edu) proposes:
I would love to coordinate a panel on Native American Theatre (broadly) and
perhaps one that examines the factors working for and against producing Native
American theatre.
Also note these panels that were proposed to the LFG with a full list of
participants
1. Latina/o Theatre with, by and for Youth
Panelists: Cecilia Aragon, Willa Taylor, Lorenzo Garcia and Roxanne Schroeder-Arce
(Session Coordinator)
In recent Latina/o theatre convenings (namely Latina/o Theatre Commons events),
the subject and importance of youth has been at the forefront; however, youth
presence and representations of performance for, by and about youth continue to be
markedly absent. Four panelists speak to the various theatres, schools and
community organizations engaging in performance work with Latina/o youth or in
Latina/o themed work created for youth. Panelists will explore the labor of youth
and the exploration of labor in work with, by and for youth.
2. Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton,
and the Labor of Latinidad
This panel tackles one of the most influential theater phenomenons of our time: LinManuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Panelists will explore the musical’s development from
Miranda’s performance of The Hamilton Mixtape for President Obama in 2009 to the
2015 Off-Broadway and Broadway casting of people of color and the use of the hip
hop aesthetic onto the narrative of the founding fathers. Collectively, papers on this
panel examine the performance of ethnic and racial politics in America, (re)define
the New American Theater and reveal the labor of Latinidad to shed new light on
the potential and limitations of the musical Hamilton.
Panelists include: Trevor Boffone (session coordinator), Brain Herrera, Donatella
Galella, Patricia Herrera, and Marci McMahon as respondent.
trevor.boffone@gmail.com
3. Facing Diversity: Precarities of Gender and Color Experienced by Artists,
Educators, and Scholars
Session Coordinator: Esther Terry
I am putting together a roundtable, tentatively titled Facing Diversity: Precarities of
Gender and Color Experienced by Artists, Educators, and Scholars. It would be a
combination of workshop and discussion, using warmup exercises to share conflicts
and anxieties in partners and small groups. Then, the wider discussion would collect
anecdotes and accounts of struggles around diversity on the job market and in
educational spaces, from university classrooms to museum exhibits.
I want it to be a space where we can share and analyze anxieties over market logic
of diverse bodies at work, and the sometimes contentious campaigns for diverse
bodies of work in educational spaces. By market logic, I mean the increasing
pressure to either market yourself as a diverse body, or to market yourself as able to
encourage diversity even if you don't qualify as a diverse body. This particular
market logic seems to encourage division among scholars, educators, and artists. If a
normative scholar doesn't get a job, or even a White woman who doesn't get an
offer, I've heard people explicitly say, "I think it was a 'diversity' hire," to explain
their rejection. I've heard, more often, from candidates who qualify as diverse
bodies, that they feel called in to check a box. And I've also heard diverse candidates'
qualifications called into question, that only their diverse body got them the job, not
their teaching, scholarship, or performance expertise. Research studies and data
show that being a diverse body does not guarantee employment, nor does it
guarantee a competitive salary. Is this the only way to approach the job market,
either as a diverse or non-diverse bodied candidate? What are the implications in
following market logic of diverse bodies at work to justify career successes or
failures?
I also want it to be a space to address the recurrence of violence or rejection
towards diverse texts, performances, or educational exhibits. I'm thinking of the
recent occurrence in NC, where male audience members heckled and harassed
student performers. The performance piece was devised to examine the
circumstances of sexual assault, and was required as part of university orientation.
This happened at Pitt, during a performance of Dog Sees God, and I've heard of it in
other locations, as well. I'm also thinking of the many stories about verbal violence
or harassment in response to the Black play, where lynching effigies are found in
theatres or the word n***er gets said casually in theatre classrooms. But after the
initial outrage, what happens? How do we respond as scholars, artists, and
educators? Is there a way to formulate organized or collective responses and
strategies, to use performance as a method for navigating these moments of
conflict?
Right now, I'm not sure if we'll have time to address both of these areas. I have six
participants lined up (plus me), all of whom are experienced in facilitating
collaboration and co-creation of knowledge, in devising performances or in the
classroom environment. All of them are women, two are African American, two are
Afro-Caribbean, one is Latina, and two are White. I want there to be enough
facilitators in the room to guide discussions and sharing, as well as focus the energy
on strategies for the future.