CfP Australasian Drama Studies  Focus Issue: New Dramaturgies of Sound and Vision

We invite submissions for this special issue of Australasian Drama Studies, Issue 79, October 2021.

ADS Sound and Vision, guest edited by Pia Johnson and Miles O’Neil, is a special issue focusing on the nexus of theatre and technology. At the sharp end of 2020, it was only natural for a confrontation between theatre and technology to arise. The pandemic has forced the technological hand, as theatre artists have navigated the performative possibilities of the internet, both professionally and pedagogically. While acknowledging the pandemic, this issue is not exclusively focused on pandemic or Zoom performance, but takes this histori-cultural moment as a pivot point that prompts a wider interrogation of the relationship between performance and technology.

New Dramaturgies of Sound and Vision examines contemporary dramaturgies of the aural and visual in performance. As narratives of sound and vision become increasingly technologically embedded within theatre and live performance, the issue aims to render these developments and mechanisms visible and audible. We argue that the pandemic has accelerated an existing movement towards the digitised, connected and recorded in performance, but that these concerns sit within a broader landscape of persistent but shifting artistic practices of sound and vision through time.

The issue will actively pursue practitioners and people interested in expanding the journal article form, aiming to prioritise innovation in form and content that may incorporate new ways to present, analyse and critique sound and vision in performance. 

Contributions to the issue may address the following topics:

Technological innovation in contemporary Australian performance

Merging of technologies – sound, vision, performance

Sound as presence or character

Internet as performance space

Technodrama and mixed reality

Virtual actors and digital scenery

Creative form and its ghosts, its evidence / residue

Dramaturgies in vision and sound 

Social media and/as performance

Performance in the digital age

Revealing the mechanisms behind the form (technician, camera, creative)

Visual documentation and its value

Pandemic constructs of performance and presentation

Submissions may be in the form of an abstract or a full draft. Full drafts are preferred from emerging scholars. Essay abstracts should be no more than 400 words, stating the title and author/s, and should give a clear sense of the proposed argument or investigation. Essay length is a maximum of 6,000 words including bibliography. Please also submit a brief biography and set of key words.

We also welcome shorter pieces, reflections and notes from the field (2000 word maximum). Please note that the journal is now published online, so we welcome the integration of rich digital format such as images, video footage, or sound files.

Submission of abstracts/drafts: Friday March 19^th to guesteditor.ads@adsa.edu.au

Authors will be advised whether their submission has been successful by the end of April, and full drafts are due by Friday August 6^th, 2021. The issue will be published in October, 2021.

Dr Yoni Prior, Editor: Australasian Drama Studies