Stage the Future III:
Third International Academic Conference on Science Fiction Theatre
Friday 6 Dec 2019 | 2-5pm
2-2.20pm. Registration
2.20-2.30pm. Opening Remarks-Welcome
2.30-3.35pm. Panel I: Science Fiction Performance
“Theatre and post-apocalypse: the performance of ruins” Ian Farnell (University of Warwick)
“The Impossibility of Being Alien: On Audience Personification of Nonhuman Characters” Dr Lilith Acadia (Trinity College Dublin / University of Michigan)
“Songs of the Satellites: the dramaturgy of space junk [Performance Lecture/Provocation]” Dr Zelda Hannay (University of Sheffield)
3.35 – 3.50pm. Break
3.50 – 4.55pm. Panel II: Staging Sci-Fi Drama & Poetic Performance
“Between materiality, representation and the real” Sanja Vodovnik (University of Toronto) & Jimena García Álvarez-Buylla (independent artist)
“Seeing double: staging the multiverse in Daniel Kitson’s Mouse: the persistence of an unlikely thought (2016) and Nick Payne’s Constellations (2012)” Anna Wilson (University of Salford)
“Science Fiction Spoken Word - or Future Beat” Dr Suzie Gray (Suzie GeeForce; independent researcher)
Saturday 7 Dec 2019 | 2-5pm
2-2.15pm. Registration
2.15-3.15pm. Keynote
“When robots appear on our stages: Posthumanist naturalism or science fiction?” Dr Louise LePage (University of York)
3.15-4pm. Panel III: Approaches to Genre
“Digital Culture, Hybridity and Intermediality: Towards a Science Fiction Theatre aesthetics” Dr Stella Keramida (University of Reading)
“Waiting for Godric: Crossing fantasy thresholds through the stage” Marita Arvaniti (University of Glasgow)
4-4.15pm. Break
4.15-5pm. Panel IV: Sci-Fi Humour on Stage
“Dystopian narratives in a utopian form: how the marriage of musical theatre, science fiction and camp can be used to explore dark or uncomfortable themes” Ellin Sears (Murdoch University)
“It was Mirth all Along!: How Comedy benefits Science-Fiction in the Theatre” Stephen B. Platt (Murdoch University)
The conference is organised by Dr Christos Callow Jr (University of Derby), Dr Andriana Domouzi (Royal Holloway, University of London); Marita Arvaniti (PhD Candidate, University of Glasgow); the theatre company Cyborphic and the London Science Fiction Research Community.
@chriscallowjr
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@stagethefuture
Our keynote speaker Dr. Louise LePage, Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York, will speak on her research in robot and posthuman theatre. More on her work on Robot Theatre here.
Stage the Future, launched in 2014, is the world’s first science fiction theatre conference. The first conference in the series took place in Egham, UK, hosted by Royal Holloway, University of London; the second took place the following year in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by Arizona State University. After a hiatus the conference returns to the UK in 2019. You can read about the first conference here in the issue 309 of SFRA Review and here in Birkbeck, University of London’s Centre for Contemporary Literature’s blog.