Speakers and talks

Prof. Ann Rigney, Utrecht University: Sitting in Trees: Performance, Memory, and Climate Activism

Prof. Milena Grass Kleiner, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile: What theatres of conflict have to offer

Prof. Maria Delgado, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London: Silence, censorship and remembrance: Xavi Bobés and Alberto Conejero’s El Mar/The Sea (2022-24)

Moderator: Alexander Ulrich Thygesen, Department of German and Romance Languages, Aarhus University.

Program

13:00-13:15  Introduction

13:15-13:45  Talk by Ann Rigney

13:45-14:00 Discussion   

14:00-14:15  Coffee break

14:15-14:45  Talk by Milena Grass Kleiner

14:45-15:00  Discussion 

15:00-15:30 Talk by Maria Delgado

15:30-15:45 Discussion

15:45-16:00  Wrap-up

Abstracts

Ann Rigney

Sitting in Trees: Performance, Memory, and Climate Activism

This presentation emerges from recent discussions in memory studies on the importance of renewed attention to the memory of non-violent struggle and civil disobedience. Against this background, I focus on tree-sitting as part of the action repertoire of climate activists. Having first considered the performative and mnemonic dimensions of tree-sitting, I go on to examine the activist memory work taking place in some of the many documentaries made about ecotopian occupations after they have been broken up. I argue that this memory work is not just different in its focus but also in its prefigurative character.

Milena Grass Kleiner

What theatres of conflict have to offer

 In the 90s, “post-conflict” emerged to describe the overall social condition of countries recovering from internal or external war. Along with transitional justice, post-conflict societies offered a light of hope. We believed that the dictatorship was over in Chile, and we had finally restated democracy. The October 2019 upheaval proved us wrong. Though the right to vote had been reinstated, social inequity was stronger than ever. In the days that followed, many people said, “We did not see it coming.” however, I think now that the notorious production of Shakespeare’s King Lear (Teatro UC, 1992) foretold the hidden plot that led to a new democratic regime in 1990. Looking back, to tag the decades to come as “post-conflict” seems somewhat inaccurate. Conflict is one of the most potent forces in theatre. I follow Chantal Mouffe (2007) in her assertions that conflict is intrinsic to human societies, and we need to understand how to better deal with it. In this context, I will present two Chilean productions (Trewa. Nation – State or the Spector of Treason Estado, 2019, and Yungay, 2023) as seen as practices to express and mediate conflict.

Maria Delgado

Silence, censorship and remembrance: Xavi Bobés and Alberto Conejero’s El Mar/The Sea (2022-24)

El mar. Visión de unos niños que no lo han visto nunca/The Sea. Vision of some children who have never seen it, premiered at the Teatre Nacional de Catalonia in February 2022 and has been touring both in Spain and beyond since. It centres on the story of Antoni Benaiges, a Catalan schoolteacher with a vocation rooted in French educationalist Célestin Freinet’s ideas of enquiry-based learning. With a vision aligned to the values of Spain’s Second Republic which sought between 1931 and 1936 – the year Franco’s Rebel Forces launched the Civil War – to increase literacy across the nation, Benaiges was murdered by Franco’s Rebel Forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Examining his impact on the children he taught, Conejero’s play provides a series of reflections on the tragedy of his death, why education matters and how it helps a society understand its responsibilities and commitments to others. In examining the piece and the attempts to censor it by theatres under the remit of town councils controlled by Far-Right party Vox, this paper asks a series of questions about democracy, performance and legacy, and celebrates El mar’s positing of learning as a way of life.