Conference Cycle
CONFERENCE CYCLE
PUPPETRY ARTS - MEMORY AND IDENTITY
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa
Organization: CET - Centro de Estudos de Teatro & FIMFA, with the participation of Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa
Coordenation: Catarina Firmo
⇨ FREE ADMISSION (subject to room capacity)
ARCHIVES IN POTENCY: DOCUMENTARY OBJECT THEATRES
Shaday Larios (Mexico)
Faculdade de Letras - Sala C135.A
12 May from 2pm to 3.30pm (Mon)
BIO Shaday Larios holds a PhD in Performing Arts from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, where she focused her studies on the philosophy of the object on stage. She codirects the documentary object theatre company Oligor y Microscopía with her partner Jomi Oligor (oligorymicroscopy.org). She is cofounder with Oligor and Xavier Bobés of El Solar. Object Detective Agency (agencyelsolar.org) with which she carries out field work in different communities to explore with their residents the links between territory, memory and culture material. She is the author of the books Escenarios post-catástrofe: filosofía escénica del desastre (2010), Los objetos vivos. Escenarios de la materia indócil (2018), Detectives de objetos (2019), Teatro de objetos documentales (2023). She coordinates the Circuito de Memoria Material in different countries, through which she has edited six publications of collaborative texts around objects as documents.
PUPPETRY ARTS AND GENDER ISSUES
How to address gender issues on puppetry? How can we discuss corporeal images and power through the materiality in puppetry? Two conferences on this topic, given by the American researchers Alissa Mello and Laura Purcell-Gates, from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
Women’s Work in Punch and Judy
Alissa Mello (Estados Unidos)
Faculdade de Letras - Sala C135.A
26 May from 2pm to 3.30pm (Mon)
As part of this Conference Cycle, there will also be the Workshop Performing Gender, directed by Alissa Mello, on 31 May (Sat), from 10am to 12.30pm. More information here.
BIO Alissa Mello is a theatre artist and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. Her publications include Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations (recipient of the 2022 UNIMA-USA Nancy Staub Award and finalist for ATHE’s 2020 Excellence in Editing Award) with Claudia Orenstein and Cariad Astles, and contributions to books and journals. Forthcoming edited volumes are Race, Gender and Disability in Puppetry and Material Performance, co-edited with Paulette Richards and Laura Purcell-Gates, and Making Meaning with Puppets: Material, Performance, Perception with Dassia Posner and Claudia Orenstein both in contract with Routledge. She was a founding member of Inkfish, and performed and choreographed with Theodora Skipitares, Anna Kiraly, Jane Catherine Shaw and Ishara Puppet Theater. From 2019 - 2022 she was the Managing Director at Sandglass Center for Puppetry and Theater Research. Since 2023 she has been the editor of UNIMA-USA’s biannual journal Puppetry International.
PUPPETRY, MONSTROSITY AND NON-NORMATIVE BODIES
Laura Purcell-Gates (Estados Unidos)
Faculdade de Letras - Sala C138.B
28 May from 2pm to 3.30pm (Wed)
BIO Laura Purcell-Gates is Reader and Research Lead for Performing Arts at BSU, whose research currently explores embodiment and materiality through object and material performance, including performing objects in technology. Recent projects have included practice-based research into puppetry, disability and medical humanities. She is currently developing Objects Without Borders, a project that investigates the role of object performance in connecting people across borders, boundaries and differences. Her writings have been published in journals including Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (RiDE), Journal of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, and Popular Entertainment Studies, and books including The Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine, Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Disqualification, Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion and Performing Objects, Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture, and Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations. Her 2011-2021 practice-based research project exploring puppetry and the medical humanities, The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak, was funded by The Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England.
This work is financed by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under UID/00279: Centro de Estudos de Teatro da FLUL
