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To see Registration Fees,
click HERE
TO REGISTER FOR THE
CONFERENCE
WITH A CREDIT CARD, GO TO
https://www.seattletech.com/registrations/index.php?1383-221-i-t
TO REGISTER WITHOUT A
CREDIT CARD, GO TO
http://www.shawsociety.org/registration-fees.htm
TO BOOK THE CONFERENCE
HOTEL, GO TO
http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/groups/
personalized/IADMRHF-ISS-20091015/index.jhtml
All are welcome, but if you wish to become a member of
the International Shaw Society and receive a discount on the registration:
www.shawsociety.org/2009-Membership-Form-&-Benefits.htm
For more on the
conference topic, click HERE.
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CONFERENCE TABLE OF CONTENTS (alphabetically) |
C A
L L F O R P A P E R S For
An International Shaw Conference Washington,
D.C. October
15-18, 2009 Sponsored by The Catholic University of America, The Washington Stage Guild, and the International Shaw Society |
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Abstracts, Topics, Paper Specifications |
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Hilton Rockville Reservations |
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Catholic University of America Pryzbyla Center |
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Pryzbyla Center, CUA Campus DC Metro |
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Shaw Plays Performed |
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General Schedule |
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CONFERENCE
FEATURES
The conference will open with a
reception on Thursday night at the Irish Embassy, followed by a Keynote Address
on Friday morning at the Pryzbyla Center on the campus of The Catholic
University of America. Papers &
panel discussions will be presented there on Friday and Saturday, with a buffet
at Clyde’s of Gallery Place on Friday night, followed by a Shaw production by
the Washington Stage Guild, and a buffet on Saturday night followed by a Shaw
production at Catholic University’s Hartke Theatre. There will be an ISS
business meeting on Sunday morning at the Hilton Rockville.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
The Keynote Speaker will be Jackie Maxwell,
Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival
In Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
For a biography, click HERE
or go to
http://www.shawsociety.org/maxwell.htm
Into what character’s
mouth did Shaw put those words?
![MCj02410050000[1]](DC-Shaw-Conference_files/image027.gif)
Hint: see On the Rocks.
To
see who said this and who said the other words put into Shaw’s mouth on this
website, as well as some additional relevant quotations, see “Shaw Quotes.” Contributions welcomed (send to
dietrich@cas.usf.edu).
CONFERENCE TOPIC: “Shaw and Politics”
Please Note: As
at previous ISS conferences, great latitude will be given to topics for papers
& panels, on the conference topic or not, and to critical approaches, and
we welcome the variety of topic and perspective that will ensue. Secondly, we encourage papers and panel discussions on
the Shaw plays produced at the conference (TBA). But for those who wish to offer papers and
panels on the conference topic, we offer the following suggestions as to how
“politics” might be understood as applied to Shaw’s works and life:
Granting that many of Shaw’s works
are about politics in a governmental sense, particularly the non-fiction prose works, but one might argue that Shaw’s
fictional works are “about politics” in a sense
that broadens the definition beyond the governmental to the personal conflicts
and negotiations that characterize our most intimate life at all levels. The principal action of almost every Shaw
play and novel could be described as the interplay among characters struggling
either to defend and maintain a certain polity (or system of relationships) or
to overthrow the old polity and create a new one or, failing that, to either
find “a separate peace” or negotiate a truce. Whether it's gender,
family, generational, class, tribal, ethnic, professional, institutional,
aesthetic, religious, or any other kind of politics you can think of, or the
politics of governments, Shaw’s “stories” are often about the usually comic or
tragic-comic struggle for power and authority in the general evolutionary
process but
played out mostly on a very personal, local, and emotional level. And most conflicts end
with a de
facto vote
and a decision on the part of key characters to take action, often
life-changing for them and maybe for their cultures as well, whether consensus
has been reached or not. That Shaw’s “problem plays” typically end
problematically, without “the problem” being solved, does not prevent the
characters from nevertheless taking action and addressing problems in
individual ways. Judging by the Shavian universe, Tip O’Neill’s saying
that “all politics is local” has an application even closer to home than
O’Neill intended by that.
While we hope many papers will
address the conference topic with the broad definition of “politics” indicated
above, it is also perfectly legitimate to restrict one’s study to just
governmental politics, as Shaw was clearly involved in such and often wrote
about it. A cautionary word here,
however, since one of the quickest ways to misunderstand Shaw is to think his
being a socialist says all you need to know about his politics, or even about
socialism. For, despite his socialist
polemics, Shaw seems to have been as sui generis
in politics of the governmental sort as he was in all other things, which
probably contributed to the Fabian notion that they should attempt to permeate all parties, never minding ideological
purity. And Shaw’s jesting, ironical manner of promoting socialism was
of course unique. Further, Shaw was
pretty much an equal-opportunity satirist, almost as likely to strike against
the Left (supposedly his own side) as against the Right (Eric Bentley famously
described the Devil in "Don Juan in Hell" as a Liberal, although
"Liberal" meant something different in those days). Perhaps
Shaw’s true position can only be described as "independent thinker."
He didn't like being tied to any rigid system, which is why many of his plays
show “vitality” struggling against “system” (and of course socialism can be one
of those systems, as he suggests in “The Illusions of Socialism”). His
works in general aimed at forcing everyone to think for themselves and to feel
free to argue for whatever perspective one arrived at, just as he did, and his
dramatic works in particular tended to feature hot debates on issues of
governance at both the governmental and more personal levels (but more often
the latter). And he simply meant to be true to nature in allowing
"strong" characters to “win” (or seemingly win) the arguments,
although he also tended to show "strong" characters being tripped up
by their own arguments at times, and he usually let the "weaker"
characters score points along the way (recall how often his Caesar loses points
to his "inferiors") and for strength to be mocked at times by
uncontrollable facts (note Saint Joan as an example of “spiritual strength” seeming to lose a key
battle). Ultimately, there are no clear winners in the world of
irony that Shaw inhabits, and no absolute villains and no absolute
heroes. For it's the clarifying debate that matters. Perhaps the
greatest evil in the Shavian universe is to be "discouraged" to the
extent that one drops out of the debate. A further point is that
even as a Fabian Shaw said that the Fabian objective was not to change the
world but to argue as effectively as possible for a point of view that needed
to be considered when people in general went about changing the world.
Shaw himself sought not conquest but a place in the great debates.
First of all, he wanted to be heard, and we all know the great and often
amusing and sometimes outrageous lengths he went to to accomplish
that!
In
Washington, D.C., the capital and principal theater of “rebel politics,” we
have the perfect venue for this examination of Shaw’s democratic “discussion
plays,” in which Shaw’s Irish “proto-postcolonialism” provides the matrix for
may of the discussions/debates. Of
course Shaw ultimately found the justification for such drama in a religious
understanding of life as political at its divine root. According to his Creative Evolution, we are
all attempts at the godhead, and what we know about gods from the ancient
Greeks is that they love to quarrel with and challenge each other. No wonder drama was born in Greece. “Drama is conflict,” said Shaw, “no
conflict, no drama.” The point of the
conflict, for Shaw, may have been evolution toward the more godly, so to speak,
but it was the drama of the conflict that provided life its zest.
And this call to study
zestful Shavian debate in turn is an invitation to the many theater artists
interested in Shaw to join this discussion and talk about how they struggle to
realize Shavian drama in the particular practices of the theater, amidst the special politics of the theater.
A substantial segment of the conference, dedicated to the late John MacDonald,
formerly Artistic Director of the Washington Stage Guild, will seek to show how
it is possible to overcome political and other obstacles to make Shaw’s plays
appeal to the contemporary theater audience precisely by emphasizing the zest.
Summing up, we hope for a more sophisticated approach to the
Shavian corpus than might ensue if one confined oneself to understanding
"politics" as just governmental politics of the national and
international sort, a sense that's hard to avoid in the aftermath of a
presidential election, granted. But please try. The
American Heritage Dictionary defines "politics," in one way, as
"the often internally conflicting interrelationships among people in a
society." That's it. That might also serve
as a definition of "drama."
SHAW VISITS THE DARK CONTINENT
TO CONTACT US:
Call (813) 503-0584 (ask for
Professor Richard Dietrich, ISS president)
Email: dietrich@cas.usf.edu