“Making Theatre at a Time of a Global Crisis”

What challenges does the theatre face today and how has the notion of “crisis” shaped the landscape of the performing arts globally?

The social, political, cultural and health turbulence that is profoundly shaking the second decade of the third millennium – including the pandemic of Covid-19, the migration/refugee drama of displacement, the alarming instances of global terrorism and religious intolerance, the crisis of ecology and the anthropocene, the failure of neo-liberalism and the establishment of neo-tyrannical political and media formations all over the world— have precipitated a climate of profound social and cultural instability and trauma, which may well be the material of modern tragedy.

This conference, aptly placed within the framework of the Buffer Fringe Festival 2020 (organized by the Home for Cooperation), intends to explore perspectives by international theatre scholars as well as local Cypriot artists, in an attempt to respond to the quandaries that are affecting society and our way of perceiving theatre-making beyond anything that could ever be imagined. Τhe conference also sets out to disseminate the findings of a two-year research project funded by the Open University of Cyprus, entitled “Mapping Crisis Theatre on the Contemporary European Stage: Theatrical Representations of the Refugee/Immigration Problem; Global Terrorism and World Financial Crisis”. The project is co-ordinated by Dr. Avra Sidiropoulou, Assistant Professor at the M.A. Programme in Theatre Studies at the Open University of Cyprus.

The Conference will be broadcasted live through the OUC eLearning Platform: https://bit.ly/2IRULCu, and the University’s
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/openuniversitycy 
Info & Programme: https://tinyurl.com/y2yfzboh