The Art of Theatre: Word, Image and Performance in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium

19th-20th of November 2010, Queen’s University, Belfast.

Guest speakers:
Professor Patrick McGuinness, St. Anne’s College, Oxford
Professor Laurence Senelick, Tufts University, Massachusetts

This conference will explore a rich field of interdisciplinary research: the relationship between art, literature and the stage in France and Belgium from 1830-1910. The rise in popular theatre, the beginnings of a ‘society of spectacle’, the emergence of the print media, the development of stage direction and set design and the crisis in pictorial and literary representation created a dynamic cultural climate wherein the interface between writing, painting and dramatic representation thrived. Examples include the paintings of performances by Edgar Degas, costume and set designs by Fernand Khnopff and Sarah Bernhardt’s self-promotion through photography. We invite papers in English which discuss all aspects of this area of study and are particularly interested in contributions which develop the following ideas:

• The depiction of theatre and performance in painting
• Paintings and visual imagery in theatre
• The illustration of plays by artists
• Set and costume design by painters
• Theatrical techniques in pictorial representation: perspective, lighting, illusion, mise-en-scène
• Visual technology and the stage: panoramas and dioramas
• Artists’ posters and prints for stage productions
• Photography and the Stage
• Le Tableau-Vivant
• Artists as dramatists; actors as painters
• Gesture as language
• Masks, illusion and artifice

Conference organisers: Dr. Claire Moran, French Studies, QUB, and Dr. Kurt Taroff, Drama Studies, QUB.

THE ART OF THEATRE

19^th-20^th of November 2010,

Queen’s University, Belfast