Fractured Narratives: Pinter, Postmodernism and the Postcolonial World 5th-7th November 2009

First Conference in the Beyond the Linear Narrative Project

In November 2009, The Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing held its first conference in the Beyond the Linear Narratives Project.

Below is an outline of the conference schedule. Papers from this project and the first year of our project will inform and contribute to a forthcoming publication, one of the project's major out-puts.

Thursday 5 November

10.30 am             Registration and coffee (Studio 1)
11.30 am             Welcome: Professor Helen Carr and Professor Robert Gordon
12 -12.45 pm       Keynote address: Professor Enoch Brater, University of Michigan, ‘Beckett’s devious
                          interventions and other narrative disruptions’
12.45 – 2 pm       Lunch
2 – 3 pm             Michael Billington: Pinter and the British Theatre – Q&A
3pm                    Workshop performance of Spirit Level, Gabriel Gbadamosi
4.10 pm              Tea (Studio 1)
4.15 pm              Panel 1 (Studio 3): Pinter, territory and identity (3 speakers)/ Panel 2: Pinter’s
                          inter-texts (3 speakers) -
5.45 pm              Readings from their work by Remi Kapo, Chinese poet,Yang Lian, and Anthony Joseph

Friday 6 November

9.45 am             Coffee and registration (Studio 1)
10 – 11.45 am    Panel 3 (Studio 3): So who then are Pinter’s legitimate children? (3 speakers)  /
                         Panel 4: Pinter and narrative (3 speakers)
11.45 am           Performance Lecture - Ajaykumar Radio Play and Performance Workshop (Studio 3) by Funme Adewole
1 pm                 Lunch
2.15 pm             Readings by Bernardine Evaristo and Anne le Marquand Hartigan
3 pm                 Timberlake Wertenbaker, Dennis Kelly, Dawn Walton Hosted by Bonnie Greer on Pinter’s legacy
4pm                  Blake Morrison, Ian Rickson, Kenneth Cranham and Lia Williams: Pinter’s drama and poetry
5.15 pm             Reception hosted by the Warden, Professor Geoffrey Crossick
7 pm                 * Special Performance of Come Good Rain

Saturday 7 November

10 am                Panel 5: Fractured narratives and postmodern theatre (4 speakers)/
                         Panel 6: (Studio 3) Fractured narrative and post-colonial performance (4 speakers)
11.45 am           Panel 7: (Studio 3) Postmodern/post-colonial aesthetics (4 speakers)/
Panel 8:             Terror and territory in post-colonial narrative (3 speakers)
1.30 pm             Lunch                         
2.30 pm             Workshop performance by Goossun Art-Illery (Studio 3)
3.30 pm             Keynote address: Professor Bart Moore-Gilbert on Post-colonial life writing
4.15 pm             Plenary session


CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Creative artists

Gabriel Gbadamosi, workshop/discussion of Spirit Level

Goossun Art-illery – Truth is Fragmented

Anthony Joseph reading from his fictional biography,  ‘Kitch’

Remi Kapo reading from his novel, Reap the Forgotten Harvest

Anne le Marquand Hartigan reading from her poem Now Is a Moveable Feast

Yang Lian, Chinese poet reading from his work

Ian Rickson on directing Pinter in Krapp’s Last Tape

Lia Williams performing extracts of Pinter's work


Playwrights’ panel

Timberlake Wertenbaker
Martin Crimp
Kwame-Kwei Armah
Dennis Kelly
Bonnie Greer (chair)

Academic participants

PANEL 1: Pinter, territory and identity
Dr Vicky Angelaki, ‘”Your language is forbidden”: speaking fractured political narratives
in Pinter’s later plays’
Professor Robert Gordon – ‘Pinter’s others: the destabilising of imperialist narrative in The Room and The Birthday Party’’

PANEL2: Pinter’s inter-texts
Professor Steve Gale, ‘My three most memorable meetings with Harold Pinter’
Professor William Baker, ‘Harold’s library’
Dr Susan Hollis Merritt, ‘Pinter still in play: Pinter's Legacies’

PANEL3 : So who then are Pinter’s legitimate children?
Dr Suzanne Scafe, South Bank University  ‘ “Let Me Tell You How it Really Was”’: Authority, Legitimacy and  Fictive Structures of Reality in Contemporary Black Women’s Autobiography’
Dr Deirdre Osborne, Drama Department, Goldsmiths One body, Many voices: Upon ‘Getting the Whole Story’ in the Monodramas of debbie tucker green and Mojisola Adebayo
Dr Joan Anim-Addo, ECL, Goldsmiths Black British Literature Representing a Fractured Past: Absences, Amnesia, Critical Resistance and the Academy

PANEL4: Pinter and narrative
Dr Clementina Angelino, University of Naples - ‘The Dwarfs as fiction and drama’
Dr Mark Taylor-Batty, University of Leeds, ‘Evasive narratives: Kullus and the source of creativity’
Dr Linda Renton, ‘Pinter’s approach to The Handmaiden’sTale’
Dr Antonia Tsamouris, ‘Terror and territory in Pinter’s postcolonial narratives’

PANEL 5: Fractured narrative and postmodern theatre
Dr Mireia Aragay, University of Barcelona, ‘Progress, violence and ethics in Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender’
Professor Nesta Jones, Rose Bruford College, ‘Music, words and narrative in The Spoils’
Dr Enric Monforte, University of Barcelona, ‘Damaged queer identities in contemporary British drama’
Dr Robert McLaughlin, Illinois State University, ‘The road you didn’t take: Sondheim’s fractured narratives’

PANEL 6: Fractured narrative and post-colonial performance
Dr Osita Okagbue, Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths,
Professor David Peimer, Department of Drama, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa: ‘Narrativity in post- apartheid performance’
Ade Solanke, ‘Fractured family in post-colonial drama
Ekua Ekumah, Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, ‘Storytelling in African performance’

PANEL 7: Postmodern/post-colonial aesthetics
Ho I Lien, ‘Choreographing cultural identities: the work of the Cloud Gate Theatre of Taiwan’
Jennifer Jackson, ‘Choreographic practices as narratives of time and space’
Mara Lockowandt, ‘Performing restraints: Pinter in Belarus’
Dr Angela Rene Wright, University of Barcelona, ‘A fractured narrative: following Walter Benjamin’s shadow into the making of postmodern traditions.

PANEL 8: Terror and territory in post-colonial narratives
Professor Helen Carr, Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, ‘Fractured narrative in postcolonial fiction’
Natalie Diebschlag, ‘Jazzing the novel: music and madness as structural singularity in Michael Ondaantje’s Coming Through Slaughter’
Britta Jubin, Department of Comparative Literature, Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany: ‘(Re) Measuring terror and territory: Uwe Timms Morenga as a new attempt at narrating the colonial war in German South-West Africa’

Workshop performance
Funmi Adewole, ‘The sleepwalkers’ dream’ (performance)
Ajaykumar, Drama Department, Goldsmiths,
Gabriel Gbadamosi, Pinter Centre Research Fellow, Spirit Level
Goossun Art-illery, 'Truth is Fragmented'