Conference Summer

I've given a couple of papers at conferences this summer, both trying out ideas from the book I'm writing on Naturalist theatre.

The first was at IFTR/FIRT [International Federation of Theatre Research] which this year was held at the University of Warwick. The title is Naturalism and necrophilia, starting with the case of the necrophile soldier Sgt François Bertrand and tracing the play of images of necrophilia in nineteenth-century French literature, ending up in Naturalism where they try to bury these tropes but find them soon scrabbling in the dirt for them.

The second was at TaPRA [Theatre and Performance Research Association] which this year was held at Royal Holloway. My paper, to the Theatre History and Historiography Working Group was entitled 'Whatever Happened to Gay Naturalism?' and asks why Naturalism found it so difficult to address the topic of homosexuality, despite it being topical, a social 'problem', scientifically endorsed and talked about elsewhere. I suggest that homosexuality becomes a kind of faultline that reveals some problems and inconsistencies in the Naturalist project.

I'm still working on these ideas and hope to give developed versions of these papers in various places - and they'll end up ultimately in the book so I won't put them up here, but you can read slightly more elaborated descriptions of the arguments here and here.