Redefining Theatre:
- Is what we do still theatre if it is only seen digitally?
- How do hybrid/interactive performance concepts change the ways we work with voices?
- What post-Zoom technologies and voice-teaching methodologies for digital voice work have been effective?
- What specific challenges and strategies have been encountered in auditioning with recorded materials?
- How has season selection changed considering both campus and department communities and how content can be delivered?
- How has voice coaching been altered?
Rethinking and Revising Voice and Speech training:
- How do we as coaches break down hierarchical structures while developing strong
- effective voices for a production?
- How can we as coaches and voice/speech educators honor the people whose stories are
- being told?
- When do we need to resist our biases, removing ourselves and encourage someone else to
- reclaim their own stories, their voices?
- What traditional coaching techniques can be shifted to foster new voices in more
- equitable ways? Are there techniques we may have missed, misread or can learn from?
- Are there ways in which our field has been unwelcoming to marginalized voices?
- What methods need revising in response to shifts in audience demographics and student
- learning styles?
Reverberations of 2020:
- Where are we now a year and a half after the pandemic hit?
- How has the Black Lives Matter movement been reflected in coaching/teaching/hiring
- practices?
- How can it help reframe future work?
- What are the best practices regarding hiring, recruiting of BIPOC coaches, teachers?
- What initiatives for equity and diversity are working and which ones need to be retired?
- How can voice professors/coaches best support their BIPOC students/clients/colleagues?
- Reckoning and Renewing our Theatre Departments:
- How essential is in-person instruction to our art? Is there a way to recast the concept?
- What has been gained in the zoom bubble?
- How have reflections on equity and diversity affected season selection?
- Are we liberating or limiting student potential in our training methods?
- How do we include intimacy training for both instructors and students in our programs?
- How does intimacy training interact with voice training?
- How do we mentor students to become resilient theatre professionals?
Retell and Relate:
- How do we write about and publish our stories of performance?
- What are the intersections between research, praxis, and practice?
- As theatre, performance programs come under the chopping block, how can we reclaim and reiterate the importance of our art for education?
- What practical exercises can we share to foster growth among our members and encourage collaboration across platforms?
Please Note:
Single Focus Group Sessions should address questions to the Conference Planner and FGR to gain approval before submitting their final proposal.
Multidisciplinary proposals must be authorized by TWO sponsoring ATHE focus groups. Email and get authorization from each focus group’s conference planner before submitting. It is best to give yourself plenty of time to gather the approvals. Last minute proposals may not be able to move forward.
TheVASTA Focus Group will be accepting single presentations or panel submissions this year.
We will attempt to put relevant submissions together into full panels for submission to ATHE.
We will have no A/V available for the conference. Please think about alternative methods for
sharing your work.
For more detailed information visit ATHE's Website
Please send individual paper/panel submissions no later than November 1, 2020, and
planned full panel submissions no later than November 15, 2020 to VASTA @ ATHE's Conference Planning Team.
Full panel submissions are due directly to the ATHE submission system on the ATHE website by December 1, 2020 for consideration.
If you have any questions, please reach out to the Conference Planning Team:
Colton Weiss, Conference Planner
Matthew Greenberg, Assistant Conference Planner
and Matthew Rossoff, Assistant Conference Planner