Message on Disasters

Dear friends and colleagues,

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for offering sympathy and encouragement since the earthquake in the Tohoku region on March 11. We were completely devastated by the unprecedented scale of the damage caused by the earthquake and Tsunami, but to know that so many friends and colleagues abroad care about us has given us great hope for recovery in the future. We really appreciate your consideration.

What has made the damage by the earthquake even worse is that it also caused accidents at nuclear power plants. This could have caused tremendous damage, not only to Japan but also the rest of the world. Fortunately, the damage has been kept to a minimum thanks to the courageous efforts of those concerned.

Needless to say, at the moment chain fission reaction is in abeyant since the accident. Unless whole core meltdown takes place, its recriticality is vanishingly improbable because their control rod still works. As some of the expended fuel was aired out, relatively more lightweight radioactive materials were already diffuse, as you know. However, since the recriticality accident is not a possibility, amount of radiation won’t get higher any longer.

Areas outside the Tohoku region, such as Osaka and Kyoto, did not suffer any damage from the earthquake and radioactivity. These prefectures, for example, are more than six or seven hundred kilometers away from Fukushima, where the nuclear plants are located. Therefore there is no reason for concern about possible damage caused by radioactivity. I would like to assure you that Osaka and Kyoto is a perfectly safe place to stay, so please do not worry about the earthquake and radioactivity.

It is true that the earthquake and Tsunami has destroyed many towns and caused many human casualties. People in Japan are trying hard not to be devastated by this daunting fact. I believe that what we in Osaka can do for the victims of the earthquake at this moment is to mourn, pray, and sincerely do the task right in front of each of us. For me, it is to invite all of you to the IFTR Osaka Conference and conduct it successfully.

I really look forward to seeing all of you in Osaka in August.


Sincerely,

Yasushi NAGATA
Organizer
IFTR Annual Conference, 2011

Call for members Performance and Religion

Call for members
Performance and Religion
A proposed working group of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)

The IFTR’s proposed Performance and Religion working group seeks new members from scholars worldwide interested in exploring aspects of the entwinement between the forms, institutions, practices, traditions and impulses of theatrical performance and religion. The aim is to develop systematic ways of developing how performance and religion have come into conversation, cooperation and conflict both historically and in the present.

We wish to place our work at the intersection of the scholarly traditions of theatre studies and the study of religion. Both are committed to the systematic and humanistic critical inquiry of their material, and both are committed to internationalism and the joint participation of scholars from all corners of the world. In these traditions, the group is open to members from all national and cultural backgrounds, and it interests itself in work on all the world’s great spiritual and performative traditions.

Both religion and performance are, in our view, sets of social and cultural practices that have a profound and long-lasting importance to those involved in them. We are committed to a nonsectarian inquiry of them, and we assume no particular faith or religious affiliation for the working group.

Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):

• The use of performance within religious practices (i.e.; ritual or spirituality) and its relationships to secular performance
• The interactions between structures of religious institutions and theatres; politically, economically, or legally
• Traditions of religious antipathy towards the theatre, and vice versa
• The secularity of performative aesthetics and ways in which this has been challenged
• Attempts to bridge religious divisions by means of performance
• The nature of the theatrical spectator compared to the religious worshipper or congregant, as well as the theatrical performer as compared to the religious practitioner or celebrant
• The use of the transcendent or supernatural in performance
• A comparative analysis of religion and theatre as phenomena or intellectual systems
• Religious performance and the human community – e.g. ecological engagements or the theatre of the oppressed

Those who would like more information or are interested in joining should contact the following proposers:

Farah Yeganeh farahyeganeh@yahoo.com
Joshua Edelman edelmanj@tcd.ie
Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen kim.skjoldager@gmail.com