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, Daumier?s
caricatures of theatre-goers and Sarah Bernhardt?s self-promotion
through photography. We invite papers 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 and caricature
- 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.

Please send 300-word abstracts of papers in English or French to
arttheatre.confgmail.com or c.moranqub.ac.uk by the 1st of August 2010.

A selection of papers will be edited for publication.