RAT Conference in Iowa???

[TimNGail@aol.com]

Has anyone else heard anything about this?  It was passed on to by another 
colleague, but I hadn't heard anything here on the RAT list about it.  Info, 
anyone?

tim
funkopolis


>Please come to Iowa this February
>The University of Iowa is hosting a meeting of the Rat
>Conference Thursday, Feb. 17 (7:30 PM) - Sunday, Feb. 20
>(4 PM). The Rat Conference began at a winter meeting in
>Iowa four years ago, and like all homecomings, this
>gathering presents an opportunity to look at distance
>traveled and the way of the road to go. The event will
>also be itself, and as usual, a remarkable group of
>people is drawing together.
>
>The subject
>Theater and War: Uses of Art. Guests are coming from
>Belgrade, Belfast and Buenos Aires, to explore means of
>sustaining life and a receptive sensibility in the face
>of atrocity (atrocities new and historic, subtle and
>overt). Guests' local situations provide our meeting
>with touchstone questions. They guide and also
>participate; they are artistic peers who will represent
>their work in a communion of laborers. Rat has focused
>in the past on esthetic borders and state borders. Let's
>go further now to talk about the congress of art and
>justice, across international borders.
>
>Questions
>How is art co-opted and made complicit with oppression?
>Do theater artists crave crisis (is conflict essential
>to our dramaturgy)? What beyond mere survival
>constitutes success? How are our rehearsal methods
>innately dissident? Do ghost dances work? How may an
>assembly of theater artists effectively witness for
>peace? Agitate for peace? Cause peace? Can artists
>communicate globally without participating in the
>development of a global monoculture? What are effective
>models of exchange under duress (so not simply how do we
>work, but how do we work together, when resources are
>scarce)?
>
>Dissembling: "I have never been in a war. Or I have
>fought in wars by simile, by metaphor"
>a) If you pay taxes to or otherwise support a government
>that trains or arms foreign militaries, if your
>government sustains an overwhelming threat of force
>(perpetuating militaristic syllogisms), then you are at
>war. Neutrality, too, can be a battle position. (The US,
>e.g., trained Guatemalan and Salvadoran officials
>responsible for documented cases of rape and torture
>through the School of the Americas in Georgia; world-
>wide we are involved in disarming by violence those we
>have armed.) If there is a war anywhere in the world,
>then the world is at war?
>b) I for one don't believe war is properly used in a
>simile or metaphor, and I want to check my rhetoric
>constantly, to ensure I support a drama of fact and not
>of sentiment. I am in a war, yes, but I have never
>walked under a bomb or suffered fear of absolute
>disappearance. Still, there is much of immediate,
>concrete, tactical value I stand to learn from those who
>have endured mortal peril.
>     All of us work with strong wills to bring a private
>sense truth to a common art. We often work to the point
>of exhaustion, confused about the identity of our
>communities, our proper relationship with them, and our
>level of effectiveness. Sometimes our public successes
>represent a perverse dislocation of our original
>inspirations. These difficulties manifest vividly where
>body and spirit are further challenged by raids,
>sanctions and deep coercion. Barter and cunning,
>strength in exile, precision in chaos, rehearsal in a
>culture where authentic performance (enactment,
>expression) is repressed... are disciplines I need in my
>life-school.
>
>Good Guys versus Bad Guys
>Dijana Milosevic of Belgrade's Dah Theater draws our
>attention to an article by Fintan O'Toole (see reading
>list under "War and Aesthetics," below). O'Toole reminds
>us that art's capacities are as often used on behalf of
>corrupt authority as they are to critique it. Our craft
>is not de facto virtuous.
>
>The Deal
>Make your way to Iowa City and we will feed you and
>shelter you by means of hospitable donation. I do not
>take lightly the trouble you may have in finding
>transportation; do not take lightly the earnestness of
>my invitation. I am contacting you, and asking you to
>make this sacrifice, because I have faith in the value
>of this particular intersection of talents.
>     Housing may mean a spare room in someone's house,
>or a sofa (preference list follows). If are able, or
>would prefer to secure your own lodging, suggestions are
>also included. If you cannot make the trip at all,
>please feel free to contribute to the shape of the
>agenda, and to participate in the dialogue that will
>follow the meeting.
>
>The Rat Conference is...
>A loose affiliation of theater artists committed to
>sharing work and ways of working. More of an ethical
>network than a professional one, we put ourselves in one
>another's presence under grace of hospitality (we are
>mostly broke in many senses, and rely on a loaves and
>fishes route to abundance). Our common esthetic is
>roughly Big-Cheap - "big" in the sense of blissfully
>impossible, and unstoppable. "Cheap" as in impecunious
>as well as tawdry (the quality so effectively championed
>by Mac Wellman). "Rat" doesn't mean anything; anyone at
>any time bears complete responsibility for its
>direction. Define it by contrary means in conversations
>with strangers; we must not be found out, even by
>ourselves.
>