Comparative Drama Conference
Keynote Speakers
(1977-2006)
1977 John Ferguson (Open University of London) “Random Reflections from Stage, Stalls and Study”
1978 Kenneth Reckford (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) “Two Comic Revelations”
1979 William Nethercut (University of Texas) “The Face of Power”
1980 Charles R. Beye (Boston University) “Mirror or Distillery: The Proper Metaphor for Greek Tragedy”
1981 Bernard Beckerman (Columbia University) “End Signs in Theatre”
1982 Frank Ryder (University of Virginia) “From Goetz to Faust: The Whole as Sum of the Parts”
1983 Peter Walcot (University College, Cardiff) “An Acquired Taste: Joe Orton and the Greeks”
1984 Edith Kern (Hofstra University) “The Comic Scapegoat”
1985 Patricia Easterling (Newnham College, Cambridge University) “Tragedy and the Heroic”
1986 John Peradotto (SUNY, Buffalo) “The Politics of the Trickster”
1987 William R. Elwood (University of Wisconsin) “Incoherence as Meaning”
1988 Albert Wertheim (Indiana University) “Eugene O’Neill and His Legacy”
1989 William C. Scott (Dartmouth College) “Greek Tragedy: The Whole is Greater than the Parts”
1990 Tom Markus (University of Utah) “This is the Night that either Makes Me or Fordoes Me Quite”
1991 Reid Meloy (San Diego DHS) and Katherine Burkman (OSU) “Myth, Murder and Modern Drama”
1992 William Free (University of Georgia) “Thinking about Theatrical Space: Place, Path and Domain”
1993 Enoch Brater (University of Michigan) “Textuality and Theatricality”
1994 Oscar Brockett (University of Texas, Austin) “Theatre History, Drama, and Performance Studies”
1995 Charles Lyons (Stanford University) “What Do We Mean When We Talk about Character?”
1996 Bernd Seidensticker (Freie University, Berlin) “Peripeteia and Tragic Dialectic in Euripidean Tragedy”
1997 Glen Gadberry (University of Minnesota) “Theatre in the Third Reich”
1998 Kenneth Washington (Guthrie Theatre) “Issues of American Actors & Theatre in the 21st Century”
1999 Sid Homan (University of Florida) “What Do I Do Now?: Directing Shakespeare and Others”
2000 Juan Villegas (University of California, Irvine) “On Histories of Theatre and Theatre as Visual Construction”
2001 Marvin Carlson (CUNY Graduate Center) “Speaking in Tongues: Multiple Languages on the Modern Stage”
2002 Helene P. Foley (Columbia University) “Greek Tragedy for the New Millennium: A Case Study”
2003 Biodun Jeyifo (Cornell University) “Drama and the Formation of Postcolonial Studies”
2004 W.B. Worthen (University of California, Berkeley) “Fossilized talking: Writing, Print, Drama”
2005 J. Thomas Rimer (University of Pittsburgh) “Athens in Tokyo: Greek Drama in Postwar Japan”
2006 Stanley E. Gontarski (Florida State University) “Staging Beckett for a New Century”