Theater theorists, historians, and practitioners gathered in Orlando for this year’s annual meeting of ATHE, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Participants convened in a range of settings, from roundtables in traditional conference meeting rooms to “submerging scholars” panels in a grottoed pool and improvised balcony-based focus groups. Disciplinary debates ensued (I’m looking at you, theory/practice dyad!), but I’m pleased to report that such tensions never diminished my ability to eavesdrop (nor, it would seem, my colleagues’ abilities to produce speech that deserved to be overheard!).
1. Person 1: “Were you at the terrible panel?”
Person 2: “Which panel? Your panel?”
2. “We’re both angry Marxists who hate everyone.”
3. Person 1: “We were talking about Proust.”
Person 2: “We were talking about onesies vs. rompers.”
4. “I don’t wear pants. I don’t go to keynotes. It’s in my conference rider.”
5. Person 1: “I feel like you are ghosting this conference.”
Person 2: “An ATHE-rition?”
6. “Don’t say ‘grammar school.’ This isn’t Sussex.”
7. “If you can’t cite yourself, how in the hell are you going to cite somebody else?”
8. Person 1: “I freaking love microfiche.”
Person 2: “Me too. I’m not going to let it die.”
9. “My students always ask me if that’s Hildegard von Bingen’s voice in the recording.”
10. “Actually, someone from my department flew to Portugal on a coupon.”
11. “I meant service to the field, not service to yourself.”
12. “I’ve won every award I’ve ever applied for, so I just assumed awards committees were correct.”
13. “I was like, ‘It’s a freaking conference paper. You’re lucky I used evidence!’”
14. Person 1: “The gender question requires a longtable.”
Person 2: “Are you suggesting a new social construct?”
15. Person 1: “I almost said something really inappropriate.”
Person 2: “Save it for the article.”
16. “The poolside music is really lesbian-affirming.”
17. “Is there anyone you dislike that you’d like to talk about?”
18. “I was awake for 73 hours making up things that rhyme with Gayle Rubin.”
This article was commissioned by Mary Zaborskis. 
