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Performing female bodies and creative corporeality in the English-speaking world
Lille, 6 February 2026
This symposium invites thinking of the creative possibilities of the female body in performance. Performing bodies, especially when indexed as female or non-compliant or non-conforming bodies, are frequently reduced to their iconic dimension. The aim is to go beyond the mere iconicity of the performing body, whether on a theatre stage, an art gallery or any public space, and explore the possibilities that the body in performance opens up: possibilities of resistance to normative, hegemonic discourses, of political, social, sexual, intellectual contestation. We also invite papers looking at the body as a site of creativity and / or knowledge production in its own right. What happens when one looks at the performing body differently?
The ways in which theatricality and scenography bear on performing bodies constitute another angle from which to investigate the topic. How do voice and gesture body forth resistance against normativity? To what extent can props and costumes participate in merging the body on stage with precarious bodies outside the stage to transcend individual corporeality and represent collective forces? What type of setting includes new forms of corporeal experience for the audience and encourage intercorporeal dialogue between audience and actors or performers? What strategies of monstration are employed for bodies that are usually invisibilised (e.g., corpus delicti, corpus vili…) ?
Papers may also address contemporary scenic and visual explorations of body imaginaries revolving around female bodies subjected to plastic, malleable and performative body techniques, such as metamorphosis onstage, body horror or enhanced physicality. The potential transcending of gender boundaries is also of interest, especially when performers or directors resort to posthumanist and transhumanist prosthetics and aesthetics. The introduction of such practices, embracing a renewed vision of a body emancipated from corporeal as well as gender norms, will be the starting point of a discussion on the resistance encapsulated in performative bodies that no longer follow corporeal expectations.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Posthumanist bodies and new reflections on the emergence of transcending corporeal boundaries
- Living arts ranging from immersive drama to street theatre to site specific theatre or dance/ physical theatre
- Female bodies as sites of contestation and resistance
- Bodies and performance as political tools
- Deviant bodies and non-conforming stagings of female bodies
- Horror bodies : the aesthetics of disturbing visions of female bodies
- Issues of visibility and representation
- Kinaesthetics (trance, frenesy and other forms of body pathologies/ phenomenons)
- Performance and creation
- Metamorphosis, morphism and mutations
- Monstrosity and Monstration
- The phenomenological dimension of the experiencing body
- Feminist perspectives on the body
- The materiality of the body including matters of gender and sexualities
- Material culture on stage
Selected bibliography
Butler, Judith. Vulnerability in resistance. Duke University Press, 2016.
Haraway, Dona. Simians, Cyborgs and Women. Routledge, 1991.
Hill, Shonagh. Women and Embodied Mythmaking in Irish Theatre. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Lemoine, Xavier, Claire Delahaye et Christine Kiehl, eds. Performing Gender, Sexual and Racial Dynamics on the US Stage. Coup de Théâtre 37 (2023).
Martinez, Ariane. Contorsion : histoire de la souplesse extrême en Occident, XIXe-XXIe siècles. Société d’histoire du théâtre, 2021.
Sagaert, Claudine . Histoire de la laideur féminine. Imago, 2015.
Paper proposals (250 words) with short bio (50 words) to be sent conjointly to Hélène Lecossois (helene.lecossois@univ-lille.fr), Sophia Mallek Winter (sophia.mallek@univ-lille.fr), and Claire Hélie (claire.helie@univ-lille.fr) by 1 December 2025.
Call for Papers – „Of Mutability and Malleability: Re-Imagining the Contours of US Theatre and Drama“
10-13 June 2026, University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès
Call for Papers – „Beyond Anthropo-Scenes“
Beyond Anthropo-Scenes: Contemporary European Performance and ‘The Human’
8th-9th September 2025, School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York
In theatre and performance, the human is generally understood as ‘centre-stage’ – often literally. But with the escalation of threats posed by technological advancements and climate and ecological crisis, ‘the human’ is increasingly understood, conceptually and critically, as unstable and precarious. Far from being at the centre of the universe (the position assumed by individualist, Enlightenment-based humanism), decades of postmodern and postdramatic theatre practices have unsettled the human from its historical centre, or even pushed it offstage altogether. The posthuman forms that have, in part, evolved from these practices engage with urgent technological and ecological debates to frame ‘human performance’ as ‘more-than-human’, kin with animals, objects, technology, plants, air, rocks. The posthuman, in its various forms, is thus increasingly being reflected on contemporary stages; such performances are the focus of this conference. Eschewing the tendency in theatre and performance studies to distinguish between and even stratify transhumanist interests and more environment-focused perspectives (Rosendhal Thomsen & Wamberg, 2020), we are interested in cultivating interconnectivity and dialogue between these fields as a response to contemporary political, cultural and ecological challenges.
Ten years ago, Una Chaudhuri wrote of the increasing presence of anthropocentric climate crisis in contemporary theatre. The ‘anthropo-scenes’ she explores respond to this crisis and its demand ‘that we think and rethink the terms of belonging, for our species and others’, with ‘[o]ur dawning awareness of the Anthropocene age amplif[ying], by many orders of magnitude, the reckonings we must now make in our little rooms’ (2015: 25). Since then, new ecodramaturgical frameworks have been developed by the likes of Lisa Woynarski (2020) and Theresa J. May (2021), both of whom connect environmental crises to other injustices, while Abby Shroering (2024), building on May’s work, navigates a threatening ecodramaturgy that forces audiences to consider the role of humanity as a species. Meanwhile, the international conference ‘Limits of the Human’ (Lausanne, 2021) and the research seminar ‘Performance in the Age of AI’ (University of Bristol, Jan 2025), alongside scholarship by the likes of Ester Fuoco (2024), Peter Eckersall, and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, mark intense interest in the ways in which AI and robots are challenging conceptions of humanness. Alongside such challenges and undoings, we encounter corresponding provocations around anthropocentric notions of space, sound, liveness, language, relationship, subjectivity, objects, bodies, and so on. Both fields – climate change and advancing technologies – grapple with massive, fundamental, even terrifying change and possible endings and extinctions, as well as the prospect of a world that will be very different to the one that birthed the humanist subject. Looking beyond performances that use human-oriented narratives to explore the socio-cultural effects of technology and the wider hyperobject of climate crisis (Chaudhuri’s ‘anthropo-scenes’), this conference asks: what might be learned by bringing the two fields together to interrogate possible meanings and roles of ‘the human’ at a point in history when history faces its dissolution?
The way ahead necessitates new and creative modes of being and acting ‘human’. We are interested in asking how, in this context, contemporary European performance might interrogate and go beyond normative understandings of ‘the human’; in particular, those understandings cemented in Enlightenment and colonialist European culture and practice. We wish to move beyond concerns over posthumanism and climate crisis from white-oriented absorptions, understanding that European (neo-)colonialism has altered bodies and destroyed worlds – and in many cases continues to do so – for centuries (Yusoff, 2018). The conference seeks to bring together parallel academic and artistic discourses around the climate and ecological emergency and the posthuman, asking how performance – that most human of art forms – might trouble inherited notions of ‘the human’ and tackle the challenge of imagining posthuman futures. These ideas will be explored through a combination of panels, round table discussions, creative provocations and performances, involving academics at all career stages as well as artists and scholar-practitioners.
We are inviting abstracts of 300 words (plus a 100-word bio) on, but not limited to, the following subjects and interconnections between them:
- Entanglements of colonialism, capitalism, (post)humanism, and climate and ecological crisis in contemporary theatre and performance;
- Changing understandings of ‘the human’ in contemporary theatre and performance;
- Post-anthropocentric challenges to dramaturgy;
- Cyborg and posthuman theatre and performance;
- Posthuman, transhuman, new materialist, extinction, and posthumous discourses;
- Anti-colonialist / anti-Enlightenment performance practices in which normative ideas of ‘the human’ are questioned;
- Challenges against white / Eurocentrist supremacy in ideas of ‘the human’;
- Queer / trans* engagements with anthropocentric / technological concerns, and/or challenging ‘humanness’ in contemporary performance;
- Discourses of vulnerability and care where these engage with climate and posthuman crises;
- Imagined posthuman / post-anthropocentric futures in contemporary theatre and performance.
In the interests of encouraging collaboration and conversation, the conference is moving away from the model of keynote speakers and towards more discursive frameworks. The centrepiece of the conference will be a live performance of The Talent (2023) by Action Hero: an award-winning production that explores the possible legacy of the voice in a posthuman future. This will be followed by an opportunity to discuss the work with the artists. Details on the performance here: https://actionhero.org.uk/The-Talent. In addition, there will also be a screening of the Finnish theatre company WAUHAUS’ sky every day, followed by a Q&A with the makers. Details on the performance here: https://www.wauhaus.fi/sky-every-day
This will be a two-day hybrid conference hosted at the University of York on Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th September. In your abstract, please indicate the proposed format of your contribution (e.g. paper, provocation, performance) and whether you are planning to attend in-person or online. The deadline for abstracts is Monday 14th April.
Conference fees will be £70 for in-person attendance, £45 to attend online, or £10 for postgraduate researchers and unaffiliated delegates.
Please send your abstracts, as well as any queries, to: beyondanthroposcenes@gmail.com
Conference organisers:
Catherine Love-Smith (University of York)
Louise LePage (University of York)
Alex Watson (Performers College Brighton, BIMM University)
Call for Papers – „Re-Orienting Gender (Studies): Feminism, Queerness, Trans* in Cultural Studies Today“
University of Bamberg, 20-22 November 2025 (Deadline: 19 March 2025)
Call for Papers – „The Prism of Festivals in Theatre and Performance Studies“
Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy, 9-10 October 2025