News
CfPs/CfCs/Job vacancies
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
Interdisciplinary Summer School – „Approaching Theatre Performance from Literary Studies and Linguistics“
Wiesbaden, Germany, 4-7 July 2025
IFTR 2025 – CfP Political Performances Working Group
Cologne, Germany, 9-13 June 2025
Deadline: 15 January 2025
Socio-Ecological Challenges of Transforming Performing Arts
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, 10-12 April 2025
Deadline: 20 December 2024
Amateur Acts: Why Amateur Theatre Matters
LMU Munich & University of Warwick, Venice, 8-10 September 2025
Deadline: 30 October 2024
Amateur theatre matters – for individuals, communities, nations, the professional arts and for the creative industries. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, for example, amateur theatre played an important part in the development of concepts like education, citizenship and subjectivity as an expression for the emerging bourgeois society. In the wake of the French revolution, some amateur theatre groups were formed as small democratic societies, others offered an alternative stage for marginalised women dramatists and in some cases the amateur craft became a legitimate way to improve morality and literacy. At the same time, many European countries reveal an extensive exchange between professional and amateur stages. Our research highlights that studying the archives and practices of amateur theatre – both historical and contemporary – not only entails a revision of our theatrical, social and cultural histories, but also enhances our understanding of today’s society.
Until recently, amateur theatre was largely ignored by researchers. However, in the twenty-first century it is receiving increasing scholarly attention. A number of important publications have opened a field contributing to an amateur turn that offers new perspectives on non-professional theatre practices Nicholson 2017, Schmidt 2020 etc.). There have been several research projects dedicated to the subject of amateur theatre, including the ‘Missing (Theatre) Histories’, which considered experimental amateur theatre practices in Hungary in the 1960s-80s, ‘Théâtres de société’ investigating amateur theatre in France and Switzerland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ‘Fremde spielen’ exploring contemporary amateur theatricals in a German context, and a project examining amateur theatre in small European nations.
Despite this abundance of activity, much of the research on amateur theatre has been advanced within specific national contexts. In 2022, the European Research Council (ERC) challenged this model by funding the project ‘Performing Citizenship: Social and Political Agency in Non-Professional Theatre Practice in Germany, France, Britain, Sweden and Switzerland (1780-1850)’. This project has sought to work transnationally to understand how amateur theatre developed across Europe in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, using its five countries as case studies.
The ‘Amateur Acts’ conference evolves from the ‘Performing Citizenship’ project to ask why amateur theatre has mattered to individuals and societies across Europe, its colonies and its migrant communities, both in the past and today. We are interested to receive proposals that discuss any aspect of amateur theatre from any period of time, with a focus on the European context. Questions of interest include (but are not limited to):
Value:
• What are the social benefits of amateur theatre practices on and off stage?
• What position do amateur theatre organisations have in narratives on cultural and personal value?
• How does amateur theatre relate to issues of gender, class, race, sexuality, disability?
• How does amateur theatre contribute to our cultural memory? What are the material traces, archives and histories of amateur theatre?
Practices:
• Why do people engage in amateur theatre?
• What examples of acts of resistance, resilience, empowerment, experimentation, innovation, ritual and tradition can be found in amateur theatre?
• What influences amateur theatre practice: for example, acting styles, design choices, scenography, costume and repertoire selection?
• What is amateur theatre’s relationship to industries and creative practices including music-making, dance, painting, technologies, the media, and professional theatre?
Ecologies:
• How do economics, legal matters and organisational structures impact amateur theatre?
• What social, political, cultural, economic factors impact the position of amateur theatre within specific communities, nations, regions?
• How has amateur theatre been utilised to develop and affirm national identities and to support colonial agendas?
• Where do we find examples of transnational/transcultural amateur theatre practices?
We will be delighted to receive proposals for 20-minute conference papers or other in-person formats (such as provocations or performance lectures). Please send a 200-word (max.) abstract and a 100-word (max.) bio to: performingcitizenship@lmu.de by 30 October 2024. After the event, a selection of papers will be published in an edited collection. The conference will include a formal launch of the project’s ‘Amateur Theatre Wiki’ and participants will be asked to join our first wiki edit-a-thon.
Performativity and Agonistic Pluralism in a Mediatised Age: Towards a Synthetic Approach
Charles University, Prague, 23-25 May 2025
Since J. L. Austin’s 1955 William James Lectures, performativity has become a seminal concern in linguistics, philosophy, literature, theatre, gender and media studies. Although Michel Foucault’s influential discourse theory defines itself against the notion of speech act, performativity as a concept has undoubtedly become paradigmatic, fundamentally inflecting understandings of discursive constructions of individual as well as social identities. In philosophy, aesthetics or political science, normative-deliberative theories of discourse (Jürgen Habermas) have been critically reflected (J.-F. Lyotard) and often abandoned in favour of agonistic pluralism (Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, William E. Connolly).
Notably, with the arrival of new media, performativity acquires new forms, including “discourse networks” no longer driven by meaning and sense but by pattern and code. These “networks of technologies” enable the selection, storage, and processing of data (Friedrich Kittler) characterized by algorithms, interaction and “flexible accumulation” (Manuel Castells) and increasingly implemented by artificial intelligence. In computer processing of natural language, “discourse parsing” has been applied, for instance in sentiment classification or question answering.
The conference invites investigation of the common features of these approaches in order to offer a theoretical reflection of mutually overlapping aspects of performativity and explore the possibility of formulating a synthetic theory of performativity which could contribute to the understanding of the dynamic of identity conflicts as reflected in modern and contemporary arts, sciences and spirituality.
Keynote Speakers
- Laura Cull Ó Maoillearca (Professor of Performance Philosophy, University of Amsterdam / Lector, Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts)
- Rajni Shah (artist and researcher, Amsterdam University of the Arts)
- Pavel Drábek (Professor of Drama and Theatre Practice, University of Hull)
The issues this conference will address include:
- What are the performative aspects of
- discursive constructions of subjective, gender, social and cultural identities, data processing in discourse networks, and computer processing of natural languages?
- What performative dimensions characterize contemporary trends in spirituality? Are they compatible with the above aspects of discursive constructions and networks?
- What roles have different forms of performativity in accelerating or moderating social conflicts?
The organizers welcome proposals of
(a) individual contributions (maximum 20 minutes, abstracts of 300 words), and
(b) round tables (4-6 speakers), including a general description (300 words) and brief bio-notes of individual speakers (100 words).
The proposals should be addressed to Professor Martin Procházka, Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University Prague, martin.prochazka@ff.cuni.cz.
The submission deadline of the proposals is 30 November 2024.
The registration will open on 1 February 2025.
This conference is supported by the European Regional Development Fund project “Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building” (reg. no.: CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004595)