Burgerz, first staged in 2018, is a one-person show by British theatre-maker and writer Travis Alabanza. The production re-enacts an incident of transphobic violence Alabanza faced in 2016, during ...

As viral contagions, pandemic lockdowns and technological innovations transform daily routines, the relationship between art and public space changes as well. Through a long-term investigative and ...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2024)

Didactic theatre for a young audience (TYA) is perceived as a widespread obstacle to the artistic quality and value of TYA. This article rethinks and deconstructs the assumptions that didactic TYA ...

Translation (and rewriting) has been central to Simon Stone’s artistic practice since his first major directing success, an adaptation of the play Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) by the Germa...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 34, No. 1, 2024)

Australian theatre director Simon Stone has emerged as a major presence on the European stage since the International Ibsen Festival presented his The Wild Duck ‘after Ibsen’, co-written with Chris...

Simon Stone’s adaptation of Yerma, after Lorca, which premiered at the Young Vic in London 2017, reconsiders Yerma as an anonymous twenty-first-century woman known only as HER. Using Lorca’s play, ...

Simon Stone has emerged as one of the most influential theatre and opera directors in the world. This transcript of a face-to-face interview in 2013 - soon after his adaptation of Ibsen’s Wild Duck...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 34, No. 1, 2024)

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 4, 2023)

This essay addresses how the collision of image, text, and speech in contemporary scripted performances discloses something significant about both being in and thinking about the theatre. It examin...

‘Essayistic Ventures in the Wake of Diasporas’ contributes to Contemporary Theatre Review’s ‘Hear Tell: Describing, Reporting, Narrating’ issue by examining performances through the essay form. The...

Sonic Spectral Summoning was a participatory ‘correspondence course’ that took place as part of Queer Extension, a series of remote, artist-led experiments in alternative education that ran during ...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 4, 2023)

At a commercial gallery in London in 2019 I’m listening to audio recordings of Rose English’s 1980s performance Plato’s Chair, while a video of the show is projected on the wall ahead. The effect i...

In 2014, 30 years after the anti-Sikh pogrom (Chauraasi) instigated by the Hindu Right destroyed Sikh lives in New Delhi, I listened to the survivors and witnesses of the 1984 pogrom chat casually ...

This document is constructed as an exchange of letters between actor Agnes Brekke and writer and theatre scholar Giulia Palladini, reflecting on their common long-term engagement with the Colombian...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 4, 2023)

This dialogue explores the possibilities of binaural sound for contemporary theatre making and museum curation, situating sonic modes of practice in relation to particular formal experimentations d...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 4, 2023)

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 4, 2023)

Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight, and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and refl...

This article investigates how French playwright Florian Zeller positions his writing with respect to realism in his play The Father (Le Père, 2012) and what his dramaturgy of porosity adds to the r...

Re-Readings is a space in which scholars use a review format to return to and reflect on a book that has influenced their thinking and scholarship; these books might be established or overlooked, a...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 3, 2023)

In February 2017, Sweden’s oldest and largest professional Sámi ensemble, Giron Sámi Teáhter, produced the politically outspoken production CO2lonialNATION – A Theatrical Truth and Reconciliation C...

This article uses netnographic research methods, as a form of olfactory sensory mining, to investigate the smell-based experiences of audience members at Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (2011). In doing...

The relationship between theatre and the Anthropocene remains an understudied topic. First, there appears to be a tension between the Anthropocene as a concept that, by radically foregrounding a ho...

This article investigates the relationship between a marginalised community of essential workers and dominant models of participation. I focus on Agri-Care, The Royals, and Alien Species, projects ...

Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight, and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and refl...

In the wake of Brexit and COVID-19, this article looks back at resilience-building agendas in English publicly funded cultural production. The analysis examines the history of ‘resilience’ in arts ...

Abstract In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed explains that precarity is akin to a vase on the mantelpiece. If it were pushed even slightly, it would fall off the edge. Existence on that edge, Ahmed explains, is what we allude to when we discuss precarious populations. Patriarchy, racism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia are violent forces. They threaten to push us over the edge. Queer performance

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 1-2, 2023)

Abstract Contemporary theatre in South Africa has a history of hegemonically framing narratives that prevalence cisheteronormative stories. These narratives exacerbate the already existing acts of violence resulting from systems that place queerness against the backdrop of marginality. Inquiries in queer histories, identities, and sexualities arouse questions of belongingness, emphasising perspectives

Abstract In this article, I offer a personal and critical analysis of The Pink Supper, a protest-performance created in collaboration with Biño Sauitzvy in 2019. It is written using three modes of expression: (a) critical writing, which appears in roman type, (b) internal conversations, in italics and (c) excerpts from the performance itself, in bold. In engaging three distinct voices, I take a queer

Abstract Queer performance has historically illuminated an imbalance of care for minoritarian concerns and fostered community connections for collective survival and resistance.1 This article interweaves theorisations by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and collaborators in the book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice2 and draws upon interviews with key queer cultural producers, practitioners, scholars

Abstract Cleaving, a principle of theatricality, proposes that a ‘cleft’ or a ‘cleaving’ holds within it the promise and ability to shift, change, alter, and create emergences. I find the instability and transformation that cleaving energises to be resonant with the instability of sexual or gender non-conforming expression. In this essay, I present a rubric of cleaving as queer becoming by bringing

Abstract How to access, read, and interpret queer-feminist live art from a transnational perspective? And how to account for those subjects whose geopolitical positionalities do not subscribe to the most acknowledged Euro-American canons? In this article, I will address these questions by engaging with the limits of a queer theory (or practice) that does not acknowledge its feminist co-constitution

Abstract Queer ghosts are haunting the independent stages of Istanbul. Trans sex workers, fallen angels, and pop icons who lost their lives are coming back to life, and they want more than a mourning. They want to educate the living, seek redress, complain, and imagine new social knowledges for the queers of the present time. This article offers a dramaturgical taxonomy of these queer ghosts by tracing

Abstract The Zizi Project is a series of connected art and performance pieces created by artist Jake Elwes in collaboration with Me The Drag Queen and members of London’s drag performance scene. The works – currently Zizi: Queering the Dataset (2019), Zizi & Me (2020; ongoing), and The Zizi Show (2020) – sit at the intersection of drag performance and Artificial Intelligence (AI), playing with and

Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight, and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and reflectively on their work and the work of their peers.

Abstract The management of the coronavirus crisis of 2020 required immediate and top-down decisions, which contradicts the bottom-up philosophy of the non-curated Festival OFF d’Avignon. As a consequence, the loose organizational structure risked breaking apart and every theatre director acted autonomously by either cancelling the scheduled programme, creating online alternatives, or organising independent

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 32, No. 3-4, 2022)

Abstract Julia Varley is a long-term artist from the Odin Teatret in Denmark as well as being one of the key actress/directors and founder members of the Magdalena Project. Julia curates numerous international festivals and workshops including Transit (in Denmark) and the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA). She is also a founding member of the Barba Varley Foundation, in support of

Abstract From the point of view of the author Hilkka-Liisa Iivanainen, the co-artistic director of Finland’s Tampere Theatre Festival, the purpose of a performing arts festival is fundamentally challenged by the unforeseen and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In Tampere, the festival’s core mission of coming together to celebrate theatre as an art form has almost become secondary to the constantly changing

Abstract John McGrath is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Manchester International Festival (MIF) and The Factory, Manchester, UK. The festival is biennial and commissions new work by artists from all over the globe, presenting the work over an 18 day period in July. Here, John talks in an interview with Maggie B. Gale about the impact of the pandemic on the planning season for the festival

Abstract In this critical reflection, festival director Shimrit Ron discusses the origins of Isra-Drama, the impact of COVID on the showcase, and the new artistic initiatives that responded to the conditions of performance online for an international audience.

Abstract In December 2021, Danielle Lynch interviewed interim director of St. Patrick’s Festival, Anna McGowan about the experiences and challenges faced by the festival in planning Ireland’s largest arts festival during a global pandemic. The discussion details immediate actions taken by festival organisers in the aftermath of the March 2020 cancellation. The interview also provides an insight into

Abstract In her interview with Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll, the artistic director of Tkaronto/Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, Laura Nanni, discusses how the festival responded to COVID-19 and calls for racial justice in 2020 and beyond.

Abstract In 2021, the International Festival of Street Theatre in Aurillac, France, was cancelled for the second consecutive summer. Amidst the ensuing furore, street theatre artists and their advocates risked conflating public health measures with the oppressive policies of the security state. This essay critically examines the underlying assumptions at work in these arguments and insists on the importance

Abstract Roman Dolzhanskiy speaks to James Rowson about the challenges of organising international theatre festivals in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses how the New European Theatre (NET) Festival and Territory Festival have navigated the complex and frequently changing public safety restrictions in Russia.

Abstract In this interview with Bryce Lease, Jay Pather discusses the multiple festivals he curates in South Africa, the Netherlands, and France. These include Infecting the City Public Art Festival, the ICA Live Art Festival, Afrovibes, and Season Africa 2020. Focusing on African contexts for performance and congregation, Pather discusses the challenges and opportunities for collaboration and audience

Abstract On 16 March 2020, then Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte imposed the Enhanced Community Quarantine putting the main island of Luzon – where Manila, the National Capital Region, is located – on a total lockdown to protect the spread of COVID-19. The lockdown restricted mobility, social gatherings were prohibited, and everyone was mandated to stay inside their homes. Moreover, there was a

Abstract Five programme advisors from the British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival offer reflections on film programming during and post COVID. In addition to a discussion on hybrid festivals, the programme advisors also comment on audiences, Q&As, the engagement with filmmakers, and what it means to programme for both virtual and live festival formats.

Abstract The London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) is a biennial festival of theatre, performance, and cultural events. The organisation also supports year-round activity in London. LIFT was founded by Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal, with the first festival in 1981 hoping to ‘challenge British theatre and open a window on the world’. It has been a significant force in internationalising the UK

Abstract Shona McCullagh, Artistic Director of Auckland Arts Festival, Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki, speaks to Sarah Thomasson about her experience of festival programming during the pandemic and the challenges and opportunities artists and festivals in Aotearoa will face in the future.

Abstract Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (GIFT) is an annual festival of contemporary performance in Gateshead, in the North East of England. It was founded in 2011 to provide a platform for contemporary performance in the region and as a creative response to Gateshead town centre’s redevelopment. It includes performances, workshops, discussions, and other informal ways for artists and

Abstract In this interview, Karen Fricker and Melissa Poll speak with Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill, the new co-directors of the Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal-based Festival TransAmériques (FTA), North America’s largest performing arts festival. Dennewald and Mill discuss how COVID-19 and the global racial reckoning have impacted the FTA, particularly through the festival’s approach to artist–producer partnerships

Abstract This article examines the impact of COVID on festivals and the future of the industry. Analysing more than 50 items of online news, scholarly reviews and reports, and governmental guidance, this article examines the immediate effects of COVID in the industry as a whole, and particularly on its precarious artists and workforce. It also explores the changing behavioural attitudes towards festivals