Agency is a significant concept in participatory performance: as a participant you are able to take actions that affect the direction or outcome of (part of) the performance and this ability is a k...

In her ‘Manifesto to Decentre Theatre and Performance Studies’ (2021), Swati Arora explores the intangible and invisible borders that function to exclude certain people and knowledges, usually inde...

This article considers two revisions of Seán O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars (1926) for the 2016 centenary commemoration of the 1916 Rising in Dublin: Sean Holmes’s robust new version stage...

Recent television shows and specials, films, and biographical musicals such as SIX the Musical (2017), signal an ongoing preoccupation with the British monarchy, particularly as it intersects with ...

Building on my argument in a recently published book chapter, ‘Toward Decoloniality and Artistic Citizenship’ (2023), this article discusses how the concept of artistic citizenship could create a c...

Thinking about decolonisation and solidarity within the context of contemporary dance, if we consider decolonising and self-authoring as a process of self-actualisation, what role can peer and inst...

‘Funmi Adewole Elliott, Alethia Antonia, Ramsay Burt, Tobi Poster-Su, Thea Stanton, and Negar Tahsili were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’, chai...

Jean Spencer (1942–1998) was an artist working in the late constructivist period in the UK, making painting and relief works characterised by geometric precision, sequential change, and, later, det...

This performative paper interweaves contextual and theoretical discourse alongside the poetic, reflective text, to capture what Gherardi et al describe as the ‘sociomaterial traces’ of a practice o...

This article challenges the often-derided role of the young and apparently naive ‘starlet’ figure in film and stage performance. My engagement with the concept of the starlet originates from Laura ...

This provocation reflects on the experience of taking a class in contemporary African dance in Senegal, arguing that it represents a physicalisation of solidarity. The class included dance students...

UK artist Andrew Logan has been creating art in many forms for over 50 years. Arguably his most joyously inclusive event, the Alternative Miss World competition, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary...

This is the text of a short provocation that was prepared for the roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonisation and Solidarity’ as part of the conference, Borderlines IX: Seeking Solidarity and Wonder T...

Drawing on my background as a Mexican dancer and researcher, I analyse my practice-research on the body as territory, referencing the Latin American feminist concept of Cuerpo-Territorio (Body-Terr...

Indu Jain, Julia Listengarten, Stefanie Gabriele Sachsenmaier, and Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on ‘Collective Resistance’, chaired by Jason Bens...

Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 44, No. 1, 2024)

This article considers the relevance of Shakespeare’s works to foreign students when taught in a non-native context, specifically, in Saudi Arabia. It argues that a student-centred approach could s...

New plays set in the past continue to make up a significant proportion of theatre productions in England. This article argues that there is much to gain by recognising such works as ‘history plays’...

Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 3, 2023)

This editorial reflects on an intervention at this year's International Federation of Theatre Research conference by Ghanaian trans artist and activist Va-Bene Elikem K. Fiatsi (aka crazinisT artis...

In part responding to our increasingly material world, this article presents scenographic strategies as a highly appropriate and effective means for cultivating an attentiveness towards everyday ob...

Vocal expression beyond words, such as the excess of speech production found in coughs, rhythm, intonation, humming, offer a mode of being that does not require the endorsement of the world through...

ABSTRACT In response to the Sewol Ferry disaster and mishandling of the South Korean government, Korean activists and artists mobilized collaboration with the victims’ families to produce activist theatre productions that center not only the trauma of those most affected by the disaster but also their lived experiences and wishes, especially those of the mothers. Furthermore, the performance community

Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 1, 2023)

ABSTRACT This is a collaborative trans-atlantic meandering around our respective research fields, interjected with archival traces of our performances. Alongside us are The GUIDE, and #Sergina. The GUIDE is a survival praxis of how the Black identity performs in anticipation of being trapped in the gaze of being processed as other; a pedagogical deployment of research and critical theory from Black

ABSTRACT This editorial elaborates on the processes and practices of Open Call and its iteration as a print and online issue of Studies in Theatre and Performance. It offers a collaborative framing of the issue that includes the voices of its editors and peer reviewers, and suggests some possible pathways through the texts and artworks that comprise this special issue, which is titled open-call+response:

ABSTRACT This text reflects in part on Sosa’s ongoing project (in collaboration with Navild Acosta) Black Power Naps (https://blackpowernaps.black/), as well as ecologies of pleasure, and bio-technologies of the body in green city spaces. Sosa was an Open Call working group member in 2021, and was invited to re-visit their practice for this STP special issue.

ABSTRACT This offering is part 1 of 3 in Lou Sarabadzic’s series Making Sense, which re-visits the exploration of the physicality and materiality of language in her video work Traces (2021).

ABSTRACT This is part 1 of 3 of a conversation and a practice of listening about and speaking of composting grief. The exchange, between melissandre varin and Carmen Wong, was initiated via voice notes, voicemails, and WhatsApp recordings and was transcribed and composed/composted visually with illustrations by N. Drofiak.

ABSTRACT This contribution is a photo-essay comprising ten images of author’s actions (and ongoing project, Free Bitch / Fr33 b1tch) during lockdown in 2021 on Gadigal Land, Warrang.

ABSTRACT Elder reflects - in three parts - on family and friendship, noting references and past/present connections to art, music, Mardi Gras, and sites of cultural heritage.

ABSTRACT Fragments of Encounters is a performance-installation based research project that was first performed at the Infecting the City public art festival in 2019 in Cape Town. The project was build around a personal archive (over 150 hours of audio recorded material), comprised of fragments of everyday encounters and conversations with South Africans, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Nigerians, Pakistanis

ABSTRACT This offering is part 2 of 3 in Lou Sarabadzic’s series Making Sense, which re-visits the exploration of the physicality and materiality of language in her video work Traces (2021).

ABSTRACT ‘Summer Cannibals’ is a work of fiction, interspersed and illustrated with Izdihar Afyouni‘s paintings. It narrates an account of grief, rage, and violence.

ABSTRACT This article reflects on the special interests, friendships, tastes, and pleasures of those who are perceived as deviating from the norm, are labelled “activists”, and are expected to educate others on topics surrounding their own communities or marginalisations. This article creates a space of honesty in which one can exist beyond marginalisations.

ABSTRACT These are parts 2 and 3 of a conversation and a practice of listening about and speaking of composting grief. The exchange, between melissandre varin and Carmen Wong, was initiated via voice notes, voicemails, and WhatsApp recordings and was transcribed and composed/composted visually with illustrations by N. Drofiak.

ABSTRACT Anti-performance is a term that I use to describe my body of performances, which in actuality are also ephemeral moments in time-space. The ‘anti’ is derived and borrowed from anti-colonial, the radical (root) of ‘decolonial’ and ‘post’ colonial, in this case a direct opposition to what is expected of gendered, racialised bodies, by audiences but also that which is usually invited by institutions

ABSTRACT This offering is part 3 of 3 in Lou Sarabadzic’s series Making Sense, which re-visits the exploration of the physicality and materiality of language in her video work Traces (2021).

ABSTRACT Place can shape and influence audience behavior during a performance. This is especially noticeable in the site-specific immersive theatre model, where the performance occurs in a non-theatre setting and audiences have an active role. In this article, we argue that ‘place schema’ – a term from the interdisciplinary field of environment-behavior studies – provides a conceptual framework for

Place can shape and influence audience behavior during a performance. This is especially noticeable in the site-specific immersive theatre model, where the performance occurs in a non-theatre setti...

ABSTRACT A windy day in May in a small village Velo Grabje on top of the hill of the island of Hvar. A small, centuries old, chapel and a dry, dusty island’s landscape is the only mise en scene for the performance of the medieval saint play which is just about to take place in front of around 40 visitors. As the wind carries their entrance song and waves their costumes, long black and white black tunics

The staging of the Play of the Life and Death of Saint Lawrence, the Martyr, by an amateur theatre group the Hvar Popular Theatre, holds a special place in Croatian theatre history for its longevit...

Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 1, 2023)

ABSTRACT Combining phenomenological methods with practice-based research, this article explores what and how directorial strategies influence stage presence. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and Joseph Chaikin’s idea of heightened awareness, in particular, it describes directorial strategies that can heighten awareness in the interdependent actor–audience relationship. Adopting the

ABSTRACT This article approaches the idea of architecture, theatre and cultural democracy as relational concepts, and considers the theatre building as a cultural artefact which both manifests and embodies power relations. We use the case study of Liverpool’s PurpleDoor to explore this idea. We consider theatre buildings as cultural artefacts to focus attention on the impact of material or physical

This article approaches the idea of architecture, theatre and cultural democracy as relational concepts, and considers the theatre building as a cultural artefact which both manifests and embodies ...

ABSTRACT Taking an interdisciplinary approach to information-led exhibitions focused on performance can be considered practice-as-research historiography if curation is engaged with as praxis. Approaching exhibition curation as research praxis is a knowledge-making process, reconfiguring exhibitions as far more than a ‘pathway to impact’ designed at securing a grant. In the curation of two linked exhibitions

Dance, commonly seen as the art of rhythmical movements of the body, is actually a vehicle to project ideas, be it social, cultural, or even political, particularly among the Hausas in Northern Nig...

Abstract This editorial explores synergies between the articles gathered in this issue, which take a range of approaches to developing ecological analyses of both the creation and reception of performances and theatre history more widely. The editorial concludes with a reflection on the current UK government’s deliberate dereliction of the higher education sector, and its consequnces for the arts and

(2022). Preliminary thoughts on the death of the editor. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1-2.

ABSTRACT This paper describes an experimental project conducted by artists/researchers Crab & Bee (Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith). The project was put together in response to the Covid Lockdown restrictions during 2020 in the UK and drew upon an art and performance practice that had been unfolding since 2018. ‘Testing Scores for Performing Placestories’ describes the testing of a group of scores

This article seeks to reconstruct and explore the initial theatrical reception of Lorca in the UK, focusing on why and how his texts entered the British theatrical ecosystem, and how they created c...

This article investigates how deeply engaging embodied perception can be nurtured and refined over a lifetime. In this article, we propose the ways in which an industry-based, self-styled performan...

Crossing the frontiers looking for inspiration has been part of the Irish literary tradition, and translation and adaptation of continental writers such as Federico García Lorca have played an impo...

(2022). Correction. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 98-98.

ABSTRACT In Rasha Fadhil’s 2003 play Ishtar in Baghdad, she has Ishtar and Tammuz, mythological figures from Iraq’s ancient past, appear in Baghdad during the Iraq War, and has them experience many of the horrors associated with the American occupation, including being tortured at Abu Ghraib prison. This article demonstrates that, in writing the play, Fadhil attempted to engage audiences both in Iraq

David Bergelson’s “I Shall Not Die but Live” takes place during the Nazi invasion of the USSR, in a collective settlement adjacent to an agricultural experimentation farm in the Ukraine. The world ...

This article considers the impact of the not-for-profit motive promoted by radical campaigners of the New Theatre movement on accounts of British theatre history. Using the Malvern Festival (1929–1...

Created by Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Thinking at the Edge (TAE) enables the articulation of meaning implicit in embodied experience, which in turn discloses the affective meaning of words ...

(2021). Performance and the Right. Studies in Theatre and Performance: Vol. 41, Performance and the Right: Strategies and Subterfuges, pp. 231-235.