Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today, a special issue of Journal of American Drama and Theatre
Spring 2025
Submissions due December 1, 2024
The American Theatre and Drama Society invites submissions for its Spring 2025 issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre. Membership in ATDS is not required for submission of an article, but submissions from members are especially encouraged.
This special issue turns to the ideas of censorship and public (or digital) censure in a rapidly changing political and technological landscape. How are these concepts changing? Which histories do they draw on, and how do theatre and performance artists, scholars, and institutions respond to both bans, silencing, and covert pressure to quietly avoid certain content? Cognizant of the history of censorship – from historical examples such as Mae West’s Sex or Eduardo Pavlovsky’s Telerañas to more recent instances, such as the cancellation of a Florida high school’s production of Indecent in 2023 – there has been a rise in both overt theatrical bans and quiet reprogramming to avoid controversy (and legal challenge, in some localities). Further, rapid technological developments have increased both the spread and speed of censorship/censure: platform bans, content moderation disputes, deepfakes, public cancellation campaigns, and doxxing attacks. What can the ideas of censorship and the public censure add to today’s theatre and performance studies discourse? Is theatre more likely to be censored, because of its embodied nature and sensory nature, or less so, because of its ephemerality and multimedia flexibility? How has theatre and performance studies resisted censorship? Should it?
This special issues on “Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today” calls for papers, interviews, and performance reviews that document, critique, theorize, rebut, redress, and explore the changing concept of censorship, and its related concepts of the public censure, “cancellation,” redaction, self-censorship, and content moderation. We are interested in curating an issue that speaks to today’s issues of censorship and public censure. We welcome historical analyses, and encourage scholars to clearly articulate the links between histories and the present and future state of theatre/performance.
Topics might include:
Radical acts of censorship or opposition to censorship
Creative evasions of censorship through activism, technology, media
Self-censorship due to real and/or perceived risk by an individual, group, or institution
Changing modes of censorship due to network effects, social media, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and surveillance
Models of artistic creation and freedom within the Americas under dictatorial, authoritarian, fascist and other repressive regimes and influences.
Censorship in the theatre and performance classroom and in production
The relationship between public censure/censorship (of content, casting, trans exclusionary bans) and concepts of social and emotional harm
Relationship between censorship, self-censorship, and the economics of theatre and performance: what is programmed? What is viral? What is acceptable? According to whom?
Relationship of censorship to discourses of childhood and/or vulnerability
Censorship in the library and the archive
Current-day representations of past periods of censorship
Censorship and international markets for performance
The relationship between cultures of fascism and patterns of censorship in dramatic literature and performance.
Censorship and public policy making based on religious law as applied to theatre
Pieces may be full length essays (6000-8000 words); briefer profiles (2500-4000 words) of artists, presenting organizations, or companies; provocations to the field (2500-4000 words); or interviews (up to 6000 words). Manuscripts should be prepared in conformity with the Chicago Manual of Style, using footnotes, and submitted as an email attachment in Microsoft Word format. If you are using images, please provide the images and captions with your submission. (Please Note: images should be at least 300dpi and authors are responsible for securing permissions before submission)
All correspondence will be conducted by email. Submissions must be received by 1 December 2024. Please direct queries and submissions to guest editors Virginia Anderson (vanderso@conncoll.edu), David Bisaha (dbisaha@binghamton.edu), and Pria Williams (pcwood@olemiss.edu).
ABOUT JADT
Founded in 1989, JADT is a widely acclaimed peer-reviewed journal publishing thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas—past and present. The journal’s provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. JADT is fully online and freely accessible. https://www.thesegalcenter.org/jadt
For more information about ATDS, see http://atds.org.