Dramaturgy as a field in theatre practice continues to be codified through published scholarship on both the role of the dramaturg and acts of dramaturgy. A separate application of the term dramaturgy exists in the discipline of sociology, inspired by Erving Goffman’s foundational work The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. This volume proposes an interrogation of the disparate uses of the term dramaturgy, applying the techniques of theatrical dramaturgy to real world sites and encounters. In the sociological sense, dramaturgy refers to the performative interchanges that shape public life, which allow humans to communicate and make meaning. We combine this understanding with the ideas expressed in what is perhaps the most important and widely-cited article ever penned by a dramaturg, Elinor Fuchs’ “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play.” Fuchs balances intellectual rigor with creative analysis, stressing that the job of the dramaturg is to analyze the rules of the theatrical world to best understand how it operates. 

We have discovered that bringing our dramaturgical thinking to cultural objects and embodied experiences allows us to analyze how things work, and how patterns —design patterns, but also patterns of behavior— accumulate to curate both space and experience. Our process of bridging Goffman and Fuchs thus constitutes a methodological approach. We work from the assumption that someone has made decisions that encourage audiences/consumers to interact with these sites in particular ways. The dramaturg’s perspective as an informed audience member allows for multiple pathways of understanding these choices, and might further offer liberatory potential beyond the mere understanding of structures. A dramaturgical approach to understanding the real world might help us create pathways to social change.  

Building on “Small Planets” and “Real World Dramaturgies” sessions held at ATHE conferences over the past several years, we envision chapters that discuss curated venues for tourism (architecture, casinos, museums, galleries, heritage sites) as well as modes of engagement (the academic job market, curriculum and syllabus development, corporate storytelling). What do we gain when we apply a dramaturgical mindset to the interactions and experiences that surround us? How are real-world sites curated for audience engagement? To what extent are resistant readings possible? 

We invite chapter proposals (300-600 words) that identify real-world sites, networks, or events for this kind of dramaturgical analysis. We hope to curate a robust and expansive collection that highlights wide-ranging dramaturgical thinking, authored by a diverse group of artists, scholars, and critics housed within a variety of academic, professional, and creative settings. We estimate that finished submissions will be around 3000-6000 words, and we are happy to include pieces of varying lengths. We welcome first-time authors and are willing to mentor you through the publication process. 

Please send proposals (or longer drafts) to both Karen Jean Martinson (karen.jean.martinson@asu.edu) and Dan Smith (smit2030@msu.edu) by January 31, 2025. Do not hesitate to reach out with any inquiries.

Call for Abstracts of Papers and Presentations
 
On Thursday, April 24, through April 26, 2025, the University of Missouri Department of Theatre and Performance in cooperation with the Cambio Center, MU Libraries, and The Bridge, will host a new theatre and drama conference, Cachimbonas!: Celebrating Latina/e Dramatists & Social Engagement, which will feature a full production of Romero, an award-winning new play by Xiomara Cornejo, Salvadoran American director/playwright.  Cachimbonas is a Central American term for a “strong, fierce, courageous woman,” or “good person,” and the conference will be centered on the work of Latina/e dramatists and will celebrate the lives, music, food, and culture of the traditions of those would have come to the US from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. 
 
The conference, which will feature a virtual component, lead by our professor, Dr. Kevin Brown, a collaborator with playwright Caridad Svich, will give special attention to Latina dramatists (for both stage and screen) who deal with issues of social justice, migration, undocumented workers, and the border with a special focus on the Mexican and Central American refugee experience.  Xiomara’s play focuses on the assassination of El Salvador’s Archbishop Óscar A. Romero and his subsequent canonization, but more broadly looks at faith as resistance, liberation theology, and the impact of war and US intervention in Central America. 
 
While the primary focus will be scholarly papers and creative workshops that address the work of Latina dramatists who focus on the above-mentioned issues in their work, some of the panels we’d like to present will be more broadly focused on Latine and Latin American theatre artists and dramatic literature, and how these works get at the realities of issues like US intervention, the US border, refugees, and migration. 
 
Featured guest artists include renowned playwright Elaine Romero, award-winning author of Title IX and Mother of Exiles, and professor of theatre at University of Arizona at Tucson, Xiomara Cornejo, author of Romero, Theater of the Oppressed practitioner, and assistant professor of theatre at the University of Illinois at Chicago , and Lil Lamberta, a trans non-binary mother, artist, puppeteer and Founder/Director of All The Saints Theater Company, all of whom will be teaching workshops in Theatre of the Oppressed, Dramatic Writing, and Radical Puppetry as part of the conference.  The conference seeks to support the work of every level of theatre, drama, and performance scholarship, however, we’ll be offering a special focus on emerging graduate and undergraduate scholars who might debut with this conference. 
 
Scholars and Artists wishing to present at the conference should send:
 
An abstract of 150-250 words describing topic(s), goals, and guiding questions
A short bio (50 words) and your contact information including email and phone number 
 
Submissions must be received by Nov. 15, 2024, and in order to attract emerging scholars and artists, we’ll be keeping registration low, and it will be free to all MU students, faculty, and staff.
 
For additional information about the conference contact Dr. David A. Crespy at his email: crespyd@missouri.edu.

IFTR’s Popular Entertainments Working Group is interested in uncovering and giving
voice to historical forms of popular performance that have largely been overlooked in
dominant theatre history narratives. The multiple performance styles/genres within the
group’s field of interest include circus, burlesque, variety, vaudeville, revue, sport as
performance, music in popular entertainments, popular theatre, clowns, comedy,
stand-up, video gaming, cosplay, comic festivals and more. More recently the scope and focus of the group’s work has expanded to consider popular entertainment’s important role in the wider theatre ecology; the influences of the popular on historical avant-garde and contemporary experimental practices; and the changing cultural status of popular forms. You can find out more about the group’s work athttps://iftr.org/working-groups/popular-entertainments


For the IFTR conference in 2025, which will take place in Cologne, Germany from 9-13 June, the Popular Entertainments Working Group wishes to take advantage of the conference theme of Performing Carnival and its keywords of Ekstasis, Subversion, and Metamorphosis to highlight the omnipresence of popular entertainments both temporally and spatially. 


At the 2024 conference in Manila, we discussed the tendency for popular entertainments to be dismissed as culturally and temporally delimited and lacking in aesthetics and social criticism. We welcome proposals on all aspects of popular entertainment. We would especially welcome abstracts within the context of the conference theme and/or that consider how popular entertainment: cultivates intermediality, intercultural, and chronological networks
is situated within an aesthetic context serves the subversive aspects of the carnivalesque embraces intermediality and crosses temporalities through embodiment recuperates lost voices repurposes the negative language used against popular entertainment survives and adapts to legislation and regulation creates grounds for resistance and transformation


For those who are interested, we’d like to consider Stuart Hall’s essay “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular.’” Working group member Jason Price will be leading a discussion of the article on Zoom in early January. (Information forthcoming in the next couple of months.) Submissions that engage with the article and one or more of the prompts above may be considered for a general panel to be proposed by the working group. IT IS NOT REQUIRED THAT YOU ENGAGE WITH THE ARTICLE FOR YOUR ABSTRACT TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THE WORKING GROUP. 


Group Meetings
The Popular Entertainments Working Group operates by circulating members’ draft papers in advance of the conference, enabling a more focused discussion. Once papers are circulated, members are then asked to nominate another paper they’d like to moderate. The group allocates approximately twenty minutes for discussion of each
paper. Members are asked to speak about their research for ten minutes; visual or AV material that amplifies or supports their paper in some way is encouraged. (As all papers are read in advance, presenters are not required to provide an oral summary of their paper.) A moderator assigned to the paper will then lead the remaining ten minutes
of discussion.


Submission of Abstracts
Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted no later than 15 January 2025 via IFTR’s Cambridge Core portal. Please specify ‘Popular Entertainments’ working group when submitting your abstract. Accepted participants will be asked to submit full papers (no more than 5000 words) to the convenors in early May for distribution. Papers need not be in a finished state: drafts and works-in-progress are acceptable. Once gathered, all papers will be made available to group members for reading and a discussant will be allocated to each.


Please send any questions to the conveners of the Popular Entertainments Working Group:


Aastha Gandhi, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, Delhi: agandhi@aud.ac.in
Susan Kattwinkel, College of Charleston, U.S.A.: kattwinkels@cofc.edu

[NOTE: Issues 1.1 (2024) and 1.2 (2024) are already published. We are currently looking for submissions for issues 2.2 (2025) and beyond.]

TPNC operates via rolling submissions, so there is no specific deadline to submit your article.

To submit a manuscript to Theatre and Performance Notes and Counternotes (TPNC), please visit Editorial Manager (https://www.editorialmanager.com/tpnc/default.aspx). The online system will guide you through the steps to upload your article to the editorial office. Except in response or discussion articles in which the identity of the author is appropriate and/or required, in order to undergo the journal’s double-blind peer-review process, all articles should (1) be anonymized, (2) be between 1,500-4,000 words, and (3) conform to the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Research articles

Original research articles can range from focused notes to medium-length articles. Articles can be on any subject(s) in the broadly-defined field of theatre studies, but the scope, ambition, and thesis should be appropriate to the length of the submitted article.

Discussions

Discussion articles can offer proposed solutions and/or problematize specific ideas related to, or emerging from, conversations or debates within the field. Discussions can also serve as a place to crystalize conversations or debates in the field, or to bring seemingly-disparate ideas into a more coherent conversation.

Responses

Response articles are, most often, directed at either the theses of a specific scholar(s) and/or a specific conversation or debate within the field. Often, responses engage directly with the strengths and weaknesses of particular theses or broader ideas in the field in order to either strengthen, modify, or challenge these theses/ideas. The aim of these responses is not to create debates or arguments (and, certainly, never arguments or attacks of a personal nature) but to move the field to a clearer and more accurate understanding of the subject at hand. These response articles can also provide a space to revisit and/or modify one’s own previously-published ideas.

Finally, if you would like to discuss the possibility of proposing and/or curating a “Symposium” consisting of 3-5 related discussion and/or response articles, please send an email to the Editor of Theatre and Performance Notes and Counternotes, Prof. Michael Y. Bennetbennettm@uww.edu.

It’s a low-stakes, fun way to tackle your research (or maybe to finish your ASTR paper!).

All are welcome!  Interested?  Read on…

ATDS Wacky Writing Challenge 

October 28-November 3

7 days, 10 pages.  

Why not? 

Riding high on a Halloween candy sugar rush?  Looking to wrap up your ASTR project?  Dying to dive back into some research from the summer?  Whatever your motivation, we invite you to join the Opulent October/Noble November ATDS Wacky Writing Challenge!

Here’s what you have to do: 

Sign up at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wGix6KE9C4T0l9gMtIsBYiwIvm114vPXxnPnIxFQ-G8/viewform?edit_requested=true

That’s it.  The Wacky Writing Challenge is open to everyone and there’s no application process.  

QUESTIONS?  Email us at: onlineresearchshare@gmail.com   

The schedule is below.  You can set your goals.  You can join the Zoom chatting sessions.  You can share your writing selfies and word-count snapshots as you go.  We’re here to cheer you on to your goal, however you get there!   

Structure:

Make-a-Plan Monday, October 28: 

Create your schedule for the week, assemble the materials you need (books, notes, files), get yourself organized, re-read what you’ve already written (if anything), and set goals for the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays have pre-set goals, but on Wednesday and Friday, you should set your own, whether that’s time spent writing, word count, page count, or any other writing milestone you choose. The program’s recommended goal is 10pp for the week.  

There will be an optional Zoom check-in the night before kick-off at 8pm EST Sunday evening  (October 27) for those who want to share their goals for the week ahead and say hello to their fellow Wacky Writing Week colleagues.  Zoom links will be sent to those who sign up.  

Two-Page Tuesday, October 29: 

95 years ago today, the US Stock Market crashed, so how hard could it be to write two pages? You can write more, but you can’t write less.  

Word Count Wednesday, October 30:  

Set your timer for whatever you put in your Monday plan.  Write.  Enjoy watching the word count climb as you go!  Challenge yourself to hit a certain number.  Take a screen shot of your word count and send it to us at onlineresearchshare@gmail.com. Celebrate every 50 words with a piece of candy corn.

Two-Page Thursday, October 31:   

Hide from rabid trick-or-treaters!  Hoard all the good candy!  Also, lather, rinse, repeat from Tuesday and write two pages!

Free-Write Friday, November 1:  

Set your timer for whatever you put in your Monday plan.  Write whatever you want to.  Also, consider eating some kale to counteract all that candy.

Sleep-in Saturday, November 2:  

Enjoy the day and take 30 minutes to re-read what you’ve written this past week. 

Synthesize Sunday, November 3:   

Daylight Savings Time has come to an end, and so has the Wacky Writing Week!  Now that you’ve written and re-read, take the time you’ve allocated today to edit and expand.  Your goal is to hit 10pp total for the week.  There will be an optional Zoom gathering at 8pm EST that evening for those who want to share their success stories and congratulate their fellow writing colleagues.  Zoom links will be sent to those who sign up.  

We also invite you to take a victory selfie and send it in to onlineresearchshare@gmail.com!  

I’m writing with some updates and sending you a virtual mooncake in honor of the upcoming mid-autumn festival.

As I said stepping into the role of President at our Austin conference, I’m grateful for Jocelyn’s leadership, and I’m humbled by all the great
people who make this organization possible. I’m eager to build on our initiatives supporting contingent faculty, emerging scholars, and those at the mid-career and senior levels. I’m excited for the direction of our field as represented by our awards, journals, and sessions offering mentorship, centering marginalized people, lifting up innovative and transgressive artistic-political work, interrogating unequal power dynamics, and moving within and beyond the United States. I’m energized by our values–accessibility and equity for queer, trans, and global majority people–and I’ll do my best to represent you and advocate for you.

ATDS shined at ATHE with a slew of co-sponsored sessions, award celebrations, and meetups with friends. If you have ideas for our conference in Atlanta next year, then please contact me, our new Vice President/Focus Group Representative Ginny Anderson, and our fantastic Co-Conference Planners Amy Meyer and Heidi Nees. ATHE is also hosting an online town hall on Wednesday, September 27th at 12pm Eastern time to seek more feedback on the future of the organization. You can register for the town hall at this link.

The ATDS governing body recently voted to change our bylaws (https://www.atds.org/about/) to grant our Conference Planners voting privileges and to turn the Conference Planner position into an elected one. This means we will host a special election for the next Conference Planner very soon, because they will shadow our current Co-Conference Planners this year. In the spring, we will hold an election for a new Digital Media Secretary. I encourage you to consider running for office and becoming a part of our terrific team. I also want to thank Pria Wood, Bess Rowen, and David Bisaha for serving on our Nominations Committee this year.

Please renew your ATDS membership if you haven’t already done so, especially since membership will enable you to vote during the special election and access our upcoming programming. We’re continuing to offer pay-what-you-can membership.

Finally, I’m delighted to announce that, with the support of Theatre Annual’s editors Ann Folino White and Peter Reed and their editorial board, the Journal of American Drama and Theatre’s editors, the ATDS Emerging Scholar Awards Committee, our Editorial Advisory Committee, and our governing body, Theatre Annual will begin inviting the winners of our annual Emerging Scholar Awards to publish their ATHE conference papers in a new special section. We believe that this opportunity will be a wonderful way to support graduate students and expand our field. In addition, please check out the latest CFPs for journals such as Theatre Annual and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre on our CFP page.

We have plans for more year-round online programming to spotlight anti-racist work, publications, and professionalization, so let’s stay connected.

Best wishes,
Donatella
—
Donatella Galella
President, American Theatre and Drama Society
Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside
she/her

The German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (CDE) is pleased to announce its 33rd  Annual Conference (19-22 June 2025). It is organized by the University of Konstanz and will be held as a  residential conference at Hotel St. Elisabeth in Allensbach, on the shores of Lake Constance. 

New Stages for Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Theatre 

Questions of sex, gender and sexuality have been at the heart of political debates in recent years, as the attacks  on transgender rights, the resurgence of right-wing extremism and its promotion of conservative family values  and gender roles, and the amplification of so-called “culture wars” have shown. The aspirations for a  postfeminist equilibrium and growing acceptance of LGBTQAI+ rights have been disappointed. The new  millennium has not only witnessed new gender theories, but also controversies on sex, gender and sexuality  in the arts. For instance, the #MeToo movement instigated a new wave of feminism by drawing attention to  systemic sexist and abusive practices in the arts, where patterns of patriarchal control and exploitation are  entrenched and habituated.  

These trends did not go unnoticed in scholarly discussions. Jill Dolan, for instance, observes that the cultural  debate surrounding feminist critique has “oscillated wildly across the political spectrum, from a more  progressive position at one end to a much more dangerously conservative place on the other” (Dolan 2012:  xiii). In this climate, a shift “from feminism to feminisms; from feminist theatre to feminist theatres” (Aston  1995: 9) has to some extent already taken place, as a survey of recent as well as long-established scholarship  on sex, gender and sexuality shows (see e.g. Aston 1995; Goddard 2007; Case 2009; Greer 2012; Rosenberg,  D’Urso and Winget 2021; Halferty and Leeney 2022; Angel-Perez and Rousseau 2023; Walsh 2023). 

Our conference asks how the theatre has responded to and how it has fuelled or redirected these debates.  Which aesthetic innovations, which new areas of investigation have evolved? How have developments in  gender and queer theory been received, refuted or advanced in the theatre? How has the theatre reflected on  its own institutional role and its own patriarchal, heteronormative traditions? How do economic pressures  and political interests intersect (or not) in the theatre? What are the gains, gaps and limits in the relationship  between theatre, theory and public discourse?  

In recent years, a plethora of plays has emerged that address topics related to sex, gender and sexuality: for  instance, Alice Birch’s, Ella Hickson’s and Laura Wade’s plays have explored the current state of feminisms,  Tatenda Shamiso’s No ID thematizes gender transitions, Travis Alabanza’s Sounds of the Underground and  Mark Gatiss’ Queers: Eight Monologues focus on drag and queer life, while Miriam Battye’s Scenes with girls explores queer relationships. Often, these plays locate questions of sex, gender and sexuality in relation to  other pressing issues like disability in Jon Bradfield’s Animal, the intersection of gender non-conforming  bodies with class and Black bodies in Travis Alabanza’s plays, the exploration of mental health in activist performances by Scottee, or a lesbian relationship in old age in Jennifer Lunn’s Es & Flo. As the #MeToo movement indicates, the virtual and the analogue go hand in hand in the latest forms of  feminist activism, just as discrimination based on gender and sexuality is omnipresent in the virtual world, as in Jasmine Lee-Jones’ seven methods of killing kylie jenner. Notable plays are often experimental in genre and aesthetics, for instance Charlie Josephine’s queer Western Cowbois. Canonical texts also remain a productive  lens for negotiating current concerns of sex, gender and sexuality, from Matthew Lopez’s rewriting of Howards  End in The Inheritance to various adaptations of Ancient Greek and Shakespearean theatre including Zinnie  Harris’ Macbeth (An Undoing), Natalie Boisvert’s Antigone in Spring and Magnet Theatre’s series of ‘tragic  reimaginings’ in South Africa.  

We invite proposals for papers in English of 20 minutes’ length that explore how plays, playwrights, theatre  practitioners, and cultural institutions are engaging with concerns of sex, gender and sexuality. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: 

• The histories and futures of feminist and queer movements on stage and page 

• The intersection of sex, gender and sexuality with race / postcolonial / indigenous concerns, class,  ableism / disabilities, age, ecology, etc. 

• The role of social media, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence for staging sex, gender and sexuality 

• Theatrical articulations of and/or responses to / forms of queer theory, black feminism, eco-feminism, bad feminism, post-feminism, etc. 

• (New) Aesthetics for political concerns, e.g. transgender representations, feminist futures, queer forms  and temporalities, nightclub, drag and working-class forms of theatre, etc. 

• Intersections of sex, gender and sexuality with (the politics of) emotions and affect 

• Theatre and sexual health as well as queer care and communities 

• The complex notion of authenticity, embodiment and representation in theatrical renditions of sex,  gender and sexuality 

• Theatre as a safe space vs theatre as a space of risk-taking and provocation 

• Institutional responses to the call for equality, diversity and inclusion  

In accordance with CDE’s constitutional policy, papers should deal exclusively with contemporary (i.e. post 1989) theatre and drama in English. 

Abstracts: Abstracts (300 words) for papers proposed (20 minutes maximum delivery time) should be  accompanied by a short biographical note. 

Deadline: 15 September 2024 

Send to: cde2025@uni-konstanz.de 

Organising team: Department of Literature, Arts and Media Studies, University of Konstanz Leila Vaziri and Christina Wald 

Support: Eszter Vass

Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English (JCDE). 

CDE encourages contributions by emerging scholars. Scholars who work on a PhD in the field of  contemporary theatre and drama (even if the PhD topic is not related to the conference topic) may apply to  the CDE PhD Forum, which will take place on 19 June near the conference venue in Konstanz. For further  information please see http://contemporarydrama.de/phd-forum/ 

NB: Only paid-up members are eligible to give papers at CDE conferences. Membership subscriptions should be taken out or renewed  prior to the conference. For details, please contact CDE’s treasurer Martin Riedelsheimer (martin.riedelsheimer@uni-a.de). 

Bibliography:  

Angel-Perez, Elizabeth, and Aloysia Rousseau, eds. The New Wave of British Women Playwrights. De Gruyter,  2023.  

Aston, Elaine. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre. Routledge, 1995. 

Case, Sue-Ellen. Feminist and Queer Performance: Critical Strategies. Red Globe Press, 2009. Dolan, Jill. The Feminist Spectator as Critic. University of Michigan Press, 2012. 

Goddard, Lynette. Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance. Palgrave, 2007. Greer, Stephen. Contemporary British Queer Performance. Palgrave, 2012.  

Halferty, Paul, and Cathy Leeney, eds. Analysing Gender in Performance. Palgrave, 2022. Rosenberg, Tina, Sandra D’Urso, and Anna Rene e Winget, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans  Feminisms in Contemporary Performance. Palgrave, 2021. 

Walsh, Fintan. Performing the Queer Past: Public Possessions. Methuen Drama, 2023.