- experimental music theatre
- movement and dance in music theatre
- music and sound in theatre and performance
- opera on stage and screen
- the Broadway and British Musical
- Opera on both stage and screen
- The Broadway and British Musical
- Experimental music theatre
- Music and sound in theatre and performance
- Movement and dance in music theatre
- The performativity of music and sound
- Materialities of voice and body
- Aurality and listening in (music) theatre
- Politics and aesthetics of music theatre
- Philosophies of music and sound in performance
- Noise and silence in music theatre
Music Theatre
The aim of the Music Theatre working group is to examine a broad range of methodological and theoretical perspectives on all kinds of music theatre, from opera and popular genres (such as Broadway and British musicals) to contemporary experiments with new forms of music theatre.
KEYWORDS
Email Address
Mtwg.iftr@gmail.com
CfP for IFTR 2025
CALL FOR PAPERS for the Music Theatre Working Group at IFTR in Cologne, Germany, June 9–13, 2025
We welcome papers relating to the general theme of the conference (Performing Carnival! Ekstasis / Subversion / Metamorphosis) as well as free papers on any aspect of music theatre.
Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: January 15, 2025
The aim of the Music Theatre working group is to discuss a broad range of methodological and theoretical perspectives on all kinds of music theatre, from opera and musicals to contemporary experiments with new forms of music theatre. We are also interested in comprehending the role and function of music, sound, and movement in performance, in the broadest sense. The group brings together theatre scholars, musicologists, choreographers, and performers, as well as researchers from other disciplines. What our approaches all have in common is that they start from a notion of music theatre as theatre, performance and experience, always dealing with the interplay of sight, sound, and the body.
We invite existing and new WG members to submit papers on any aspect of music theatre, broadly conceived, or music and sound in performance, or the consideration of movement and dance in music theatre.
In keeping with the conference theme, we are also interested in a broad exploration of the relationships between music theatre and the carnivalesque, excessive performances, parody, satire, and transformation.
The Music Theatre WG is committed to an open and inclusive discussion of a broad range of topics in various stages of development, including work in progress. We particularly encourage graduate students and early career scholars to share their work.
For the Cologne conference, we welcome full-length papers of up to 3000 words that will be distributed in advance, as well as shorter contributions of max. 10 minutes to be presented at the conference. Please indicate in your abstract which option you prefer.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words and are due January 15, 2025.
All abstract submissions are made through the Cambridge Core portal. Please note that you must renew your membership or become a member in order to submit: https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr/
Papers of up to 3000 words are to be submitted by June 1, 2025.
At the WG meetings during the conference, only a short overview of each paper will be presented (5–10 minutes) and the remaining time will be devoted to in-depth discussion (15–20 minutes). Short contributions will not be circulated in advance and will have shorter discussion time.
More information about the conference and the related prizes and bursaries can be found at the IFTR website, http://www.iftr.org/conference. If you want to find out more about the Music Theatre WG, please visit https://www.iftr.org/working-groups/music-theatre.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding the conference and your abstract submission: Mtwg.iftr@gmail.com
Tereza Havelkova (Charles University)
Phoebe Rumsey (University of Portsmouth)
Convenors
Tereza Havelkova [2022-2026]
Phoebe Rumsey [2022-2026]
About the Working Group
The Music Theatre Working Group brings together theatre scholars, musicologists, choreographers, and performers, as well as researchers from other disciplines, with the aim to foster interdisciplinary discussion of diverse aspects of music theatre. What our approaches have in common is that they start from a notion of music theatre as performance and experience, dealing with the interplay of hearing, vision, and the other senses. We are interested in comprehending the role and function of music, sound, and movement in performance, in the broadest sense. The group’s areas of interest include:
The group meets at the annual IFTR conferences, and it also holds interim online meetings. At the IFTR conferences, papers presented during the group meetings may either relate to the general theme of the conference or present the members’ current research in various stages of development, including work-in-progress. The papers are circulated in advance, and only a short summary is presented at the conference to allow enough time for in-depth discussion.
If you would like to know more about the Working Group, please contact us at Mtwg.iftr@gmail.com.
Current Projects
We are currently preparing a new edited volume titled Music Theater and Politics: (Re)thinking Histories, Decentering Perspectives (edited by Tereza Havelková and Marcus Cheng Chye Tan), contracted with Oxford University Press. The book examines music theater’s relations with politics and the political. Politics is understood here in terms of governance, statehood and political systems as well as structures of power and ideology more generally, including identity politics of race, ethnicity, and nationhood. In line with the agenda of the Music Theatre WG, the book approaches music theatre in the broadest sense as theatre performance dominated or motivated by music and sound, encompassing a range of Western and non-Western forms. The book offers a wide geographical representation of the topic in terms of both the material discussed and the group of scholars contributing to the debate. The chapters include case studies from North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Completed Publications
"Sounding Corporeality." Edited by Aoife McGrath, Marcus Cheng Chye Tan, Prarthana Purkayastha, and Tereza Havelková. Special Issue of Theatre Research International 46, no. 2 (July 2021).
This special issue emerges from the persistent questions that are asked in both music and dance studies in the context of performance practice and scholarship: what is the relationship between sound and the body, corporeality and sonicity? How does sound interrelate and interact with the body and movement beyond the recognised effects of rhythm and affect – the ways in which sound dictates bodies in motion and compels bodies to motion? How do audiences and performers experience this interaction, and how can scholars talk about it? What does this relationship mean to whom, where, when and why, and what common ground can we find between choreography and corporeality, and sonicity and musicality? "Sounding Corporeality" explores aspects of this intricate relationship as it is encountered and evidenced in theatre and performance. This issue is also an acknowledgement and examination of the intimate interactions, intersections and interventions of this sonic-corporeal relationship, of how corporeality sounds and of how sonicity moves. What "Sounding Corporeality" adds to the discourse are the ways embodied sound and choreographed sonification in theatre and performance bring into motion, and make visible, socio-political and cultural questions.
The Legacy of Opera: Music Theatre as Experience and Performance. Edited by Dominic Symonds and Pamela Karantonis. Rodopi Press, 2013.
The collection considers the way in which ideological and cultural assumptions have impacted on our contemporary view of music theatre, focussing in particular on the way that opera’s development as a form and status as an art has inscribed a very particular set of assumptions and expectations about the musical stage that twentieth century developments have had to negotiate. In this respect, opera is seen as a defining cultural form and practice whose shadow looms large over the popular and modernising developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Gestures of Music Theatre: The Performativity of Song and Dance. Edited by Dominic Symonds and Millie Taylor. Oxford University Press, 2013.
There are two principal questions posed through this series of essays: how do song and dance function as physical and material gestures, as dimensions or perhaps sub-sets of music theatre works? How might identities be constituted for characters, performers and audiences within and through the song and dance of music theatre? The first consideration, through a series of philosophical discussions, engages with music theatre’s substance, function and form; the second, through analyses of those song and dance gestures in a range of music theatre contexts, engages with its reception, effect and affect.
Other
Previous Convenors:
Marcus Cheng Chye Tan & Tereza Havelkova [2018-2022]
Marcus Cheng Chye Tan & George Rodosthenous [2014-2018]
Pamela Karantonis & Dominic Symonds [2010-2014]