Political Performances

The Political Performances WG engages variously with the diverse histories and intellectual traditions of political performance-making and its accompanying scholarship. From its foundation in 2003, the group has met at every IFTR annual conference, welcoming members from all continents.

KEYWORDS

diverse histories
politics and performances' forms and contexts
practices and manifestations of political performance
theories

EMAIL ADDRESS

iftrpolperf@gmail.com

CfP IFTR 2025: Cologne, Germany. 9 – 13 June 2025.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 22 January 2025

Deadline for bursary applications: 22 November 2024 (https://iftr.org/conference/bursaries)

In line with this working group’s established practice, we have identified three loose strands that reflect the recent work of scholars in the wider field of political performances, and that also align with the 2025 conference theme: Performing Carnival!

The Political Performances Working Group therefore invites proposals for papers that explore the following topics:

(A) Epistemologies

Political theatre, performance or dramaturgies in relation to: revolting subjects; transgressive pleasures; the aesthetics of disruption, carnival and the carnivalesque (taste, sensuousness, style, etc.); surplus and abundance; carnival, capital and commodification; carnivals and colonisation or decolonisation; carnival and the State; carnival and cultural activism; gender, carnival and/or the carnivalesque; queer carnivals / queering carnival; carnival and transition (trans, transness and transformation); carnivals and animality; and ritualistic carnivals of death, the dead, or the dying.

(B) Place

Political theatre, performance or dramaturgies in relation to: local, regional, national or international manifestations of carnival and the carnivalesque, including the concept of the festival as a site of communal activity and transgression; carnival and the commons and/or enclosure; occupations of public and private space; protests, resistance and marches as carnivals; the transformation or subversion of space and place; carnival’s role in imagining community (national, local, cultural, or subcultural); carnival and the utopic imagination; and the wider conference’s focus on ‘Ekstasis’, meaning ‘the sense of being out of place in an “exalted state of feeling”’.

Political theatre, performance or dramaturgies in relation to: carnival and carbon (carnival’s carbon footprint, or carnivals against the climate crisis); pleasure and exhaustion (the exhaustion of pleasure, or the pleasures of exhaustion); temporal distortion; carnivals at the end of the world; and the transformative power of carnival and/or its limitations.

Working Methods

The group takes a capacious approach to ‘political performances’ and welcomes abstracts from scholars and/or practitioners addressing a wide range of political theatres, political performances and performative activism rooted in different political, cultural and geographical contexts , and that may be past, present, or hypothetical.

Presenters are also free to propose presentations in a range of formats, noting any technical requirements.

Please also note that the working group pre-circulates work-in-progress/paper drafts in advance of each conference. This allows more time for critical response and discussion from members of the group, who will have read the papers in advance. The work of the Group relies on the exchange of ideas building over the course of the conference and beyond. We therefore expect participants to attend all PPWG meetings at the conference. We aim to make reasonable adjustments for members whose circumstances do not allow this level of commitment but strongly recommend that colleagues unable to attend the majority of WG sessions apply to the General Panels.

Abstract Submission

Please submit abstracts through the Cambridge Core website. In order to make a submission you will need to be a member of IFTR:https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr. When you submit your abstract, please make sure to indicate you are submitting to the ‘Political Performances Working Group’.

The Political Performances Working Group often receives a large number of proposals. Where it is not possible to schedule a paper into the time slots allocated to the working group, the convenors will propose papers to the organisers for inclusion in General Panels or the New Scholars Forum instead. In order to help working group convenors curate the panels, we therefore ask all contributors to address the themes of the call for papers directly in their abstract.

Deadline for abstract submission: 22 January 2025
(exclusively through Cambridge Core)

CONVENERS

Julia Boll, Universität Konstanz

Trish Reid, University of Reading

Working Group Contact: iftrpolperf@gmail.com

MISSION STATEMENT

The group seeks to address the relation between theatre, performance and politics in the widest possible sense. Topics discussed range from theory to practice; from historical accounts to current case studies; from local and regional performances to general concepts and forms of political (re)presentation in performance; from feminism and post-colonialism to applied and community work, and from education and therapy to propaganda and censorship. Within this broad thematic reach (which does not necessarily follow the subject of each IFTR conference), PPWG strives to promote dialogue at a specialist level, which may take the form of research clusters around specific areas.

COMPLETED PUBLICATIONS / OUTPUTS

The group published its first anthology of essays in 2009, as part of the IFTR series ‘Themes in Theatre’: Political Performances: Theory and Practice, eds. Susan C. Haedicke, Deirdre Heddon, Avraham Oz and E.J. Westlake. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. http://www.brill.com/products/book/political-performances

The group published its second anthology iin 2020. Mireia Aragay, Paola Botham, and José Prado-Pérez (eds.) World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices. Leiden, Netherlands, Brill Rodopi. https://brill.com/view/title/57109?language=en

In addition to our publication plans, we encourage ongoing discussion from existing and new members via formal and informal channels, including an invitation to post articles and discussion points here on the IFTR site, and a reading group which ocassionaly meets online.

Conference Reports

Accra 2023

Trish Reid and Julia Boll continued their PPWG convenorship in 2022-23, with Julia as lead convenor for the group's meeting in Ghana. The PPWG received c40 abstracts and was able to accomodate 22 in the WG sessions. We also hosted one sponsored panel. The group remained committed to pre-circulation of drafts prior to the annual meeting — which was done successfully again this year — and to sharing the chairing of WG sessions among group members beyond the convenors. We had another very productive meeting with many excellent papers and much cross-fertilisation of ideas. In our final WG business session the group agreed that we would seek a new convenor to shadow Trish and Julia, in the coming year, in order to facilitate a smooth handover. We are in discussion with publishers about a future edited collection and are shaping this around the strands in our recent CfPs.

Reykjavik 2022

Trish Reid and Julia Boll continued their PPWG convenorship in 2021-22, with Trish as lead convenor for the group's meeting in Iceland. The PPWG received c40 abstracts and was able to accomodate 21 in the WG sessions. We also hosted one sponsored and two curated panels. The group remained committed to pre-circulation of drafts prior to the annual meeting — which was done successfully again this year — and to sharing the chairing of WG sessions among group members beyond the convenors. We had an EXTREMELY productive meeting with many excellent papers and much cross-fertilisation of ideas. It was wonderful to meet again in person. In our final WG business session the group agreed that the current convenors would continue for another terms. We held one online reading group between Galway and Reykjavik and we set up a WG email address for easier communication. We are in discussion with publishers about a future edited collection. Our most recent collection was published in 2020.

Galway 2021

Trish Reid, Julia Boll and Cristina Delgado-García continued their PPWG convenorship in 2020-21, with Cristina as lead convenor for the group's meeting in Galway. The PPWG received c70 abstracts for the 2020 conference which was, obviously postponed due to the Covid-19 crisis. We were able to host 18 presentations in the online PPWG sessions, all of which were well attended, although time differences did impact on availability. PPWG aslo sponsored/curated a couple of General Panels. In addition we hosted a short discussion/book launch for the volume recording the work of the PPWG group during an earlier cycle, which is now published by Brill. The discussion was led by Paola Botham and José Prado-Perez. The group remains committed to pre-circulation of drafts prior to the annual meeting, and to sharing the chairing of WG sessions among group members beyond the convenors. Both initiatives were deemed welcome and successful at Galway. Strands of work proposed for the Reykjavík 2022 were discussed as was the possibility of establishing a reading group.

Shanghai 2019

Trish Reid, Julia Boll and Cristina Delgado-García continued their PPWG convenorship in 2019, with Trish as lead convenor for the group's meeting in Shanghai. The PPWG received 55 abstracts for the 2019 conference. We were able to host 22 presentations in the PPWG sessions, all of which were well attended. Members were updated about the volume recording the work of the PPWG during 2014-2017 cycle, led by Paola Botham and Mirae Aragay. The collection is forthcoming with Brill as part of their series Themes in Theatre, which is published in association with IFTR. The group is now committed to pre-circulation of drafts prior to the annual meeting, and sharing the chairing of WG sessions with group members beyond the convenors. Strands of work proposed for Galway 2020 were discussed.

Belgrade 2018

Trish Reid, Julia Boll and Cristina Delgado-García took up PPWG convenorship in late 2017, with Cristina as lead convenor for the group's meeting in Belgrade. The PPWG received 70 abstracts for the 2018 conference. We were able to host 23 presentations in the PPWG sessions and 13 in PPWG-curated/sponsored panels within the general schedule, all of which were very well attended. In our business meeting, the working group size was discussed again, but members agreed that the variety of approaches to political performances within the group is fruitful. Members were updated about the volume recording the work of the PPWG during 2014-2017 cycle, led by Paola Botham and Lloyd Peters. The collection is forthcoming with Brill as part of their series Themes in Theatre, which is published in association with IFTR. Finally, we agreed to consult all our members with regards to: (1) pre-circulation of drafts prior to the next annual meeting, (2) capping of papers accepted if numbers continue to grow, and (3) strands of work proposed for Shanghai 2019.

Sao Paulo 2017

The group received 22 paper proposals, of which 13 – from eight different countries – were presented at the conference, followed by lively and enriching discussions. One of the issues addressed during the business meeting was the (large) size of the group, which is considered a strength but does impose certain operational restrictions. Most members who were present at the meeting agreed on a continuation of a generally inclusive approach and a flexible 'policy' towards paper submission and presentation. There was a desire to keep PPWG sessions open to non-members, which implies that presentations should be accessible to those who have not read papers in advance, even when time may be limited to 15 or 10 minutes per speaker (depending on the number of papers accepted at a specific conference). A strong aspiration was expressed to create a permanent communication platform for the group, with password-protected areas. A new team of convenors, to be elected in 2017, will take this forward, as well as the organisation of the next meeting in Belgrade 2018.

Stockholm 2016

The group received a record number of proposals for this meeting. A total of 34 papers were presented, 22 during our own sessions and 12 in general panels, including the PPWG-sponsored panel ‘A Turning Point in Theatre History? War, Spectacle and the 21st-Century UK Stage’, which was exceptionally well attended. To deal effectively with such a high volume of papers, we used the model of 'research clusters' that was piloted in Warwick 2014. The material was therefore divided in four clusters of eight to eleven papers, with each WG member being expected to read only the papers within their own cluster in advance. The purpose was to preserve the wide-ranging nature of our subject area without losing the unique opportunity that WG sessions offer to discuss work-in-progress among peers who are in the same field.

Previous Calls for Papers are archived on the Working Group's Wordpress site: https://politicalperformances.wordpress.com/