- critical spatial practices
- cultural venues
- interdisciplinary practices
- performative spaces
- performative urbanism
- performing arts architecture
- public assemblages
- urban scenographies
- Intersections
- spaces of performance
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Theatre architecture, performance space and public assemblies
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Post/de/colonialism
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Ground, soil, habitat, landscape and territory
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Boundaries, margins and edges
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Performance and terrestrial politics
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Transitions, movement and migration
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Precarity, vulnerability and performance space
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Critical approaches to staging the city
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Performative urbanisms
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Urban scenographies
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Place, displacement and emplacement
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Nomadic theatre, and de- and re-territorialization
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Margins and marginality
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Indigenous and place-based ecologies and epistemologies
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Performance space and the state
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Performance space, performance design and the city
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Theatres and performance spaces as loci of struggle and resistance
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Margins and marginality
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Cultural landscapes
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Haunting
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Occupation
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Contesting domination
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Settler atmospheres
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Site-specificity and site-responsiveness in theatre and/or architecture
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Theatre & architecture in the anthropocene/industriocene
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Performance as vibrant assemblage of body and architecture
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Performance, sustainability and social justice
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Place-making and community engagement
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Theatre as an ecologically transformative gesture
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Architecture and temporality: resilience and transience
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Porous and/or ephemeral performance spaces
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Spatial performativity and spatial agency
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Performance space, location and landscape
Theatre & Architecture

Theatre & Architecture is an interdisciplinary working group that focuses on the intersections between the two disciplines by examining the ways they inform, challenge, expand, complement or frame one another through a broader understanding of performance and space.
KEYWORDS
Email address
theatreandarchitecture@gmail.com
Working Group Convenors
Dr Višnja Žugić [visnja.zugic@gmail.com] (2022-2026)
Dr Shauna Janssen [shauna.janssen@concordia.ca] (2021-2025)
Dr Dorita Hannah [dorita.m.hannah@gmail.com] (2018-2026)
CALL FOR PAPERS - COLOGNE 2025
The Theatre & Architecture Working Group invites proposals from researchers and practitioners for our meeting during the 2025 IFTR World Congress
C A R N I V A L E S Q U E S P A T I A L I T I E S : siting revelry + resistance
Intersecting with the main conference topic of ‘Carnival’ Ekstasis | Subversion | Metamorphosis, for our meeting during the 2025 IFTR World Congress, the Theatre & Architecture Working Group will explore what it means to (re)claim and design spaces for public celebrations, as well as engage with performative actions and unplanned performances of revelry and resistance that shape experiences of urban, suburban and rural environments in ways they were not designed or intended for.
The topic ‘Performing Carnival’ ranges from planned festivals to the carnival of everyday life, encouraging us to consider the spatial politics of performing carnival on the local and global stage. Current world events serve as a catalyst for rethinking and challenging our perceptions of the carnival of the everyday between architecture, performance, land, and cultures which they embody. How do we understand cities and urban environments differently through the carnivalesque? This meeting is an opportunity to consider what it is to create and critique theatre architecture, performance spaces, cultural venues and the public realm, both on and offline – operating between the imaginary and reality.
We invite flash talks and provocations that engage with practices and approaches to the revelry and resistance of carnival and the carnivalesque.
Abstracts may address (but are not limited to):
Deadline for proposals
We invite proposals and provocations that engage with the theme, and may take the forms of PechaKucha presentations (20 slides x 20 seconds) or flash talks (8-10 mins). This aligns with rethinking collaboration formats during WG meetings, which could include workshops or performative engagements, depending on the number of proposals we receive. Please be mindful that resources and time for workshops or performative engagements will be restricted.
Abstracts can be submitted via the IFTR 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.
Deadline for the Submission of Abstracts: 15 January 2025.
TAWG Flash talks / PechaKucha presentations are to be pre-circulated by 9 May 2025.
For further information: www.IFTR2025.com
Mission Statement
Refining the field of interest over the years, the focus of IFTR’s Theatre & Architecture Working Group (TAWG) has expanded: from theatre architecture as a built form to recognizing and exploring both disciplines through their critical and creative overlaps. This opens the notion of Theatre towards Architecture and Space, and Architecture towards Theatre and Performance. Operating from a critical spatial platform, the group shares practical, theoretical and research-based phenomena relating to theatre and performance studies, embracing a broad spectrum of spatial theories, architecture and design practices.
TAWG is composed of scholars, practitioners and industry professionals working in between and across theatre/performance and architectural/spatial design. Traversing a wide range of spatial, performing and visual arts fields, the Working Group is made up of members living and operating in all five continents.
To stay in touch with the Working Group please subscribe to our Mailing List or join our Facebook Group
Current Projects
Publication: Since 2021 the T&A working group has focused thematically on the social and geopolitical nature of Performing Grounds – Public, Cultural and Intermedial – towards a published anthology that engages with the spatial politics of assembly and decolonising globalised cultural landscapes.
Between Architecture & Theatre Series is a recently established publication format that documents the outcomes of the group’s meetings and gatherings through Little Books focused on various themes that emerge from yearly conferences.
Completed Publications
Performing Architectures: Projects, Practices, Pedagogies, edited by Andrew Filmer & Juliet Rufford, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
Past Working Group Convenors
Dr Andrew Filmer [awf@aber.ac.uk] (2012-2020)
Dr Juliet Rufford (2010-2018)
Prof Frank Hildy (2006-2012)
The image is from National Theatre Wales' production of Aeschylus' The Persians (2010) directed by Mike Pearson and designed by Mike Brookes and Simon Banham