TAWG invites proposals from researchers and practitioners for our meeting during the 2025 IFTR World Congress, with the theme CARNIVALESQUE SPATIALITIES: siting revelry + resistance

CALL FOR PAPERS: THEATRE & ARCHITECTURE WORKING GROUP

IFTR World Congress 2025, Cologne

9-13 June, 2025

‘Performing Carnival’ Ekstasis | Subversion | Metamorphosis

Photo Credit: Extinction Rebellion: Tensegrity Towers 2020 (Original Photo: Gareth Morris)

 

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):

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

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

About the IFTR Theatre & Architecture Working Group

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. For further Information about the Theatre & Architecture Working Group please visit: https://www.iftr.org/working-groups/theatre-architecture

During the IFTR Conference we warmly welcome individuals who wish to take part in the group's discussions, but who do not want to submit a paper.

Working Group Conveners 

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)