Documenting Performance WG convenor callout 2022
Expressions of interest by 12 December 2022 (5pm, UK time)
The Documenting Performance working group at the Theatre and Performance Research Association is looking to appoint new co-convenors to steer and facilitate the work of the group over the next three years. Co-convenors can be at any stage of their career, and we are looking for those whose specialism and area of research and practice is interconnected with that of the working group. We welcome scholars, artist scholars and all those engaged actively in research.
The Working Group was founded in 2011 as a platform for investigation which acknowledges and contributes to an increasing range of scholarly and artistic activity concerned with performance and its documents, including archival encounters. At its centre is a concern for how we do the work of reading, thinking, writing about, and making theatre and performance; how documentation determines our ways of working, as scholars and artists; and the affect of the circulation of documents between institutions and epistemologies. At stake, then, is how documentation shapes and determines the performance field. The Working Group is a community invested in the conceptual, practical, and creative possibilities of Documenting Performance. Here, performance is conceived in an expanded sense and might include theatre, dance, live art, curatorial, installational, participatory and visual projects, as well as particular modes of critical engagement.
Recent areas of interest include Use and Mis-Use (TAPRA 2022), Speculation and Fabulation (20221) and Wayward Temporalities (2019). Documenting Performance also held two recent interim events: a collaboration with May Day Rooms archive (Collectivity and Transformation in the Archive, 2022) and with Tate Modern (Hear Tell: Reporting, Describing, Narrating, 2019).
The Theatre and Performance Research Association is a not-for profit company limited by guarantee. It exists in order to facilitate, sustain and promote excellence in research through and into all aspects of theatre, the performing arts, and performance studies.
You will have a demonstrable commitment to equitable and inclusive practices in Theatre and Performance research and will bring this commitment to enabling individuals and groups who are historically underrepresented in the discipline of Theatre and Performance Studies to become involved in Working Group activity. You will also have a specialism related to the work of Documenting Performance.
Key duties include:
- Facilitating and steering working group activities at the annual TAPRA conference, and through additional interim events as desired.
- Administering the working group, including at the annual conference, identifying research foci and themes, launching calls for papers and presentations, selecting presenters, scheduling and chairing events, ensuring an inclusive culture in the group, and reporting on group activities.
- Planning and disseminating information about the working group.
All convening roles within TaPRA are voluntary and TaPRA recognises that this brings into focus structural challenges and inequalities in relation to working practices and institutions of research. The benefits of undertaking this role include:
- Opportunities to set and lead research agendas by identifying topics and themes around clusters of shared research interests
- Opportunities to gather together, encounter, and be part of new collaborative networks of researchers, including with fellow convenors, working group participants, and TaPRA members internationally
- Opportunities to bid for TaPRA research resources to facilitate working group events outside of the annual conference gathering
- Building your academic experience in research leadership
- Opportunities to influence the practices, cultures, and conversations of performance research by providing a key part in how a major research association operates. This includes opportunities to become more involved in decision-making and conversations amongst TaPRA members on important issues, and options to participate in research prize nominations and shortlisting committees.
The outgoing co-convenors of the Documenting Performance working group will work with the new co-convenors to provide a supported hand-over, including facilitating discussions on assembling a team who will make a good fit together in terms of shared investments in ethics and practices of research.
Please complete this form if you are interested in self-nominating for the role.
Deadline: 12 December 2022 (5pm GMT)
We will aim to make a decision by 23 January 2023.
In the form, we will ask for:
- a short summary (up to 500 words) of how you see your work relating to that of the working group, and what you hope to see in the work of the group over the next few years. If preferred, you can submit this in an alternative format (audio or video).
- an additional short (e.g. 150 word) biography.
Researchers actively engaged in the diversification of theatre, performance, and research practices are particularly encouraged to apply.
