TaPRA 2025 Performance and New Technologies CFP

Deadline: Monday 10 March 2025

27-29 August 2025, University of Warwick
Theme: Postdigital and AI Dramaturgies: Gen Alpha and the Politics of Care in Online Performance

The Performance and New Technologies Working Group is inviting proposals concerning emergent performative paradigms of generative artificial intelligence (AI) that intersect with the politics of care. We are particularly interested in proposals that engage with the online performance cultures of Generation Alpha (children born after 2010) and performances created for the internet during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

We invite you to ponder/reflect on how mediated and online performances can be read as ecologies of becoming (Mastrominico 2022) which, using generative AI tools, actuate posthuman dramaturgies that are concerned with politics of care in relation to the social world of generation Alpha. The theme of ‘care’ draws on research regarding the novel performative experiences of connectivity and social interactions in online spaces audiences and artists constructed during the pandemic (Svich 2021) and, conversely, the political and social freedoms embodied, corporeal, ‘live’ theatre makes available to artists and audiences that are restricted in online spaces (Jarvis and Savage 2024, 4). These critical contexts have led the conveners to put concepts and practices of care in dialogue with performance processes which either expand, challenge, disrupt, or resist imaginaries of posthuman futurity.

Inspired by the concept of ‘experiential AI’, we wonder what kind of posthuman dramaturgies can be observed when ‘machines work with humans in order to assist machine intelligence and to use machine intelligence to extend human intelligence’ (The Institute of Experiential AI 2025). Considering these issues in relation to Gen Alpha acknowledges the seismic cultural impact AI will have on a generation whose childhoods were marked by the trauma of lockdown and who do not remember a time before social media (let alone a world without the internet).

Our questions for 2025 TaPRA conference are: How can we identify posthuman creative practice in current intermedial performances supported by AI? How do we address the ethical implications of developing and employing AI technologies in the context of AI-driven experience of Generation Alpha?

We would like to welcome practice-based responses, provocations, lecture-demonstrations, and papers, exploring and reflecting on various readings, approaches and interpretations of the nexus between Posthumanism, AI dramaturgies, Gen Alpha, and the politics of care in mediated and online performance practices.

Proposals may respond to, but are not limited by, the following prompts:

• Posthuman dramaturgies in the AI era
• Online performances as ecologies of becoming
• Politics of care in mediated/intermedial performance
• Performance cultures and Gen Alpha
• Hyperconnectivity in the experiences of AI- Natives
• Human agency within AI-driven technologies
• Performances of survival
• Transmedia performance/stages
• AI and performance
• Augmented reality
• Virtual augmentation
• Intersecting IRL and imaginative realities
• AI alternative spaces of imagination and artistic resilience
• Archiving online performance practices

Proposals, if accepted, may be directed into a range of presentational formats, including traditional panels (with 20-minute papers) or performance-based panels. We also welcome alternative, practice-as-research or performance-based proposals that engage with the theme.

As an alternative to a full paper, panel or practice research presentation, PG students who are in the early stages of their research may wish to present short ‘firestarter’ provocations (5 minutes) that can form the basis for wider discussion. While we encourage statements of preference, final decisions will be made by the working group conveners and will be indicated at the time of acceptance. The Working Group also warmly welcomes participants who do not wish to present this year.

Please also include precise details of your resourcing needs, for example, any audio-visual technology, or a particular type of space (e.g. drama studio) that you will need to make your presentation.

Submit your abstract here by 10 March 2025

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How the TaPRA conference works:

Our conference has two types of sessions: whole group sessions for all delegates and parallel panels of papers, performances, and interventions streamed by “working group”. The working groups focus on specific research interests and disciplines and set their own themes for each conference. This is detailed in CFPs like this one. There is also an opportunity to exhibit practice research in a gallery.

A complete list of our 13 working groups is available here on the TaPRA website. Most delegates choose a working group that aligns with their interests and use this group as their base for the conference, attending most or all of their slots as the working groups meet multiple times. These sessions host presentations from long-standing members and new colleagues. However, you can attend sessions hosted by any other working group throughout the conference. The programme also includes open panels where attendees are encouraged to visit working groups sessions other than their own.

To speak, present, or perform TaPRA, you will need to identify your preferred working group and submit a proposal that speaks to their theme. You apply to one working group. You can also indicate that you are willing for your paper to be considered by other working groups.

Conference environment:

In addition to whole group sessions, working groups, and open panels. the Practice Gallery and publisher stalls are open for most of the conference, and there are more social events at various moments including the conference dinner.

Access:

The 2025 annual TaPRA conference at the University of Warwick will be a hybrid event, facilitating participation by online delegates alongside those attending in-person. Since our 2021 conference we have been able to experience benefits of online conferencing, such as increased opportunity for international presenters, lower financial costs to participate, and greater accessibility for those with caring responsibilities. The 2025 conference at Warwick aims to retain the wider opportunities for engagement that online platforms offer, whilst also maintaining a space for in-person engagement and social interaction.

Key dates:

• Applicants will receive decisions on their proposals on 11 April 2025
• Conference registration opens 12 May 2025
• Early bird registration closes on 30 June 2025
• Presenter registration deadline is 18 July 2025
• General registration closes 12 August 2025

Bursaries:
Each working group has one bursary available for postgraduate and early career researchers. The bursary includes free conference registration and £300 towards conference travel and accommodation, to be disbursed after the event on showing proof of spend. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please tick the relevant box on the ‘Abstract Submission Form’, when submitting your abstract.

Please note: only one proposal may be submitted for a TaPRA event. It is not permitted to submit multiple proposals or submit the same proposal to several Calls for Participation. All presenters must be TaPRA members, i.e. registered for the event; this includes presentations given by Skype or other media broadcast even where the presenter may not physically attend the event venue.