TaPRA 2026: Performance and New Technologies

Deadline: Monday 9 March 2026

2026 Theme—Human and More-Than-Human Co-creation in Performance
The Performance and New Technologies Working Group is inviting proposals that explore, question and challenge how performance-making engages with and relates to the entanglement between human and more-than-human. We invite reflections on what forms of collaboration between human performers, AI systems, and other-than-human environments might enable ethically grounded modes of co-creation.

It has been a quarter of a century since George Lucas created cinema‘s first CGI character of Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menance followed soon after by Andy Serkis’s landmark motion capture performance of Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Simulated, more-than-human characters and virtual environments are now the norm of Hollywood blockbusters. Indeed, death is no longer a barrier to reviving actor’s performances, as proven by the CGI revival of Peter Cushing’s character from the original Star Wars movie in Rogue One decades after he had died.

Simulated presences are becoming increasingly familar in a diverse set of live performances. The sensational success of the holographic stadium gig Abba Voyage, the interactive VR installation The Museum of Austerity, Bryony Kimming’s autobiographical solo piece I’m A Phoenix, Bitch – featuring a holographic version of a younger Kimmings – and Rimini Protokoll’s Uncanny Valley – starring a robotic playwright – are just a small sample of live performances featuring technological agents. Alongside these human and more-than-human dramaturgies, computer games such as The Last of Us and Detroit: Become Human represent an elevated level of characterisation and interactive storytelling.

Inspired by Donna Haraway’s concept of the Cyborg and the MTH eco-philosophy of David Abram, we invite contributions that explore the rise of posthuman performance ecologies and creative ecosystems envisaged by philosopher Rosi Braidotti, as well as the implications and possibilities for more-than-human theatrical aesthetics, performance-making methodologies, and performer training paradigms.

Our questions for TaPRA 26 are:

What kind of relational and collaborative practices might we engender and inhabit to co-create within posthuman realities? How do we embody and evolve our understandings of these new performance environments, production processes and paradigms of being/not being in performance? How does performance-making disentangle itself from binary systems of production and human-centric creative approaches?

Conversely, we also wish to ponder historical contexts of past technological innovations and how they have shaped technological mediated environments and characters through their impact on theatre and performance practice.

We welcome contributions responding to, but not limited by, the following prompts:  

• Actor training for virtual environments and digital artworks
• Ethics of AI generated videos
• Use of holograms and VR in museological contexts
• Co-agency and co-creation in technologically enabled performance
• Resurrecting dead actors and performances
• History of technologically augmented/mediated non-human live performance
• Postdigital performances of care
• Cyborg politics and hybrid bodies in performance
• Intermedial practices involving human and other-than-human phenomena
• Human more than Human: exceeding human limitations in performance

We particularly encourage proposals from early-career researchers and postgraduate students, as well as industry professionals who don’t usually present or work in academic spaces. We welcome collaborative papers and proposals for panels.

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.

Working group publication
The Performance and New Technologies Working Group is calling for proposals by its members and contributors for an affiliated issue to be published by the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (IJPADM) in May 2027.

The issue is titled Atlas of Care: Collaborative Assemblages and AI Futures and it intends to offer a collaborative space to examine and discuss how practices of care intersect with the collaborative and performative dimensions of artificial intelligence through posthuman assemblages.

The theme has been shaped by discussions held within the working group over several years both at recent TaPRA conferences and at the interim events at Queen Margaret University in 2022 and at Rose Bruford College in 2025.

The issue aims to combine a variety of critical perspectives to investigate how AI technologies and social discourses are reshaping contemporary performance practices in relation to visual aesthetics, dramaturgical composition, participatory models, and critical engagements from audiences, scholars, and artists.

The Atlas aims to capture the intergenerational new cartographies that emerged during the Working Group gatherings, shaped by members arriving from different territories of practice, thought, and technological engagement. For more information, please contact the editors:
Joseph Dunne-Howrie joseph.dunne-howrie@rosebruford.ac.uk, Anka Makrzanowska  a.makrzanowska@arts.ac.uk, Bianca Mastrominico bmastrominico@qmu.ac.uk

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.